So now what?

The Senate Finance Committee had barely voted on the big health care legislation when the infinitesimally short attention span of Capitol Hill shifted to the next step. And it sounds like the debut of a 1950’s doo-wop band: ladies and gentlemen, give it up for Harry Reid and the Bill Blenders.

That would be the majority leader, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, and the team of senators, aides and White House officials who will meld the Finance Committee bill with an alternate version of the health-care legislation that was approved back in July by the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee.

Mr. Reid will gather the group in his office on the second floor of the Capitol for its first official meeting on Wednesday. The group includes Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana and the Finance Committee chairman; Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, who was acting chairman of the HELP committee when it passed its health care bill; and representatives of the White House.

Jim Manley, a spokesman for Mr. Reid, said that Senator Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, the lone Republican on the Finance Committee to vote in favor of the bill, would be invited to future sessions. And Mr. Manley said the Democratic leader was prepared to go to substantial lengths to keep Ms. Snowe’s support.

“He is prepared to do what he can to keep her on board while putting together a bill that can get the 60 votes necessary to overcome a Republican filibuster,” Mr. Manley said.

Senate Democrats have already held some preliminary discussions about blending the two bills, and the White House lobbying team is already fully deployed across the Capitol.

The more liberal HELP bill was approved on a strict party-line vote,
with Republicans unanimously opposed. And in many ways, it was only half of a bill, because the Finance Committee has jurisdiction over
the tax provisions needed to finance the legislation, as well as
spending on Medicare and Medicaid.

The HELP bill, for instance, anticipated a major expansion of
Medicaid, the state-federal insurance program for the poor, but it is the
Finance Committee bill that includes the expansion, which extends
eligibility to all Americans earning less than 133 percent of the federal
poverty level, including childless adults currently excluded.

Speaking of the other side of the Capitol, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, continues to work on her own blending project, pulling together the bills reported out by three different committees into a single legislative proposal for full floor debate.

The House bill will include a government-run insurance plan, or public option, to compete with private insurers. But Mr. Reid, and perhaps President Obama himself, may have to mediate that issue in the Senate.

Liberal senators want the public option. But Ms. Snowe is firmly opposed. She has expressed openness to a compromise that would allow a government-run health plan to be “triggered” in states where the legislation otherwise does not succeed in providing affordable insurance.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The health care reform debate reached a new milestone Tuesday as a key congressional committee passed an $829 billion plan projected to extend coverage to an additional 29 million Americans.
"Now's not the time to pat ourselves on the back," President Obama says at the White House on Tuesday.

"Now's not the time to pat ourselves on the back," President Obama says at the White House on Tuesday.
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The Senate Finance Committee's bill would subsidize insurance for poorer Americans, establish nonprofit health care cooperatives, and create health insurance exchanges to make it easier for small groups and individuals to purchase coverage.

Among other things, it would cap annual out-of-pocket expenses and prevent insurance companies from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions.

The plan is financed by a combination of reductions in spending for Medicare and other government programs, as well as higher taxes on expensive insurance policies and new fees on the health industry.

The committee passed its long-awaited plan Tuesday with a 14-9 vote. Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, was the lone committee member to cross party lines, breaking with other Republicans to vote for the measure. All the committee's Democrats supported the bill. Video Watch why there was applause after the vote »

The Finance Committee was the last of five congressional panels to consider health care legislation before formal debate begins in the full House and Senate.

President Obama expressed satisfaction, but said more work remains.
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"We are now closer than ever before to passing health reform, but we're not there yet," he told reporters in the White House Rose Garden. "Now's not the time to pat ourselves on the back."

Instead, he said, it is time to "dig in and work even harder to get this done." Video Watch Obama laud action, call for more work »

Obama singled out Snowe "for both the political courage and the seriousness of purpose that she's demonstrated throughout this process."

Democratic leaders in each chamber have now started the politically delicate task of melding together five pieces of legislation -- two in the Senate and three in the House.

Last week, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated the Finance Committee's bill would cut the national deficit by roughly $80 billion over the next 10 years while expanding coverage to 94 percent of the country's non-elderly population.

"Ours is a balanced plan," said committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Montana. "Now is the time that will tell whether things are merely said, or whether something is actually done. Now is the time to get this done."

Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley, the committee's top Republican, said he wished he "felt better about the substance of the bill," which is "moving on a slippery slope to more and more government control of health care." Video Watch what Grassley had to say about health care reform before the vote »

Snowe indicated she has concerns with several aspects of the bill, but didn't want to see the reform process derailed.

