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PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: We simply cannot allow differences over individual elements of this plan to prevent us from meeting our responsibility to solve a long-standing and urgent problem for the American people.

SENATE MINORITY LEADER MITCH MCCONNELL, R-KY.: On paper, they have 60 votes. But I think they're having an extremely difficult time convincing 60 people to completely ignore the wishes of the American people with a weak, flimsy argument to make history, when we all know that many things that happen in history were not good.

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BRET BAIER, HOST: Well, President Obama called the entire Democratic caucus to the White House today and there you heard him one day after moderates forced some significant changes in what the Senate was talking about when it came to health care reform. So where does it go from here and what about passage?

Let's about bring in our panel: Steve Hayes, senior writer for The Weekly Standard, A.B. Stoddard, associate editor of The Hill, and syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer.

Steve, what do you think?

STEVE HAYES, SENIOR WRITER, THE WEEKLY STANDARD: I think yesterday Joe Lieberman was the most important man in the Senate and we saw all of the things that he did to leverage his position, leverage his views to get what he wanted out of the negotiations.

I think now we may see that Roland Burris is the new most important man in the Senate when you've got 60 votes. Nobody would have guessed Roland Burris would be the most important man in the Senate, ever.

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You got 60 votes but he is still saying, look, I want a public option. You see in the Senate, and particularly you see public option advocates peel off one after another after another. You see Jay Rockefeller last week offer some conciliatory language. You've seen Sherrod Brown and others basically peel off and say I don't love it, but I can live with it.

Roland Burris is proving to be very stubborn. Now, ultimately will the man who holds Barack Obama's Senate seat be the one to bring down his signature domestic policy item? I don't think so, but Burris is pretty interesting. He's worth watching.

BAIER: A.B., another issue is the abortion funding issue. Senator Ben Nelson from Nebraska, his amendment failed in the Senate, but there's the issue of, let's say it gets past the House -- I mean the Senate -- you still have the House Democrats who voted with the Stupak amendment to prevent federal funding. The abortion issue is still a sticky issue.

A.B. STODDARD, ASSOCIATE EDITOR, THE HILL: Is the final issue because now that the government health care program has been kicked off the table, abortion remains the final issue for Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska. His amendment to change the language is something similar to the House language did fail.

But all along, he has also been saying it doesn't mean I won't support the final bill. I just don't know yet. They're still working with him. I think they can work with him. I'm not absolutely sure. But he sounds like he is amenable to voting for this bill at the end.

But those 40 Democrats we talked about in the House, they are dug in. They don't want that bill that they voted for last time to come back and become law. And so that remains a huge fight that we would see in January if the Senate bill does get out the door by Christmas Eve.

BAIER: And Charles, Steve mentioned the number of Democrats who may be wavering, we could still see many Louisiana purchases as we say with as it was called with Mary Landrieu where she managed to get $300 million in Medicaid additions to Louisiana.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: The eminent junior senator from Illinois that my colleague was talking about, if Landrieu got $300 million, he gets an island in the Caribbean, several islands.

There's no way he is going to stop this bill. They will send Tony Rezko to knock on his door and tell him he hopes nothing happens to any of his close relatives.

Look, I think they are over the hump. I think the hump was Lieberman. The hump was the question of the public option. It's now gone.

On abortion, it's not beyond the wit of man to work out a compromise. Nelson, for example, he could vote with the Democrats to shut off debate and then he could oppose the bill itself when you only need 51. They wouldn't need him. Or, they swallow Stupak in both Houses and they get it.

This thing is too big. The Democrats are within reach of controlling -- of having the federal government control a sixth of the economy. You watch Mitch McConnell in the clip we just showed. He sounded like a guy with a losing hand. Remember, he's the man who said a few months ago that Congress will pass something because Obama will sign anything.

And what they get is going to be control of the insurance industry. They are going to have a mandate so individuals have to purchase insurance. They're going to turn the insurance companies into a utility, like the electrical company.

It will be proxy control of health care, and that is an amazing achievement if you're a believer in government control of health care.

BAIER: Steve, we were talking in the break that a list of these things that are in here could have been achieved on day one with a pretty short one-page bill and you're out of there.

HAYES: No question. And I think that's one of the reasons that conservatives who are celebrating, you know, all of the difficulties that the White House is having, and there are victories, quote-unquote, by having the public option out, by having the Medicare buy-in taken out.

People who are celebrating this are being tremendously shortsighted. There is a lot, from my perspective, very bad stuff in this bill. And it will essentially be the government controlling one-sixth of the U.S. economy.

And we still don't have the details on what kind of exchanges we're talking about. I mean, we don't know so many of the details that were in the 2,000-page Reid bill that will likely end up in whatever the final bill are still unknown and there remain fights from this point forward.

BAIER: That's the question, A. B. -- is there a backdoor to the public option or government-run insurance with what is on the table here? Is there another way they get there?

STODDARD: No, there is no Medicare expansion. They did not get what they wanted. There is no path to single-payer.

There are insurance regulations and I would argue that from the assessments of the bill so far, and I know that the final one in the Senate is pending and awaiting analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, and of course we could see changes before it hits the floor. Obviously we will see changes when the two chambers merge their legislation.

But us covered people not going to see a change in our life. Our premiums may never go down. People who are uninsured are going to be in these exchanges, but very few of us will have the choice in competition that we were sold by the president and the Democrats when they said they were going to reform health care.

So I actually don't think it will give the average person a lot of bang, a lot of benefit. I think that the bill will save before it spends in order to reach -- in order to get a good score on budget. And I think voters will not feel really happy about this bill for many years to come, if at all. I actually don't think it's going to be a wild takeover of health care and I don't know that the impact is going to be so great.

BAIER: And the politics, if you're saving and getting the taxes up front and spending later, it's not exactly...

KRAUTHAMMER: I think it hurts Democrats either way. I think if it passes it will be a catastrophe politically. Democrats will have to answer for a lot of additional taxation. If the Medicare cuts happen, they have to answer for a lost cut in services, a lot of doctors and hospitals that will go under or quit as a result of this new plan.

There are going to be a lot of consequences which are going to be felt by individuals which are going to hurt the Democrats. It will take a decade to undo the damage in this bill.