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The Montana Democrat and his former state office director Melodee Hanes began their relationship in the summer of 2008 after Baucus separated from his wife, Ty Matsdorf told The Associated Press late Friday.

Baucus nominated Hanes for the U.S. attorney post in March. But she later withdrew, saying she had been presented with other opportunities she couldn't pass up.

The Senate leader who's been a major proponent of Democratic health care legislation had submitted six names to a third-party reviewer, who whittled those to Hanes and two others. Matsdorf said the senator sent the three names to the White House with no ranking to select a nominee.

Matsdorf said Baucus' relationship with his girlfriend had nothing to do with his decision.

"Senator Baucus recommended each of the three candidates based solely on qualifications, and merit, knowing whichever one the White House selected would serve Montana well," Matsdorf said.

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"For more than a year, we've been working to meet the goals of reducing the growth of health care costs, improving quality and efficiency and expanding coverage. There are a tremendous number of complicated issues that go into reform and the public option is certainly one of them," Baucus said in a statement released after Reid's press conference. "I included a public option in the health reform blueprint I released nearly one year ago, and continue to support any provision, including a public option, that will ensure choice and competition and get the 60 votes needed to pass the Senate. Success should be our threshold and I am going to fight hard for the 60 votes we need to meet that goal this year."

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OK, so it was only one Republican, Olympia Snowe of Maine. Fine, so her support wasn't sewn up until the last few hours of debate Tuesday on a relatively conservative Senate Finance Committee proposal, after literally months of work that had been fruitless up to then. And yes, it came as a bit of a surprise, and with no promise that Snowe would stick with the reform plans down the line. "Is this bill all I would want?" she asked. "Far from it. Is it all it can be? No. But when history calls, history calls."

For now, at least, history did call. The Finance Committee's 14-9 vote to approve the legislation means all five of the House or Senate panels with jurisdiction over healthcare have passed a bill. No other reform proposal has ever gotten this far. And Snowe's support -- no matter how grudging, or temporary, it proves to be -- was all the Obama administration needed to run with the notion of bipartisanship that Democrats hope will be catnip to swing voters (and moderate lawmakers in their own party).

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Baucus' bill has been controversial -- not progressive enough for progressives, not conservative enough for conservatives -- but, thanks to the Democratic majority on the committee, it's expected to pass there. (The Senate floor is a different story, but we're not there yet, especially as the various versions of the legislation that have come out of committee will most likely  be combined in some fashion.)

For now, then, the biggest question isn't whether the committee will vote to approve the bill, but whether the Democrats will be joined by one of their Republican colleagues, Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe. Though Democrats have largely given up on their earlier attempts to craft a bill that could attract more bipartisan support, they'd still like to get Snowe's vote for political reasons. NBC's First Read blog observes: 

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In most polls, the majority of Americans favor a nonprofit alternative -- like Medicare -- that would give the private health industry some competition. So if so many of us, including President Obama himself, want that public option, how come we're not getting one?

Because the medicine that could cure our healthcare nightmare has been poisoned from Day One -- fatally adulterated, thanks to the infamous, Washington revolving door. Movers and shakers rotate between government and the private sector at a speed so dizzying they forget for whom they're supposed to be working.

If you've been watching the Senate Finance Committee's markup sessions, maybe you've noticed a woman sitting behind Committee Chairman Max Baucus. Her name is Liz Fowler.

Fowler used to work for WellPoint, the largest health insurer in the country. She was its vice-president of public policy. Baucus' office failed to mention this in the press release announcing her appointment as senior counsel in February 2008, even though it went on at length about her expertise in "healthcare policy."

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The big number that Republicans are likely to focus on isn't the deficit reduction, but the total cost of the bill, which the CBO and JCT estimate at $829 billion. That's high, but the fact that it still allows for a deficit reduction, and comes in well under the $1 trillion price tag that Democrats have feared for political reasons, means that the White House and their allies on the Hill are likely to be very happy.

As for whether the bill would work, the CBO and JCT estimated that it would reduce the number of non-elderly U.S. residents who don't have insurance by 29 million. That would still leave 25 million uninsured, one-third of whom are illegal immigrants. But the percent of non-elderly legal residents who are insured would go up from about 83 percent to about 94 percent, and that's the number that Democrats will focus on.

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The undeniable difference today is the speed and variety of the compost being thrown. With the 24-hour instantaneous delivery systems offered by radio, TV and the Internet, people are feeling more and more compelled to say ludicrous, shameful things in public that just a short time ago they would have hesitated to say in private. 

Rational pleas for cease-fires go unheeded. But this week, conservative Rick Moran, the freelance writer (and brother of ABC News' "Nightline" co-host Terry Moran) who runs the archly named Web site Right Wing Nuthouse, went out on a limb and urged sanity.

He wrote, "Employing reason and rationality to fight Obama and the liberals is far superior to the utter stupidity found in the baseless, exaggerated, hyperbolic and ignorant critiques of the left and Obama that is [sic] passed off as 'conservative' thought by those who haven't a clue what conservatism means ...

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For instance, this morning, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, ripped the public option, saying it would be the first step towards a single-payer healthcare system in which Americans would lose the ability to choose their healthcare providers. This argument clearly got to Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who introduced one of the public option amendments.

