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Guest
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http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-
klein/2009/10/what_olympia_snowe_got_for_her.html?hpid=topnews?hpid=topnew
s
The list of senators charged with merging the Finance and HELP bills into
the legislation that will actually come to a vote on the Senate floor is
vanishingly small, and every participant is there for a reason. Harry Reid
will preside. Max Baucus, chairman of the Finance Committee, will be one
of the chief negotiators. Chris Dodd, who led the HELP Committee's health-
care efforts, will be the other. And that's about it. Oh, except for one
other person:
Jim Manley, a spokesman for Mr. Reid, said that Senator Olympia J. Snowe
of Maine, the lone Republican on the Finance Committee to vote in favor of
the bill, would be invited to future sessions. And Mr. Manley said the
Democratic leader was prepared to go to substantial lengths to keep Ms.
Snowe’s support.
"He is prepared to do what he can to keep her on board while putting
together a bill that can get the 60 votes necessary to overcome a
Republican filibuster," Mr. Manley said.
Democrats really want this bill to be bipartisan -- to the point that
they're giving the Republican a space in the negotiations equivalent to
the chairmen of the two relevant committees. Indeed, I wouldn't be shocked
if this perk had been negotiated in advance of Snowe's vote yesterday.
This shifts the room's balance of power substantially: The negotiations
were previously confined to one liberal Democrat and one centrist
Democrat. Now they'll be between one liberal Democrat, one centrist
Democrat, and one moderate Republican. In practice, this is likely to mean
that Baucus will have something of a trump card against Dodd. If there's a
particularly thorny dispute, and Snowe weighs in strongly alongside
Baucus, it's hard to imagine Reid siding with Dodd, except in the most
extraordinary of cases.
There will also be issues that Snowe brings to the table herself. For one
thing, she wants to make sure the bill is affordable, but that just means
that people can afford the fees, not necessarily that what they're buying
will be good insurance. One of her ideas, actually, is to make the minimum
benefit package less generous. She also wants to open up the exchanges and
push for her public option trigger. Suzy Khimm has more details.
--
Nancy Pelosi, Democrat criminal, accessory before and after the fact to
Rangel's tax evasion. |
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