Remember that just about anything can happen between now and the final version of the healthcare reform bill that comes out of the conference committee.

At first glance, this latest proposal seems like a workable compromise - but it really isn't. What are the odds that Blue Cross plans will undercut their own products? And why the separate plan, anyway? Why not just let people buy into the federal employees' plan?

President Barack Obama will meet Sunday with Senate Democrats on Capitol Hill, as a group of moderate and liberal senators weighed a new public option compromise in hopes of striking a deal by early in the week.

The president’s visit comes at the start of what will be a critical week for the health care reform bill. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will attempt to reach a so-far elusive compromise on the public option, and begin taking the procedural steps needed to pass a bill by Christmas.

As the Senate convened a rare Saturday session, about a dozen Democratic senators continued intensive talks on the public option, with the goal of agreeing on a framework that can garner 60 votes.

There appeared to be serious consideration of a new proposal on the table: a national health plan similar to the Federal Employee Health Benefits Plan, which provides insurance to members of Congress and federal workers. It would be administered by the Office of Personnel Management, which oversees the federal plan, and all of the insurance options would be not-for-profit.

“So in other words, what we got is a national plan that the progressives would like, but that’s where that middle is, we’re trying to find that middle,” said Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa).

“There’s sort of a kind of a general agreement on where we’re headed on this thing,” Harkin added.

Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), a public option opponent who faces a tough reelection next year, said she was encouraged by the proposal.

“It’s one of the things that’s been talked about, and I think it bodes well for being able to do what we want to do, which is to create greater choice and options in the marketplace but also have a downward pressure on premiums on cost ,” Lincoln said. “Those are the dual objectives we've got.”

It's been over a year since Americans elected Barack Obama, but we're still living in George Bush's world – two wars, a recession, a deficit, and so much more.

President Obama has his hands full cleaning up these messes and establishing a legacy on healthcare and climate change. I get that. But there's one blind spot that he can't afford to ignore any longer.

We're living under the rule of George Bush's judges. He picked over 40% of all current federal judges. We're talking about lifetime appointees, and so few cases ever make it to the Supreme Court that they usually get the last word.

Bush's judicial legacy didn't happen by accident, or overnight. He made it a priority. The numbers are telling: as Obama approaches the end of his first year, he’s picked roughly 30 nominees, 11 of whom have been confirmed. By the end of his first year, Bush had nominated 65, and nearly 30 had been confirmed.

To be sure, Republicans have been obstructing Obama's nominees at every turn – that's why so few have been confirmed. But Obama has played into their hands by not nominating more people, which would throw their obstruction into sharp relief and amp up pressure on the GOP.

I know it might not seem this way – in the midst of the healthcare fight – but Obama's legacy, the future of progressive legislation, and the well-being of our nation depend on the character, and quantity, of the judges he nominates. This issue deserves equal billing with the others at the very top of the administration's agenda.

The good news is that, unlike with many problems we face, Obama can ramp up nominations without sacrificing progress on his other priorities. There is no shortage of highly qualified – and progressive – nominees, and Senate Democrats can crush judicial filibusters when they set their mind to it.

The bottom line is that Obama may never have another opportunity like the present, with 60 Democrats in the Senate, to push through his nominees and return some balance to the judicial branch. And he has only four or so months before the 2010 election season causes the Senate to grind to a halt.

President Obama, your legacy clock is ticking. We need you to act now.

Fortunately, Sen. McCain has excellent healthcare coverage and can get checked out for early signs of Alzheimer's disease! Via Media Matters:

In what will, no doubt, be a recurring trend from Senate Republicans as they fight health care reform, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) decried the Senate Democrats' legislation by using faulty and fact-less rhetoric. McCain falsely accused the Senate health care reform of using "Enron accounting" measures. His comments are ironic, however, in light of his close, personal relationship with Phil "Mr. Enron" Gramm.

