The Congressional Budget Office has released its "score" of the Senate Finance Committee's health care bill. The bill actually reduces the deficit by over $80 billion over the next ten years and by more over time. It also likely leaves about 6% of the population uninsured.
The Finance bill is unique as I understand it in being long-term budget positive according to CBO projections, but it also seems to me that the score could be improved by adding a public option, which is still possibly in the cards, and that the outcome would be improved both by a public option and by taking some of those savings and routing them toward subsidies to achieve universal coverage.
Ezra thinks that this score will be sufficient to get the bill out of the Finance Committee, which is the most conservative committee in the Senate.
Remember, before this bill heads to the floor of the Senate, it will be merged with the HELP bill authored by Ted Kennedy (negotiators will include Harkin, Baucus, and the Administration). That merging is overseen by Harry Reid.
Note, of course, that the Senate still has issues if Reid opts for a public option in the bill when it hits the floor. Max Baucus has been where he is because of the desire to break the filibuster. Reid can pursue a different route: daring Joe Liberman, Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln, and Kent Conrad to filibuster health reform.
Either way, once bills come out of the House and the Senate, into conference we go. Whatever comes out of there heads back for up or down votes but the Senate can still filibuster if some Dems and all the GOP decide to deny health reform an up-or-down vote.
(I guess we can't let Baucus get away with an entire day of unadulterated praise, can we? - promoted by Jay Stevens)
Over the years, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D) has issued a lot of press releases made a lot of headlines railing on corporate tax loopholes and the "tax gap" - the gap between what taxes are owed and what taxes are paid. In fact, just last month, the Financial Times reported that Baucus held a hearing specifically to rail on tax loopholes that let companies hide their profits in Caribbean tax havens. "If American companies are setting up shop at the beach just to avoid their tax obligations, we can't keep our heads in the sand," Baucus thundered. This posture has allowed Baucus to sugarcoat his generally lobbyist-friendly agenda with something that seems populist.
Cut to this week's debate over the farm bill. Bloomberg News reports that House Democrats paid for part of the bill by closing tax loopholes so as to "make it harder for overseas companies to use Caribbean tax havens to avoid taxes on US profits." Sounds like something Baucus would pick up and champion when the bill comes through his committee, right? Wrong.
Here's CongressDaily from today:
"When House Democrats last week put a tax provision affecting foreign-based firms into the farm bill without committee debate, Republicans rushed to condemn it as a tax increase on firms like Switzerland-based Nestle that bring jobs to the United States...It is one of several companies cited frequently by opponents of [the] language that would see no tax penalty under the change...The Senate is likely to turn a more skeptical eye to the offset. Finance Chairman Baucus said Wednesday that the provision will not be a part of the Senate farm bill. 'We're not going to do anything that is similar to what the House did,' Baucus told CongressDaily."
So, to sum up, Baucus was against precisely the kind of tax loopholes he is apparently now for - even in the face of evidence that all the Republican arguments against the Democrats' bill are actually substantively false.
I wonder...which particular lobbyists got to Baucus this time?
Max Baucus says expanding the Children's Health Insurance Program is his number one health care priority for the Senate Finance Committee this year.
Chairman Baucus launched his effort to renew the program that provides health care to more than 13,000 Montana kids during a committee hearing Thursday, saying he not only wants to renew CHIP but also expand it to cover more kids as well.
Congress probably will take its time in considering President Bush's plan for expanding health insurance coverage. Lawmakers, however, are moving more quickly to renew a program that now provides coverage to 6 million people, mostly children.
The State Children's Health Insurance Program expires Sept. 30. Democrats and Republicans say they want to swiftly reauthorize the program.
"There is no greater priority for the Finance Committee in the health arena this year," said Sen. Max Baucus, the committee's new chairman. "It's No. 1."
(Author's Disclaimer: Barrett is Sen. Baucus' Communications Director)
