The chairman of the Senate Budget Committee says the House must stick close to the Senate's version of health care reform or risk losing the 60 votes needed to pass it in the Senate.
What we have is a plan to force people to buy from an insurance industry who is allowed, by law, to price fix and operate as a monopoly - with no outside competition.
Sen. Kent Conrad, a Democrat from North Dakota, said on "Fox News Sunday" that the 60 votes needed to stop a filibuster would not hold together unless the Senate bill emerged largely intact from a House-Senate conference.
It's telling that Conrad feels comfortable going on Fox News to tell the Democratically-controlled House what to do and how to behave. It's telling that Pelosi probably has more people in her District than Conrad has in his state - but he is calling the shots.
When a senator simply threatening to filibuster brings the entire Senate to its knees, something is very, very wrong with our current system. It appears Conrad, Baucus, Lieberman and Nelson single-handedly run this country.
Conrad to House