Gramm Was National Co-Chairman Of McCain's Campaign. Former Texas Senator Phil Gramm is the general co-chairman of McCain's presidential campaign. [JohnMcCain.com, accessed 6/3/08]

• McCain Was Chairman Of Gramm's 1996 Presidential Campaign. The Pittsburgh Tribune Review reported that in 1996, "McCain was national chairman for the presidential-nomination bid of U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas." [Pittsburgh Tribune Review, 9/3/07, via LexisNexis]

McCain: As President "I Would Rely On" Gramm. During the January 24 Republican debate in Florida, John McCain said, "But I as president, as every other president, rely primarily on my secretary of the Treasury, on my Council of Economic Advisers, on the head of that. I would rely on the circle that I have developed over many years of people like Jack Kemp, Phil Gramm, Warren Rudman, Pete Peterson, and [think tank] The Concorde Group." [New York Post, 1/26/08, emphasis added]

McCain: Gramm Is "Smartest" Politician. John McCain said the following about Phil Gramm to the Houston Chronicle: "He's probably the smartest - not just economist, but politician - there is." [Houston Chronicle, 2/25/08, via LexisNexis]

McCain Praised Gramm's Strategic Advice. The Houston Chronicle reported, "In an interview with the Chronicle, McCain called his friend's ability to frame issues and come up with clever campaign tactics 'just remarkable.'" [Houston Chronicle, 2/25/08, via LexisNexis]

• McCain Looked To Gramm When Campaign Was Floundering. The Houston Chronicle reported, "After working in the background for months, Gramm stepped into the center of the McCain campaign at its nadir last summer. Gramm said McCain 'asked me to come to Washington to look at the books and see what we needed to do to straighten them out.' The man famous for the Gramm-Latta budget cuts of the Reagan era recommended deep cuts in the McCain campaign budget and a radical change in strategy so that voters would hear the old 'straight-talk express' again. It worked. In January, Gramm stepped out of the shadows. He traveled with McCain in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina and stumped solo for his friend in his native state of Georgia." [Houston Chronicle, 2/25/08, via LexisNexis]

McCain Said Gramm Was His "Mentor" On Economic Issues. New York Times business and economics columnist David Leonhardt wrote, "Mr. McCain begins the story of his economic education in 1982, when the country was in recession and he was first elected to the House. Once in Congress, he worked with Jack F. Kemp and Phil Gramm, who conservatives who were also in the House then, and Martin Feldstein, a Harvard economist who was an aide to President Ronald Reagan, to pass tax cuts and spending restraints. Mr. McCain said that Mr. Gramm - 'a guy who taught economics for 12 years at Texas A&M' and has endorsed Mr. McCain - had been an especially important mentor." [New York Times, 1/26/08, emphasis added]

On Tuesday, Senate Democrats beat back Jeff Sessions’ filibuster of Obama’s first judicial nominee – Judge David Hamilton – by a reassuring margin of 70-29. Sessions lost ten of his fellow Republicans, including conservatives like Hatch, Cornyn, and Thune, and Hamilton will be confirmed Thursday afternoon to the Seventh Circuit.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that the GOP is winning the battle for the federal courts.

Just a few short years ago, right-wing Senators denounced filibusters of President Bush’s nominees in the strongest possible language and threatened to employ the “nuclear option.” Sessions went even further – he claimed Democrats were violating the Constitution by blocking any Bush nominee (no matter how extreme). But some time after November 4, 2008, his interpretation of the Constitution must have changed dramatically.

Now a Democrat is in the White House, and – hypocrisy be damned! – Sessions is vehemently pro-filibuster and pro-obstruction. And the worst part is that he’s been successful. Judge Hamilton was nominated in March to general acclaim. He received the highest possible rating from the ABA, both his home-state Senators strongly endorsed him (including senior Senate Republican Dick Lugar), and even the head of the Indianapolis Federalist Society backed him. It doesn’t get much better than that.

