Copyright was relived of arbitration. It got special Copyright Royalty Judges. This became Public Law No: 108-419 six years ago.

Residents of nursing homes are on their second bite at the apple. Remember, even sub-committee chairs do not get their own legislation passed. So lucky Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-CA-39) has introduced a bill in both the 110th Congress and 111th Congress.

Fairness in Nursing Home Arbitration Act of 2008 - Provides that a pre-dispute arbitration agreement between a long-term care facility and a resident (or anyone acting on the resident's behalf) shall not be valid or specifically enforceable.

All us schmucks with cellphone contracts or credit cards for Costco? No luck yet, nada, zip.

Then the not-acceptable-to-Terrapins Chairman's mark comes out of the Senate Finance Committee. After reading Subtitle H is the reaction: We waited for this? Yikes!

SUBTITLE H—SENSE OF THE SENATE REGARDING MEDICAL MALPRACTICE
Current Law
No provision.
Chairman’s Mark
The Chairman‘s Mark would express the Sense of the Senate that health care reform presents an opportunity to address issues related to medical malpractice and medical liability insurance. The Mark would further express the Sense of the Senate that states should be encouraged to develop and test alternatives to the current civil litigation system as a way of improving patient safety, reducing medical errors, encouraging the efficient resolution of disputes, increasing the availability of prompt and fair resolution of disputes, and improving access to liability insurance, while preserving an individual‘s right to seek redress in court. The Mark would express the Sense of the Senate that Congress should consider establishing a state demonstration program to evaluate alternatives to the current civil litigation system.

Of course, the Nono Goposaur's will point to Texas as a great success in the area of malpractice reform, but not all agree that it was good for any party except the insurance companies in the longer view. Access to the courts is blocked. Market losses drive insurance premiums as much, if not much more, than court costs. For all the lecturing on personal responsibility, the desire to protect corporate medicine from liability is, well, interesting.

And Sen. Gregg's attempt at this failed in the HELP Committee markup. Surprise, surprise.

Do those plain statements in the Chairman's mark get translated in more arbitration-by-the-hour-hired-by-the-party-being-accused-of-the-error for medical cases? Or do patients get their own specialized court system? The statement that has troubled me the most is of course from Sen. Kent Conrad (R-ND)

"I think we're seeing consensus along the lines of safe harbor for doctors who use best practices, and this idea of medical courts, use of arbitration to lift a lot of these cases out is under discussion," said Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., a chief negotiator in the Senate.

Anyone else notice the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law hearing that was held Tuesday on the 2009 version of Rep. Sanchez's bill? Only two of the ten major credit card companies no do not use arbitration. And cell phone contracts fall into this category. The pre-dispute clause is what particularly bothers Rep. Sanchez.

Justice paid for by the offending party was one complaint in The Declaration of Independence. At it's worst arbitration is returning to a system where justice depends on "the amount and payment of their salaries". Private justice. I was watching this hearing as a possible piece of financial industry reform. I came away with a dread of arbitration as a way to circumvent other laws meant to protect the mythical little guy.

Happy Day-after Constitution Day.

[x-post from DKos, by appropriate request]

What happens if the Senate Finance Committee passes no bill?

That's the question I asked on Daily Kos yesterday.

This is an absolutely critical question of procedure.  Until you know the answer to this question, you shouldn't know whether you are happy or sad if Jay Rockefeller says that he's going to vote against the Baucus bill in Committee.  Everyone here should oppose the Baucus bill on its merits, of course, but you don't know whether there are strategic reasons for Democratic Senators to vote for it in Committee because it increases the possibility of our ultimately getting a good bill.

Sometimes our tendency to react ideologically ("Oppose the Baucus bill!") can get us into trouble, if that opposition also makes the public option less likely.

Luckily, we have some informed people on DKos (and here!)  I'm posting an entire interchange from yesterday below.

I had touched on this before, but after meeting at the White House, Sen. Rockefeller leaves no doubt where he stands on the public option and the use of co-ops as a substitute.

