Tony Ondrusek, Publisher

According to the Los Angeles Times and IFAwebnews.com, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus beat both Sen. Ted Kennedy and President-elect Barack Obama by being the first one out of the starting gate in the quest for health care “reform.”

And Baucus’s quest for the glory might, according to the Times, catch the incoming president and his staff off guard.

Baucus announced his proposal in a sweeping 98-page document that, one would assume, was not written at the last minute, but had been written, edited and printed in time for the announcement of last week’s election results.

But what of Sen. Ten Kennedy, whose op-ed piece in the Washington Post this weekend led some to believe that he would be the first to introduce legislation? Was he caught off guard and is now seething, or will he be content to just sit on the sidelines and allow others to own the legacy of creating another federal bureaucracy? Baucus said that he was waiting to speak with other lawmakersabout a bill that he will likely introduce, and invoked the name of the iconic Massachusetts senator, so a safe bet would be that any legislation might be named the Baucus-Kennedy Health Care Reform Act of 2009.

According to the Times article, Baucus goes further than Obama was willing when he announced that he wants everyone to buy health insurance and that he would fine large employers that didn’t offer it to employees. Obama had changed his stance until, at the end of the campaign, his stance was one against a mandate for coverage for all (children only), and said he didn’t favor fines for employers that didn’t offer coverage (he was only in favor of fines for parents who didn’t acquire coverage for their children).

Hmmm, but didn’t Baucus and Obama meet, cheerily in fact, on the same day that Baucus announced his proposal? You bet. Ceci Connolly wrote in her Washington Post blogthat the two “had nothing but happy talk on their ability to revamp” the nation’s healthcare system.

Does this mean that Obama will sign Baucus’s legislation, if it passes, thereby reneging on his earlier campaign promises? Will Obama say that he has too much on his plate with the financial crisis and will allow Congress instead to revamp health care?

And what about the financial crisis? Where will the money come from for such a massive undertaking? In an Associated Press article, the same question is asked, with no answer. In announcing the plan, Baucus has conceded that he doesn’t know how it will be paid for, only that it will require a massive, up-front investment. Of course, everyone knows who will pay for it: U.S. business owners, workers and taxpayers.