ah, those sweet "nothings" pols can whisper in our ears... until it's time to actually do the deed...

baucus is a rat. a fink. a traitor to the american people.

He was bought off.

It's not that complicated.

I'm shocked, shocked that Baucus was a deceitful troll. Pull over the fainting couch, I'm getting the vapors.

Unlike most liberals, Baucus is an American first and a democrat second. It's gratifying to see he's come to his senses.

I suspect that ALL of this nation's biggest political problems can be traced back to the supreme court essentially gifting CORPORATIONS, entities that exist only on paper, First Amendment protections. That decision has effectively allowed a few hundred corporations to decide, via their endless supply of money with which to buy off pols and with which to generate mass marketing campaigns,the fate of more than 300 million citizens. What happened to Baucus? He is getting paid to articulate insurance corporation's ideas. That's all! It isn't rocket science. Health care, if it is ever passed, will be whatever America's corporations deem the American people to be worthy. Period! Baucus is their bitch and they his pimps. Questions?

baucus is a whore; selling out to his medical industry benefactors at the expense of the citizens..

how thoroughly unsurprising that al approves.

Baucus should not be chairperson. He has too much conflict of interest with the insurance/pharmaceuticals. the evidence for his centrist ramifications are very clear.He ensures he will have the money to campaign and dupe Americans again when he is elected.

It's not even the money. Most everything that happens in the Senate, is about the Senate.

What an astoundingly principle-free individual Mr. Baucus is. I mean, just flat-out bald-faced lying to the people of this country, and to the leaders of his own party. Remember that little statement Baucus put out after Kennedy died? The man is scum.

I find it interesting that when a fiscally responsible representive comes to the realization that we can't afford a $2 trillion government run healthcare plan, liberals immediately demonize their own. Can anyone explain how we can take on an additional $2 trillion when we are projected to have a $9 trillion deficit in just 10 years?

Can anyone explain how we can take on an additional $2 trillion when we are projected to have a $9 trillion deficit in just 10 years? -Chip Grinkmeyer

Well, I could give you the economics answer about GDP and relative debt percentages (since just throwing out a big number like you did is meaningless scare tactics), or I could explain how we'd actually spend less on health care over time, just as other countries who have universal plans do, or I could give you a moral answer about how we're obligated to take care our countrymen, an obligation we should value more than illegally invading sovereign foreign nations and dismantling their governments, but instead here's an answer you'll be more comfortable with:

The Death Panels will assassinate all Republicans and levy a Death Tax of 100% to fund their fascist adventure.

This week, is it 'their fascist adventure' or 'their socialist adventure'?

Apologies in advance. My email is broken.

He's a coward.

Davis X. Machina,

I'm not sure it matters, they use the terms interchangeably with no sense of actual meaning or history.

Let's just split the difference and call it 'fascialism'. Will that work?

Max Bacus should not be the chairman of Finance Committee. He has shown time and time again that he doesn't care about the people of his state that voted him into office or the rest of the people throughout the US. All he cares about is "lets make a deal with the lobbiest and his GOP friends". If there were some way that he could be removed from his chairmanship. It should be done. He hasn' even shown the respect to Senator Kennedy in death or before. All it is about is "Max Bacus". He doesn't even care about the man "President Obama" that helped him to stay in the Senate.

call it 'fascialism'

i think i typed that in my browser once and the results were NSFW.

I think i typed that in my browser once and the results were NSFW.

Balloon Juice has problems with their filters and the name of a common ED drug, which has led to discussion there of Republican charges of 'socia1ism'

Can anyone explain how we can take on an additional $2 trillion when we are projected to have a $9 trillion deficit in just 10 years? -Chip Grinkmeyer

By the same token, why were tax cuts a good idea when we decided we needed $5 trillion (over the same time period) for defense and an additional $2 trillion off the books (over a shorter time period) for a "foreign adventure", when we had a multi-trillion deficit?

Strangely, the people asking how we can afford health reform now, didn't have any problems supporting tax cuts then. The people they supported were given a budget that was paying off the deficit, and immediately stopped that fiscal sanity. Didn't hear a murmur.

The answer is, we can't afford not to reform health, because the cost of it is getting out of control. And since the status quo of the market solution is not reducing costs (only care), we need the government to do it.

As a former Baucus constituent, when I heard Baucus' pronouncement last Fall I knew that health care (mostly health insurance) reform was toast.

Whenever Baucus made a substantive forward-looking statement back in the day>> the opposite happened.

I find it interesting that when a fiscally responsible representive comes to the realization that we can't afford a $2 trillion government run healthcare plan, liberals immediately demonize their own. Can anyone explain how we can take on an additional $2 trillion

It is a $1 trillion dollar plan that depending on how you calculate it is either budget neutral over ten years after cost savings and proposed taxes (the House has it with a $6 bn surplus after some revisions to pay-go legislation go into effect) or costs $239 billion over ten years (per a CBO score that doesn't include pay-go changes) or an average of $24 billion a year which is around two months worth of current war spending.

What I find interesting is that someone who has zero apparent understanding of the contents of the bill comes on a policy based blog demanding we explain counter-factuals. Because of some factoid he heard some where. Do some reading and try again.
______________________________________

Right before the war actually broke out in Iraq I told a joke that made even the war mongers at work laugh.

" Hey, I've got some good news and some bad news!"
"What's the good news?"
"George Bush came out for universal health coverage!"
"Wow. What is the bad news?"
"It's for Iraq."

Plus the vast majority of that $1 trillion goes directly to the pockets of private insurance companies who then will be requires to pay out some 90-95% of that to mostly private medical providers. Under CBO scoring only about a third of people who gain insurance under the bill end up in the Public plan (less than 5% of Americans).

And while CBO does not score things this way a lot of that money will come back to the government in the form of income and payroll taxes.