Key Senate Aide: Health Reform Deal Not Imminent (Baucus' Aide)

[villager]

Source: Fox (!)

Key Senate Aide: Health Reform Deal Not Imminent

This memo highlights the struggles among the gang and the extreme sensitivity with which Baucus must treat any "compromise" with his fellow committee Democrats who are not involved in negotiations and remain skeptical on several issue

By Trish Turner


In a memo to legislative aides on the Senate Finance Committee, obtained by FOX News, the staff director to Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of that committee, warns that despite a Washington Post headline and report indicating that a compromise deal on health care reform is imminent, that is in fact not the case.

Baucus' comments Tuesday night to reporters indicated that a deal could be coalescing. The chairman said cost issues are nearly "nailed down" and that most other issues were coming together.

But the memo from his staff director, Russ Sullivan, who has been at most closed-door bipartisan compromise negotiations among his boss and five other committee members, leaves quite a different impression.

"While progress has been made in recent days, neither an accord nor an announcement is imminent," Sullivan wrote in the memo. "In fact, significant policy issues remain to be discussed among the Members, and any one of these issues could preclude bipartisan agreement."

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Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/07/29/key-senate-aide-health-reform-deal-imminent/

[robinlynne]

1. Does anyone give a xxxxx if it is bi-partisan? I don't want bi-partisan.

I want health care.

[joeybee12]

2. I want it done right, not bi-partisan..bi-partisan means it won't be done

right.

[harmonicon]

3. right on!

Healthcare should never have to be partisan. It is a human right.

[BlueIdaho]

4. Can the senate decide to move on without the Baucus committee?

Simply say - sorry asshole you missed your deadline so we're moving on without you.