Well, so much for President Obama’s commitments toward Congressional bipartisanship and unity within the Democratic Party itself. Just toss those on the pile along with the rest of the broken promises he made on the campaign trail. If the legislative progressives have their way, Senator Max Baucus’s chairmanship on the Senate Committee on Finance and quite possibly his legislative career could very well be on top before this whole health care reform battle is over.
It’s no secret on Capitol Hill that the Democratic senator from Montana isn’t exactly a favorite among his more liberal colleagues. Many of them feel he takes a stand with conservatives on a variety of issues, such as gun rights, the death penalty, and offshore drilling just to name a few, way too often. What really has them riled up this time, however, so says The Hill, is that not only has Baucus been “negotiating for weeks with Republicans over healthcare reform without producing a bill or even much detail about the policies he is considering,” he and the rest of the members of the Finance committee have reportedly “tossed aside the proposal to create a robust government-run insurance program.”
This does not sit well at all with more progressive legislators like Tom Harkin of Iowa – Chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry as well as a member of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee – who want a strong public option. Baucus, on the other hand, is aligning his support with a more modest co-op program. Some liberal senators, The Hill reports, are privately suggesting that Baucus “might be more open to persuasion if his chairmanship is subject to regular vote.”
Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, speaking on MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann, openly chastised Baucus’s attempts to convince Republicans of reform as misguided and essentially squashed any-and-all hope for ‘bipartisan cooperation’ in the legislator as President Obama had promised:
“I go back to 40 years ago when the Medicare bill passed. People like Bob Dole, Strom Thurmond, Donald Rumsfeld, Gerald Ford, as Members of Congress, they all opposed it. The fact is, in those days, the Democrats moved forward, they didn’t worry about “we have to have X number of Republicans,” their mission was: we’re going to get a good Medicare bill. … That needs to be our charge, not “we need a bipartisan bill.”
Still, there are key factors that work to Baucus’s advantage. First, unlike Republican senators who are limited to only three full terms as chairman of a panel, Democrats have no such restraints. Being only sixty-seven years old, a relatively young age for a legislator, he could be influential for some time to come. More importantly, however, in spite of the uproar from progressives, including far-left political blogs like Think Progress, Baucus still retains the support of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. Like or not, Senator Max Baucus has “emerged as a lead negotiator in a landmark policy debate, and some lawmakers think he will end up defining healthcare reform.”
Tags: bipartisan, Bob Dole, Donald Rumsfeld, Gerald Ford, government-run, Harry Reid, health care reform, HELP, HELP Committee, Huffington Post, Iowa, Keith Olbermann, Max Baucus, Medicare, Montana, MSNBC, Nevada, Ohio, public-option, Sen. Max Baucus, Sen. Sherrod Brown, Sen. Tom Harkin, Senate Committee on Agriculture, Senate Committee on Finance, Senate Finance Committee, St. Petersburg Times, Strom Thurmond, The Hill, Think Progress
