Sens. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota and Dick Durbin of Illinois have been working intensely on a jobs bill for more than a month, talking with relevant committee leaders and other members and dispatching aides to dozens of other meetings in the hopes of crafting a bill that could get through the Senate quickly.

And when they walked into a meeting in the office of Reid (D-Nev.) on Jan. 22, they thought they were about to cross the finish line — the Dorgan-Durbin plan would be blessed by the small group of senators in the room, presented to the full Democratic Caucus on Jan. 28 and then taken straight to the floor for a vote.

But Montana Sen. Max Baucus had other ideas.

The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, where the health care bill was debated for months last year, surprised the senators gathered in Reid’s office by suggesting he wanted a chance to mark up portions of the bill under his committee’s jurisdiction before it went to the floor, according to several people who attended the meeting.

via Democrats squabble over jobs bill – Manu Raju and Meredith Shiner – POLITICO.com.

Here is what I have to assume, Baucus wants to do what he did with the moderate health care bill: water it down, send it through weeks of useless negotiations and see how his constituents (aka industry and angry tea baggers from the right) feel about it before he comes up with a bill that no one likes. Now mind you, the President and the Democrats are under pressure to get more done for job creation. Durbin and Dorgan were proactive and Baucus inserts his ass on the tail end of the process (no pun intended). One of these kids is doin’ their own thing.

Huh?

U.S. Senator Max Baucus has finally broken his silence regarding his personal position on including a public option in health care reform legislation. Last Monday night (8/17), in an unprecedented conference call to Montana Democratic central committee chairs, the powerful leader of the Senate Finance Committee told his strongest supporters that he supported a public option.

While discussing the obstacles to getting a public option through the Senate, he assured his forty listeners, “I want a public option too!”

The conference call was groundbreaking in that none of the recipients could ever remember this kind of call ever happening before. The teleconference was set up seemingly in reaction to rising discontent among the local Democratic leaders with the Senator’s failure to take a clear position on the issue.

The discussion, which became contentious and rancorous at times, also touched upon the wisdom of creating insurance cooperatives as an alternative to a public option. When several of the county chairs objected, commenting that they did not trust the health insurance companies to police themselves and limit their outrageous corporate profits, Baucus commented, “Neither do I.”

via The Seminal » Baucus: “I Want a Public Option”.

If any of this is true, then why negotiate with a Blue Dog/GOP delegation that says they will never sign a bill with any “public option”?

So, I repeat: Why has it come down to these six? Who anointed them? Apparently, the White House. At least that’s what I’m repeatedly being told by sources both on the Hill and in the administration. “The Finance Committee is where the action is. They’ll tee up the final bill,” says someone who should know.

via Why the Gang of Six is deciding healthcare for 300 million of us | Salon .

US Senators Conrad (D-ND) and Baucus (D-MT) are shown here seated. (Melina Mara -- The Washington Post Photo)

Ezra Klein recounts Finance Committee members Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND) and Max Baucus (D-MO) tale of how they “Came up” with the co-op plan as a political solution.

In early June, Max Baucus asked Kent Conrad to solve this argument. Conrad came up with the co-op proposal. And I literally mean “came up” with it. Conrad told me that the idea emerged “out of conversations in my office after we were asked to see if we couldn’t come up with some way of bridging this chasm.” To put it bluntly, the co-op does not solve a policy problem so much as it solves a political problem. That political problem was, “How do you finesse a compromise on the public option?”

via Ezra Klein – Co-Ops as an Alternative to the Public Plan .

A June 18, 1993 an article in the Toledo blade entitled: Health Care co-op concept at heart of Clinton reform contradicts Baucus and Conrad’s accounts of their own ingenuity. A as part of a 1993 letter to the Editor of the New York Times, Published October 15, 1993,  in response to a William Safire editorial, Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) clearly mentions health care co-ops:

A health care co-op — an alliance under the Clinton plan — will do what co-ops traditionally do: empower consumers as part of a larger buying pool. Competition will be the order of the day as insurance companies compete to sell their services to alliances, the only place they can go to do business.

Conrad’s staff just dug up Bill and Hillary’s old homework  from the early 1990′s.  All the plans being bandied about as new alternatives existed 15 years ago, to the day. Republicans didn’t vote for this then and they won’t today. Baucus has worked with Grassley since 1981 on the Senate Finance Committee. Most observers would believe he had a good idea of where Grassley stood on these issues prior to building his committee.  Since no progress has been made in Senate Finance Committee on health care for the last 16 years, what real work are Red State, Blue Dog democrats Baucus and Conrad (representing the 44th and 48th most populous states, respectively) really accomplishing in these closed door deliberations? What does this say about Baucus?

