Centrist Position on Health Care Forming

The rise of a true centrist position is quickly leaving the president in the bind. Obama through his hands off approach with the actual crafting of bills has allowed two sets of legislation to emerge, the Baucus version which is bi-partisan in nature and the liberal House version which has also been mirrored by Dodd and Kennedy:

Via HA:

Some centrist House Democrats have reached out to Republicans to explore breaking with their party leadership on healthcare and crafting a reform bill with the rival GOP, one congressman claimed Saturday.

Rep. Charles Boustany (R-La.) asserted that an "interesting development" is taking place underway that, if true, could effectively remove Democratic leadership from the driver's seat on healthcare reform legislation in the House.

"There's an interesting development occurring behind the scenes, wherein moderate Democrats — so-called "Blue Dog" Democrats — and business-friendly new Democrats are actually starting to have conversations with us to build a coalition from the center outward, to actually really come up with substantive and well-founded healthcare reform," Boustany said during an appearance on Fox News. "And that's the only way to do this."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other Democratic leaders have moved quickly to pass a preliminary version of healthcare legislation before the August recess in Congress.

The House Ways and Means Committee as well as the Education and Labor Committee approved marked-up versions of legislation, which would create a public (or "government-run") option for consumers as well as impose a surtax on high earners, on Friday after the bill was unveiled on Monday.

Of course some of the blue dogs are denying any alliance in the offing, how much of that is true and how much rhetoric for political cover is an open question. But, with the CBO just blasting the President out of the water and his dropping poll numbers how long before Congress bucks the president and focuses on 2010 survival? Of course this is primarily about the Public Plan put forward as a way to socialize medicine. Baucus never bought into that notion but instead pushed the use of Health Care co-operatives as a means to provide more coverage.