The proposed co-op model is untested and unsubstantiated – and should not be considered as a national model for health insurance. Both the USDA and the GAO agree there is not sufficient analysis and data for health care co-ops, and the National Cooperative Business Association – the leading association for co-ops nationwide – believes that more research must be done before such a plan can be considered.  

The consumer health insurance cooperatives identified by the USDA and NCBA operate and function just like private health insurance companies.  There is no evidence that co-ops would bring costs down or make insurance more affordable.

I have said all along that we need a public plan option in health care reform to drive down the insurance costs that are pummeling working families. I urge my colleagues to seriously consider this troubling new information before hanging their hats – and most importantly the livelihoods of millions of Americans – on an untested concept. We can do better.

So he asked for these to be studied, just to be fair, and coming full circle is back where he started, with a scold.

I believe it is irresponsible to invest over $6 billion in a concept that has not proven to provide quality, affordable health care, when we know that a public health insurance option will rein in costs and save taxpayers billions of dollars.

Well, now, all righty then.

Well, I know who one of those other senators on the Finance Committee happens to be. And that Senator is also the chair of the Health subcommittee of the Senate Finance Committee. After meeting with David Axelrod at the Senate Democrats' weekly luncheon Tuesday afternoon, Jay expressed what is probably on a lot of other people's mind.

Are we getting to the point where, if we do anything, we’ve achieved our purpose?

So here is an announcement, one hour later yesterday.

Rockefeller told reporters he was unhappy with the lack of a government-run "public" insurance option in the bill, which is scheduled to be made public on Wednesday, and had problems with some of its changes in children's health insurance and Medicaid, or healthcare for the poor.

"There is no way in its present form that I will vote for it," he told reporters

Then he spelled out his reasons.

Rockefeller cited four main concerns: The lack of a public insurance option, changes to Medicaid, changes to the State Children's Health Insurance Program, and overall affordability provisions.

SCHIP is one of the feathers in Sen. Rockefeller's cap. And how strongly does he feel about this and the public option?

After meeting with Baucus on Tuesday evening, several committee Democrats identified misgivings similar to Rockefeller's and made clear they expect the bill to undergo significant changes during the markup.

Rockfeller said he'll sponsor an amendment in committee to add a public option to the bill, and will have other amendments as well.

His move to West Virginia as a VISTA volunteer is a part of the effect that the Kennedy family had on a generation of people in public service. The rest of the country only knows his sad chapter on FISA. To Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV health care is a right, not a privilege for the few. Now, where have I heard that before?

The Hill:

Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee are poised to demand changes to the healthcare legislation being drafted by their chairman.

Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) plans to introduce his proposal for healthcare reform on Wednesday with a committee mark up to begin the following Tuesday. Based on the comments by several committee Democrats after a meeting Monday evening, that mark up could be a lengthy one.

Of course! How could it be any other way?

You know the "Gang of Six" with whom Baucus has supposedly been negotiating this ridiculous piece of crap bill? The Republicans are Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Mike Enzi (R-WY) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA), right? And Max Baucus leads the Democrats, right?

And who are the other Democrats in the six? Do you even know? Would you have to look it up? Remember, these are supposedly the insiders in this. Who are they?

That's problem number one. And as it happens, they're Kent Conrad (D-ND) and Jeff Bingaman (D-NM). Maybe you knew that if you've been a keen observer of the "negotiations," but if you didn't, think about what it means that most casual observers could name Snowe, Enzi and Grassley, but no one other than Baucus for the Dems.

Look, maybe that's not really true. I'm telling you just what I think about it, but that's not how everyone sees it. Maybe you've been a really big fan, or even a big critic, of how Jeff Bingaman has been handling himself in these dealings. What do I know?

Point is, there are 13 Democrats on the Finance Committee. Thirteen.

Just how the hell did we think the other ten of them were going to react to being sidelined in the biggest damn show in town? Ten Senators? Told to STFU while Max Baucus spins his wheels for six months? Come on!

