Apparently, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid cut Nevada a sweet deal on Medicaid. Some Blue Dog Dems want theirs too:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid moved swiftly to ensure that his home state of Nevada wouldn’t be hurt by Medicaid changes included in the health care reform bill moving through the Senate Finance Committee. Now some of his Democratic colleagues are demanding the same treatment for their states.

“We have to make sure Colorado is treated fairly,” Democratic Colorado Sen. Mark Udall said Wednesday. Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh [. . .] said: “If they want our votes ultimately, I suspect that they should take our concerns into account.” “We’re watching it,” added Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor.

Of course Reid could and should say, if you want your concerns taken into account, you better vote for the bill, with a public option. Cases in point:

A good news post from Ezra, reporting by Politico:

Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) is quietly talking with the Senate Democratic leadership and Finance Committee members about an alternative to both the government insurance option and the nonprofit insurance cooperative. In a one-page document he began circulating last week, Carper suggests giving states the option of creating a competitor to private insurers, which could include a government plan, a network of co-ops, or a large purchasing pool modeled after the revered Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan.

So long as states can band together, this could work. In fact, we can make this "Federalist Option" robust (Medicare +5) and open to everyone in the participating states. Imagine California, New York, Illinois, etc. banding together in a robust public option open to everyone. This works for me. Let Blanche Lincoln explain to Arkansans why they do not have that option. No interloping please.

Speaking for me only

Mark "Theory of Change" Schmitt gets back to his roots, the marketing of Democratic capitulation:

One way or another, we'll have to compromise. We'll either compromise with the most conservative Democrats and one or two Republicans, or we'll compromise with the limits of a process that was designed for a totally different purpose. The political question is simply going to be which compromise is worse.

Big Media Ezra is quick to second. I got bad news for the Village apologists - you can't sell this sh*t now. Most Democrats and progressives now rightly believe that health care reform which includes mandates but not a public option is a giveaway to the health insurance companies. No matter of Villager Wonk BS is going to change that. That is the political reality now.

Speaking for me only

Via TPM, Blanche Lincoln says:

We can [. . .] expand coverage to the uninsured and underinsured without creating a purely public, new government program.

Of course we can. We can also eliminate Medicare, Medicaid and Tricare and get rid of all government run health insurance. Does Lincoln support that? After all, we can take from the American People and give not hundreds of billions of dollars to the insurance companies, but trillions of dollars instead and get rid of these horrible government run insurance entities. The Max Tax that Lincoln supports chooses to tax the less well off and let the rich insurance companies, corporations and the wealthy off scot free. It is a terrible policy. Moreover Lincoln is wrong when she says "We can [. . .] stabilize the cost of coverage [. . .] without creating a purely public, new government program." That is a lie. Blanche Lincoln, a Bizarro Robin Hood, wants to take from the less well off and give to the insurance companies. It is as simple as that. I doubt that is a winning political formula. But I am no interloper. Blanche Lincoln will find out if the formula works for her next year.

Speaking for me only

The Bystander President can no longer stand on the sidelines on HCR, according to Chris Bowers:

[A] source on the Hill confirms to me the Senate HELP and Senate Finance committees will be merged by an informal, behind the scenes process involving the four major players in the Senate: Tom Harkin (Chair of HELP), Max Baucus (Chair of Finance), Harry Reid (Majority Leader), and the White House. Together, these four will meet and decide what sort of bill to send to the Senate floor for debate and amendments.

. . . [T]he only way a public option ends up in the bill that is sent to the Senate floor will be if the fourth major player, the White House, demands it. It is all up to the White House now. If it pushes for a public option to be included in the health care bill sent to the Senate floor, then a public option will pass as part of health care reform (at that point, all we would need are 60 votes for cloture, and from what I hear we have 57 already). However, if it allows a health care bill to go to the floor without a public option, it is pretty unlikely that a public option will pass as part of health care reform.

I disagree with Bowers in this sense - of course HCR would have a public option of course if Obama wanted it. He does not care. The only way the public option gets in is if the House CPC stands firm. The chances would also improve if 2 or 3 Progressive Senators say they will not vote for cloture for any bill that does not have a public option. Hell, if Ben Nelson can do it, why not Bernie Sanders? but the real block will be, as always, the Progressive Block. The conference report may be where it gets done.

Speaking for me only

So sez GOP huckster Ras. Now I certainly do not hope Lincoln loses to a Republican. But I am not one to be an outside interloper.

Let the local blogs handle it. Wake me up when the results come in next year.

