President Snowe will have a seat at the table when Senate leaders get together with the other White House's representatives to merge the Senate bills.
Mr. Reid will gather the group in his office on the second floor of the Capitol for its first official meeting on Wednesday. The group includes Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana and the Finance Committee chairman; Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, who was acting chairman of the HELP committee when it passed its health care bill; and representatives of the White House.
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.
And that's why we had to have 60 Democratic votes in the Senate. Bending over backwards to make sure President Snowe doesn't veto the bill.
I wonder how Rockefeller and Wyden and Schumer and Cantwell who were all locked out of negotiations in Finance going to feel about that? Or Sherrod Brown, who worked so hard to put together the public option component of the HELP bill. Or the 30 Democrats who signed onto his letter demanding a public option.
They should take a page from the House Progressive Block--just say "no" unless there's a public option, threaten to join a Republican filibuster. Congressional Progressives need to join up as a cross-chamber block on passing a crappy reform bill.