As to the substance of the article itself, more power to the Senators who want changes, I say. I anticipate a lot of pressure being brought down on them to report something out of committee so that the process can move forward. But I hope they're thinking about the mechanics of what happens if they do that -- or if they don't. If the Senate doesn't go the reconciliation route, and the leadership has to put together its own package as between the HELP committee bill and whatever's salvageable from the Baucus trainwreck, then ultimately it hardly matters at all whether Finance reports anything. And if the Senate does go with reconciliation, it's looking to me like the bill comes back to them anyway at some later point if they deadlock the committee now and prevent it from reporting by Oct. 15th.

If they think there's any chance the full Senate would send it back to Finance with instructions to report back a bill that's somehow better than the one Baucus has proposed, then go for it. There's not much chance of getting a worse one. It worst, it's probably a wash. If the situation on the floor is such that the Baucus bill is all that can pass, let them prove it by recommitting a reconciliation bill to Finance with instructions to report back Baucus' bill. That's a fine acid test for his draft, if you ask me. But if you think you can produce something better and closer to HELP once you break free of Baucus and his gang and hear from the full body, then do what you need to do to get it in front of them without giving the Baucus plan any kind of stamp of approval.

Find a PDF of Max Baucus' (and nobody else's) 223 page health care bill here.

At least, one foot is there. The other one is in the grave.

Why is it being released today, September 16th? Because the deadline for it was yesterday, September 15th, that's why.

Here's a question I got via Twitter last night:

@KagroX assuming Baucus bill is as bad as Bob Reich says http://tinyurl.com/... how will Schumer, Rockefeller, Stabinow vote in Cttee?

And I answered:

@mitchellhirsch They will probably be asked to report it out and wait to see how it's merged with HELP.

And that's something to think about. I mean, the real answer is that I have no idea what they'll do. And I've heard whispers that there might be attempts to amend the draft to include a public option, of course.

But if it doesn't get included, what would Senators like Schumer, Rockefeller, Stabenow and Menendez do?

Well, I think they'd likely come under intense pressure to simply go along and allow the bill to be reported out of committee, despite their objections. If the leadership wants to keep the reconciliation option open, they'll be mindful of the fact that the budget resolution instructs Senate Finance (as well as the other four committees of jurisdiction) to report out legislation achieving $1 billion in budgetary savings, to be included in the reconciliation process. I'm not 100% sure, but I think that will require that the Finance Committee actually come up with something, even if it's just pro forma, or at least it will make things considerably more difficult if they don't.

So I think it's possible that Senators on the Finance Committee who support the public option will essentially be asked to put those concerns aside for the sake of moving the process forward, and that they'll agree to do that.

Should they? Or should they use that leverage to force more consideration of the public option?

Good question. And I suppose it's worth considering. Because if they hold things up, then I suppose it falls to Baucus and the more conservative Dems to decide whether they'll block their own bill and throw things into the chaos of reconciliation on the floor rather than in committee. Surely the conservative types will be using the logic of the process to try to put the liberals over a barrel, telling them that unless they give in, the process can't move forward, and since the bills will be merged anyway, what really matters is that outcome, not the Finance Committee vote. But the same logic applies in reverse, too. At least insofar as the committee and later merger outcomes are concerned.

The real question is what happens if the Committee makes no report and offers no bill? There are real answers about that, but they're archaic and confusing -- even more so than questions about what happens during reconciliation under the normal process.

We'll have to look at that later, and decide who holds more leverage -- conservatives or liberals -- should reconciliation go forward without a bill from Finance.

We already know Max Baucus (D-MT) is not a closer.

Nice guy. A decent vote, most of the time. And as he'll frequently remind you if he thinks you're criticizing him from the left, a pro-choice vote from Montana.

But not a closer.

Baucus made a personal promise to deliver on strict oversight of the TARP, and I don't know anyone who's particularly happy with the way that worked out, though he did eventually get a Special IG placed.

Baucus took six extra three months -- when time was of the essence -- to deliver a health care "blueprint" that represented absolutely no progress whatsoever, even though he claims to have been working on it for over a year.

And all the while, other work that Baucus claims jurisdiction over has been piling up.

Now he wants more on his plate:

Behind closed doors, Sen. Baucus has been staking his claim on major aspects of the climate bill, including financing for a cap-and-trade system.

His power play could put Baucus at the helm of the Obama administration’s domestic agenda, giving an unpredictable Montana Democrat control over legislative proposals that could define the Democratic Party for years to come.

The article, because it's in Politico, tries to make the case that this should be worrisome to liberals, because Baucus has been swinging to the conservative side of late, especially when he's trying to get "bipartisan compromise." But Democrats in general ought to be more concerned with the fact that Baucus has been generally ineffective in getting his work done, whether the end product is conservative, liberal, or otherwise.

It may be an impossible situation, given the Senators he's forced to work with. I'm certainly not saying I could get a deal that he couldn't. I'm just saying it's his job, and he hasn't performed well enough to merit more responsibility.

If he's making a jurisdictional play on which there's discretion, I would advise the leadership to steer away from Finance, simply on the grounds that if they'd like to get a damn bill at some point, they're better off somewhere -- anywhere -- else. And really, if he's making a play on which there's not that much discretion, I'd advise the leadership to think about what some other Senators are reportedly discussing in private: casting around for more capable hands for the Finance gavel.

UPDATE: As if to top it all off, TIME notes that Baucus is tinkering with his train wreck of a health care bill... to appease Joe "You Lie!" Wilson!

The controversy over Republican Rep. Joe Wilson's shouting out "You Lie!" at the President over his claim that illegal immigrants wouldn't benefit from health-care reform apparently sparked some reconsideration of the relevant language. "We really thought we'd resolved this question of people who are here illegally, but as we reflected on the President's speech last night we wanted to go back and drill down again," said Senator Kent Conrad, one of the Democrats in the talks after a meeting Thursday morning. Baucus later that afternoon said the group would put in a proof of citizenship requirement to participate in the new health exchange — a move likely to inflame the left.

Forget "the left." This move should inflame people who like to get shit done.

Enough with this guy. If you go to lunch with Max Baucus, he'll take six months to order, and just end up saying, "I'll have what he's having."

We've lost two votes since I posted 44 Senators Support a Public Option. Senator Edward M. Kennedy passed away and Senator Olympia Snowe has been much more firm in her opposition to the Public Insurance Option. I probably shouldn't have included her anyway.

We've gained two votes in my own Senator Dianne Feinstein and Colorado's Michael Bennett.

Virginia's Senator Mark Warner may be our 3rd addition. Chris Bowers from OpenLeft is keeping the best Senate Whip Count right now. I'm gonna steal share some more insight from him below the fold.

Everything we've known and said about Max Baucus' handling of the health care bill and his related responsibilities as Senate Finance Committee chairman is out in the open:

Listen to Chuck Todd tell it.

When he came out with his blueprint yesterday, I had people at the White House say, "Well, I saw this in June." And they're like, "What... where... you know, if this is it, then why didn't he come out sooner?" A lot of Capitol Hill watchers saying, "Hey, had he come out with this as the blueprint in June, forced a Grassley or an Enzi to sign off on it, you might have had a bipartisan thing to agree to. Clearly after the month of August, Grassley and Enzi are "no" on this front, no to this blueprint. But they were sitting out there, potentially waiting. So I think how he managed the politics of this has made him less relevant to this process.

Todd's being generous here, frankly. Had Baucus come out with this blueprint in June, you wouldn't have had a bipartisan thing to agree to, because the problem with this blueprint is that it's merely a compilation of points on which Republicans demanded capitulation, wrapped up in a single package, with a poison pill on top. It would've been bipartisan in the sense that Baucus would have voted for it, and Republicans like Grassley and Enzi would have been happy to see him do it, because it's a political death wish for Democrats. But it was no more worthy of being called "work product" in June than it is now. It was laughable on its "merits" in June. What's laughable now is the fact that Baucus claims to have been "working" on it all this time.

If you had asked me in June how long I thought it should take Baucus to concede every issue to the Republicans and then add the slow-acting poison of the mandates and even higher fines, I would have said ten minutes.

Baucus took ten weeks.

Coffee is for closers, Baucus.

I'm not as hard a guy as the Alec Baldwin character whose line that is. I'm truly sorry to have to say it. But it's not that you're not a good enough guy for the job, or too conservative a guy for the job. It's that you didn't do the job.

