Rep. George Miller (D-CA) is now saying the path forward will be for the House to pass the current Senate bill–unchanged–with the promise of a reconciliation fix later. Which, you know, the Senate Democrats promise they will get around to. Lucy, meet football. From The Hill: Miller conceded that the House may have to pass [...]

Ben Nelson (D-NE), living up to his role as the great defender of the health insurance industry, is now leading the fight against the new Health Insurance Rating Authority that Obama proposed as part of his health care reform package (PDF). From Politico: Nelson quietly urged Democratic leaders to reject Feinstein’s effort to include in [...]

While to most people in greater America this would seem like common sense, it is amazing how many people inside the Beltway will find this news mind-boggling. A new poll shows that the majority of Americans in many states don’t object to Democrats using reconciliation to pass health care reform if they think the bill [...]

The New York Times editorial page is now basically demanding that the House of Representatives effectively give up their constitutional rights and powers. No longer will they be the writer of laws and originator of all bills dealing with taxes, like the founders intended, but instead they should serve only as a rubber stamp for [...]

Talk about bad timing. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin launched a campaign today to end the filibuster and restore the ability for a simple majority of senators to pass legislation. His efforts include an email to supporters directing them to sign a petition at fedupwiththefilibuster.com to stop the abuse of rules that prevent majority rule. [...]

President Obama and Sen. John Barrasso (R- WY) got into a very interesting back-and-forward during the bipartisan health care summit. Barrasso tried to defend catastrophic insurance saying it makes people the “best consumers of health care.” Obama thought that was insufficient for many lower middle class Americans. The important thing is that this is not [...]

Anthony Weiner, Glenn Greenwald and Joe Scarborough pointed out the obvious this morning– the public option is substantially more popular than the Senate/White House bill. Now that only 50 votes are needed, there is no good argument to be made for passing a bill without one — it’s simply a way to pay off Rahm Emanuel’s back room deals.

Weiner has also been outspoken on the subject of ending the insurance industry anti-trust exemption. He is one of the FDL Fire Dogs we’ll be helping in 2010, so if you’d like to donate to his campaign through ActBlue, you can do it here.

I spent the day at the New School listening to Glenn Greenwald and Daniel Ellsberg speak on “The Recurrence on Limits of Knowledge.” Joining them was Chris Capozzola of MIT and David Barstow of the NYT, subbing for Eric Lichtblau.

As amusing as it would’ve been to see Glennzilla scrap with Litchtblau, I loved hearing Barstow speak. He broke the Pentagon Generals story, one of the best pieces of investigative journalism in recent memory, and advocated for government contractors being subject to FOIA requests.

I have to say, I like that suggestion a lot.

Welcome to the final part of “Battle at the Blair House,” the bipartisan health care summit. You can watch it live on C-Span 3 here, or via the embedded video. The meeting will be divided into four segments: Controlling costs – introduced by the President Insurance reforms – introduced by Secretary Sebelius Reducing the deficit [...]

During the bipartisan health care reform summit, President Obama said that they would try to bridge the divide between Democrats and Republicans on the issue. But Obama finally admitted that they simply might not be able to bridge the divide. There is just no way Republicans are going to vote for Obama’s omnibus health care [...]