Harry Reid told local constituents in a conference call on Thursday that the final bill that goes to the president’s desk will have a public option. In the past, he has preferred a public option but doubted whether the sixty for cloture could be achieved–until progressive organizations threatened him. They made it clear that if he couldn’t even get the sixty for cloture on a bill with the public option, he’s no use to them. They threatened that in next year’s election, which is on shaky ground for him, they would sit on their hands and watch him lose to a Republican.
Dems would hope to pick up a seat to replace that loss, perhaps in the form of Robin Carnahan.
So Reid is serious now about getting it passed. The best place to start would be when he melds the Finance Committee’s “no public option” bill with the Health Committee’s bill that has one. TPM points out:
If he adopts the latter panel’s public option, it would dramatically alter the nature of the legislative battle, shifting the onus from liberals, who have been doggedly fighting to include the public option in the Senate bill, on to conservative Democrats, who would have to decide whether their opposition to the popular measure is so strong that they’d be willing to join the GOP in a health care filibuster and tank the entire reform effort.
TPM says, further, that Reid can assuage hurt Blue Dog egos at that point by letting them and Republicans offer an amendment to remove the public option from the bill. Such an amendment would fail, but conservative Democrats could at least go on the record as opposing the option–without committing political suicide by voting against cloture.
This is such very good news.
This is the best and most significant news I’ve heard in days. We’re finally out of the Senate Finance Committee and I’ve been waiting to hear if Reid would say anything. Halleluia!
public pressure seems to be strong enough that even blue dogs realize that they need to provide something that can be called a public option. However, as we have seen the past couple of months the term can be made to cover a lot of territory, not all of it very cheering.
As progressives cheer for the public option, it continues to remain primarily an undefined entity. The “strong public option” or “robust public option” is largely mythical. It was initially defined by a Political Science graduate student in 2001 for the primary purpose of delaying the demise of the insurance industry by forcing them to compete w. a publicly funded program which would be open to all comers. This proposal has never been under consideration by either congressional body. Instead we have competing, watered down versions of tiered, means tested programs that will do nothing to alleviate the current health problems of our nation.
Despite the protestations of Harry Reid and others, ie Charles Schumer, I suspect that this is more for show than for substance. Schumer, particularly loves the stage. “See how hard we tried”. The Dems want a bill, any bill, except for a bill that may endanger their rel/sh w. their corporate donors and they seem to be trying to manage that while employing a “smoke and mirrors” campaign w. the public. I find it curious that the big orgs like MoveOn have not caught on, but continue to promote the elusive “strong public option” w/o trying to push for definite parameters.
The worst case scenario that I envision is that a weak and watered down, useless to the general public (and perhaps even harmful) bill will pass and that fact will force health care reform off the table for the next 20 years.