So Sen. Baucus is finally finished with that wonderful Gang and their take over of the 'hood. And he let everyone in on the final product since the cry in August was "Read the Bill!". Right?

Well, not if we believe what we and The Hill  heard at the White House Press conference today in an exchange with Chuck Todd.

Gibbs said he was told that "K Street had a copy of the Baucus plan, meaning, not surprisingly, the special interests have gotten a copy of the plan that I understand was given to committee members today."

But surely he has shared it with the person who has to schedule the floor debate eventually.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said he had not seen Baucus's draft either, when asked during a briefing at the White House after a meeting with Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

Nope. And this was so-oo worth waiting for. Not.

The reason that I am hoping the Democrats push the health care bill through the budget reconciliation process is simple.  We can get a better health care bill at the 51-vote (including Biden) threshold than we can get at the 60-vote threshold.  If we try to get 60 votes it means that every Democrat, and Republican Olympia Snowe of Maine, has an effective veto over any provision that they don't like.  And, frankly, I don't want Ben Nelson and Olympia Snowe determining what kind of health reform we get.  Now, the Republicans are getting very testy about the prospect of this bill getting passed through reconciliation.  

Max Baucus (D-MT) has finally decided to let us all know that he's formulated his health care plan:

In a last effort to give the Senate a bipartisan health care bill, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee circulated a comprehensive proposal on Sunday to overhaul the health care system and proposed a new fee on insurance companies to help pay for coverage of the uninsured.

The proposal is the culmination of more than a year of work by the chairman, Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana. A similar fee was proposed by several liberal Democrats in July. In making it part of his proposal, Mr. Baucus may help cover the costs of the bill but also risks alienating Republicans whom he is trying to win over. Mr. Baucus is struggling to forge a bipartisan consensus among 6 of the 23 senators on his committee before President Obama puts new pressure on lawmakers in an address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday evening.

The proposal by Mr. Baucus does not include a public option, or a government-run insurance plan, to compete with private insurers, as many Democrats want.

Mr. Baucus’s plan, expected to cost $850 billion to $900 billion over 10 years, would tax insurance companies on their most expensive health care policies. The hope is that employers would buy cheaper, less generous coverage for employees, thereby reducing the overuse of medical services.

The separate new fee on insurance companies would help raise money to pay for the plan. The fee would raise $6 billion a year starting in 2010, and it would be allocated among insurance companies according to their market shares.

No public option. Not even a public option with a "trigger," which was a ridiculous idea tacked on to a position that was already a compromise. And the central tenet of the financing: a giant new "fee" that insurers are already saying they'll simply pass on to their customers.

Apparently I'm supposed to be more favorably disposed toward the "fee," because it was once proposed by liberal Senators like Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Jay Rockefeller (D-WV). And I'll admit that the sentiments expressed by those two have some merit:

Mr. Schumer said, "The health insurance industry should pay its fair share of the cost because it stands to gain over 40 million new consumers under health care reform legislation."

Mr. Rockefeller said the fees were justified because insurance companies were "rapaciously, greedily and unstoppably making money by underpaying the patient, by underpaying the provider and by overpaying themselves."

But if the idea of health care reform was to control the growth of premiums, that's not really gonna help. And I understand that healt care reform options like those I'd prefer -- single payer or a non-profit, publicly-funded alternative -- will also cost taxpayers money out of pocket. But I'd rather spend that money funding a provider that won't be motivated to deny me coverage in order to increase bonuses for its employees. That's my bottom line. The fee gets passed on to the customers just as surely as any increase in taxes required to fund a public plan would, but at least if it's a tax for funding a non-profit entity, nobody's taking 30% off the top for bonuses.

Anyway, the real tragedy here is that this falling-off-a-log plan is "the culmination of more than a year of work" by Baucus. A year ago, we knew the Republicans would oppose single payer. We knew they would oppose any kind of public plan, because they oppose any expansion of government that they didn't author or that doesn't kill foreigners or wiretap hippies, and because they would even oppose all of that if Obama would get a "win" if it passed. And we probably could have guessed that they would have opposed these fees, too (and they do), but would be more than happy to see Democrats add them into their plan, because it's such a loser, at least so long as people don't have anywhere else to go that allows them to buy insurance without facilitating yet another skimming opportunity for the insurance companies. A fee might work just fine if there was some way to avoid having to carry that burden for the insurance giants.

