Let’s hope Baucus doesn’t cave to GOP

While we sit and await the Super Committee to get settled in Congress, hopes for anything positive arising from it are very low.

The key to the committee is who on which side of the aisle will be the first to blink to let the other side predominate.

Based on what we have seen from President Barack Obama and his party during the debt ceiling and other negotiations with the Republicans and their tea party subset, the odds are with the righties.

The top target will be Sen. Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, the all-too-ready-to-compromise chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, who will probably compromise or, in Obama’s mode, cave in to the enemy Republicans. Compromising under previous situations in Congress in American history has been welcome and desired, not so much under current circumstances.

What likely will happen is the unified group of hard-line Republicans will continue to work together as they have and primarily gang up on the senator who so hindered the work on the health care reform bill, including doing away with the single-payer system; Medicare for all.

Millions of people will watch while the process unfolds with the fate of poor, disabled, elderly and other people in need hanging in the balance. We are at the mercy of the committee and Congress. We urge all the participants, especially Baucus and the Democrats to pay heed to us. I, among many, am a disabled, unemployed, quadruple bypass survivor and could be devastated with a couple of wrong moves.

Jeff Clarkson

Elgin