Negotiations on a final Senate bill are set to resume today with Reid, Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and senior White House officials. Republicans have not been invited to participate in the talks, although Reid said Thursday that he has reached out to a few GOP Senators and is likely to consult moderate Sen. Olympia Snowe (Maine). Snowe was the lone Republican last week to support the Senate Finance Committee’s version of a health care overhaul.
“There are challenges that lie before us because the Republicans are going to insist that we do it alone,” Reid told reporters.
Unable to mount a filibuster on their own and calculating that Democrats are on track to send a health care bill to Obama by year’s end, Senate Republicans figure the only way to stop or reshape the measure is to give the public enough time to figure out what’s in it and what they don’t like about it.
Considering the final bill has not even been written, there is no way for the American public to know what will be in it and the GOP's strategy will be to use procedural motions each and every day, on every single amendment to make sure the American people have a chance to actually read and understand the final bill, once it is written.
The only way to give the American people time to understand what is written into the bill, is to make every aspect transparent, force discussions on it publicly and that is something the Democratic leadership does not want.
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