By now you probably know that Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) supports the liberal attempts to socialize the nation’s health care industry. Without his support this past weekend, Harry Reid’s far-left legislation would’ve been stopped dead in its tracks.

Dorgan voted on Saturday to move forward with a proposal that establishes government-run health care; puts bureaucrats in charge of deciding who gets medical treatment and when; implements new taxes on businesses when they’re already struggling to maintain their workforces; and, most outrageously enough, guts Medicare and leads to a denial of services for seniors.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the federal agency that (obviously) manages Medicare and Medicaid, confirms that the legislation Dorgan supported will end up hurting America’s seniors.

A plan to slash more than $500 billion from future Medicare spending — one of the biggest sources of funding for President Obama’s proposed overhaul of the nation’s health-care system — would sharply reduce benefits for some senior citizens and could jeopardize access to care for millions of others, according to a government evaluation released Saturday.

The report, requested by House Republicans, found that Medicare cuts contained in the health package approved by the House on Nov. 7 are likely to prove so costly to hospitals and nursing homes that they could stop taking Medicare altogether…

In the face of greatly increased demand for services, providers are likely to charge higher fees or take patients with better-paying private insurance over Medicaid recipients, “exacerbating existing access problems” in that program, according to the report from Richard S. Foster of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

In other words, Dorgan provided the crucial vote on legislation that not only lays the foundation for government taking over America’s health care system and rationing care for all citizens, but guts Medicare and jeopardizes access to basic health services for millions of senior citizens.

Why am I writing specifically about Dorgan? After all, there were sixty other members of the U.S. Senate that voted for this monstrosity, right? So there’s plenty of blame to spread around.

That’s quite true. But without Dorgan’s vote this legislation wouldn’t have moved forward. Harry Reid needed sixty votes to move forward with the proposal, and Dorgan, against the wishes of his constituents, provided that crucial sixtieth vote. He did so even as the national deficit reaches $1.4 trillion — another result of Dorgan almost always walking lock-step with the Pelosi-Reid agenda.

It’s a shame that Senator Dorgan is more interested in putting a smile on the faces of Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Barack Obama than in representing the interests of his state. His vote for socialized health care might make beltway liberals happy but it’ll leave his constituents with a queasy feeling.