Update: It does seem like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wants to hang on at least to the semantics of "public option." As before, the detaisl of the deal aren't very clear, but it does still appear that the public option as we've been discussing it for months now is out. Still, Reid says, in a statement just released, that it's in. He's also denied the AP report.

The full statement:

This has been a long journey. We have confronted many hurdles, and tonight I believe we have overcome yet another one.

I asked Senators Schumer and Pryor to work with some of the most moderate and most progressive members of our diverse caucus, and tonight they have come to a consensus.

 

It is a consensus that includes a public option and will help ensure the American people win in two ways: one, insurance companies will face more competition, and two, the American people will have more choices.

 

I know not all 10 Senators in the room agree on every single detail of this, nor will all 60 members of my caucus. But I know we all appreciate the hard work that these progressives and moderates have done to move this historic debate forward.

I want to thank Senators Schumer, Pryor, Brown, Carper, Feingold, Harkin, Landrieu, Lincoln, Nelson and Rockefeller for working together for the greater good and never losing sight of our shared goal: making it possible for every American to afford to live a healthy life.

As is long-standing practice, we do not disclose details of any proposal before the Congressional Budget Office has a chance to evaluate it. We will wait for that to happen, but in the meantime, tonight we are confident.

Update 2: Some aides to senior Senate Democrats are telling Salon that there's some confusion among staffers (and possibly lawmakers) over exactly what the deal that's been reached looks like. Apparently only the 10 Democratic senators involved in the talks know for sure, at least as of late Tuesday night. One senior Democratic aide says the deal will still preserve some form of public plan, though it's significantly weaker than what was in the bill before the negotiations started.

Check back Wednesday morning for more details.

Separately, the Wall Street Journal's John Fund criticized Reid on historical grounds, writing:

Historians also faulted Mr. Reid's curious reference to the Senate civil rights debates of the 1960s. After all, it was Southern Democrats who mounted an 83-day filibuster of the 1964 Civil Rights Bill. The final vote to cut off debate saw 29 Senators in opposition, 80% of them Democrats. Among those voting to block the civil rights bill was West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd, who personally filibustered the bill for 14 hours. The next year he also opposed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Mr. Byrd still sits in the Senate, and indeed preceded Mr. Reid as his party's majority leader until he stepped down from that role in 1989.

Fund's line of attack was odd, and for more than one reason. For one thing, Reid never said it was Republicans who'd opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. (Fund gave it the inaccurate title of the 1964 Civil Rights Bill.) For another, making this sort of argument in a column titled "Harry Reid's History Lesson" is just ironic, because it betrays a lack of knowledge of the actual history of the Civil Rights Act and the years that followed.

Democrats did lead the filibuster of the Civil Rights Act, there's no doubting that, and that's something the party -- and especially Byrd -- has to reckon with. But there's a reason why President Obama is a Democrat. There's a reason why the vast majority of African Americans have voted Democrat for decades now, and it's not because they support the pro-segregation party.

The Civil Rights Act was the beginning of the end for the Southern faction that was once key to the Democratic party. Some Southern Democrats, like South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond, simply became Republicans. Others, loyal to generations of Democrats that came before them, hung on to their affiliation, only to become the last of a dying breed as Republicans -- using the Southern Strategy -- picked up the mantle of the party opposed to civil rights and ran with it.

There was one other very important senator who supported the filibuster, one whose name Fund didn't mention. That would be Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., who said the bill was "a threat to the very essence of our basic system." Later that year, Goldwater became the Republican Party's nominee for president. He was also the model for President Reagan, and for much of the modern conservative movement.

Two groups of Democratic senators have been meeting since Monday to try to hash out a deal to replace the public option -- five liberals and five moderates. Instead of a government-run insurance plan in the healthcare exchanges that the reform bill would set up, the new scheme would let people who don't have employer-provided insurance buy into new national insurance plans supervised by the federal agency that handles health benefits for government workers, the Office of Personnel Management. The details of how that would work -- how OPM would negotiate with insurance companies to set the premiums, how many people would be expected to enroll, how vigorously the plans would pursue cost controls with providers -- are still all up in the air. Besides opening the federal plan up, uninsured people between 55 and 64 could also buy into Medicare, usually restricted to people 65 and older, though it's not clear how much the government would charge them to do that.

This new plan seems to be picking up steam among moderates, but progressives aren't thrilled by it. "We don't believe that substituting a collection of private plans for a public health insurance option is a compromise," said Jacki Schechner, a spokeswoman for Health Care for America Now, a coalition of progressive groups and labor unions that came out firmly against the alternative plan Tuesday. HCAN supports expanding Medicare, but doesn't think that's an acceptable alternative to a real public option, either.

But the public option may not be an option for much longer, the way things are heading in the Senate. Enough conservative and moderate Democrats have said they won't vote for a bill that includes a public plan that leaders may not have much choice but to jettison it. And while progressives say they don't like the alternative plan, no members of the Senate or major liberal groups have come out and said they'd oppose the overall reform bill without the public option.

Talks are still ongoing, though, and lawmakers participating in them wouldn't say where they think things will end up. "There's no deal on anything," said Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, an outspoken public option supporter. "Nobody agrees to anything. The public option is still in the bill. I'm not willing to concede anything" until the talks wrap up.

Time is running out, though. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid still wants to pass a bill by the end of the year, which doesn't leave much room to let these talks drag on much longer. Asked Tuesday when he would begin to take the next parliamentary step to move the legislation along in the process, Reid just shook his head grimly: "As soon as I can."

By tabling the amendment, the Senate essentially defeated it. But don't think that's the end of the debate over abortion and healthcare reform.

This amendment was authored by Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., who represents a key swing vote on reform, one his fellow Democrats have been working hard to get. And Nelson has said that if language like that used in the Stupak amendment, and in his proposal, isn't included in the Senate bill, he'll vote to support a filibuster.

The vote was 54-45 in favor of tabling the amendment. Nelson and his allies needed 60 votes to keep it alive.

In response to this, Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., has introduced new legislation that would create war bonds to fund the wars.

"I believe that we need shared sacrifice and fiscal discipline in financing the war effort,” Nelson said in a statement. “I don't believe our first instinct should always be a rush to tax. The government has gone to great lengths to address the economic downturn and adding new taxes right now could undermine those efforts."

The problem with this logic is that bonds -- even war bonds -- aren't free money. At some point, those who invested expect to be paid back, and with interest. In order to accomplish that, the government has to use money it gets from... well, from tax dollars.