“[I]t didn’t take long the next day for the reality to set in that not much about the game had really changed. "Every day,” Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, who is leading bipartisan talks, said with a sigh, “we get a little closer. And I mean it.” (See 10 players in health-care reform.) Problem is, he has meant it before — virtually every day for the past four months, he has reported he’s “making progress.” Baucus has pledged to send a bill to the Senate floor the week after next and has promised legislation for his colleagues to look at “within a day or two” of Sept. 15, the deadline set by Reid. But if anything, the President’s speech gave the negotiators more, not less, to think about. The controversy over Republican Representative Joe Wilson’s shouting “You lie!” at the President over his claim that illegal immigrants wouldn’t benefit from health-care reform apparently sparked some reconsideration of the relevant language. “We really thought we’d resolved this question of people who are here illegally, but as we reflected on the President’s speech last night, we wanted to go back and drill down again,” said Senator Kent Conrad, one of the Democrats in the talks after a meeting Thursday morning. Even the Republicans Obama hailed by name were not moved. Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, who famously worked across the aisle with Ted Kennedy to create the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, remained a solid no. “I like the President a lot, and I’d like to help, but it’s pretty hard to under these circumstances,” Hatch said, citing a litany of problems he has with the bill. No one from the White House has approached Hatch in months, nor have the bipartisan negotiators, even though he used to be one of those negotiators before he dropped out in disgust. Hatch declared the process “heartrending” because of what he called a lack of outreach. But outreach is in the eye of the beholder, and Democrats like Senator Chuck Schumer challenged the other team to step up: “The ball is now clearly in the court of the Republican Party. Are they going to continue to just say no? Or will they meet us part of the way? That’s the question.”