The Baucus/Grassley road show on health care reform continued unabated through last week, and Baucus continues to defer to him, despite the obvious fact that Grassley is undercutting just about everything Baucus proclaims to intend to do with a reform package.
That continued on Friday, when Grassley made crystal clear his objection to any real reform:
Grassley, the top Republican on the Finance Committee, says he won’t back legislation to overhaul the U.S. health-care system unless Democrat Baucus, the panel’s chairman, abandons some of his party’s key goals. Among them: a government-run insurance plan and a mandate that employers cover workers.
"The biggest challenge he has in his own caucus is that a large share of Senate Democrats really want the government to run everything," said Grassley, 75, an Iowa farmer and former chairman of the panel, which is taking the lead on the bill....
And Baucus is just dreaming.
Baucus, 67, the scion of a Montana ranching family who has split with his party before, says he’s willing to compromise, even though many Democrats may not be. The party has a 59-40 advantage in the Senate....
"It’s very important to get bipartisan consensus on something as big and large as health-care reform," he said in an interview. "We want something sustainable." ...
Baucus said there are ways to structure a new public program that might appeal to more Republicans. "There’s a lot we can trade off," he said.
Actually, the biggest challenge Baucus has in his own caucus is that bugaboo about "bipartisan consensus" and a bunch of Democrats falling over themselves to present some kind of palatable alternative for Republicans (and that includes you, Senator Wyden, who should be helping carry Ted Kennedy's banner, and you, Kent Conrad). Chuck Grassley and the majority of his Republican colleagues (including Lieberman) have made it absolutely clear that they will oppose any reform that actually, you know, creates reform.
Can Grassley put it any more baldly than this, caught by John Amato?
Sen. Grassley, the Mad Twitterer, was on with Andrea Mitchell and she asked him about the public option. She didn't bring up his tweets,unfortunately. He said that he was against the public option because a think tank study told him around a hundred and nineteen million people would opt out of private health insurance and join it.
That's a Republican saying competition is bad, who is against the consumer's right to choose where and how they spend their money. That's a Republican Senator who doesn't give a good goddamned about what the American people might want.