But the nomination was dragged out for months by the GOP. As a result, Hamilton will become just the seventh Obama nominee to be confirmed to the federal bench. By contrast, nearly 30 such Bush nominees had been confirmed at the same point. We’re talking lifetime appointments to the highest courts in our land. President Obama obviously has his hands full, but he can’t afford to neglect this crucial aspect of his legacy.

But so far, Obama has been playing into the hands of the GOP obstructionists. He’s nominated fewer than half as many people as Bush had at this point. That has got to change, and quickly. The Obama administration has a window of just 4-5 months to return some semblance of balance to the federal bench before the mid-term elections. The choice is simple: act now to fill the judicial pipeline with highly qualified progressive nominees, or let Sessions and Bush win.

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MarketWatch:

A health-care overhaul proposed by Senate Democrats will cost $849 billion over 10 years, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday, and slash the deficit by $127 billion over the next decade.

The price tag is just under President Barack Obama's target of $900 billion over 10 years.

The estimates, from the Congressional Budget Office, also showed that the bill would reduce the number of uninsured Americans by 31 million people, said the Journal, citing a senior Senate leadership aide.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has been anxiously awaiting the CBO's price tag for the bill before moving to debate on the Senate floor. The first procedural vote could come later this week on the bill. Obama wants to sign a health-care reform bill before the end of the year.

Like a bill that passed the House on Nov. 7, the Senate's bill aims to cover most Americans, bar insurers from denying coverage to sick people, set up insurance "exchanges" where people can shop for coverage and fine those who don't get insurance. It also sets up a government-run insurance plan, expected to enroll about 6 million people.

But Reid faces a number of hurdles in getting a bill through the Senate, including concerns about the measure's cost. Sens. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., and Ben Nelson, D-Neb., are among two of Reid's fellow Democrats who have openly worried about the cost of health-care reform.

Per what I've been told from Senate leadership offices, the Senate health care bill will:

• cut the budget deficit by $127 billion over 10 years
• cut the budget deficit by $650 billion in the second decade
• extend guaranteed coverage to more than 9% of Americans -- including a 31 million person reduction in the uninsured

Reid will probably file cloture on the motion to proceed tomorrow. The CBO's report should go up on the Senate Democrats site shortly.

So Harry Reid's holding firm - for now. And you just can't argue with Sherrod Brown: What concessions have the ConservaDems made?

The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, met on Monday night with a group of liberal Senate Democrats who urged Mr. Reid not to back down from his decision to put a government-run insurance plan, or public option, in the major health care legislation that he is working to finalize.

[...] “I don’t think in the end, anybody here in our caucus wants to be on the wrong side of history, wants to kill on a procedural motion, something as important as this,” Mr. Brown said. “It’s the most important thing they ever will have voted on except perhaps the Iraq war.”

Mr. Brown, who is a member of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which included a public plan in its version of the health care legislation, said that liberals had already given a lot of ground, starting with their willingness to give up a fully government-run single-payer system, which many favor.

“A large number of people in this country including many, many doctors wanted Medicare for all,” he said. “That didn’t happen. Then we wanted a strong public option tied to Medicare rates. Then we wanted a public option building the Medicare network. That didn’t happen. Now we are saying public option coming out of the HELP Committee. And now we’re saying public option with the state opt-out. Where was the compromise coming from their side?”

Hopefully the Big Dawg will make them see the political danger of screwing up this health care bill. Of course, since Sen. Bob Casey is already hard at work on a Stupak-type bill, I wouldn't count on them listening:

CNN has learned from two senior Democratic sources that former President Bill Clinton will attend the Senate Democrats' weekly luncheon Tuesday to address the caucus about health care.

A notice obtained by CNN went out to Senate Democrats saying, "All Senators should be aware that former President Clinton will be making a presentation on Health Care at tomorrow's caucus lunch. Senator Reid has requested that all Democratic Senators attend."

A constant refrain from Democratic leaders is that wavering Democrats must heed what they say is a lesson of the Clinton administration: fail to pass a health care reform bill, and congressional Democrats will suffer on Election Day.