"Is this bill all that I would want? Far from it," she said. "Is it all that it can be? No. But when history calls, history calls. And I happen to think that the consequences of inaction dictate the urgency of Congress [taking] every opportunity to demonstrate its capacity to solve the monumental issues of our time."

On Monday, an insurance industry trade group questioned several of the assumptions underpinning the bill. America's Health Insurance Plans released a report stating that, if enacted, the bill would increase premiums for families by an extra $4,000 by 2019. It said premiums for individuals would rise by an additional $1,500.

The analysis, conducted by the firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, threatens to undermine Obama's assertion that it is possible to expand coverage while slowing the rate of medical inflation.

A Finance Committee spokesman slammed the analysis, calling it "a health insurance company hatchet job, plain and simple." Snowe said it was "surprising" the insurance industry "would issue that kind of condemnation when you are trying to create a constructive approach" potentially worth billions of dollars to private companies.

The committee's plan, initially drafted by Baucus, is the only one under serious consideration that excludes a government-run public health insurance option. Several top Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have questioned whether it is possible to contain costs without creating a public option to serve as a check on private insurers.

Republicans and some conservative Democrats oppose the government-run insurance option, saying it would drive private insurers from the market and eventually bring a government takeover of the health care system.

Baucus has said the more conservative Senate lacks the votes to pass a public option; Pelosi has repeatedly insisted the more liberal House will pass a bill that includes one.

The Finance Committee plan was partly the result of months of negotiations between Baucus and five other panel members -- three Republicans and two Democrats. The proposal from the "Gang of Six" has been widely viewed as the only one with the potential of attracting any Republican support.

The vote came after the committee spent two weeks debating 130 amendments. Committee members boosted the bill's overall price by more than $50 billion in part by expanding insurance subsidies for individuals and families with lower incomes.

They also voted to exempt senior citizens from higher taxes on medical expenses.

The sweeping bill would be paid for in part by cutting spending on several health care programs -- including Medicare -- by roughly $400 billion. Another $200 billion would be generated by imposing a new tax on high-end health care policies, dubbed "Cadillac" plans by critics.

At the same time, new fees would be imposed on drug and insurance companies, medical device manufacturers and other industries tied to the health care sector.

Individuals would be required to purchase coverage or face a fine of up to $750.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's goal is to emerge with a single bill that can overcome a potential filibuster by winning at least 60 votes in the Senate. He wants to meet Obama's goal of designing a bill that will cost no more than $900 billion over the next decade.

Senate aides expect that effort to take a couple of weeks.

Joining Reid in the decision-making will be Baucus; Sens. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut and Tom Harkin of Iowa; senior Democrats on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee; and Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff.

Other key senators -- including Snowe, one of the Gang of Six -- are also expected to be involved.

Aside from wrestling with the public option, Democratic leaders have to resolve sharp differences over how to pay for a reform plan. Top House Democrats oppose a tax on high-cost policies, which they fear would affect many union members. They have instead proposed a tax surcharge on individuals with annual incomes over $500,000, or families earning more than $1 million.

To get a bill passed, Reid could implement a legislative option known as reconciliation, which would require only 50 votes instead of 60. However, Republicans have promised a "minor revolution," in the words of GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, if Democrats resort to that rarely used tactic.
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Republican leaders, who have criticized the various Democratic plans for their size and scope, won't be involved in the upcoming negotiations. One senior Republican leadership aide recently quipped that she would be in her office with her feet on her desk during the talks because she wasn't going to be invited to offer suggestions.

If the House and Senate manage to pass health care reform bills, a conference committee would then negotiate a final version requiring approval from both chambers before going to Obama for his signature.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has been asked to investigate whether Panama tortured an Ecuadorian citizen who was being held as an illegal immigrant, an official hemispheric human rights organization said.

Jesus Tranquilino Velez Loor was arrested November 11, 2002, and deported to Ecuador on September 10, 2003. During that time, he was held without receiving procedural guarantees, the right to be heard and the right to present a defense, said the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

"The case also involves the lack of investigation of complaints of torture presented by Mr. Velez Loor before the Panamanian authorities, as well as the inhumane conditions of detention under which he was held in several Panamanian penitentiaries," the human rights commission said in a release Tuesday.

The human rights panel, which is part of the 35-nation Organization of American States, said it referred the case to the court last week because Panama did not adopt sufficient measures to address issues raised in a previous commission report.

