For Baucus, Health Care Is the Issue Of a Lifetime

Legislation Could Define His Career, His Party

By Shailagh Murray and Ceci Connolly
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, May 24, 2009

Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, may be President Obama's most critical ally on health-care reform. But which version of the independent-minded Montanan will preside as the debate intensifies this summer?

Republicans hope it's the cautious loner with a history of betraying his party on politically sensitive bills. Democrats are rooting for the iconoclast who emerged this year as a newly reliable champion of the administration's ambitious agenda.

Now 67, Baucus remains a Senate original in a chamber that has become increasingly homogeneous. He once confessed to viewing politics as "dirty, corrupted and tainted," but he hasn't lost a race in his conservative state since 1972. By dint of his seniority, Baucus is responsible for delivering the biggest breakthrough in health policy since Medicare was enacted nearly 45 years ago.

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