Too bad Baucus can't be fired!!! then he would lose his health coverage and would know how his constituents would feel.

The magic of magical thinking , sweet ummm !

Procedural question: Several committees in both houses are working on their own versions of health care reform. How do these bills get reconciled? On the floor?

Baucus is a fool or a saboteur. The GOP publicly announces that it hopes to break the Obama presidency over health care reform and Baucus insists on cooperation with the GOP.

Its hardly a secret that a surprising number of the members in the US Senate are not particularly bright, but in the case of Baucus I go with saboteur.

Baucus is the poster child for all that is evil about the current campaign finance system and revolving door congressional staffing. In this case he is working hard for his patrons in the insurance industry. He is doing a very good job of obstruction and delay. The industry really needs to give him a nice fat performance bonus.

Baucus.

This is the guy who went off and negotiated with Republicans on his own to get the Bush tax cuts passed.

The same tax cuts that bankrupted the country.

Now he's worried about the fiscal impact of healthcare reform.

I hope they can take any POS that comes out of Baucus' committee, and wipe their asses with it in Reconciliation.

When, you represent a small populated state with very few large money making industries and you want to have money to run for re-election, who do you turn to for money? All of these Senators are similar. They have become the Blanche Dubois Senators, just trying to get by with the help of others. Those others, just happen to be Big Pharma, Big Insurance, the AMA and Hospitals. If these did not kick in to Baucus, for example, he would have a hard time keeping a sweeping job at God's Love Shelter in Helena.

Even in Oregon, Ron Wyden's second largest contributor is Blue Cross-Blue Shield. The same old "Follow the Money" rule.

Taylor, you forgot to mention that Baucus was the only Democratic Senator allowed to sit in on the RepuGs' Medicare revision planning, especially the sellout to Big Pharma on Medicare D. They gave him his own special rhinestone pet collar. If he ever gets lost, the tag and the implanted microchip will help direct him back to Republican National Headquarters.

We could short-circuit all this nonsense by doing the Senate bill via budget reconciliation. Obama says he is deadly serious, and I hope he is serious enough to do this. If some Democratic Senators do not want to be part of the most historic social welfare legislation since Medicare, that is their problem.

Baucus took $3 million from the industry he's protecting.

It's time to investigate him. Expel him.

Baucus. That fucker needs to start losing shit now. Take away his pork and perks, then see how valuable he thinks Insurance Industry dollars are. What a douche.

Time to return to the meet-ups from Dean's (?) campaign except meet in front of congressional offices and demand action. These six are probably watching reruns of "Law and Order" and playing 5 Crowns hoping to run out the clock.

The normally responsive Wyden's office has become very quiet in responding to e-mails about his stench, er stanch on healthcare.

Even Ed Schultz, last evening, let him off the hook by not questioning him about his dislike for Public Option. He mentioned PO once in passing, by saying it was not in some of the bills. Schultz, who had railed against our President not standing up for PO in the press conference, didn't even mention it to Blue Cross and Blue Shield Wyden, who opposes Public Option. Ed has a way of mouthing off, but, caving at the most curious of times.

Baucus is only a symptom of a much deeper problem -- the constitutional structure of the Senate. Small state senators effectively control the Senate by constitutional design, and do so whether democrats or republicans are the majority. Why do you think democrats were unable to pass meaningful civil rights legislation before 1964?

Unfortunately, there is no constitutional solution; the constitution forbids amendments, even under the incredibly difficult normal process, that would deprive a state of its equal share of senators.

Perhaps the best treatment of the problem can be found in Sandy Levinson's excellent book, Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (And How We the People Can Correct It.

Max Baucus, who gets over $1,500/day on average from the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries, knows very well what constituency he truly represents and he's doing them just fine.

If Harry Reid had either a backbone or a pair of balls, he'd remove Baucus from his chairmanship. Baucus needs to caucus with the party he always votes with - which isn't the Democrats.

North Dakota, New Mexico, Iowa, Maine, Wyoming, and Utah?

Seriously? Those six states represent 3.3% of the entire population of the United States. Talk about undue overrepresentation.

Let's get a group from California, Illinois, Texas, New York, Florida, and Pennsylvania to work on health care. Senators from those states only represent 40.3% of the country.

Or better yet, let's just let Dick Durbin handle the whole thing by himself since he represents 4.2% of the country or, 0.9% more than the great Max Baucus brain trust.

How can we abide by such an undemocratic institution? Abolish the Senate.

Why isn't more being made publicly of this turd's bought-and-paid-for status? It's time that he be pilloried in the public square on a daily basis. This man is a criminal not just a would-be Rethuglican.

