Who Are The Gang Of Six? And Why Are They Ruining Health Care Reform?

Three different House committees and the Senate committee whose expertise is health care have all put forward comprehensive proposals for health care reform that includes reining in insurance company excesses, expanding coverage towards universality, holding down costs, and protecting choice and all have come to the correct conclusion that none of this can happen without a public option (as Darcy Burner of the Progressive Caucus Foundation explained so succinctly Sunday at OpenLeft).

But for some reason, the Inside the Beltway Village has decided that the final word on this is the committee least competent and least trustworthy to deal with it, the hopelessly compromised-- by gargantuan, thinly-veiled bribes from the Insurance Industry and the Medical-Industrial Complex-- the Finance Committee. Worse yet, the DLC corporate shill who runs that committee on behalf of his patrons in corporate America, Max Baucus, has put together an ad hoc subcommittee of 3 Democrats and 3 Republicans-- committees and subcommittees always represent the proportion of each party, so in reality 3-2 Democrats to Republicans is what the makeup should be.

The media Villagers have dubbed this a "bipartisan committee of moderates." It isn't. Take a look at this list of the 6 members of the ad hoc subcommittee charged (by Max Baucus, who has taken a min-boggling $2,890,631 from the Medical-Industrial Complex and another eye-popping $1,196,463 from the Insurance Industry) with putting together the nation's health care reform legislation.

Jeff Bingaman, the 38th most progressive member of the Senate- 383,228
Kent Conrad, the 42nd most progressive member of the Senate- 149,317
Max Baucus, the 57th most progressive member of the Senate- 349,394
Olympia Snowe, the 40th most reactionary member of the Senate- 398,723
Chuck Grassley, the 30th most reactionary member of the Senate- 1,038,175
Michael Enzi, the 13th most reactionary member of the Senate- 189,046

If Snowe is a moderate, Grassley is clearly a mainstream conservative, veering right these days in fear of a primary challenge, and Enzi can't be described in any other way than as a far right fringe maniac and die-hard obstructionist. This year Baucus has voted as frequently with the Republicans on crucial substantive issues as he has with Democrats. Worse yet is that not one of these senators represents urban America. Next to each of their names is the number of votes they received in their latest re-election bid. Senators elected in 6 states with big cities have won the votes of 4,769,824 (Chuck Schumer), 4,337,469 (Jon Cornyn), 4,193,833 (Dianne Feinstein), 3,616,210 (Dick Durbin), 3,038,386 (Carl Levin), 2,854,036 (Bill Nelson). The total number of voters electing all 6 senators deciding the shape of the country's health care comes to 2,506,893. Every one of the senators with cities got more votes than the combined votes of the 6 deciders and the combined vote totals of these 6 unrepresented states is 22,809,758.

Are you getting the idea that one of the most bribed corporate shills in the history of American politics-- Max Baucus-- has stacked the deck against the American people? He certainly has. Schumer, John Kerry, Debbie Stabenow, Maria Cantwell and Cornyn are all on the Finance Committee, and all have urban centers in their states. By Senate tradition at least one more Democrat should have been on the subcommittee. And maybe, just maybe, Baucus could have been persuaded by Obama to pull his head out of corporate ass long enough to realize how patently unfair it was to not include even one senator representing the tens of millions of Americans living in cities instead of hamlets and on ranches?

Is it any wonder that the bill he just vomited up is an insulting piece of crap, worthless to almost anyone other than the lobbyists and CEOs who are his campaign donors?

Meanwhile... Eureka, Lou Dobbs with just the right amount of Lou Dobbs: