Will the Congressional Budget Office come back today with a favorable score for the latest version of Reid-care? Much is riding on this for the increasingly manic and unpopular Harry Reid. National Review’s Rich Lowry, who’s slightly more optimistic than I am that the Reid bill is going to fail, says that Reid needs “everything to break exactly right,” including to good CBO score today, to get a vote before Christmas.

“If he goes to Christmas break without a bill,” Lowry wrote last week, “it gets much harder to pick up the pieces in January. Since the Senate debate began, the bill has only gotten more unpopular. It’s all still in flux obviously, but we just might be watching the bill fall apart before our eyes.”

There is a burgeoning optimism that the bill is “tottering,” including hope that Senator Claire McCaskill will vote against the bill if the CBO gives it an unfavorable score. She said she would “absolutely” do that. But again, I am not persuaded she really will. Maybe it’s because Harry Reid has been the public face of the pro-Baucus bill side, but I still hew to the fear that, when push comes to shove, the Democrats will vote for a bill no matter how awful it is or how much the public doesn’t want it. They’ve simply gotten in so deep it’s hard to get out.

On the other hand, it may be that the plan to expand Medicare, already on the brink of insolvency now, was the last straw in an unseemly debate and that McCaskill and others really will vote against the bill. The D.C. Examiner seems to think so:

There has not been meaningful debate or useful discussion, but rather the same baloney being sliced in different ways. There is still no consensus on how to expand coverage or how to pay for it, which are the same problems that existed when Obama first called for action in his Feb. 23 address to a joint session of Congress — 294 days ago.

It seemed inevitable that the Democratic supermajority would eventually get something passed on health care, if only through an utter indifference to quality.

But this process has been grinding on so long to so little effect that if the CBO pans the idea of expanding Medicare, Obama may find that time is really up for his plan.

 

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Senate-health-bill-goes-into-sudden-death-overtime-8655462-79174572.html

Except for a few bubbles of optimism when Democrats quit talking about the details of health care and focused on how sweet it would be to score such a big win over Republicans, we’ve seen the Super Bowl of hand-wringing in Washington.

There has not been meaningful debate or useful discussion, but rather the same baloney being sliced in different ways. There is still no consensus on how to expand coverage or how to pay for it, which are the same problems that existed when Obama first called for action in his Feb. 23 address to a joint session of Congress — 294 days ago.

It seemed inevitable that the Democratic supermajority would eventually get something passed on health care, if only through an utter indifference to quality.

 But this process has been grinding on so long to so little effect that if the CBO pans the idea of expanding Medicare, Obama may find that time is really up for his plan.