Here's hoping this report is correct. All we need at this stage of the game is to get SOMETHING out of that committee.

This would seem to make some sense. Since they really are all holed up together then the assumption has to be that they are finding agreement. And since the Rs are not going to go along with a public plan, it's hard to imagine that agreement containing one. The question is, how does this meet the objective of universal coverage if there is no public plan?

About friggin time. Not that this is all that common on NPR (and even less so in the rest of the broadcast media), or that it will measurably affect Baucus. Nor do I hold out much hope that NPR will continue to follow this or similar stories up.

But many many thanks for the link. The story deserves quoting (few people will follow the link):

Paul Blumenthal, a writer for the nonpartisan watchdog the Sunlight Foundation, mapped Baucus' network of influence. (You can see the "Baucus influence map" at left).

"We have Max Baucus, who represents a single node, as the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee," Blumenthal explains. On his computer screen, lines radiate from Baucus to five of his former Senate staffers. Two of them served as chief of staff to Baucus, the top job in his Senate office.

All five now lobby Congress for various interests. Among their clients: drugmakers Wyeth, Merck, Amgen and AstraZeneca, plus the third-largest corporation in the world, Wal-Mart.

"In Washington, relationships are part of the huge game of influence," Blumenthal says. "If you don't have a relationship with someone on the Hill, then you aren't going to have the kind of access that you need for your client." And so, he says, these lobbyists — and their clients — have a unique brand of access to one man at the center of the health-care debate.

Backing up the access is money — and that puts Baucus at the heart of Congress' ethical conflict.

Baucus And Fundraising

Lawmakers have two constituencies: one, the voters back home; the other, the people and interests that finance much of their re-election campaigns. These donors often live out of state.

When Baucus ran for his sixth term last year, his campaign raised $11.6 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Nearly half of the funds came from out-of-state donors, including millions from health care and other industries overseen by Finance and Baucus' other committees.

Just 13 percent of Baucus' re-election funds came from Montana donors.

The whole story is worth a listen or a read, or both. Audio stream and download available at the link you posted; note that the audio is different from the text on the site. The story does a pretty good job of exposing Baucus's rank corruption. And Baucus is by no means alone. Reid noted, Reid has received almost as much from Big Pharma, Big Insurance and Big Medical as has Baucus. Doubtless other Dem senators are members of that august club as well.

On Reid: well, he's all about the money. The linked Las Vegas Review-Journal article says that the [cough] $25 MILLION war chest Reid will have amassed by next year serves as a deterrent to Republicans who want to get into the race.

If he were to spend it all, it would certainly be the most money ever spent on a state election. But spending it isn't the point, analysts say. The point is to intimidate.

It equally serves to deter any Democrat who even thinks about mounting a serious primary challenge against him, in hopes that Nevadans could actually elect someone to represent them rather than his corporate masters. (BTW, that $25M figure represents $11,400 in contributions, per day, every single day of Reid's term in office, weekends and holidays included.)

In an interview a couple of weeks ago, Reid said he thought his campaign was going fine. Asked what campaign-related activities he was doing, the senator smiled.

"Everything I do in the last five years has been campaign-related," he said. "That's what my life is about."

Well, now we know where some of that money is coming from. It ain't you and me.

Or as the NPR story concluded:

So as Baucus and other lawmakers attempt to craft a bill that can smash through a virtual gridlock of interests, the awkward question lingers: To whom are they more attentive — their voting constituencies back home or the dollar constituencies who are at the Capitol every day?

I think we know the answer to that question.

The problem with primarying Baucus is the same problem as primarying Reid: Both they have too much money. In the words of that LVRJ article: "If he were to spend it all, it would certainly be the most money ever spent on a state election. But spending it isn't the point, analysts say. The point is to intimidate."

Their corporate masters will do everything they can to make sure that the Reids and Baucuses of the world represent them, not us.