I know this will come as a shock — sort of like the Pope being Catholic — but the Dems are admitting they have a “serious problem” with regard to the health bill negotiations, and do not expect to finish until February.

From Roll Call:

“We’ve got a problem on both sides of the Capitol. A serious problem,” Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday evening.

The difficulty in hashing out an agreement between the two chambers is largely due to there being so many different factions with a stake in the matter, Rangel said. “Normally you’re just dealing with the Senate and they talk about 60 votes and you listen to them and cave in, but this is entirely different,” he said. “I’m telling you that never has 218 been so important to me in the House.”

Another senior House Democrat familiar with negotiations on the bill said no progress has been made this week on any of the key sticking points in the House and Senate bills, despite steady meetings with union leaders and the White House.

“There’s no agreement. No deal on anything. Nothing,” the lawmaker said.

That’s nada, zilch, zero, uh, nothing.

Here’s Politico’s take, which they refer as a Dem assault on the health bill.

Then there is juicy quote, also from the Roll Call story:

Read More →

RealClearPolitics has the key parts of Dodd’s statement in a video clip here and CBS News reports the Trillion Dollar President’s approval rating has hit a new low — 46%.

Senator Dodd (D-CT) gives his normally rambling comments, among them:

“If this is all about surviving politically, then we’re missing the whole purpose of what we’re supposed to be doing,”

which is ironic and easy for him to say because he just announced his retirement. Dodd was widely seen as one of the most unlikely to win re-election. He has visibly aged.

Rob at sayanything.com notes Sen. Dodd is really saying that what the public wants is irrelevant.

The CNBC print article about Dodd’s statement reports that Senators Lieberman and Lincoln are taking a close look at what changes are going to be made in the House — which may be whose “one or two votes” Senator Dodd is talking about.

Dodd also made reference to the Progressives being unhappy. Over at The Corner, Robert Costa reports a senior GOP staffer saying:

“They’re working over the progressive caucus, Big Labor, and other Lefty groups to convince them that a bad bill is better than no bill. They have no margin for error, so they’re doing everything they can to unite groups who dislike the bill.”

The Progressives, I have been predicting, will show some steel if they do not get what they want, and Costa’s post shows some behind-the-scenes-evidence of it.