“Camp Baucus” could have a raucous welcoming committee

Political donors from across the country will descend on Big Sky tomorrow for the 10th Annual “Camp Baucus” fundraiser. Here’s a link to the invitation.

But in order to get to Big Sky Resort, the site of the three-day hike/fish/horseback ride event, donors will have to drive Big Sky Highway past dozens of single-payer health care reform advocates who are steamed over the direction Congress is taking on reform.

Max Baucus, as chair of the Senate Finance Committee, is the Senate’s point man on health care reform. For weeks hand-picked members of his committee have been meeting behind closed doors to hash out some a compromise on a reform bill.

At that same time, Baucus is busy raising money for his 2014 Senate campaign. Baucus’ people aren’t saying who’ll be at the event, but if you look at the list of industries that gave most to Glacier PAC in recent years you’ll find that health professionals, pharmaceutical/health products, insurance companies, and hospitals and nursing homes top the list. Organizers of Friday’s protest expect lobbyists and executives from those industries will be driving up Highway 64 on Friday.

"A lot of biggies show up at these events. When Max has a fundraiser, they show up. That's what we're trying to bring attention to," said Gene Fenderson of Helena, a retired labor leader and co-founder of Montanans for Single Payer.

Fenderson, one of the chief organizer of the rally, said protesters will line the road holding signs with slogans that read "Buy Back Baucus" as well as large scale faux checks that read "Max — A seat at the table. What does it cost? $4 million. Buy Back Our Senator!"

According to the invitation for Camp Baucus, the event is billed as "a trip for the whole family" where attendees will "enjoy Big Sky's fly fishing, golf, horseback riding and great hiking." The minimum "requested contribution" to Glacier PAC — Baucus' primary political action committee — is $2,500 for individuals and $5,000 for PACs.

Baucus’ people say the event isn’t as unseemly as Fenderson and other activists make it out to be because A) Max can’t be bought, B) Camp Baucus was scheduled long before Congress got tangled up in health care reform negotiations, and C) political fundraising is a necessary part of politics.

"Max's number one priority is crafting a health care bill that lowers costs, improves quality and can pass the U.S. Senate," said Baucus spokesman Ty Matsdorf. "He is keeping his eye on the ball and staying focused on the task at hand to help the thousands of Montanans who are being crushed by the high cost of health care."

Reform advocates say the fact that Baucus has taken more money from the health and insurance sectors than any other Democrat in Congress — more than $3 million from the health and insurance sectors from 2003 to 2008 — should disqualify him from leading reform efforts in the Senate.

Fenderson said it's inappropriate for Baucus to hold an upscale fundraiser with lobbyists from the health care sector at a time when his committee is in the process of drafting a national health care reform bill.

"We don't get the money from the corporations to bring forward our position, so this is the way we have to do it," Fenderson said.

Here’s a link to the “action alert” for the Camp Baucus protest.

Missoula blogger seeks Executive Director post for Montana Democratic Party

Matt Singer, a prominent Democratic blogger for Left in the West and CEO of the Missoula-based political group Forward Montana, is apparently vying for the post of executive director of the Montana Democratic Party.

Sources who were at a "meeting of progressive Democrats” in Missoula on Tuesday night told me that Singer showed up—on warm summer evening—donning cowboy boots and jeans and announced that he would seek the post. According to one source, “he looked just like Jon Tester or Brian Schweitzer" --wardrobe wise.

I wrote a profile of Singer a few years back when I was still at the Missoula Independent. (Back then he was donning pink bunny ears for a voter registration drive). The gist of the piece was that Singer, at the time a 24-year-old blogger and activist, was going places in Montana Democratic politics. His web-savvy approach to politics had landed him a job with then-U.S. Senate candidate Jon Tester early in Tester’s campaign.

“He’s one smart dude,” Tester said of Singer. “He’s very talented. I think what he’s accomplished using Internet as a vehicle for political action speaks for itself as far as success.”

Not longer after working for Tester, Singer and a handful of young Democrats from Missoula launched Forward Montana.

I hadn’t gone back and looked at that article in a while. When I did, I noticed this reader comment posted shortly after the article ran:

By Anony Moose 11-15-07

Be interesting to see if Forward Montana stays true to its progressive roots or is co-opted by Democratic party insiders. Will stay tuned.

Interesting indeed.

Right now there’s a battle waging within the Democratic Party over health care reform. Max Baucus chairs the Senate Finance Committee, making Montana one of the bloodiest battlegrounds. Groups like the Montana Human Rights Network, Montanans for Single-Payer and MEA-MFT (the state’s largest labor union), have been fiercely advocating for a single-payer, or Medicare-for-all solution to the health care crisis. But Baucus and the rest of the Democratic Party establishment want a “uniquely American” health care reform package that maintains the existing for-profit insurance industry. Baucus has taken a lot of flak from the left flank of his party for his refusal to consider single-payer. So much so that he felt compelled to respond in a recent Missoulian op-ed piece.

Singer is firmly backing Baucus in his approach to health care reform both behind the scenes and on his blog. For that, Singer is also taking heat from the left.

It’ll be interesting to see how the health care debate plays out and how liberals react to Singer if he does ascend to a top post in the state party.

This week in health care reform

Single-payer gets a hearing

Tomorrow morning the House Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions Subcommittee, chaired by Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., is holding a hearing to examine the single-payer health care option.

Single-payer advocates across the country are thrilled, because tomorrow’s hearing marks the first time Congress has opened the door and invited them to officially take part in the health care reform discussion.

Anyone who has followed this raging debate over the past couple months knows that Montana’s Sen. Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, has thus far refused to consider single-payer or even let single-payer advocates take part in Senate hearings.

Last month Baucus had 13 protesters arrested for disrupting two committee hearings and demanding that Baucus include single-payer in the discussion.

That incident, and Baucus' refusal to include single-payer, sparked protests across Montana last week:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Are Baucus and Obama parting ways on the "public option"?

In a letter sent to Baucus and Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy last week, Obama said he wants any bill that reaches his desk to include a strong public option. Baucus has previously said he supports the idea of a public option, in which the federal government would manage a health insurance plan that would compete alongside private insurance companies. But Baucus has also insisted that any bill that makes it out of the Senate Finance Committee has to be a "bi-partisan" bill. So far, conservatives in Congress are lining up to oppose that idea.

Now, according to this New York Times interview with Baucus and Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, the ranking Republican on the finance committee, Baucus appears to be backing off his support of a public plan. Here's what he had to say about it (it's at the 6:20 mark in the video):

"Now some suggest that maybe this so-called public option is necessary to keep insurance companies feet to the fire. That's an argument that we hear around here. My point is that there is less need for that...if we really do a good job reforming the health insurance industry."

Less need for public option? Is that Obama's position? Baucus should know what's on Obama's mind, because after all Baucus’ former chief of staff, Jim Messina, is now Obama's deputy chief of staff. And as New York Times Magazine Washington correspondent Matt Bai pointed out on the News Hour last night, the relationship between Baucus, Messina and Obama is not “incidental," especially when it comes to health care reform.

“Jim Messina is the deputy chief of staff in the White House. He's also not just a former chief of staff for Senator Baucus. Senator Baucus at one point has said this is like another son to him.

And so that's been, I think, critical, because, you know, the president and Senator Baucus do not have a strong relationship. They didn't know each other well in the Senate. But they've put a lot of effort into building that relationship in the last couple months, and a key part of that is him being able to call his former confidante and either vent, or get something across, or hear what's being thought on the other side.”

So is Baucus now indicating a split with the president, or is Obama feigning support for a public plan?

What happened to support for single-payer?

At one time, Obama was a "proponent of a single-payer universal health care program." At least that's what he told the crowd at a 2003 AFL-CIO convention when he was running for the U.S. Senate:

If you watch the video all the way through, you'll note that Obama tells the crowd that "we may not get there immediately, because first we have to take back the White House, and we've got to take back the Senate."

White House: Check.
Senate: Check.
Congress: Check.

So why is Obama, via Max Baucus, now running from an idea he once supported? Democrats control Washington, and if Al Franken is declared in the winner in the still-as-yet-to-be-decided Minnesota Senate Race, Obama—along with the help of two Democrat-leaning independents—will have a veto-proof majority in the Senate.

