If not, it should be.
Here's the two key Republican "negotiators" that Baucus has been wasting so much time with all these long months. Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi (number 1 in corporate PAC contributions since 2003):
But, as Huffington Post’s Sam Stein points out, Enzi indicated to a local crowd yesterday that he disagrees with the entire approach the Finance Committee is taking:
Congress should approach health care reform in steps, instead of trying to put together a comprehensive package said U.S. Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo.
Health care is so massive that reforms can’t be made with one major bill, which is what the Obama administration and congressional Democrats are pushing, Enzi told members of the Casper Rotary Club on Monday at the Parkway Plaza Hotel. [...]
"We do need to have health care reform," Enzi said.
"We do need to get it right. We need take the time to do it. I think the only way it will happen is we need to break it down into smaller parts than we have now and put it through one at a time."
So he's just sitting in those meetings for the Oreos and beef jerky? He's certainly not doing it to negotiate any kind of reform plan. But if you really want to see what the major problem with the Baucus committee is, look no further than Chuck Grassley (number 6 in corporate PAC contributions since 2003):
Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, called President Obama and Speaker Nancy Pelosi "intellectually dishonest" on Tuesday, saying that Democrats were using the flap over end-of-life consultations to divert attention away from health care legislation currently being considered in the House.
The Iowa Republican, while not explicitly mentioning euthanasia or rationing of care, also said that he did not want government policy to "treat life at age 85 different than we do life at 35." (At a town hall meeting last week in Adel, Iowa, the senator said, "We should not have a government plan that will pull the plug on grandma.")
Right, it's the Democrats who are intellectually dishonest in this process. Utter bullshit. It's well past time for Obama to pull the plug on the farce of this "bipartisan" crap, get his Senate Democrats (that means you Ben Nelson and Kent Conrad) in line to agree to vote for cloture on meaningful, comprehensive, real healthcare reform.
