The White House is, however, contemplating using "legislative language" in the president's speech on Wednesday, which pulls together the 80% they believe all of the four Congressional bills agree on. But even THAT hasn't been decided on yet. As one person said to me, anyone who is claiming we're writing our own health care bill is "leaning over their ski tips."
Still, we can report that there is some frustration in the White House with the Senate Finance Committee and the fact that they haven't reported out a bill yet. There are some advising Chairman Max Baucus to report out a skeleton bill and then, with White House help, starting to cobble together a bill.
OK, if "legislative language" isn't a bill, then what is it? Maybe specific provisions they want to be able to plug into a bill. On the other hand, maybe it's a bill that they aren't ready to admit to yet. After all, not writing a bill was supposed to be the big strategy here, since the Obama administration consensus seems to have been that being too specific was what got Clinton's reform killed. So this report and CNN's may not be entirely contradictory.
Not that the final bills won't be. New York Times is reporting that Max Baucus has finally given up on his bipartisan snipe hunt and will introduce a bill involving non-profit co-ops to compete with insurers. CNN had the White House working on a "trigger" that would allow a public option to kick in if reforms didn't achieve the desired results within an certain period of time. And the House of Representatives is saying no bill will leave that chamber without a public option.
So the left hand doesn't know what the right is doing. The right doesn't know what the left is doing. And a third hand is thrown in just to make things even more confusing. This is the most serious bone of contention -- public option or no public option -- and we don't seem any closer to a resolution than we were when this whole thing started.
If the House is serious and either Baucus's or the White House's provisions come out of the Senate, expect the most interesting conference committee ever. These two bills will have to be resolved into one and whoever wants it most will probably win.
