Taegan Goddard's Political Wire

October 13, 2009

Daily Pulse: All Eyes on the Senate Finance Committee

The Senate Finance Committee will vote today on its version of the health care reform bill. The action starts at 10 a.m. when senators question CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf before voting.

Washington Post: "The finance panel's vote marks a watershed in the quest to overhaul the country's health-care system. Not since Theodore Roosevelt proposed universal health care during the 1912 presidential campaign has any such bill come this far. "

Republicans continue to play hardball, according to The Hill, telling Sen. Olympia Snowe (M-ME) they will deny her a shot at becoming the ranking Republican on the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee if she backs the bill.

A Senate Democrat on the panel "said Republicans on the panel are threatening to vote against Snowe, who is in line for the senior GOP post that is about to come open."

Meanwhile, Democrats are moving ahead as if they have no GOP support and "have already begun their own internal negotiations aimed at reconciling the various measures passed by House and Senate committees. As part of that exercise, lawmakers are reviving ideas that had been discarded, including a new approach to a government insurance plan that appears to be gaining support with party moderates."

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Taegan D. Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites.

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country, including the Washington Post, USA Today, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer and Christian Science Monitor.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

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