Speaking for me only

Finance is going to report a no-PO bill but then Senate leadership has to merge it with the HELP bill. The ConservaDems will threaten not to vote for cloture. Will Reid call their bluff? What if PO supporters start making the same threat? All it takes is 1 or possibly 2.

If Senate leadership reports a PO-included bill to the floor, then the PO game is won. If it is not, then we should whip Progressives in the Senate to filibuster it (just like the Progressive Caucus in the House.) Suppose they do not?

Then we are back where we started - depending on the CPC to hold the line and get the PO in the conference report. Honestly, the public option is in better shape now than I would have imagined. And no, I do not credit Obama's 11 dimensional chess for that. I do credit his Bystander Presidency for allowing this to happen though. There is something in that at least. NOTE: One wildcard is Snowe voting for BaucusCare. The Village will get all whipped up in that case.

Speaking for me only

While Max Baucus continues to look like a fool, the smoke has certainly cleared on Kent Conrad - he is a vehement opponent of a public option and always has been. All his protestations to the contrary, in the words of Don Corleone, it was always Conrad.

The interesting news, after the Schumer Amendment failed by 10-13, is that 10 (11 if one is to believe Baucus' rationalizations) of the 13 Democrats on the most conservative committee in all of the Congress, the Senate Finance Committee, support some form of a public option.

What's left of interest in the Finance Committee? To me a declaration when the final bull (Freudian slip, "bill" for "bull") is voted on that in fact BaucusCare is DOA. Indeed, I would love for Rockefeller to vote No on it and intone, in open mockery of Baucus, that he is voting no on the bill because it does not have 60 votes.

Not a winning day today, but, all in all, not a terrible day either.

Speaking for me only

I always hate those "who owes Rahmbo" stories. The fact is no one owes Rahmbo anything. But if anyone does, it is the Blue Dogs. Let him go twist some Blue Dog arms. But it is good to see some "Senators owe Schumer" stories:

Sen. Charles Schumer has revived the prospect of a public insurance option in the Senate’s version of healthcare reform. Whether it ultimately passes may depend on a handful of first-term Democrats who owe their seats, in significant measure, to the support they received from Schumer (D-N.Y.) when he headed the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) in 2006 and 2008.

Is this true? Who cares. Just good to see some stories that give Schumer the juice, given the fact that his performance was actually stellar, as opposed to Rahmbo's lackluster work in 2006, which has been magically transformed by the Rahmbo PR machine into some political miracle.

Speaking for me only

I hope the public option amendments to Senator Max Baucus' atrocious proposal succeed in the Finance Committee, but I am sanguine about that. Assuming the worst for a moment, How the bill is voted out could be important.

First, it is important that the Democrats on the Finance Committee be put on the spot on the public option amendments. Let's find out who is for it and who is against it. For example, Baucus himself, Kent Conrad, and Blanche Lincoln will be No votes and no more hiding that fact. Let them take the consequences for their opposition. Second, even if, for procedural purposes, certain Dems vote Yes, let it be a Yes/No vote. The Hill describes what I mean:

After NYTimes story reported that anonymous Senate aides said that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was going to kill the public option when he merged the BaucusCare bill with the Senate HELP bill, Reid's office pushed back, via Greg Sargent:

A spokesman for Harry Reid is aggressively shooting down this morning’s Times report that Reid has decided not to include a public option in the bill that will ultimately be voted on by the full Senate. The Times quoted senior Senate aides — though not necessarily from Reid’s office — claiming that the health care bill he creates by merging the bills created by two key committees won’t ultimately have a public option in it.

But Reid spokesman Rodell Mollineau strongly disputed the story, saying there had been no decision and indeed that the process wouldn’t permit for a decision to have been made already. “It would be wildly speculative of me to say that has been predetermined,” Mollineau told me in an interview.

Is it ok to have doubts about Reid on this? Or should we be applauding Reid's "formlessness?"

Speaking for me only

I found this exchange from Nashville bloggers defending Blue Dog Jim Cooper quite funny:

It’s really amazing how much effort national progressives are putting into going after Jim Cooper. . . . A political operative, the city’s feminist conscience in the blogosphere and a former Music City Democrat have all picked a side — against the national interlopers. Is Coop the most progressive congressman Nashville could produce? Certainly not. But is that enough a reason to turn him out?

If you are a progressive it is. But what is funny to me is the language - "outside interlopers?" (And this blog really seems clueless. Lost Cause anyone?) You would think someone in the South would have a little more tact with their language (think "outside agitators" during the 60s.) In any event, the "city's feminist conscience" (though note the walkback here) seems not to exactly have her finger on the pulse of Cooper's district: