In another sign that the Gang of Six is fast becoming the Deep Six, Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus today told the AP that while he still has hopes for a bipartisan deal, health care reform is happening this year with or without the GOP.
What caught my eye though this passage down in the story (emphasis added) …
“I think the chances are still good,” Baucus told The Associated Press in an interview Monday. “I talked to them, and they all want to do health care reform. But the sad part is a lot politics have crept in. They are being told by the Republican Party not to participate.”
If it falls apart, Democrats will have to turn to the “nuclear option” — forcing through an inferior bill through a process that only requires 51 votes instead of 60, Baucus said.
I don’t want to jump to the conclusion that this was some weird editorial gloss by the AP. Perhaps this is what Baucus said, and he meant that it would not be the ideal outcome, etc. But why would a bill passed through reconciliation be ‘inferior’? And, that’s only half a rhetorical question. Read More
I must confess I’m surprised. The new Quinnipiac poll is out this morning. And despite a few other polls that had shown this race nearing a tie, they have Christie still up by 10 points: 47-37, with the independent drawing 9%. In other words, at least according to this poll, the last several weeks of terrible (or seemingly terrible) news for Christie, hasn’t had much of an effect. Unless this poll turns out to be a real outlier, that’s really bad news for Corzine.
Late Update: It turns out that there’s a second Christie v. Corzine poll today. This one’s a bit better for the incumbent, with a 5 point spread. But that’s about in line with the last FDU poll. So the big picture seems to be the same: little change even after a very rough month for Christie.
Michael Steele takes to the airwaves in a new ad opposing all manner of things that are not actually in the health care reform bill. That and the day’s other news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.
President Obama chats with physicist Stephen Hawking at the White House where Hawking was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom. This and other behind the scenes images from our August at the White House slideshow.
I’d been thinking alone the same lines. The 2007-2008 Mike Huckabee was the warm and fuzzy face of the Christian right, more morals than intolerance and even a backdraft of social justice on the economics front. But he seems to have decided that there’s an opening for a hate-fest candidate in 2012. And he’s auditioning for the role.
Who kidnapped Tom Ridge’s dog and took him to a secret prison in Albania?
A new poll shows Democrat Creigh Deeds has closed to within 7 points of Republican Bob “Keep Women in Their Place” McDonnell. A month ago McDonnell had a 14-point lead.
It’s a big potential hang up that could make a senate health care bill much better for progressives or kill it entirely. In most conversations, the question of whether to push health care legislation through ‘reconciliation’ in the senate (which requires 51 rather than 60 votes) is being treated largely as an issue of how tough Senate Dems are willing to get.
But there’s a catch — a dynamic interaction between senate procedures and the substance (and thus the politics) of the bill. In short, to make a health care bill pass muster under the fairly arcane ‘reconciliation’ procedures, you may need to make the public option substantially more robust than what many Senate Dems are now envisioning.
In other words, maybe you have 55 votes for health care reform, but not 60. So you go for reconciliation. But you could have a situation where the Dems decide to pull the trigger on reconciliation (which needs 50 votes plus Joe Biden). But to meet the reconciliation guidelines you may need to include a public option that only 48 or 45 Dems will vote for.
Confused? We have the story here.
A voice from far on the left of the Israeli peace camp on why a boycott of Israel would be neither moral nor effective, and why Israel is not South Africa.