Chris van Hollen, who chairs the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), went on FOX News Sunday with Chris Wallace to raise the white flag of surrender to LieberCare.

If you haven't already joined the donor strike against the DCCC, DSCC, and DNC, this would be an excellent moment to "thank" van Hollen for surrendering.

First, van Hollen promised to "give up the public option" in return for unspecified "mechanisms" to "keep down premiums" - when we all know the only such "mechanism" outside the realm of utter self-delusion is competition from a public option.

WALLACE: Is the public option dead?

VAN HOLLEN: It's not dead, but we also recognize that the Senate was able to just muster the 60 votes. So before the House was to give up the public option, we would want to be persuaded that there are other mechanisms in whatever bill comes out that will keep down premiums.

We've got to make sure that the final product is affordable. We're asking everybody to have health insurance. It's got to be affordable.

van Hollen then begged the Senate to compromise on the idiotic healthcare tax that will primarily hurt union members who have sacrified wage increases over the past two decades just to get decent insurance.

WALLACE: Won't the House have to accept the Senate provision for an excise tax on so-called Cadillac high-premium insurance plans?

VAN HOLLEN: No, there's a common thread between the two bills in terms of how it's paid for. The House bill has a surcharge on people who did very well under the Bush administration with tax breaks. We raise -- have a surcharge on people over half a million dollars for individuals and over a million for couples.

The Senate bill, in addition to having a tax on high-cost insurance plans, also increases the Medicare surcharge for very high- income individuals. So you can see room for a compromise there.

Would you have to have some threshold where you -- on so-called Cadillac plans? Yes, but we believe that the Senate plan unfairly treats many individuals in terms of where the cap is.

And finally, van Hollen gave a rousing defense of the Hyde Amendment, which the Democratic base has fought for three decades.

WALLACE: OK. Abortion, which may be the toughest issue, because Congressman Bart Stupak, a Democrat, led the fight in the House for a provision sharply restricting any use of public funds to provide for abortions, but some House liberals and a lot of Senate Democrats said that goes too far.

How can you pass a version that perhaps moves a little bit more lenient than Stupak when he gave you the 64 votes to put you over the top?

VAN HOLLEN: Well, let me be clear. As you know, Chris, on both sides there's a clear effort to make sure that no public dollars go for abortion coverage. I mean, that is -- that is clear in both bills. How you accomplish that has been a matter, of course, of great dispute between the two bodies and among different groups who are looking at this issue.

It's not clear exactly how this will be resolved in the final analysis, but I'm confident that it will be. One thing people predicted from the very beginning was that we wouldn't get as far as we have in terms of providing health reform.

I believe at the end of the day we will -- we will resolve this issue in a way that meets that principle that taxpayer dollars will not go to pay for abortion.

As I wrote above, If you haven't already joined the donor strike against the DCCC, DSCC, and DNC, this would be an excellent moment to "thank" van Hollen for surrendering.

Update 1: House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn told Face the Nation he never really supported a public option anyway.

DICKERSON: Can you vote for a final health care bill that does not include a public option?

CLYBURN: Yes, sir, I can. Because why do we want a public option? We want a public option to do basically three things: create more choice for insurers; create more competition for insurance companies; and to contain costs.

So if we can come up with a process by which these three things can be done, then I’m all for it. Whether or not we label it a public option or not is of no consequence. What we want to do is get good, effective results from whatever we put in place.

DICKERSON: A number of other public option supporters who shared your passion for the issue feel that the president let them down a little bit on this. That he didn’t fight very hard for it. That he was kind of stringing them along through the process. Did he let you down?

CLYBURN: No, he did not. If you may recall, I said way back before we went out on our August break that we ought to take a hard look at this so-called robust public option that a lot of people had bought into.

I never quite bought into that. I was one of those people saying, we ought to come up with a hybrid. Part of which was to bring more people into Medicaid. And that’s what we did on the House side. We did a blended plan. We didn’t do what you might call a robust public option plan on the House side.

What we’re saying is, on the House side, let’s increase eligibility for Medicare to more than 33 percent of...

DICKERSON: All right. Congressman...

CLYBURN: Yes.

DICKERSON: I’m afraid we’re going to have to leave it there on the details. We’ll be back in just a minute with more on the terror plot.

Ah yes, the terror plot. Who gives a rat's ass about the details of healthcare reform? It's not like 47 million people have no healthcare and the rest of us are going broke trying to pay for it. Nah, nothing there, let's talk about the terror plot.