Let’s face it, there’s only one reason why it has taken this long to pass comprehensive health care reform: the Senate Finance Committee. The three related committees in the House passed their versions before the August recess, and the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee passed it when the chairman was still Senator Kennedy. Yet the Senate Finance Committee, under moderate Senator Max Baucus (D-MT), has yet to pass a bill. And it is highly likely that any bill that passes the Finance Committee will not contain the public option–a pivotal part of the other four bills. How is this so?

The Senate Finance Committee is generally considered to be one of the most conservative committees in the Senate. Even though Democrats hold a three-seat advantage (13 Democrats, 10 Republicans), their membership is littered with vocal centrists. Six of the Democrats are centrists, with some of them (Kent Conrad, Blanche Lincoln, and Baucus, in particular) being incredibly vocal. Conrad and Baucus repeatedly say that they cannot include the public option because it “doesn’t have the votes”– but, we would HAVE the votes if they actually voted for what their constitutents want. Extensive polling by Research 2000 show that Baucus is suffering back home in Montana over his handling of this situation. With 60 votes in the Senate, the Democratic Caucus has no one to blame but themselves.

Now, yesterday’s debate was instrumental in the fight for the public option. Senators Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) offered up amendments, both of which failed by only a few votes in committee. But to have so many Democrats vote *for* a public option shows the wide support that it has in the Democratic caucus–only a select few senators (such as Conrad and Baucus) oppose it. It is highly likely that the Finance Committee bill will pass out of committee without a public option, but Rockefeller and Schumer pushed hard enough to have the debate open again.

So what is the future of the public option? The most logical path, and the one to hope for, is that Majority Leader Reid (D-NV) keeps the public option when the HELP and Finance Committee bills are combined. This will leave the debate over the public option to the floor, where the Republicans will no doubt filibuster. The best option for Reid is to hold the caucus together, having all sixty Democratic senators vote for cloture–to end the filibuster. Once cloture is passed, the Democrats need only fifty votes to actually pass the legislation. This would free Conrad and Baucus to vote against the bill, without forcing the Democrats to make major concessions (such as a trigger) to garner Olympia Snowe’s (R-ME) vote. Other methods–such as slipping the public option in during conference or using reconciliation–remain on the table; but having a solid block vote for cloture would be the best way to pass health care.

Now, it will take a lot of effort to hold the Democratic caucus together, but it can be done. It would take a lot of nerve for a senator to join a Republican filibuster against one of the president’s greatest domestic initiatives. Only a few senators would have the courage to do so–Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Kent Conrad (D-ND) in particular. If Reid and Obama can hold those two in line, the filibuster can be broken and a public option can be passed out of the Senate.

At the end of the day, there are a variety of ways that a public option can be passed. But it is absolutely essential to reform. Because if there is no public option, there is no health care reform.

Tags: filibuster, Harry Reid, Kent Conrad, Max Baucus, Senate, Senate Finance Committee

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