Moments ago, the Senate Finance Committee approved their version of the health care bill and voted 14-9 to report it out of committee. Olympia Snowe of Maine was the only Republican to vote for the bill. For her temerity, she may be denied the position of Ranking Member of the Commerce Committee. I’m not sure it is a good thing overall that Snowe supported the bill. It could be argued that her support for the Finance version of this bill will give it a leg-up on Dodd’s HELP version. That would be unfortunate. But, at least Baucus didn’t delay and delay and negotiate with the Republicans for nothing. He did at least get one vote from them.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
Forty minutes and still no comments?
Your comment fervor from your last two posts must have taken all the oxygen out of the room.
But, Mike, this is stuff that matters. Meta is so much more interesting.
I know.
Quite a bit of heat around here today, though.
With so much going on, there sure was a lot of passion aroused surrounding what appear to be some longstanding issues that seem to have been simmering in the liberal blogosphere of late.
It seems to me to have the potential to be a distraction.
We’ll see when the dust finally settles.
“Meta is so much more
interestingentertaining”.tru dat. l haven’t had this much fun listening to/reading things since l volunteered at my daughters’ cooperative pre-school many years ago.
that aside, l’m a bit surprised rockefeller voted for it. l really expected him to play chicken with baucus, wyden and snowe. maybe he got some private assurances in the cloak room.
as for the likelihood of snowe voting yea on the final bill…well that’s another day. further, if the RAT’s extract their pound of flesh because of this vote, she may yet follow arlen and change sides.
cue exploding heads.
How come the Reps can snap their fingers to take away her committee status while the Dem assignments are hewn in granite?
McConnell isn’t Reid
And Republicans are not Democrats. But, when it comes to cloture, I think the word is going to get around, those with committee chairs (Lincoln, Lieberman) better get in line.
I hope that also applies to all Dem-sponsored ammendments to the bill when it goes to the floor as well.
demoRATic caucus arcana…it’s just another reason, among many, the senate is largely dysfunctional.
ego tripping is embraced.
here’s audio of snowe explaining her yea vote today, via npr.
basically, she’s saying that she won’t vote for a public option, and share the trepidation of her fellow RATpublicans.
a hollow victory, at best. but now the onus is going to be on reid. will he bring the HELP bill forward with the public option as the preferred one, or will he not?
we shall soon see.
Congratuations, Maxie. Thank you for putting the entire country on edge, you SOB.
Could it be said that the AHIP report outweighs her support in that the need for a public option is more necessary than ever?
It would have been better if Snowe said no.
Now she controls the entire process from here on out and she damn well knows it.
If you thought Baucus made a weak bill, wait until you see the Snowe job that’s coming.
yup.
what happens next is reid, baucus, dodd, and the white house meet. and if harry reid proves true to form, the worst choice becomes the bill that goes to the floor.
maybe i’ll be proved wrong, and boy would that be great, but I predict a bad bill with no public option to contain costs.
watch.
Somewhere today I heard Reid quoted that he didn’t want to have anything “too controversial” in the bill that goes to the floor and that those more controversial ideas would have to be brought to the floor as amendments.
But I think he wants a public option in the bill. Ideally, if he can get all Dems to agree that they will vote for cloture on the bill itself and on all Dem amendments, but vote the way they want on passage of any of them, we may do fine.
Trying to keep a positive attitude anyway.
i have about as much faith in reid as I do in unicorns that gallop on rainbow paths into a purple sky.
ie: none. watch what happens: reid is going to base everything on the finance model. the chances of a public option making it in are slim.
just my prediction. happy to be wrong, but I don’t think I am. You’re gonna see a repeat of FISA. I am 99.99% sure.
My fear as well.
Bill Nelson is all atwitter about the “bipartisan” vote. In the real world, what difference does it make that the vote was 14-9 instead of 13-10? The one-vote bonus came at a high cost to content. Somebody explain what we got out of Snowe’s reluctant switch? She says she doesn’t know if she’ll vote for the final bill. Does her vote make it any more likely that she’ll at least vote for cloture?
Or to ask another way,
how was that not nothing? Or was that snark?
Now, it’s time for the House to move their bill to the floor.
Well, yet again. We don’t know what the hell will happen between now and conference.
So I am going to assume that people will expect the worst, because lately that’s all that’s assumed.
What was given up for Snowe’s lameass vote isn’t worth shyt for how they sold out the American People.
and, I wanna know why isn’t the HELP bill as important as Baucus’ SELLOUT SHAM?
Those two bills will be combined together in the Senate.
This is not the final bill. Hold off on the pitchforks.
What happened to the artist formerly known as Jello Jay? I thought Jay Rockefeller was going to hold his own and earn his new nickname Jay Rock by voting no. Any comment from him yet?
Four, counting himself, Lincoln and Conrad. It’s time to just admit that Baucus & Co. are Republicans and always have been.
Back when Bush was ruining the economy with his tax cuts for the rich, these “democrats” could have easily filibustered, but they actively supported the tax cuts.
It’s a joke. Makes me sick.
What’s impressive to me is that, now that we actually have SOMETHING substantive to talk about, there is so little interest.
The “Flame Away” thread from last night and today’s follow-up continue to draw attention, but this one (of actual substance) sits idle, with few even rating any comments.
It’s so sad what we’ve become as a nation, from all sides. We just love the controversy. We really couldn’t care less about the big issues, yet we claim to. Give us a beautiful train wreck and we just can’t inject enough of our feelings about the tragedy. But a practical matter like the cost of healthcare and the impact that will have on small business development (our only REAL long-term hope to fix the disastrous economic situation) and that’s really just SOOOO BORING.
What a pathetic bunch we are. And I include myself, so lay off the flames…
Well, the Baucus bill has already been talked to death. I assume everybody’s waiting to see what’s next before having much to say. It would be nice if the bill had much to cheer about as is, but that will have to wait until action on the floor.
I know. I can’t stand the Baucus Bill. But by actually reporting something, anything out of the Finance Committee, we’re actually home-free. If it stalled and died, we’d join the Clinton effort in the scrap-heap of history.
Right now we need to be excited that we’ve actually made it so far and hoping that we can create a system where smart people who are sick to death of working for corporations or government can finally quit their jobs and start small businesses that they know will work. Who knows what these engineering firms or software development firms or whatever will produce, but their soon-to-be founders are dying to start their new innovative firms. It’s true all around the country.
What’s been holding them back? The FACT that they can NOT buy health insurance for themselves or potentially great employees without the Fortune 500 Corporate Umbrella over their heads, which allows them to do so.
These “Exchanges” change all of that. They allow anyone to quit the job they hate and start a new company with the best deals on Health Insurance around available to them. Of course they will be even better if we have a Public Option available on these Exchanges, but we need to move on and let this new system evolve. And allow states to opt-out of “Public Option” if they can offer truly Universal Systems where everyone who walks in the door is treated without ever facing questions about their ability to pay.
I was just watching Olbermann and saw the latest round in the disinformation war.
http://bit.ly/kjevB
http://bit.ly/1nEajJ
I decided to it post it here, but it deserves its own post.