What? Did Harry Reid finally grow a pair? Tells Baucus to stop chasing GOP votes!

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

Reid to Baucus: Stop Chasing GOP Votes on Health Care

July 7, 2009, 5:35 p.m.
By David M. Drucker and Emily Pierce
Roll Call Staff

<snip>

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Tuesday ordered Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) to drop a proposal to tax health benefits and stop chasing Republican votes on a massive health care reform bill.

Reid, whose leadership is considered crucial if President Barack Obama is to deliver on his promise of enacting health care reform this year, offered the directive to Baucus through an intermediary after consulting with Senate Democratic leaders during Tuesday morning’s regularly scheduled leadership meeting. Baucus was meeting with Finance ranking member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) Tuesday afternoon to relay the information.

According to Democratic sources, Reid told Baucus that taxing health benefits and failing to include a strong government-run insurance option of some sort in his bill would cost 10 to 15 Democratic votes; Reid told Baucus it wasn’t worth securing the support of Grassley and at best a few additional Republicans.

By Tuesday afternoon, the Finance Committee began looking at ways other than taxing health benefits to deliver a health care overhaul that costs less than $1 trillion and is deficit-neutral, as Baucus wants.

Baucus for months has worked with Grassley on a health care reform bill that could garner bipartisan support. But the Finance chairman was forced last month to delay the markup of his committee’s bill because such a compromise remained elusive.

</snip>


http://www.rollcall.com/news/36546-1.html?type=printer_friendly

[tekisui]

1. Good! I hope Reid keeps calling out the DINOs that buckle

and obstruct.

[DCKit]

2. Geez, ya' think Harry just figured out who Baucus is really working for? n/t

[spin]

3. We need to change our health care system and move it into the current centruy...

if the big insurance companies, the pharmaceutical companies and the doctors end up behind the eight ball, so be it.

The middle class and the poor have been screwed for years because of profit and greed.

If the Democrats fail to come up with a truly good system that includes single payer heath care, but instead sell out to the corporate interests who are spending one million dollars a day to save their greedy asses, we need to elect people who will represent us.

If we all get pissed enough to hold the feet of those we elect to the fire, we can do this. Otherwise we are just feudal slaves with little hope of a better future.

We can all sit calmly by and spend our time watching tributes to Micheal Jackson and other talented but basically unimportant dead media celebrities. The corporations will have succeeded in their goal to create an uniformed and uninterested underclass to serve as lackeys.

[rocktivity]

4. It's more like has grown THIRTY pairs.

His 60 filibuster-busting votes are like a concealed carry license--just knowing he's armed with it is enough to keep the opposition in line.

:headbang:
rocktivity

[wryter2000]

6. Unfortunately, the 60 include

Two very sick people (Kennedy and Byrd) and Lieberman, who's sick in his own way. Still, my fingers are crossed.

[wryter2000]

5. I'll be on my fainting couch

:wow: I couldn't have put it better myself. Is there hope for our Democrats, after all?