One is tempted to ask who died and left you in charge, but I guess the answer is Ted Kennedy.

Could you imagine the howls of laughter erupting from the Bush White House and the Republican leadership, not to mention Rush and Murdoch's crew, if Harry Reid or Tom Daschle had ever attempted to lay down this kind of marker on any of the legislative filth passed during Bush years?

Obama might just go for it. He can proudly show what a great bipartisan leader he is. This has gone far beyond stupid.

So much time, energy and expense has been wasted on this search for "bipartisanship". It's all just cover for selling out more of the government to huge corporate interests. If he were alive today, Mark Hanna would be so proud of the Senate, so pleased with where we are. It seems the republicans are well on their way to ensuring that ordinary Americans remain insecure. What's wrong with the Obama administration that they keep caving to these guys?

Dear Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi,

You already have enough Democratic votes to pass health-care bills in both the House and the Senate. Republicans are going to oppose ANYTHING you propose, so stop trying to appeal to them and tell them to go f**k themselves instead.

Do you think Newt Gingrich, Tom Delay, or Mitch McConnell would be trying to write a bi-partisan bill were they in your position right now? Hell no....they'd be trying to run you over and leave your dead carcass in the middle of the road! It's high time you developed the spine and guts to do the same.

Sincerely,

A very disgruntled Democrat

I think the original plan by Grassley & Enzi was to demand fealty by the Democratic party, knowing they probably wouldn't get it, so Republicans en masse could run elect/re-elect me ads using it as an example of how partisan the Democratic party really was. To a right-winger's way of thinking, it's perfectly acceptable to say "Do everything what I want and we'll get along fine. Oh, you won't do everything I want? Well, then, all the battles that now follow will be all your fault."

What I also think, is that even these two blowhards had no idea just how far backwards Obama had been willing to bend to make bipartisanship a reality.

I honestly have no idea how this is going to go down, but my mind is usually set on "hope for the best/expect the worst" mode. What I hope is that the media will note how ridiculous it is for the minority to make these sorts of demands - it's one thing to passionately make the case to change legislation you think is bad, and another thing entirely to demand your way like a child nearing a tantrum. I also hope that the Dems & Obama will really REALLY come to their senses on the matter of bipartisanship - pass the best possible bill (which it seems to everyone with a working brain in their heads means including a public option), and by and large the Dems will be untouchable. There will be benefits and dividends to reap from this bill for years and years and years, and the blowback from int on the GOP could really make them the regional party for a generation or more.

That's what I hope. What I expect is an even-more-watered down piee of legislation that will have poorly planned and poorly managed co-ops and huge subsidies for poor people mto give to insurance companies, making them richer beyond even their perverse dreams. Pre-existing conditions, real and imagined by insurance bean counters, will result in more rescission, and by the time I retire, at least 40% of my pay will be going towards insurance that can drop me if I become too expensive, but I won't be able to not have insurance, because it will be against the law.

It might be worth reviewing the legislative history of the last major health care revision: the Republican MMA of 2003. Speaker Hassert held the vote in the house for an unprecedented length of time so he and DeLay could work over and bribe recalcitrant Republicans, and the bill just barely passed. In the Senate the final bill passed 53-44, none of this 60 vote crap.

And the gang of six originally had a seventh member, Orrin Hatch. 4 Rs, three of them arch-conservatives, three Dems, two of them full-on Blue Dogs, one of them with Blue Dog tendencies, all of them from those small, mostly white, mostly rural states. The Gang was a like a shrunken mirror image of the Senate, if not of the country. The whole thing is truly perverse.

I wonder if Bernie Sanders can get five other senators to start calling themselves the Gang of the Other Six to sponsor the Origingal Baucus Plan, the one that included a public option and Medicare at 55. Hell, Boxer alone, counting half the population of her state, represents more people than the Gang of Six/Seven combined.

...none of whom represent large, diverse states...

Ah, this is a point which I have knowingly belabored, but never tire of seeing made: the gang of six only represents 3.6% of the population of the United States, or less than 1/3 of the 12% that could be considered a reasonable target for such a group.

Illinois, for comparison, represents 4.2% of the total United States population. Maybe we should just let Dick Durbin write the whole bill?