With this visit at a critical time for health care in the Senate, the former president will be able to deliver that message in person.

It's good news that unpaid bloggers are included in this compromise, but since I don't know the details, I don't know if this would have kept Judy Miller out of jail:

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration, leading Senate Democrats and a coalition of news organizations have reached tentative agreement on legislation providing greater protections against the fining or imprisonment of reporters who refuse to identify confidential sources.

Under the deal, made public Friday, federal judges could quash subpoenas demanding testimony or information from reporters if the judges determined that the public interest in news gathering outweighed the need to uncover the source of a leak, including, in some circumstances, unauthorized disclosure of classified government information.

Protection under the so-called shield law would also be extended to unpaid bloggers engaged in gathering and disseminating news.

A version of shield legislation was approved by the House in March. But a similar bill has stalled in the Senate, and its prospects appeared to dim significantly in September when the administration, responding to apprehension expressed by intelligence agencies and prosecutors, took a harder line with regard to cases in which the government could claim national security concerns.

With the new agreement, however, the White House has now moderated that position.

[...]The leading proponents of the legislation, Senators Charles E. Schumer of New York and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, both Democrats, expressed confidence that the compromise would move quickly through the Senate.

“We still get most of our information from investigative journalists,” Mr. Specter said. “If you can’t protect sources, there is a lot of public corruption and private malfeasance that will go undetected and unpunished.”

Ah, the audacity of playing it safe! Obama clearly doesn't understand how positively this will affect people's lives, or he wouldn't be so lukewarm. The public option is polling well everywhere - including those conservative districts.

In fact, just about the only group not strongly supportive are the big contributors:

President Barack Obama is actively discouraging Senate Democrats in their effort to include a public insurance option with a state opt-out clause as part of health care reform. In its place, say multiple Democratic sources, Obama has indicated a preference for an alternative policy, favored by the insurance industry, which would see a public plan "triggered" into effect in the future by a failure of the industry to meet certain benchmarks.

The administration retreat runs counter to the letter and the spirit of Obama's presidential campaign. The man who ran on the "Audacity of Hope" has now taken a more conservative stand than Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), leaving progressives with a mix of confusion and outrage. Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill have battled conservatives in their own party in an effort to get the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster. Now tantalizingly close, they are calling for Obama to step up.

"The leadership understands that pushing for a public option is a somewhat risky strategy, but we may be within striking distance. A signal from the president could be enough to put us over the top," said one Senate Democratic leadership aide. Such pleading is exceedingly rare on Capitol Hill and comes only after Senate leaders exhausted every effort to encourage Obama to engage.

"Everybody knows we're close enough that these guys could be rolled. They just don't want to do it because it makes the politics harder," said a senior Democratic source, saying that Obama is worried about the political fate of Blue Dogs and conservative Senate Democrats if the bill isn't seen as bipartisan. "These last couple folks, they could get them if Obama leaned on them."

But with fundamental reform of the health care system in plain sight for the first time in half a century, the president appears to be siding with those who see the Senate and its entrenched culture as too resistant to change. Administration officials say that Obama's preference for the trigger, which is backed by Maine Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe, is founded in a fear that Reid's public option couldn't get the 60 votes needed to overcome a GOP filibuster. More specifically, aides fear that a handful of conservative Democrats will not support a bill unless it has at least one Republican member's support.

Getting the public option in the Senate bill makes it that much more likely that we'll be able to get it through conference, and not through the reconciliation process.

(from WMXdesign h/t Howie Klein)

If your unemployment ran out this week, you can thank Sen. Jon Kyl. Yes, the Republican whip objected to a quick vote that would have helped all those people. You can contact him here and thank him for his compassion:

Washington -- Key Senate Democrats tried unsuccessfully today to quickly pass legislation to give jobless workers in Michigan and other hard-hit states an additional 20 weeks of unemployment benefits.

