(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. BEN NELSON, D-NEB.: It's a laundry list of concerns that I have. As you continue to go through the list, keep in mind, we haven't gotten the CBO numbers back from that package, so that alone would keep me in limbo until I have had a chance to see those.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: Senator Ben Nelson from Nebraska. He is on the fence according to everybody up on Capitol Hill. A couple of big issues, abortion funding, federal funding for abortion, that's a big issue for him.

Also, as you heard there, the CBO, the Congressional Budget Office has not come out with its score, at least we haven't heard anything about it, about the Reid plan, the proposal that no one has seen. So what about health care reform? We're back with our panel. Mara?

LIASSON: Well, as Ben Nelson said, he's waiting for CBO. It's like "Waiting for Godot." I mean, we had heard we were going get the CBO numbers on Monday.

BAIER: Well, we weren't going to get them.

LIASSON: The Senate was going to get them. We were going to hear about them. I meant we, the American people.

Look, I think this is an amazing thing. When you need 60 votes to pass anything and you only have 60 Democrats, any one senator can be very, very relevant whenever they want to be.

First it was Joe Lieberman. Now it's Ben Nelson. They are really struggling to come up with some kind of abortion language that he could accept.

Now, there is a language on the House bill, the Stupak amendment which I think he likes. I don't know if you could pass something like that through the Senate, but there has to be a version of that to get him.

Now, in the past people thought if you lose one Democrat, maybe you can get Olympia Snowe, but that doesn't look likely at the moment. So this thing right now is all about Ben Nelson and I don't know what they're going to be able to do to satisfy him.

BAIER: Charles, you have been in the past conversations, very confident that Senator Reid would be able to get this through. Are you less so today? Do you think that perhaps there is a chance that this is not going to happen?

KRAUTHAMMER: I don't. We heard Nelson say he has a laundry list. It is a Christmas list and it's holiday time. He watched Mary Landrieu of Louisiana come home with $300 million, which is now called "the Louisiana purchase," to get her vote on cloture a couple of weeks ago.

He watched Joe Lieberman, watch Obama and Reid put a stake through the public option and killed it in order to win Lieberman's vote.

And Nelson has his list.

I'm sure he's a principled man and I don't want to sound cynical, but he wants something on abortion. I mean, the more I look at his objections, the distance between what he wants and what is offered is rather narrow. I can't imagine it can't be finessed.

And then he says he has other stuff he cares about. Well, I'm sure they're going to look at U.S. Treasury and find the funds to satisfy his other list and he will come onboard.

It is inconceivable that over these small differences that one senator is going to hold out and kill the whole bill. I may be wrong, but perhaps I'm not cynical enough.

BAIER: Even if he's looking at polls in Nebraska that are completely upside-down on this issue for Democrats and health care?

KRAUTHAMMER: But he can get language on abortion which is at least as strong as current law, and I can't understand why that would not cover him on the abortion issue.

LIASSON: Every senator gets to be a hero in this scenario. He can win for the pro-life forces of Nebraska.

BARNES: It was easier for Democrats to dump the Medicare buy-in and public option than it is to deal with abortion, because it is a more gut-level, emotional issue for Democrats. The Democratic Party is the pro-abortion party.

(CROSSTALK)

LIASSON: This did it in the House of Representatives.

BARNES: I think, but they did it knowing they would get rid of it in a conference or something, that it wouldn't go through.

LIASSON: Maybe.

BARNES: Look, Nelson is interesting because of this - he voted against all the funding for the health care bill. He voted with Republicans against the tax hikes, Crapo's amendments on the tax hikes, and is against all the funding.

You would think that intellectually that would make it hard, it would be difficult for him to ultimately vote for the bill. Well, stranger things have happened and it could happen this time.

My calculation is simply this: That when a president in what is essentially a tie, when the president steps in, the tie is broken in favor of the president. So I still think Obama-care will pass the Senate, too.

BAIER: On a bill this big, on a vote this big that everybody is going to remember - one-sixth of the U.S. economy - can a senator go in and say I voted for cloture to end debate and vote against the bill and get away with it?

LIASSON: Yes, he can, and I will tell you why: There is no doubt that...

BAIER: And get away with it?

LIASSON: Yes and here is why: Well, first of all, it depends on how tough your race is and Ben Nelson isn't up for this year. There is a lot of things that are going to happen before he stands for reelection.

However, there certainly will be ads run against him saying a vote on cloture equals a vote on the bill.

BAIER: It's already started.

LIASSON: It's already started. However, there was a big debate a couple of years ago about judicial filibusters. And Republicans made the very strong point in a lot of these conservative states, voters heard this loud and clear, things deserve an up and down vote on the floor, in this case judges. That was their argument.

Now the Democrats are saying this health care bill deserves an up or down vote on the floor. You can vote to get it on the floor and then vote your conscience when it comes to final passage. This used to be upside-down when we with talking about judges.

You know, I still think in the end, when you're talking about one lone holdout, unless he wants to be the Democrat who killed health care reform - and it's unclear - this thing will still pass.

BAIER: Fred, you have written about this, something this big being this partisan, with no bipartisan support ...

BARNES: None whatsoever.

BAIER: ... for a major bill like this.

BARNES: And every bill we have seen in domestic policy, whether it's Medicare, Medicaid, civil rights, whatever, over the last 50 years has been a bipartisan bill that was also popular, popular with the American people.

There is a Pew poll that shows folks that don't know much about Obama-care, about the bill, are evenly divided, but those who follow it and know something about it, not a lot, but something about it, they are two-to-one against it. And yet Democrats act like this is something that the American people demanding. They aren't.

BAIER: What we haven't talked a lot about it because a lot of people don't think it's real - is this liberal backlash. While it's very loud, you believe that they will all fold in the end?

KRAUTHAMMER: Well, the ones outside the Congress will be louder and louder, the Howard Deans, the Huffingtons and the other wingnuts will be against it and they will rail.

But if you're a Democrat in the House, in the Congress, and you're in the left, and you have a chance, as I've said again and again, to seize control of the a sixth of the American economy and you can later amend it and you can fudge it, you are turning insurance companies into utilities, which is a way of getting proxy control of the health care system, this is an opportunity you're not going to get again.

You're within an inch of getting it and you're going to sink it over a public option which is redundant and unnecessary, I think not.

BAIER: But it will be loud.