Progress Illinois

After a month of boisterous town halls across the country and stalled negotiations on Capitol Hill, President Obama is set to address both chambers of Congress tonight about health care reform. When he takes the podium, he won't face appreciably worse political conditions than when lawmakers left town for their August recess. In some sense, the dynamic has shifted in the Democrats' favor.

Sen. Max Baucus, chairman of the Finance Committee, has circulated a plan among committee members that he hopes to put up for a vote by next week. While it's much less expansive than other bills being deliberated -- subsidy levels are too low, the employer mandate is too weak, and it does not include a public option -- it could be strengthened before a full Senate floor vote or in conference. Baucus heads the only committee with jurisdiction over health care that hasn't yet passed a bill, so the most important thing to note here is that the wheels are starting to move again on the Hill.

Republicans are furious with this new push. And their latest bogus talking point, floated this morning by Rep. Judy Biggert on WFLD's Good Day Chicago, is that the Democrats are not being sufficiently bipartisan. Watch it (the quote begins about three minues in):

BIGGERT: We on this side have never had a seat at the table. Anything that we have brought up has gone to deaf ears, nor have we even been asked to participate. Bipartisan agreement really has to take into account the things that we think our important. We all care about having everybody have health insurance if they want it. And I think there are certain reforms that need to be made -- the preexisting conditions, the affordability of it that allows people to purchase it, but that’s about as far as we go. Eighty-five percent say they like the health care plan that they have and the President came out in the beginning and said that would be true. In the Education and Labor committee, I offered that amendment to the bill in the markup of the bill and it was unanimously voted down by the other side of the aisle.

It's important to remember that the Democrats do not need Republicans to pass this bill. The electorate chose a Democratic president last year. The party holds strong majorities in both chambers. Americans broadly support the major reforms included in most of the Democratic bills. And even if conservative Democrats can't stomach the large but deficit-neutral price tag, congressional leaders can use the reconciliation process to pass the more politically-risky measures with an up-and-down vote in the Senate.

Nonetheless, the White House and Sen. Baucus -- to their detriment, perhaps -- are going to great lengths to include GOP lawmakers in the process, despite appeals from progressives to forge ahead. President Obama urged the so-called Gang of Six to keep up their bipartisan talks, even after Baucus and company blew through its original deadline to appease the concerns of Republican Senators. Sen. Olympia Snowe has had several meetings with White House officials about expanding subsidies and implementing a public option trigger plan.

And what do Democrats get in return?

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) returned to his homestate and urges people to fund his campaign so he can "defeat Obama-care." Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) promoted "the rationing of [America's] health care" during the GOP's weekly radio address. Meanwhile, legislators like Biggert have intentionally lied about their opponents' proposals. Even the amendment that Biggert proposed -- which she described on Fox as "ensuring that anyone who likes the health care they have right now to keep that health care, rather than get forced into a government-run plan" -- was misleading. Nobody would be forced into a public option. It would be one choice among many offered to those who qualify. Biggert's bill was not defeated out of partisan spite. It was voted down because it made no sense.

If the Republicans had ever negotiated in good faith, Biggert might have a valid point. But they haven't. And they have nobody to blame but themselves.