All About The Benjamins

Never mind the effectiveness:

The Senate bill, we now know, costs a smidge under $850 billion during its first 10 years, cuts the deficit by $127 billion, and covers 31 million people. In the second decade, it cuts the deficit by an improbably large $650 billion. But we don't know anything else. We haven't seen the CBO's full score yet, nor do we know any of the specifics in the bill. Reid's office released the numbers before it let anyone see the language. It wants the numbers burned into the media's mind. They're the message, at least for now. [...]

It's a real victory to push your bill below $850 billion if the point is to get it below $900 billion. But what if that's not the point? Most experts think the bill needs about $1.2 trillion to be truly affordable. Compromising beneath $900 billion might be necessary, but it's nothing to celebrate. It's a concession, not an accomplishment.

But that doesn't mean Harry Reid isn't doing the best he can with what he has to work with:

He's not hollering about it or making threats. But in his meeting today with the key Democratic hold-outs, Sen. Reid (D-NV) made it clear that if they shut him down on one of the procedural votes, he's still got reconciliation (i.e., pushing the bill through with simple, 51 vote majorities) as an option.