Maybe:

• Baucus is completely incompetent. He chose to subject health care reform under a 60/40 democratic/republican majority congress to the whims of a 50/50 Democratic/Republican ad-hoc committee with the GOP half positioned firmly to  the right of Republican party in 1993  and the majority in the 2008 election. Baucus originally built a committee with 4 GOP senators and 3 Dem senators, but Orrin Hatch stepped aside.
• Baucus isn’t pro-reform. Montana and North Dakota voted for McCain/Palin and as the insurance and pharmaceutical  industry donations fill up Blue Dog campaign coffers,  it seems they are stalling so that they can purposefully strangle health care reform.

The Baucus is an incompetent angle just seems unlikely.  Volumes of bills have been trimmed, bolstered and then ushered into signed legislation during Baucus’ consecutive terms since 1975 he has worked under Finance chairs such as Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) and Bob Dole (D-NC).  In reality, the why at this point is irrelevant. While Pelosi and Clyburn got the house to produce bills with the President’s preferred compromise single payer public insurance options, insurance exchanges, and public health subsidies Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has been missing in action while his Finance Committee chair has bucked the President, Senator Rockefeller, the chair of the Finance sub-committee on Health Care, millions of general election voters and himself in 2008. Yes, himself: A public option was essential to Baucus’ proposal, published November 12, 1998 which can be viewed here (c/o Jed Lewison at DailyKos).

The President convinced his supporters that a public or private health insurer, single payer option available on an open market exchange was the heart of the most sensible, necessary, health care reform policy. The GOP is energized by opposing a Democratic president who they personally dislike and/or distrust for visceral reasons. This visceral dislike is given thin cover by GOP elected officials and Washington, D.C.  insiders who formerly held office that toss out unfounded accusations of socialism, ‘death-panels’, fascism, and racism. Baucus is giving them cover by “negotiating” with them. In reality, Baucus seems to be allowing the GOP to  give it their best try to soften any health care reform plan that comes into his committee so that by the time he produces draft legislation, his esteem with his right leaning home state constituency and his campaign/PAC check book balances won’t be affected.

Obama needs a healthy something reform bill passed or he has failed to deliver on one of his main campaign promises. As of now, he needs to privately explain exactly what courses of action are acceptable to Baucus and other Blue Dogs in the senate. Sitting in a room with the Mount Rushmore of health care opponents is not one of them. If Baucus won’t budge, and both houses of congress grind to a hault, then Howard Dean may have the best advice: strip the bill of all budget/funded measures and make it a regulation overhaul. Second, Obama needs to continue to make his case in the plainest of English to the American voter and to invite skeptics to challenge his ideas and logically dismantle opposition talking points which have been steadily peddled as principled objection. He started on Micheal Smerconish’s Syndicated Radio show .

Congressional Democrats need to re-evaluate the system where they allow a legislator elected by a constituency that is generally opposed to the party platform to control their legislative agenda. The chair of the Senate Finance Committee is the most powerful post in the Senate and there is simply too much friction between Max Baucus’ political reality and the party platform for him to be truly beneficial to Obama’s progressive agenda laid out in the 2008 primaries and campaign.

Rockefeller has sparred privately with Conrad and Baucus during their Democrat-only Finance Committee meetings about what Rockefeller views as a disregard for measures that would make insurance truly affordable to the poor in West Virginia. But when Rockefeller emerged from those meetings, he tended to deliver only cryptic statements to the media.

On Thursday, however, he stopped putting on a polite face. In a warning shot of sorts, he sent letters to the Government Accountability Office, the National Cooperative Business Association and the Agriculture Department, asking dozens of questions about the history, success rate and legal, regulatory and licensure requirements of cooperatives — questions he said he has yet to receive answers from by the committee.

“I don’t think he is very happy with me, and I regret that,” Rockefeller said of Conrad. “I can’t worry about that.”

via Senate Democrats spar over public plan – Carrie Budoff Brown and Patrick O’Connor – POLITICO.com.

3 Democrats, 3 Republicans guiding health care is not what the American public voted for. No solution should be 50/50 bipartisan with the way the country split the senate 60/40. Since true universal health care is off the table and the real conversation is around a public option, the Republicans have gotten as much as they 40% they deserve. The fact that Baucus and Conrad insist on meeting the GOP on their side of the debate, should not only concern the Obama administration going forward but should make democratic senate leadership seriously consider enacting and making permanent Sen. Tom  Harkin’s proposals for choosing new committee leadership at regular intervals and by other criteria in addition to Senator tenure.