This morning, Greg Sargent reported on a disturbing Bloomberg story that Rahm Emanuel met with key Dem senators, and signalled to them that the public insurance option was, well, optional as far as the White House was concerned, that it could be dropped to get a bill passed. The report included this passage from the earlier Bloomberg story:
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel met last night at the U.S. Capitol with Senate Democrats and told them Obama is "open to alternatives" to a new government insurance program in order to get legislation overhauling the health-care system to his desk, said Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota.
"His message was, it’s critical that you do this," Conrad said.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus of Montana said Emanuel urged the senators to seek Republican support and didn’t discourage them from pursuing the use of non-profit cooperatives, an idea Conrad has proposed.
Since Greg posted that at 8:18 a.m. EDT, Bloomberg has done some significant revision of the story, with that passage reduced to:
Obama is signaling that he’s willing to compromise, and yesterday White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel carried the message to lawmakers that the president is "open to alternatives," Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota said.
And then Greg has this update:
A spokesperson for Senator Kent Conrad tells me that Emanuel was making a far more general comment and was "in no way" talking about doing away with the public option.
This story has been raging since Bloomberg reported Conrad and fellow Senator Max Baucus’s claim that Emanuel had told Senators that Obama could nix the public option. Bloomberg quoted Conrad saying Emanuel and Obama are "open to alternatives" to a public plan.
Not so, says Conrad spokesperson Chris Thorne, who emails:
Conrad says Emanuel was speaking in reference to the need to overhaul the health care system as a whole — to forge compromise and get a bill to the president’s desk. It was in no way a comment on the president’s willingness to do away with a public option.
So where did Bloomberg get the story? It seems pretty unlikely that they'd make up quotes from Conrad and Baucus out of whole cloth. What did these guys really say, and what happened to make them back off?
When it comes to Conrad and Baucus, who knows? Conrad is falling all over himself to be the savior of health reform and to be the face that gets on the TV the most so it's not a surprise to see him saying that his marching orders come directly from the White House. It's not entirely clear what Baucus is up to, other than to have his "reform" cake, and eat it, too, in the form of cozy weekends with his favorite lobbyist friends. And who got to Bloomberg reporters to get Baucus excised from the story? Baucus's staff? Emanuel's deputy and Baucus's former chief of staff, Jim Messina?
The "bipartisanship" fetish is one of the problems that has put Max Baucus front and center in this debate, along with the illness of Sen. Kennedy, who should have been the shepherd of health care reform. The NYT has a long report on Baucus and reform today, pointing out--unwittingly--the key problem with Baucus in this effort.
All of that has left Mr. Baucus, 67, front and center, with the future of the health system largely in his hands. "If there is any chance we can do a bipartisan bill, it has to be in the Finance Committee," said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader.
Mr. Baucus, in an interview, said he had been preparing for this role since he was elected to the Senate in 1978, and viewed this as his moment — and Montana’s — to make history.
"I think I’m the luckiest guy in the world," he said in an interview in his office. "Here I am representing Montana in the United States Senate. I am at the point to be able to do something really significant, really meaningful, and it must be done."
....
Mr. Baucus takes great pride in working with Republicans, especially Mr. Grassley. Last week, as Republicans pummeled Mr. Dodd over the cost of his bill, Mr. Baucus huddled with some of those critics, including Mr. Grassley, to develop a bill that Republicans could support.
Mr. Baucus also delayed his first public drafting session until after the Fourth of July to work on lowering the bill’s cost.
Soft-spoken but tenacious, Mr. Baucus in recent weeks successfully strong-armed several lobbying groups into muting their criticism of his legislation, part of a concerted strategy of assuring interest groups that they had his ear as long as they did not chew on it.
Some Republicans called it heavy handed. "They’re literally being intimidated," said Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas.
Even as Mr. Baucus has tamped down criticism, he has continued collecting campaign contributions from industry interests, including drug companies and insurers.
So we've got the joint problem of Conrad's and Baucus's egos, thinking that they're the ones who are going to make history. But making it so much worse is their shared political instinct is for some vision of bipartisanship that hasn't existed since before the Clinton administration--since the Republican party left the realm of responsible governance for whack-job extremism. It's a deadly combination for getting real reform. Bipartisanship and the kind of health care reform the country is clamoring for are mutually exclusive.
