Congress: Next week?
Posted: Friday, July 17, 2009 9:17 AM by Domenico Montanaro
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Congress
We won't see a health-care bill from the Senate Finance Committee this week, but Democratic Sen. Max Baucus, chair of the committee and a key to the process, says: “We’re ready when we’re ready but we’re not going to be ready today,” Baucus told reporters. “We’re very close to reaching agreement. By close, I mean it’s a matter of couple, three or four days, maybe.”
More Baucus, per Roll Call: “I have the deepest respect for the president. I also want to make sure the product we come up with is good, is solid, is thought through,” he told reporters. “In addition, I fully believe it must be bipartisan. It must be bipartisan to get 60 votes.”
Video: President Obama is ramping up his campaign to get a health care reform bill done, making a fiery speech at a fundraiser in New Jersey. TODAY’s Natalie Morales talks to NBC’s Savannah Guthrie about the president’s agenda.
The
New York Times writes that the Congressional Budget Office’s Douglas Elmendorf “told Congress that the health legislation proposed so far would not curb the federal government’s runaway spending on medical care and that lawmakers would need to take more forceful action to meet Mr. Obama’s goal of controlling costs. The testimony by Mr. Elmendorf before the Senate Budget Committee drew criticism from Democratic leaders, highlighting their rising frustration over the difficulty of paying for an overhaul. Asked about the testimony by Mr. Elmendorf, a highly regarded economist, the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, snapped derisively, ‘Maybe what he should do is run for Congress.’”
And you know it's not a good sign for Jack Murtha (and congressional Dems who could be linked) when Roll Call creates a section called "The Money Trail" and its graphic is a drawing of Murtha.
