Not sure whether this should count as a data point vis-a-vis news this news out of the Senate Finance Committee, but Rep. Chris van Hollen (D-MD), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, took the rare step today of weighing into the upper chamber's internal negotiations. "What concerns me about what's happened in the Senate Finance Committee is that they've had a whole lot of time to work these things out, and just don't seem to be able to break the impasse," Van Hollen told Bill Press. "At some point they're going to have to pull the plug on that process, and when they do that is something they're in a better position to know."

A somewhat unclear report from the Associated Press indicates that they may have reached that point. We'll know soon enough.