So what I'm saying here is that it's very disappointing, to put it as mildly as possible, that it took Baucus more than a year to formulate a plan that amounts to capitulating to every Republican demand, and then adding a heaping pile of political suicide on top of it. Thanks, Max! Great plan. Glad we waited.

Now STFU.

Remember when it was pointed out the many things falling behind due to Sen. Baucus inability to close the deal in the Finance Committee on health care reform? Now, even as the White House and Leader Reid are indicating the are ready to pull the plug on the pretend bipartisan negotiations, Max still said this yesterday.

"I think the chances are still good," Baucus told The Associated Press in an interview Monday. "I talked to them, and they all want to do health care reform. But the sad part is a lot politics have crept in. They are being told by the Republican Party not to participate."

While Sen. Baucus still tilts at windmills out of some loyalty to compromise, what other committee's schedule is suffering?

Now, the senator has decided decided to push back the introduction again. In a joint statement Monday with Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, her partner in drafting the bill, Ms. Boxer said the legislation "is moving along well" but that the new goal is to introduce the measure "later in September." The statement attributed the delay to Sen. Edward Kennedy’s death last week, Kerry’s August hip surgery, and the "intensive" focus on health-care legislation by the Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over the revenue raised by the measure and whatever trade-related provisions it involves.

And while Sen. Enzi and Sen. Grassley have been tying the Finance Committee up in knots, how have other members of the Republican caucus been spending their time?

Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) "has hundreds of procedural objections ready for a health care plan Democrats leaders want to speed through the Senate," The Hill reports.

In a recent interview, Gregg said "that Republicans will wage a vicious fight if Democrats try to circumvent Senate rules and use a budget maneuver to pass a trillion dollar health care plan with a simple majority."

Now, I won't even bother to check to see what Sen. Gregg's position on using budget reconciliation from 2001 to 2005 were, because just a WAEG will do there. Looking at The Hill story a little further, we see something else of interest.

William Hoagland, a longtime senior aide to Senate Republican leaders on budget issues, said it will depend on how Democrats draft their final bill and how the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) scores it.
::::::::
Hoagland said, however, that he did not see how a plan to set up membership-run healthcare co-ops could survive a Republican objection.

Are you listening Sen.Conrad? Can we stop talking about co-ops now?

And you, the rest of the Democratic caucus, can we drop the idea that about thirty-six Republican Senators don't really agree with Sen. DeMint?

I'm not entirely sure if this quote is part of the overall strategic message or just a slip of the tongue that reveals the worst kept secret in politics. In either case, Senator Max Baucus of Montana -- who is not exactly seen as a champion of health care reform due to his willingness to "negotiate" with Republicans -- provided us with a lot of insight about the workings of the Republican Party in today's Washington Post.

But Baucus says the bipartisan deal is still alive. He said he still speaks frequently with Republican Sens. Charles Grassley of Iowa, Olympia Snowe of Maine and Michael Enzi of Wyoming.

"I think the chances are still good," Baucus told The Associated Press in an interview Monday. "I talked to them, and they all want to do health care reform. But the sad part is a lot politics have crept in. They are being told by the Republican Party not to participate."

Emphasis is mine, of course and I'm overlooking the fact that the very next paragraph in the story calls reconciliation the nuclear option.

Baucus' quote is extremely troubling, though. Even though the Republicans are "the other party," democratic representation demands that elected officials ultimately bow to the will of the people. If 77 percent of the people support the choice of a public option, doesn't it stand to reason that Congress should take steps to offer it?

But, no. The Republican Party (is Rush Limbaugh officially the chair of the RNC yet?) has ordered its members not to even participate in the negotiations.