Velez Loor "was sentenced to a prison term for having repeatedly entered Panama illegally. ... Panamanian law provides that foreign nationals, who repeatedly enter Panama, without the necessary papers, will be imprisoned for two years and then deported," Panama said in a 2006 report.

Velez Loor admitted he had gone into Panama without proper papers or visas.

The commission said it received an e-mailed complaint from Velez Loor on February 10, 2004, "in which he claims to have undergone torture, forced isolation, and mistreatment at the hands of Panamanian police officers at two Panamanian detention centers without being given the opportunity to defend himself, without the benefit of any court of law, without being allowed to make a telephone call and while being deprived of all medical care."

Panama denied those allegations in the 2006 human rights commission report.

Officials at the Panamanian embassy in Washington did not return a telephone request Tuesday from CNN for comment on the latest development.

The human rights commission consists of seven members who act in a personal capacity, without representing any country, and who are elected by the OAS General Assembly.

William C. Thompson Jr. walked into Tuesday night’s mayoral debate a likeable man who is being outspent 16 to 1, and whose views and background are more than a bit of a mystery to many New Yorkers.
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William Thompson greeted his supporters before his debate with Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Monday night.

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Unfortunately for Mr. Thompson, he seemed to have exited in the same fashion.

Save for his accent, which carries the unmistakable cadence of his native Brooklyn, and for his insistent attacks on Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s flip-flop on term limits, Mr. Thompson, the city comptroller, resembled a painter who left too much of his canvas blank.

He grew up as the high-achieving son of a prominent politician and a teacher in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a neighborhood of elegant brownstones that now suffers a plague of foreclosures and homelessness. During his time on the Board of Education, he voted for two chancellors who concentrated on the poorest students and wrested power from corrupt local school boards. Test scores rose sharply in his final years there.

A viewer would have learned little to nothing of these facts. Mr. Thompson’s personal anecdote count Tuesday totaled zero.

The conundrum for Mr. Thompson is that he’s carved a three-decade career in public life by being a conciliator, a nimble-footed inside player herded board members to votes and — with one notable exception — really tried to avoid annoying former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.

He lacked power to make most policy decisions and seemed allergic to crusades. All of which is perfectly defensible, but public powerlessness is not the stuff of compelling narratives.

On Tuesday Mr. Bloomberg attacked him, erroneously, for being “in charge” of the schools in the 1990s. Mr. Thompson scrunched his face, incredulous.

“I was in charge?” he said, turning to look at the mayor. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”

Mr. Bloomberg replied with just a hint of a Cheshire cat smile.

In fairness, neither mayor nor comptroller made the night electric; Mr. Bloomberg in particular tended to dole out energy a miserly watt at a time. The city is sunk into recession’s mire, unemployment tops 10 percent — black male unemployment edges toward 50 percent — and foreclosure threatens working class families, and the candidates made glancing mentions of all of this. (Neither candidate uttered the word foreclosure).

A reporter asked the candidates about a controversial fact of life in minority communities: Police each year frisk more than half a million young men, more than 80 percent of them black or Latino. The number of frisks has increased during the past decade, sweeping up hundreds of thousands of teenagers and college students. Police have arrested fewer than 5 percent of this number.

Mr. Thompson wants to curtail it. “We know it’s being overused,” he said.

Mr. Bloomberg conceded no problem. “I do think the police have struck a good balance,” he said soothingly.

Mr. Bloomberg is not much for emoting. He rolls his eyes, his voice cuts monotone and his touch is rarely common. But he came into the night with considerable advantages. He is a reasonably popular two-term incumbent (residents tend to like his policies more so than him), and he sits atop a great green bag of personal swag, having so far spent $65 million of his own money on this campaign.

Mr. Bloomberg, an independent, is unsentimentally promiscuous about party loyalty. But in his governing style, he looks an awful lot like a moderate Democrat, which complicates matters for Mr. Thompson, who as it happens is a moderate Democrat.

None of which is to suggest that Mr. Thompson has no line of attack — the decaying economy suggests opportunity. But the Thompson campaign has been curiously relaxed — last weekend he appeared at two churches, according to his schedule. He offered passionate words Tuesday night about the plight of middle-class New Yorkers.

But he offered no storehouse of stories of actual suffering to put meat on the bones of his attack.

Instead Mr. Thompson concluded as he began, by doubling down on a single bet: term limits. The election, he said, will be New Yorkers’ referendum on term limits. “And that we say: We are not for sale!”

In less than four weeks, he’ll find out if that is enough.