Hypothetically, if Congress were to somehow pass a single-payer bill, does anyone believe that Obama wouldn't sign it? I highly doubt that Obama would use his veto pen for the first time on a piece of legislation that he has vocally supported in the past, and one that, if you believe the polls (and here, and here, and here), is supported by the majority of Americans.

Singler-payer advocates rally in Montana

Single-payer advocates held rallies in front of Sen. Max Baucus' field offices around the state on Friday. At the Helena event, protesters chanted "Hey hey, hey ho, health care's a right that's worth a fight," among other clever ditties, as they held signs criticizing Bacaus' refusal to include single-payer in the national health care reform debate. Labor leaders and human rights groups said Baucus will ignore single-payer at his own political peril. More on the Friday's protests in Saturday's dead-tree edition of the Tribune.

Baucus meeting with single-payer advocates

As I write this, a group of prominent single-payer advocates are meeting with Sen. Max Baucus to try to convince him to put single-payer on the table.

However, Clark Newhall, a Salt Lake City attorney, doctor and single-payer crusader, beat them to the punch this morning. Newhall was one of the first people in the country to publicly question Baucus on his affirmed stance that single-payer is off the table (here's the video). This morning Newhall attended Baucus' public breakfast in Washington, D.C. and challenged the Senate Finance Committee chairman on his position. Newhall sent me this e-mail immediately following the meeting (the embedded linke is mine):

Washington DC -- June 3 -- 8:30 a.m.

I just spoke with Max Baucus at length about single payer. More accurately, I listened to his views and tried to challenge them. Based on that conversation, I predict the following will happen today at the meeting that Marcia Angell, David Himmelstein, Oliver Fein, Geri Jenkins and RoseAnn DeMoro are having with him.

1 -- he will say what a candid and honest guy he is.

2 -- he will say that N-O-B-O-D-Y will vote for single payer in the Senate.

3 -- he will say that N-O-B-O-D-Y has a single payer bill in the Senate; he will not acknowledge SB 703.

4 -- he will say that the "60% of physicians want single payer"
statistic is false.

5 -- he will say that the American people do not want single payer.

6 -- he will say he knows the American people don't want single payer because politicians have a nose for what their constituencies want, mainly because most politicians want to get re-elected.

7 -- he will get nervous if anyone mentions the overwhelming support for single payer that the recent 'listening tour' in Montana revealed.

8 -- he will say that Americans are used to having employer-paid health insurance, and do not want to change.

9 -- he will deny that Medicare is 'uniquely American' and will shy away from using that phrase.

10 -- he will admit that the power of insurance companies has something to do with how the legislation is being shaped in the Senate but, when pressed on that, will reverse position.

11 -- he will rely heavily for his position on the proposition that Obama does not want single payer, and he may point to the recent flat statement of Obama to Sherrod Brown that single payer is off the table.

12 -- he will be obdurately and obstinately close-minded to facts, arguments and moral suasion.

13 -- he will act very involved and interested when the talk turns to 'paying for this' but will deny that single payer pays for itself.

14 -- he will give the impression that removing employer tax breaks for health insurance in some fashion is likely.

Those are my predictions. Let's see how close to the mark they are.

Newhall said he personally spent nearly $60,000 producing and running a series of television and internet ads –which are currently running on CNN, MSNBC, Comedy Central, The Game Show Network and other cable networks—promoting single payer. You can see the ads here. Newhall said those ads have generated more than 67,000 faxes to members of Congress.

“I’ve also collected something like 4,000 voice mails, transcribed them all, sent them off to Baucus and Obama. I just hand delivered about 2,000 of them this morning to Baucus,” Newhall said this morning.

I asked him if he thought any of it was getting through.

“F*** no,” Newhall said.

I’ll be following up on today’s meeting between Baucus and single-payer advocates later today. I’ll let you know if Newhall’s predictions came true.

On a related note:

Eight-one percent of respondents to an unscientific poll currently up on the Missoulian's Web site say single-payer should be included among the options for health care reform. In a similar unscientific poll in the Tribune two weeks ago (no link to the poll results, but here's the forum), 57 percent of respondents said single-payer should be considered.