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If it weren't Lou Dobbs saying it and knowing he always likes to take a shot at the Obama administration ever since the black man got elected and his brain exploded, I'd almost be inclined to agree with Dobbs on this one. I don't think it's "authoritarian" to want everyone to have to pay into a system that makes sure everyone is covered and has health insurance of some sort. I do agree that what Baucus is proposing looks like nothing less than making sure all of us are going to pay into the health insurance industry monopoly whether we like it or not with no assurance they're not going to still rip everyone off on premiums since there is not at least a public option in his plan.

And why in the hell is Baucus at this late date still pretending that any Republicans are going to vote for any of this? They already had the Democrats take all of their amendments and then still said they wouldn't vote for what the Democrats compromised on with the bill.

All I can say is, let me in a poker game with any of these guys since I'd go home with a pocket full of money. Never show your hand or let the other person call your bluff until you have to. And as a twenty some year union member, I can also say that the Democrats obviously haven't learned what the term "bargaining in good faith" means. They could use a few of our Business Reps showing them how not to be played for suckers when you negotiate.

I'm not sure just what Max Baucus' game is here, but I've grown tired of it. He's had months to get something done and what he's come out with is a sell out to the insurance industry. I hope to hell the Progressive Causus in the House isn't going to stand for this.

And surprise, surprise it turns out that "just when you thought the Baucus revolving door couldn’t spin faster: the Senate staffer responsible for devising the tax policies at the heart of the Baucus plan is a former lobbyist for health insurance and pharmaceutical interests, including an insurance industry front group".

Color me not shocked. Obama needs to decide which side he's on in this debate whether he cares about keeping his base. As John has said, he's going to lose the left if he sells us out.

Transcript below the fold.

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Chuck Todd walks through the Republicans phony argument on why they won't be able to negotiate with the Democrats on the health care bill. Now that Ted Kennedy is gone there's no one else that will "have a conversation with" them "the way Ted Kennedy would have done it". As if they ever had any intention of working with Democrats on anything. Good bill, bad bill, doesn't matter. They were never going to do anything but obstruct.

We need people like Senator Jeff Merkley fighting for us. Blue America still has our act-blue page alive and well for health care reform. Please pitch in if you can.
It's so frustrating watching the Max Baucus coalition try and dictate health care reform for America.

Not to just keep flogging a dead horse endlessly, but it does strike me as worth noting that when you read a puff piece in The New York Times about the Gang of Six bipartisan dealmakers in the Senate that vast power is being wielded by people who, in a democratic system of government, would have almost no power. We’re talking, after all, about Max Baucus of Montana, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, Susan Collins of Maine, Mike Enzi of Wyoming, and Chuck Grassley of Iowa. Collectively those six states contain about 2.74 percent of the population, less than New Jersey, or about one fifth the population of California. The six largest states, by contrast, contain about 40 percent of Americans...read on

And Max Baucus was leaking out costs today to the media from the Holy CBO that he says gets their bill to cost under the magic 1 trillion mark. Of course the Holy Grail doesn't have all the figures yet, Max says, but he's trying to sell it to the media that way. If the plan doesn't cost anything then it won't do anything. Being obsessed by the Holy CBO has been a huge big mistake. Just to remind you, Max Baucus was instrumental in getting Bush's tax cuts passed back in 2001.

Baucus started his career as a relatively low-profile congressman from conservative Montana but, in recent years, has shown a willingness to stray from the Democratic lines, at times sparking intense fights with the congressional Democratic leadership. He supported President Bush’s trillion-dollar tax cut that mainly benefitted the wealthy in 2001, fought to add a prescription-drug benefit to Medicare (in language pushed by the Bush administration) and sought billions in aid for drought-plagued farmers in his home state.

And now he plans to kill health care.

Bill Clinton speaks up about the CBO:

Former President Bill Clinton, himself a victim of an errant Congressional Budget Office score or two, implied today that the agency wasn't connected enough to the real world to know whether programs would save money or not. Speaking a few days after the CBO estimated that the White House's latest "gamechanger," an independent Medicare Advisory Commission to set prices, would save little money over 10 years, Clinton urged policy-makers -- and here he means Democrats -- to not accept the CBO's scores without adding a dollop of common sense. " I recognize that if you're in that budget office, you've got to project the future," Clinton said. But certain programs would realize savings "regardless of whether the mathematical rules they are now up with will prove it or not." He said that those with a stake in changing the system "almost always get the short end of the stick" when it comes to budget projections.

And Digby explains:

n order to understand what this really means you you have to recall that there was no discussion, zero, when the last administration asserted without any debate that we were engaged in a war without end, for which costs could not be measured nor should they be. It was accepted by members of both parties as a simple imperative and no discussion of cost-benefit analyses were even on the table. But when it comes to directly benefiting Americans with a life and death threat of another sort, that's all we talk about. This is not an accident

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This whole health care debate has been played very badly. Not getting into the game publicly for so long allowed the right wingers and Evan Bayh Democrats to corrupt the health care messaging. Now we hear that the Blue Dogs have corrupted the EC&C committee also. We'll see what actually happens a little later. People are usually very reluctant to change anything in life, even if it's going to help so it's not a shock that America is split over health care reform in the polls. It's a big deal and in the end people will be more hesitant to actually back change. That's why we need a strong leader to communicate it. That just means the Democratic Party must keep pushing forward. The Republicans went forward with the lunacy of the Terri Schiavo matter even when 79% of Americans were against government intervention in a family matter. That''s their core values. They are birthers. We want real health care reform that will help us all. We believe in America.

Howie Klein has more on Max and the Blue Dogs.

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Republican efforts to roadblock meaningful health care reform take on the fantastic and bizarre at times, and this example of Theatre of the Absurd is no exception. MyLeftNutmeg, a Connecticut blog, puts their silly manoeuvres into perspective:

This is a revealing moment from Monday's markup of the health care bill in the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee that illustrates the level of procedural obstruction Senate Republicans are willing to rise to in order to impede its progress and in the hopes of killing its momentum.

At the opening of Monday's hearing, Sen. Dodd asked Sen. Enzi (R-WY), the ranking Republican on the committee, if he would agree to accept by unanimous consent a total of 64 Republican amendments. After a whisper from an aide, Enzi, a little perplexed and not a little embarrassed, refused to allow the 64 Republican amendments to be accepted, lowering his voice to mumble, "I think some of our members want votes on some of those." Dodd's visible exasperation and disbelief is priceless.

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