Some good news from the Senate, it seems that the Senate leaders have started playing hardball on health care reform. New articles on Politico and The Hill confirm that Senator Reid has stood his ground with the finance committee on not including taxing health care benefits to pay for health care reform and he is still committed to an August deadline. In addition, Senator Baucus is facing increasing pressure to abandon alternatives to the public option. Lastly, Senator Durbin has begun "shadowing" Minority Leader McConnell to try to disrupt the Republicans' attempts at delaying the health care bill.
Via Politico:
The four Republicans asked Reid to reconsider the timeline, saying it was too rigid given the scope of the bill. Several of the members said Reid suggested that he was flexible.
But a spokesman for Reid said later that the Senate was still keeping to the August deadline.
Under pressure from Senators, the finance committee will drop taxing health care benefits to pay for health care reform:
Senators had grown exceedingly concerned about taxing benefits as polling data and other figures began circulating widely among members. One Democratic senator who is opposed to the proposal asked the Congressional Research Service to run a state-by-state analysis of how many people would face higher taxes, according to a Senate source.
Snowe agreed, saying there was too much opposition to such a major piece of the financing package.
"There is enough of a concern that it will be out of the bill," Snowe said.
Senator Baucus, Chairman of the Finance Committee, is continuing to try to find alternatives to avoid including a public option in the Finance Committee's bill. A quest that does not appear to be supported by any of the other Democratic leadership.
One alternative to the public option, the dreadful co-op, has been declared dead already:
Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), a senior member of Finance, was more blunt, saying flatly that both taxing benefits and alternatives to a public plan — such as a nonprofit health insurance cooperative — are virtually dead.
"Whether some think it is [viable] or not, it isn’t," Rockefeller said, regarding the proposal to tax benefits. He added that the cooperative proposal is also off the table.
Lastly, Durbin has begun shadowing Senate Minority Leader McConnell on the Senate floor to disrupt the Republicans' attempts to derail the health care bill.
McConnell’s staff says they have noticed Durbin taking a more forceful approach against the Republican leader in recent weeks, culminating in a pointed reproach of McConnell on the Senate floor this week.
Durbin acknowledged his new role in an interview Wednesday, saying he decided to birddog the GOP leader after noticing McConnell stepping up attacks against Democratic healthcare reform proposals and the majority’s decision to close the Guantánamo Bay detention camp.
It is nice to see the Democratic Senate acting like they are the majority party for a change.