That delays action on the high-stakes issue until at least next week.

Tom Clementson, a 58-year-old unemployed construction worker in Indian River, expressed frustration by the Senate's slow pace.

"So many people are out of work and need this extra money to put food on the table," said Clementson, who cashed his last check six weeks ago. "It seems like the Senate should spend more time on getting this passed."

Today's failed effort to quickly pass a bill followed the unveiling of a compromise bill by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and key allies. The bill would give all states an extra 14 weeks of jobless benefits, plus an extra six weeks for states with unemployment rates of 8.5 percent or greater.

[...] Reid introduced the bill after reaching a deal with Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, who had balked at the House-passed bill, which only gives extra benefits to the hardest-hit states.

[...] But when Reid asked senators to quickly pass the bill under a speedy procedure, Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., objected. That's enough to prevent a quick vote.

Kyl said he wanted to have time to look at the proposal and consider possible Republican amendments, and also ask the independent Congressional Budget Office to estimate its cost.

[...] While objecting to quick passage, Kyl said he expects "at the appropriate time," Republicans will "be able to work out some kind of agreement."

Kyl helped cause this mess. It's only good manners to help clean it up - but then, Republicans aren't big on personal responsibility, are they?

I wish I wasn't all hoped out these days, because then maybe I could see this news as a push for the public option on its merits, an actual solution and not as a campaign of CYA for the Democratic brand, something in which anything remotely resembling a "public option" will be good enough for their purposes - i.e. convincing supporters this actually is a representative democracy.

I suppose we'll see:

WASHINGTON - -- Despite months of seeming ambivalence about creating a government health insurance plan, the Obama White House has launched an intensifying behind-the-scenes campaign to get divided Senate Democrats to take up some version of the idea in the weeks just ahead.

President Barack Obama has long advocated a so-called public option, while at the same time repeatedly expressing openness to other ways to offer consumers a potentially more affordable alternative to health plans sold by private insurers.

But now, senior administration officials are holding private meetings almost daily at the Capitol with senior Democratic staff to discuss ways to include a version of the public plan in the health care bill that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., plans to bring to the Senate floor later this month, according to senior Democratic congressional aides.

Among those regularly in the meetings are Obama's top health care adviser, Nancy-Ann DeParle, aides to Reid, and Senate finance and health committee staff, both of which developed health care bills.

At the same time, Obama has been reaching out personally to rank-and-file Senate Democrats, telephoning more than a dozen lawmakers in the last week to press the case for action.

Administration officials are also distributing talking points and employing other campaign-style devices to rally support for passing a bill this fall.

The White House initiative, unfolding largely out of public view, follows months in which the president appeared to defer to senior lawmakers on Capitol Hill as they labored to put together gargantuan health care bills.

It also marks a critical test of Obama's command of the inside game in Washington in which deals are struck behind closed doors and wavering lawmakers are cajoled and pressured into supporting major legislation.

"The challenge is to go to the (Senate) floor, hold the deal," said Steve Elmendorf, a lobbyist who was chief of staff to former House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt. But "they are more involved than people think. They have a plan and a strategy, and they know what they want to get and they work with people to get it."

Sam Stein reports:

In a late-game push to pass the public option, progressive groups are trying to convince Democrats that it would be political suicide to pass a bill requiring people to buy insurance coverage but not giving them the choice of a government-run plan.

A memo making the rounds on Capitol Hill makes the case that the current construct of the Senate Finance Committee's legislation - which includes an individual mandate but no public option - will be resoundingly opposed by the American public.

Commissioned by the progressive-leaning Health Care for America Now - and obtained by the Huffington Post - the piece is based on three new polls conducted by reputable polling firms in swing House districts and the state of Maine.

"Nationally," the memo reads, "voters oppose a mandate to purchase private insurance by 64% to 34% but support a mandate with a choice of private or public insurance by 60% to 37%... Each [survey] found that likely 2010 voters oppose 'requiring everyone to buy and be covered by a private health insurance plan' but support 'requiring everyone to buy and be covered by a health insurance plan with a choice between a public option and private insurance plans.'"