He really needs to lose his chairmanship if he doesn't get this done. I have been worried about that guy for quite awhile.

Why isn't more being made publicly of this turd's bought-and-paid-for status? -frak

The same people who own Baucus own the media. Blogs comment about this daily, and some radio hosts, like Ron Reagan, but you'll never hear on whit of who owns who on the boob tube.

And I will say it again, calls to Conrad from North Dakota residents are running heavily against this. So he's having to fight his most vocal constituents on this.

If Obama can't bully and/or bribe Baucus into line, then he clearly can't deal with Putin either....

"Before yesterday, the bipartisan group engaged in negotiations included Baucus, Kent Conrad (D) of North Dakota, Jeff Bingaman (D) of New Mexico, Chuck Grassley (R) of Iowa, Olympia Snowe (R) of Maine, Mike Enzi (R) of Wyoming, and Orrin Hatch (R) of Utah."

By my count, this is 4 Rs and 3 Ds. How did this come about? I could have sworn the Ds had a significant majority in the Senate.

It's extremely depressing because we know you can't trust Conrad and Grassly is just an obstructionist and Baucus is a corporatist who never has supported real reform just the many ways they could get subsidies to private ins. Co. to cover the uninsurable at tax payer expense. Only public pressure has forced Baucus to reconsider his corporatist plans. How can anything good possibly come from such a committee...a committee who is so anti "the people" it's disgusting.

The real problem will be amending what ever crap this committee produces. Rest assured...if it were anything good we'd already have a bill...the hard part is getting us to swallow the crap they are going to produce and call reform....BECAUSE IT'S NOT THAT DIFFICULT TO PRODUCE A GOOD PLAN LIKE THE MANY ALREADY PUT FORTH...which means their delay is not good...and definitely not to our benefit.

What does it take to strip someone of a chairmanship? Would procedural moves to do this light a fire under Baucus even if they were just threatened?

Agree that reconciliation is the best recourse. The WaPo did a nice piece on Baucus's whoremanship of the SFC.

Bacus who gets 25% of his campaign contributions from the insurance industry is working closely toward getting a bipartisan solution with Sen. Grassley, the man who is dead set from the get go to any public option and who tells his own constituents that if they want great health care to go work for John Deer or the government. I don't think any of us can expect them to be awarded the Nobel for their efforts to help mankind.

MNpundit brings up a point. I checked the local paper for a blue dog congressman in another part of the state and the comments were overwhelmingly negative on health reform. One letter after another blasted Obama and the health care in very strong terms. The blog comments were even worse. We better start pushing back or else.

Doubtful--I'm thinking that MoveOn or some such group should do some advertising in Montana about what a corrupt pol Baucus is. Hit him in his home state.

"...we're trying to come up with a proposal that will resonate with colleagues all across the country."

Drop a stick of dynamite in a empty quarry and you'll get resonance. Is it useful? Nope.

Man, and I though Pat Moynihan did a lousy job with the Clinton plan during his days at the head of the Finance committee.

"...How do these bills get reconciled?..." PeakVT @ 8:56 AM
I may be mistaken, but I believe that when different bills for the same piece of legislation are reported out by the various committees, they are referred to another committee for reconciliation and then THAT bill is sent to the Senate floor for debate. Hopefully, anything Baucus includes to get that illusive butterfly of "bipartisanship" will be stripped out by the reconciliation committee.

Indeed there has to be a Dem majority on that committee.

Maybe Baucus needs to communicate with every other Senator to get a sense of what kind of revenue mechanism they would find acceptable.

In any event, this can't go on forever. As Pres. Obama said, in this town you need deadlines or some things would never get done. So, I suggest Reid give the committee a deadline and if it isn't met then the members need to be replaced.

Max Baucus(R-Pharma) does not lose his health benefits. None of them do. Even idiot congressmen who serve only a single 2 yr term have federal health care benefits for the rest of their lives. Lets face it. These as**&^#$% don't give a crap about the average American. They are all feeding from the same trough. Evan Bayh's wife makes a million bucks sitting on healthcare boards. Harry Reid's sons are lobbyists. Joe Lieberdouche's wifey is a lobbyist. Joe Biden's son is a lobbyist. Hillary Clinton's brother was a lobbyist. Trent Lott' son was a lobbyist. Bill Frist was only a Senator to get his daddy's hospital co. out of hot water with Medicare. The twit who was the mastermind behind part D(can't remember his name) got a multimillion dollar lobbying job immediately after passing Part D. And I am not even talking about Abramoff-like campaign money laundry operations. These people are shameless.