THE NON-PUBLIC OPTION Ten Democratic senators are calling for abandoning the much-maligned 'public option' -- a government-run health insurance plan to compete with private insurers -- and replacing it with two programs that might achieve the same goal of expanding Americans' choices and providing some competition. We won't know if this compromise does that until the Congressional Budget Office has evaluated it. But we admire the senators' desire to try to move reform legislation forward. We have long championed the idea of a public plan. With no need to turn a profit and backed by government muscle, it could charge lower premiums and probably induce its private competitors to lower their premiums. But the insurance industry and Republican critics were determined to kill or severely weaken a public plan. As currently embodied in the Senate bill, the public plan would be sold only on new insurance exchanges that would be open just to people who buy their own insurance policies and to certain small businesses. And instead of imposing rates based on Medicare's relative low reimbursements, it would have to negotiate how much to pay health care providers (just as private plans do). The CBO believes the public plan's premiums would be higher than the average private plan's. We still believe that a weak public option is better than none. Here are the details, as of now, of the possible alternative: MEDICARE BUY-IN People ages 55 to 64 who are eligible to use the exchanges would be permitted to buy coverage from Medicare. Unlike older Americans, this younger group would have to pay the full premium themselves unless their incomes are low enough to qualify for subsidies. The premium could be in the neighborhood of $7,600 a year for single coverage. Whether people would find Medicare attractive at this price is not clear. Expanding Medicare to cover even a few million people strikes us as promising. Medicare, which pays low rates to providers, might actually offer stiffer competition to private plans than the current weak version of the public option in the Senate bill. REGULATED NONPROFIT INSURANCE For people below age 55 who are not enrolled in group coverage, the insurance industry would have to create an array of nonprofit insurance plans to compete with for-profit plans on the exchanges in every state. (If industry fails to do this, the government would create them.) The plans would be approved and supervised by the government's Office of Personnel Management, which administers the health insurance plans offered to members of Congress and federal employees. These plans could have great difficulty competing in states where they lack networks of doctors and hospitals and where entrenched insurers and hospital combines dominate the market. But that is also true of the weak public option. And in at least some places they would provide more choice for consumers. At this point, even the 10 Senate negotiators have not fully agreed to all elements of the deal. They have simply agreed to have the budget office evaluate it. Until that is in, it is impossible to know whether this nonpublic option is an acceptable alternative. A GOOD FIGHT President Barack Obama's proposals for pump-priming the job market are a welcome, if belated, reminder that the goal of government efforts to stabilize the economy must be to put more Americans back to work. In a speech on Tuesday, Obama outlined a sensible list of programs that could be rolled out in coming months. But we fear his refusal to attach a price tag means that he is still not ready to do full battle with congressional Republicans (and some Democrats) who have vowed to block any additional stimulus spending. To work, this effort needs real money behind it. More than 7 million jobs have been eliminated since the recession started, and today more than 15 million Americans are out of work. Most economists still expect joblessness to get worse before it gets better. The president's package could provide a substantial boost to jobs, but only if it gets sufficient money. Proposals by Democrats in the House that could provide $150 billion for jobs plus $100 billion to extend unemployment insurance amount to a bare minimum of what is needed. Obama proposed asking Congress for $50 billion next year (the only program with a price attached) for additional investments in public works, which would put large numbers of people to work. He called for more incentives for investment in energy efficiency, including rebates for consumers who retrofit their homes. And he proposed giving small businesses cheap loans and an array of tax breaks to encourage investment and hiring. Unfortunately, he made only a passing reference to the idea of giving more assistance to cash-strapped state and local governments, and extending unemployment insurance. Administration officials suggest that money could be provided through other initiatives, but Congressional Republicans are especially opposed. We hope this does not mean that the White House is pulling its punches on what could be the best big ideas to encourage job creation, assist the jobless and stimulate the economy. We, too, are concerned about the size of the deficit. But creating jobs and ensuring that the incipient