One Is the Loneliest Number for Baucus

Senator Max Baucus thinks he’s come up with a health care reform bill that can pass the Senate, but hardly anyone else on Capitol Hill shares that view.

The “Gang of Six” senators who spent months behind closed doors trying to hammer out a bipartisan agreement had dwindled to just Baucus when it came time to unveil the fruits of their labors. The Senate Finance Committee chairman was greeted by an overflow crowd of reporters, photographers, and television camera crews Wednesday when he unveiled his $856 billion bill, but he stood alone at the microphone. There were no Democrats, much less Republicans, there to endorse the soft-spoken Montanan’s proposal.

Many Democrats don’t like the fact that Baucus didn’t include a government-run plan as an option in new insurance exchanges that will be available to individuals and small businesses. They also think he gave up too much in a futile effort to win Republican support for the bill.

“The way it is now, there’s no way I can vote for the Senate package,” said Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, who happens to chair the committee’s health subcommittee.

The Republicans in Baucus’ gang, including longtime sidekick Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, left him hanging. Grassley complained that an “artificial deadline” kept the group from completing their work.

“I’m disappointed because it looks like we’re being pushed aside by the Democratic leadership so the Senate can move forward on a bill that, up to this point, does not meet the shared goals for affordable, accessible health coverage that we set forth when this process began,” Grassley said.

Just to make sure he didn’t sound too bipartisan, Grassley added that two hot-button Republican issues—“preventing taxpayer funding of abortion services and the enforcement against subsidies for illegal aliens”—also have not been resolved. Grassley is running for reelection in 2010, and some Iowa Republicans have complained he’s been too cozy with Democrats.

If a vote were taken today, there wouldn’t be 51 votes for Baucus’ bill, much less 60 votes to overcome a Republican filibuster, said Julius Hobson, a former director of congressional affairs for the American Medical Association.

“We will have to see how things evolve in the Finance Committee when they start their markup process on Tuesday,” said Hobson, now a senior policy adviser at the law firm Bryan Cave.

Baucus said he looked forward to including amendments that would improve his bill, but he defended his proposal. “I think I’ve come up with a good, balanced bill that can pass the Senate,” he said. By the time his committee votes on the package, it will win some Republican votes, he predicted.

Republicans and Democrats alike understand that they have “a moral obligation” to pass legislation this year that would overhaul a broken health care system. “We will act to pass health care reform legislation this year,” Baucus said.

Politics usually trumps moral obligations, however. After other committees approved health care reform bills on party-line votes, many health care reform supporters hoped the Gang of Six negotiations would produce a bipartisan bill that would stand a better chance of being enacted. That didn’t happen. Maybe Baucus is right, and it still could happen next week. Maybe the Senate Finance Committee is like Baucus’ beloved Montana: “the last best place.”

---

Kent Hoover is the Washington bureau chief for bizjournals.