In a not-so-subtle message to Senate Democrats, the memo concludes with a warning shot at the Senate Finance Committee's legislation - which seems unlikely to include a public plan.

"All of the health care reform proposals that have passed Congressional committees to date, including three House committees and the Senate HELP Committee, include an individual mandate and the choice of private or public health insurance," the HCAN memo reads. "The Chairman's mark introduced into the Senate Finance Committee includes the individual mandate without the choice of a public health insurance option."

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/25/new-progressive-memo-sent_n_299799.html

Why the media is focusing on the Baucus Dogs is a slap in the face to the four other bills and the rest of Congress, but this HCAN memo hammers home a point that was backed up by the new CBS/NY Times poll. Cancel the public option at your own peril. And that means without those death triggers.

So Senate Democrats on the Finance Committee offered an amendment that would enable the federal government to bargain for lower drug prices for their bulk purchasing, a direct assault on the White House/Big Pharma deal from a few months back. Basically it would shift poor seniors back onto Medicaid for their drug purchasing, where the government can negotiate discounts. This would save the government over $80 billion dollars.

And Tom Carper of Delaware defended the secret deal in the most amazing of ways:

I was not involved in negotiations with PhRMA but I believe that the administration was, obviously PhRMA was, and I presume this committee was involved in some way in those negotiations.

And what PhRMA agreed to do through those negotiations is to pay about
80 billion dollars over 10 years to help fill up half the donut hole. That's my understanding. And they are prepared to go forward and to honor that commitment. As I understand it, the commitment from our colleague Senator Nelson would basically double what was negotiated with PhRMA.

And whether you like PhRMA or not -- remember I talked earlier today in our opening statements, I talked about four core values, and one of those is the golden rule, treat other people the way I want to be treated?

I'll tell you -- if someone negotiated a deal with me and I agreed to put up say, 80 dollars or 80 million dollars or 80 billion dollars and then you came back and said to me a couple of weeks later -- no no, I know you agreed to do 80 billion and I know you were willing to help support through an advertising campaign this particular -- not even this particular bill, just the idea of generic health care reform? No, we're going to double -- we're going to double what you agreed in those negotiations to do. That's not the way -- that's not what I consider treating people the way I'd want to be treated.

That just doesn't seem right to me.

This is incredible. The deal is transparently one to protect drug industry profits. There's just no doubt about this. Carper is saying that it's more important to get a few generic ads in support of health care reform than to save the US taxpayers $80 billion dollars. Backroom deals must be honored even if they hurt people. That's the "golden rule" in Washington.

Did Carper not know that cameras were rolling when he said this?

Dr. Dean overcomes his natural shyness to share his thoughts on the Baucus bill and lobbies for using reconciliation to pass it:

Howard Dean, former Democratic National Committee chairman, minced no words about Sen. Max Baucus's health-care proposal, unveiled to the public this morning. "The Baucus bill is the worst piece of healthcare legislation I've seen in 30 years," Dean said last night at a healthcare town hall and book signing in Washington. "In fact, it's a $60 billion giveaway to the health insurance industry every year," he said. "It was written by healthcare lobbyists, so that's not a surprise. It's an outrage."

The Baucus bill leaves out some of the president's goals for healthcare reform, such as the controversial public option. While more palatable to Senate moderates, the Baucus proposal also drew criticism from Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a Democrat from West Virginia, who said yesterday he would not vote for it in its current form.

"I'm glad Senator Rockefeller is not going to vote for it. I wouldn't vote for it at all under any circumstances," Dean added.

Instead, Dean said Senate Democrats should and would end up using the reconciliation process to pass a plan with the public option. "It can be done, and that's how it will be done," Dean said, pointing out that a majority of Senate Democrats still support a more robust bill.