Specifically, Senator Max Baucus (DINO-MT), who thinks that making people pay income tax on their healthcare benefits is preferable to raising taxes on the well-to do:

Currently, the portion of health benefits that are covered by a person’s employer is tax-free income. Baucus said last week that taxing those benefits should be considered. That way, health care reform would be funded with health care dollars.

Baucus says taxing health benefits wouldn’t necessarily be harmful to lower- and middle-class Americans.

If it won’t be harmful, then I’m Karl Rove’s secret love child.

Of course this will harm “lower- and middle-class Americans”. That’s what its intention is: Tax the poor to keep a tax break for the rich.

I understand that you won’t find a flaming liberal representing Montana. I get that, and if he were low on the seniority totem pole, I might let it slide, but he’s 7th in seniority, and so is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

Unfortunately, his next election will be in 2014, but this guy needs to be kept away from the machinery of government to the maximum degree possible.

There is a reason that Baucus is whoring for rich people from one of the poorer states in the nation, as the Wiki notes, 91% of his donations in 2008 came from out of state, so his money comes from bankers, insurance companies, etc., and he is offering them a return on his investment.