Senate Dems Say Obama Plans Don't Fix Spending

Many believe his inexperience in Senate maneuvering stalled bill

(NEWSER) - Democrats in Congress think Rahm Emanuel’s lack of Senate experience slowed health care reform legislation to a death crawl. Liberals and centrists have different complaints, but agree that the White House chief of staff’s time in the House did not prepare him for Senate maneuvering. “They're a bunch of barons over there,” a representative tells the Hill . More»

Measure that should have saved money will cost an arm and a leg

(NEWSER) - The Senate health reform bill is all fire and brimstone for the folks over at Firedoglake . The “con job” legislation “isn’t a ‘starter home,’ it’s a sink hole,” Jane Hamsher writes, and “it needs to die so something else can take its place.” Why, you ask? Ten reasons:

• $$$: "Forces you to pay up to 8% of your income to private insurance corporations."
• More $$$: "Penalties of up to 2% of your annual income" if you don't buy insurance.

Screwy Senate has a flawed, but good bill

(NEWSER) - The health care bill is as good as it’s going to get, and progressives whining about it—or worse, trying to kill it—are being ridiculous. “In a normal democracy,” EJ Dionne writes, the majority support would quickly pass a public option or Medicare expansion. But the “bizarre habits of the Senate” mean “we are no longer a normal democracy,” and "power has passed to tiny minorities, sometimes minorities of one" More»

If there is one, which we hope there isn't. Good idea, say Dems.

(NEWSER) - In the circus that is the Senate these days, a couple of anti-public-option Republicans—Tom Coburn and David Vitter—rolled out an amendment to the health care bill Friday requiring members of Congress to enroll in any such plan that might come to pass. When Dems didn’t object—Sherrod Brown, Chris Dodd, and Al Franken tried to cosponsor, but were rebuffed—GOP senators upped the ante and added in the president. The amended amendment would extend the mandate to the whole executive branch. More»

Hostile insurance industry pushes Dems to consider grab-bag of proposals

(NEWSER) - The public option, left for dead by the Max Baucus bill that passed the Finance Committee just weeks ago, has a new lease on life in the Senate. Credit goes to a CBO report underwhelmed by that bill's efforts to encourage competition, and a big power play by the insurance industry that backfired. Democrats are considering a raft of possibilities, from the triggered plan favored by GOP Sen. Olympia Snowe to others that would allow states to opt in, or out. “This issue is alive,” Max Baucus tells the Wall Street Journal. More»