economic recovery does not stall, are more important right now. And, as Obama pointed out, the bank bailout is expected to cost $200 billion less than earlier estimates, which opens space in the budget. Obama rightly called the apparent conflict between stimulating job creation and reducing the fiscal deficit 'a false choice.' The budget gap cannot be closed in a sustainable fashion without first achieving robust job growth. He also criticized Republicans who eagerly championed budget-busting tax cuts under President George W. Bush, only to pose as deficit hawks now. There is other hypocrisy to be highlighted. A Congress that agreed to spend hundreds of billions to rescue enormous financial institutions should be willing to spend far less to put Americans back to work. The president can win this argument on the merits of economic soundness and fairness. But he must be willing to fight. UPHILL TOWARD EQUALITY The fight in New Jersey to legalize same-sex marriage cleared a crucial hurdle on Monday night, and it is now time for the rest of the state's lawmakers to do end a grievous violation of this nation's promise of equal rights. The same-sex marriage bill was approved by the Judiciary Committee of the State Senate on Monday night following a day of emotionally charged testimony. The fate of the bill was in doubt late Wednesday, when the Senate postponed a vote set for Thursday and sent it back to the General Assembly for more hearings. We're not sure why they are necessary at this point and hope the delay does not rule out a vote before the next governor takes office on Jan. 19. It was disappointing that only a single Republican on the committee, William Baroni of Mercer, was willing to stand up for the measure. And the two ranking Democrats on the panel -- Chairman Paul Sarlo of Bergen and Vice Chairman John Girgenti of Passaic -- also voted against extending a fundamental right to gay men and lesbians. But the narrowness of the 7-6 vote should not obscure the fact that it was the first time any legislative body in New Jersey has voted for same-sex marriage. Supporters of the measure are still hunting for the votes needed for final approval. Much now depends on whether Democrats -- including the majority leader, Stephen Sweeney, who will become the Senate president in January -- can rise above overblown fears about the next election if they join in discarding inadequate civil unions in favor of full marriage equality. A negative vote could delay justice for four or even eight years. Christopher Christie, the Republican who defeated Gov. Jon Corzine, has said he would veto any legalization bill, making passage in the current lame-duck session an urgent matter. For Democrats truly committed to treating all of New Jersey's families fairly, this should not be a hard vote. A recent Rutgers-Eagleton poll showed that New Jersey voters would accept the change. As Monday's hearing showed, there is agreement on both sides that the state's civil union law is not working. Wavering Democrats should worry less about political tactics and more about addressing that problem. FROM THE ALPS TO THE PITS Ingenuity is never in short supply in Washington when it comes to challenges like circumventing the ban on lobbyist-financed congressional junkets. The good news is that there has been a considerable decline in these global power outings since tighter rules were enacted two years ago. The bad news is that dozens of lawmakers managed to evade the ban with wanderings paid for by nonprofit shell organizations. Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. and his wife had their trip earlier this year to Liechtenstein paid for by a nonprofit group, the International Management and Development Institute. Never mind that the group's president is a lobbyist and that it is subsidized by European companies that employ lobbyists to sway opinion and policy on Capitol Hill. Sensenbrenner says he attended meetings about Liechtenstein banking 'without any cost to taxpayers' and with advance approval of the House ethics committee. Nothing beats that get-out-of-controversy card, especially if the trip also included a tour of a prince's castle and an afternoon at an Alps ski resort. The ethics panel also cleared a four-day conference for the Congressional Black Caucus at a casino resort in Tunica, Miss. The agenda submitted didn't mention corporate sponsors, including Eli Lilly, which subsidized a health care workshop (or that Wal-Mart was running a skeet shooting contest). Then there was the energy and real estate investment firm that invited companies to pay $18,500 per person to hobnob in Israel with 'an elite cadre' of powerbrokers, including Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. The firm flew Ros-Lehtinen and her husband to Israel. She was apparently so enthused that she appeared in a promotional video for the sponsor. The loopholes and violations were laid bare in a study of 1,150 trips by The Times's Eric Lipton and Eric Lichtblau. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, who leads the ethics panel, said that if nonprofit groups are being used 'as a pass through' for corporate players, then 'that is a fraud.' It looks that way to us. So who will fix it? 