Dems Float "Split Bill" Vote....."Might" include Public Option on first round...

AUGUST 21, 2009
New Rx for Health Plan: Split Bill

By JONATHAN WEISMAN and NAFTALI BENDAVID

Democrats hope a split-the-bill plan would speed up a vote and help President Barack Obama meet his goal of getting a final measure by year's end.

Senators on the Finance Committee are pushing ahead with talks on a bipartisan bill. Democratic leaders say they hope those talks succeed but increasingly are preparing for the possibility that they do not.

Most legislation in the Senate requires 60 votes to overcome a filibuster, but certain budget-related measures can pass with 51 votes through a parliamentary maneuver called reconciliation.

-snip-

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs continued to insist Wednesday that Ms. Sebelius didn't mean to signal the White House was abandoning the public plan. A senior Democratic congressional leadership aide said weekend statements were calculated to test Republican responses.

Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona said Tuesday nonprofit insurance cooperatives, which centrist Democrats have suggested as an alternative to a public plan, were nothing but a "Trojan horse" that would lead to excessive government control of health care.

"It's fair to say the steam is going out of these bipartisan negotiations," the Democratic aide said.

House committees have passed bills that include a public option and new programs that would make insurance available to most Americans who lack it. If the Senate passes its own bill, the two chambers must hash out a compromise that could go to the president for signing. The public option could be the biggest point of contention between House and Senate.

Senate Finance Committee members working on a bipartisan bill are scheduled to talk Thursday on a conference call. "The Finance Committee is on track to reach a bipartisan agreement on comprehensive health-care reform that can pass the Senate," Sen. Max Baucus (D., Mont.), chairman of the Finance Committee, said in a statement.

But other senators noted privately that several factors are working against any deal. Many Democrats now believe it's a long shot. Mr. Baucus has set a deadline of Sept. 15 to reach agreement.

Several softer deadlines have already come and gone without a deal. One Republican senator, Orrin Hatch of Utah, has dropped out of the talks. The remaining Republicans have suggested they would only support something that had the backing of many GOP colleagues.

Still, the three Republicans negotiating with Sen. Baucus said Wednesday they believed a deal could be reached. "I'm hopeful," Sen. Olympia Snowe (R., Maine) said. "It's not without challenges, because of the complexity and the costs associated with it. We recognize that. And that's why it has consumed the amount of time that it has."

much more about this at:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125072573848144647.html

who do they think they are fooling?

They have these majorities and they can't? BULLSHIT.

I guess they truly do not work for us huh?

when you have to deal with Liebermann and blue dog types.

will go, yeah whatever.

There used to be a time when democratic leaderships were able to get the most recalcitrant of members to vote the way the leadership wanted.

Think for a recent example on The Hammer, Delay may have had his issues, and he was a corrupt SOB... but he did in the house what LBJ did in the Senate, and later what other leaders did, like Tip O'Neil.

So yes, to me this is an excuse, if they knew what they knew or how to get their people to vote the way we want them to vote.

I wish at times I didn't care about this, or the history of this country, or any history for that matter.

buried on page 18a somewhere, we'll hear about how they've stripped the bill of exactly what we need to make it work.

Joan Walsh of Salon is praising Obama for finally waking up that the "Left of the Left" is a force to contend with...along with Maxine Waters.. Good Listen.