The Baucus Health Care Plan: Who Will Vote for THIS?

You’ve heard endlessly about how you need 60 votes to pass anything in the Senate. (It’s the number of votes required to end a filibuster.) You’ve even heard the number 60 used to justify why the Senate Finance Committee is jettisoning something as popular as the public option from their bill. As Sen. Kent Conrad said again and again on TV, there are “not 60 votes in the U.S. Senate” to pass a public option. But given the reaction to Sen. Max Baucus’ bill, crafted in secret with a bipartisan “gang of six” including Mr. Conrad, the magic number is not 60. It’s 12.

That’s the number of votes it would take to vote this mess of a proposal out of the Senate Finance Committee. And it’s not at all clear that it will get those 12 votes.

In a post later tonight, I’ll go over my reactions to the policy, although I’m going to have a hard time besting Shadowfax’s summary, “As for the bill itself: it pretty much sucks.” Or even Ezra Klein’s reaction to the “free rider” provision: “This isn't just the worst policy in the bill. It's one of the worst policy ideas I've ever seen.” We were expecting this bill to be substantially weaker that what we’ve seen from the House, the Senate HELP Committee, or President Obama’s less detailed blueprint. But we were expecting them to be weaker for a political end –- to get the 60 votes needed for passage, and entice bipartisan support.

Yeah. That’s not going to happen.

The gang of six was originally a gang of seven, with more Republicans than Democrats. But then Orrin Hatch dropped out. The end result of the gang of six's months of negotiations -- months where their deliberations stalled reform and helped its popularity sink in the polls -- is that very few of the members now support the compromise they helped create.  Mike Enzi and Chuck Grassley are openly airing their disunity after spending most of August bashing health care reform. Look for them to bring hundreds of amendments to the table. Olympia Snowe, the best hope of a Republican vote, said she won’t immediately support the compromise she had one of the biggest hands in crafting. And Republican leadership, in the form of Sen. Mitch McConnell, calls it “yet another thousand-page, trillion-dollar government program”... even though the actual Chairman’s Mark is a mere 223 pages and the CBO says it will only cost $774 billion.  (I understand.  Math is hard.)

The co-op meant to replace the public option as a compromise to Republicans and the insurance industry hasn’t solved the politics of the situation either. Republicans have been deriding it as government-run health care all the same. AHIP warms over the same language they used for the public option, calling it, “a new untested government-created co-op that could disrupt the quality coverage on which millions of Americans rely today.”

But the best part is Democrats and progressives are not amused either. Sen. Jay Rockefeller -- excluded from the secret negotiations despite being the #2 ranking Democrat on the committee, as well as chair of the Subcommittee on Health -- says there is “no way” he can vote for it. Sen. Ron Wyden, also on the committee, seems to also have big problems with how the bill defines “affordable health care”: “I don't know very many working-class families who you can look in the eyes and say: 'Do you have that kind of money in your checking account?' -- because they don't.” Sen. John Kerry has expressed milder reservations, but it’s not a home run for him. We haven’t even heard from Sen. Charles Schumer yet, who’s been an outspoken supporter of the public option and against the co-op. Ditto Sen. Robert Menendez.

Normally you would count on progressive organizations to push reluctant senators to back health care reform. But that’s a huge question mark for the Baucus plan. The AFL-CIO, AFSCME, and MoveOn have all unleashed highly critical statements. Health Care for America Now called the bill a failure and “a gift to the insurance industry.” So count them out.

If there are zero or one Republican votes, then the bill can’t even be voted out of committee without holding onto 11 or 12 of the 13 Democrats. Ironically, the huge concessions to get to 60 votes may kill any chance Baucus has of getting to 12.

(Photo credit:  The Senate Finance Committee home page).