The question for Senators Snowe, Enzi, and Grassley is simple. Who do you represent? Is it the people of Maine, Wyoming, and Iowa or is it the professional campaigners in the Republican Party? And so what if you get forced out of the party? We took Arlen Specter in.

Having read on the front page of Kos that Sen. Grassley is declaring that there "won't be a deal in September", I have a procedural question - would it be possible for Reid to bypass Finance and put the HELP committee's bill on the floor to be voted on - or even alternately, have the House pass HR3200 as is and have the Senate work on it that way?

CQ ($):

The Senate is unlikely to complete its consideration of a bill to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration next month, which probably will mean yet another short-term extension for the agency.

The FAA has been operating on a string of short-term authorizations, the most recent of which (PL 111-12) will expire at the end of September.

A Democratic aide for the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, which has jurisdiction over most of the FAA reauthorization bill (S 1451), said his committee is ready to take the measure to the floor. He said Commerce hopes the bill can be "filler" between appropriations bills, which will crowd the September floor calendar.

"We’ve been talking to leadership, we let them know we’re ready," the aide said.

But the Senate Finance Committee, which has to write the tax title of the bill, isn’t ready. The committee has yet to mark up its portion, in part because it is front and center in helping write a health care overhaul.

He takes care of business, that Max Baucus does. Yessiree.

It's not just that the current authorization will run out because Baucus never delivered up the bills on his plate. The FAA has been running on a series of emergency extension. Finance failed to pass one last year, too.

A real closer, he is.

Look at this headline:

Liberals, conservatives pose threat to Baucus bill

Not health care bill. Not Finance Committee bill.

Baucus bill.

Sure, Max Baucus (D-MT) is the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. And lots of bills are referred to by their author's names. But there's more to this than a headline.

The entire article is built on the kind of blind worship anything labeled "the middle" or "centrist" typically enjoys in the traditional media.

But more than that, it's built on the premise that none of the other work done by any of the four other Congressional committees -- you know, the ones that have actually done their work -- really matters. That everyone's really just waiting for whatever Max Baucus lays before them.

Oh, there's some truth behind the theme weaving its way through the fabric of this article. If a bill's going to get to 60+ votes, there's going to have to be some working together. But really this piece just reinforces the view that Baucus thinks it's a matter of everyone else getting over their differences with what he produces. The Republican enforcer on the other side of the table from him certainly feels that way:

Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) has cautioned that if he agrees to sign off on the Finance Committee version, he doesn’t want it altered.

Not surprisingly, Democratic senators on the HELP Committee and House Democrats find Enzi’s proposal ludicrous.

Yes, ludicrous! But the notion that four other committees should knuckle under to what Baucus delivers? Centrism! Moderation! Compromise!

Again, if this is about getting to 60 in a process that's going to have to include a merging with the Senate HELP Committee bill anyway, not to mention a conference with the eventual House product, then what's the reason for leaving this in Baucus' hands to work out with Enzi? If the game is just for the Senate to accept what Finance produces, then by all means, let them work. But that's not it. All the pragmatists and hard-headed realists say it's about producing a bill that gets past 60. If Enzi's not going to be one of the 60, then stop talking to him. Whats the difference whether this is hammered out under the Finance Committee umbrella or elsewhere?

If you want 60 votes, go where the votes are. Enzi, by all accounts, isn't going to be one of those votes.

We're just finding out now that Enzi's position is that he'll accept what he likes, and no more? Golly gee! How could we ever have discovered that? What a brilliant negotiator Baucus is, to get him to blurt that out! To have pried that out of Enzi after just a few months of negotiating, too! Imagine what he'll do with six more weeks!

There's no reason in the world why this has to be done by Max Baucus, and certainly no reason for it to be negotiated with Mike Enzi. If Baucus happens to have the closest personal relationship in the Senate with the gettable votes for this bill -- whether they come from Susan Collins (R-ME), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), George Voinovich (R-OH), or whomever -- then fine, so be it. Let him negotiate with them.

But there's no reason in the world, given that the Senate bills are going to be merged in the end, anyway, why this process has to be a slave to formality, tying the negotiations to the committee structure. The hearings are over. There's really no longer any need for trying to fit negotiations this big into a box that small.