Markup News (and What We Don't Know Yet)

Nick Beaudrot is filing some interesting posts about the continuing Finance Committee markup, including the defeat today of the Bill Nelson amendment that would have stuck it to the drug companies and financed lots of things that liberals like. Nick interprets it as evidence that the dissenting Democrats (Carper, Menendez, and Baucus) are in hock to PhRMA.

Another (and I think fairly different) possibility, however, is that what's really going on here is that Democrats are not going to break the deals that the White House cut with various key interest groups. It's not Senators paying off interest groups; it's Democrats enforcing the deals which they probably see as responsible for getting reform to the point it's at now. It sure makes sense that Team Obama would be making an effort here, but are they?

Hey, reporters! We want to know whether the White House is whipping to enforce deals with the interest groups against the instincts of liberal Senators.