Schumer asked Grassley how he could support Medicare, yet oppose a public option. Grassley responded, “Medicare is part of the social fabric of America ... [but] to say that I support it is not to say that it’s the best program that it can be.” Grassley then went on to lament healthcare's fate if government becomes more involved.

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It's by no means assured that the public option can pass the committee. And if it does, it could still die when it comes to a vote in the full Senate. There are still enough Senate Democrats who've wavered on the subject, or who outright oppose the idea, that it seems like it'll be very tough to get the caucus to hold together and provide all of the 60 votes that would be needed in case of a Republican filibuster. In the committee itself, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., the chair, has seemed lukewarm at best when it comes to the public option, and that's one of the reasons the committee's bill -- which he's spent a fair amount of time shepherding -- doesn't include it.

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So on Monday, two liberal groups -- the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and Democracy for America -- came out with a new ad that tries to push Baucus towards supporting a public option.

The spot, which can be viewed below, will reportedly begin running in Montana and in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday.

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Just because things have started off well for progressives, though, doesn't mean they'll stay that way. As the healthcare reforms move through Congress, some of the most contentious fights are likely to be intramural battles among Democrats trying to figure out how expensive the legislation should be, how to pay for it and how generously the federal government should subsidize insurance for people who can't afford it at market rates.

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Unfortunately, by the time the panel broke for a vote (and some lunch) three and a quarter hours later, the only thing they'd done was talk -- and talk and talk and talk -- about how pleased they were to be there working. Stabenow's statistic meant 1,950 people had lost their insurance during the morning session -- and yet the Finance Committee hadn't even managed to finish with its opening statements. Two members deferred their blather until after the break. Chairman Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, had asked his colleagues to limit their remarks, but keeping a senator quiet may be the only task harder than producing a healthcare reform bill. The first votes on any actual proposed amendments to the bill weren't expected until after 6 p.m.

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Scenario One: If Olympia Snowe votes in favor of Max Baucus' plan -- which is favored by the medical-industrial complex because it dramatically increases their customer base without a public option that squeezes their profits -- the Baucus plan will be the bill that goes to the Senate floor. Why? Because her vote will give enough political cover to wavering Dems Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu, Jim Webb and Evan Bayh to gain their support for the Baucus plan. Which means the White House and the Democratic leadership in the Senate will have a good chance to get the 60 votes they need when the bill goes to the Senate floor in a few weeks.

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In the end, after months and months of negotiations aimed at winning bipartisan support for a healthcare reform bill in the Senate Finance Committee, Max Baucus was all alone on Wednesday as he announced his draft proposal. He stood, looking lonely, in front of a backdrop that could have accommodated his entire so-called Gang of Six -- if, that is, the talks had worked out. As it was, he showed up as a Gang of One. But don't tell Baucus his work had come to naught. "No Republican has offered his or her support at this moment," he admitted. "But I think by the time we get the final passage in this committee, you'll find Republican support. This is a bill that should enjoy broad support."

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The Gang of Six effort demanded deference from Democrats all summer because, the argument went, it was the only process by which they might gain some Republican support. Three of the six, after all, were Republicans. But that turned out to be much easier said than done. By the time Baucus released his bill today, all the Republicans had jumped ship on him. The Finance Committee is now looking at a one-party bipartisan compromise. Still, if conservative Democrats ultimately prove unwilling to vote for a stronger bill, the compromise position carved out by Baucus could be reform's only path to passage.

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Two Democrats, Sens. Jay Rockefeller and Ron Wyden are unhappy with the bill. Rockefeller, for one, has already gone so far as to say, "I want to make clear that in its current form I cannot put my support behind the Finance bill — it will not have my vote." Among other things, he's reportedly upset about the lack of a public option in the bill.

Of course, Rockefeller and Wyden aren't the only people with reservations. Baucus' chief negotiating partner in the GOP, Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, has already all but said he won't vote for the bill, no matter how many concessions to him it contains. ABC News' George Stephanopoulos summed up the Democratic perspective on all this pretty well, saying, "Baucus draft is a bipartisan bill without bipartisan support."

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House Republicans have been claiming that the House bill lacks provisions to ensure that illegal immigrants don't receive subsidies for coverage. That's actually not true -- but Baucus and Conrad now say they'll add the language the GOP has been demanding to the version of the legislation that they're working on.

There is one upside to the story, though. Originally, it appeared as if Baucus and Conrad wanted to keep illegal immigrants from participating in the planned insurance exchange, which would have had the effect of preventing them from buying any sort of individual coverage and creating a class of people who, legally, could not be insured.

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Six members of the Senate Finance Committee -- three Democrats and three Republicans -- held a conference call late Thursday in which, the Washington Post reports, they "agreed to redouble their efforts to craft a less costly alternative to the trillion-dollar initiatives so far put forward in Congress." The paper also reports that "the senators rejected the idea of imposing a deadline on their negotiations ... The consensus, one participant said, was 'to take your time to get it right.'"

The group "remain[s] committed to continuing our path toward a bipartisan health-care reform bill," committee chair Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., said in a statement released after the conference call.

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