Now, I understand (but do not endorse) the undemocratic nature of the Senate, and can't help but chafe at the bottleneck caused by a Senator who represents less people than my Congresswoman.

And that's not even speaking to the complete lack of diversity represented by the Baucus Bunch. And have we ever gotten an explanation why the six are split evenly, despite the Democrats' overwhelming majorities? If I'm not mistaken, the split actually favored Republicans 4 to 3 before one of them took his ball and went home.

Truly, we should revitalize the War on Gangs and begin by disbanding the Gang of Six. The tent is too god damned big when corporate lackeys like Baucus are allowed in, not to mention given undue and unearned levels of power.

Right-wingers hate the Baucus/AHIP bill because they will vote against any Democratic Bill, no matter how AHIP-friendly.

Liberals hate the Baucus/AHIP bill because it is a giant gift to big insurance.

Dear Baucus/AHIP - may your bill rust in peace.

Now comes the big sell-out.

Look for a weak bill to come out of conference with Obama pressuring the progressives to pass it. Then the White House will put the screws to people like Markos Moulitsas who will dutifully write about how "this is better than nothing" and "if we don't pass this then it will be a huge defeat for the Democrats" -- and the left will cave in as usual.

And what will we get? Mandates on individuals to buy insurance from the big insurance companies, no price controls on Big Pharma who won't have to negotiate with the government because Obama long ago negotiated that deal.

The Republicans are right: health care reform should die -- they are just wrong on the reasons.

Who would have guessed it, progressives and teabaggers find common cause--and they might just get their million man march if anything like this Baucus abomination comes to pass.
And the Dems will be giving up what could have been permanent majority status even faster than the Repubs did. Impressive.

Do the Democrats need to bring their own lube also?

What I don't understand is why we never had a single televised committee hearing about the process of writing these bills. Is this typical? At the very least the hearings could provide facts, and maybe even put insurance company execs on the spot about their practices.

The appeasement of Republicans makes as much sense as Chamberlin's appeasement policy towards Hitler!

Grassley has already stated publicly that he won't vote for any bill that doesn't have "broad Republican support."

Is there ANY bill, no matter what was in it, that could gain "broad Republican support?" NO!

It doesn't make the SLIGHTEST DIFFERENCE what "bi-partisan" compromises Democrats offer! NO Republican will vote for ANY bill. Period.

More than 80% of all Republicans nationwide are opposed to ANY health care reform bill. They've already been convinced by the right wing propaganda.

So, any Republican who votes for this will be an instant target for their own right-wing base, as well as giving up all those insurance industry dollars. Plus, they'd be giving up a perfect opportunity to campaign against "government run health care."

Why should they support it? And why must Democrats endless cave-in to them in a FUTILE effort to appease them!

Grassly wants Democrats to promise they won't pursue their own bill if they don't get any Republican support? In other words, he's demanding Democrats give the GOP more incentive to block health care. Christ, he's a bastard.

When will the democrats accept that the republicans do NOT want health care reform. They have been totally bought and paid for by the big insurance companies.

Dems should put the public option in and push it through anyway they can. Not everything is going to be bi-partisan. Healthcare is one of those areas where republicans just won't budge so if dems truly feel it is important they need to go it alone.

Let's see if I have this down correctly: the Republicans are saying that the contents of the present Finance committee bill meet their HCR goals, but they won't promise to vote for the present bill in the future because it might get amended once it's introduced on the floor of the Senate? And if it gets changed, they can't/won't support it.
Okay.
Then Democrats should start, immediately and continually, referring to the Finance bill as the "Republican Health Care Reform Bill" and treat it as such when it is introduced onto the floor of the Senate. If Republicans have publicly announced that their reason for not agreeing to support the present bill is that it might be altered during debate, it's only basic logic (available to senators at no extra cost) to infer that they WANT the Finance bill to remain the same. If they want the bill to remain the same, that means that is what they envision as "health care insurance reform". Fine, let them defend it, then.
The whole Democratic strategy during the debate should be one of comparing the budget-busting, ineffective, corporate give-away Finance bill with the, say, HELP bill, a true piece of reform legislation. References of sympathy for the effort to square the circle made by Baucus should be enough to soothe his ego; if not, well, he's a big boy and will just have to suck it up.
If nothing else, it would be very enjoyable watching Republicans trying to defend a bill they have never supported.