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Kucinich Hits Back At Gibbs: You've Read Liberals Wrong

Friday, August 13, 2010

And then on 2/23/10 - 'The President's Plan': No Public Option

==For more than a year, President Obama remained on the sidelines of the health care debate -- chiming in now and again with sometimes-inspired, sometimes-disappointing rhetoric about broad values while members of Congress did the heavy lifting.

Now, the president has finally weighed it with "a plan."

But it is not enough.

The White House is making a big deal about what's being labeled "The President's Proposal," which the administration announced with much fanfare Monday.

According to the White House, the Obama plan does a lot:

[...]

But the real news is what it does not do.

Despite urging from House leaders and a growing number of senators, "The President's Plan" does not include a public option.

Nor does it bow in any meaningful way to progressive proposals to expand access to Medicare and Medicaid.

In other words, the president has opted for the Senate's exceptionally compromised approach, rather than the bolder bill produced by the House. This is not exactly shocking. The president abandoned serious discussion of the public option several months ago. But the failure to even reference moves to develop a federally-funded alternative to private insurance represents a clear embrace of the Senate stance.==

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/02/23/opinion/main6234680.shtml

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Kucinich Hits Back At Gibbs: You've Read Liberals Wrong

3rd link - does at least address the issue at hand, saw nothing in it to indicate it was Obama who killed the public option.

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The links give the backstory to the fact that we could have had a public option.

But you think Obama was pushing for a public option?

Did you sleep through the spring, summer, fall, and winter? You obviously missed how Obama progressively equivocated on a public option, going from, "I will not sign any legislation that doesn't include a public option" to "President Barack Obama said Monday that Congress should approve a final healthcare bill even if it doesn’t include a public option" (12/21/09 -

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/73275-obama-public-option-not-the-most-important-part-of-healthcare-bill )

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Kucinich Hits Back At Gibbs: You've Read Liberals Wrong

Representative Loretta Sanchez, Democrat of California, expressed her continuing support for the public option in a column in The Hill newspaper, defending her vote in favor of the bill. “Over the last few weeks, it has become clear that this bill is far from perfect,” she wrote this week. “It does not provide a public option, which I believe is critical to achieving genuine reform.”

Some advocates of the public option have been working to get a sense of the vote count in the House before renewing their demands. One potential strategy is to persuade a Democratic senator to put forward a public option amendment, but to force a vote on it only if Republicans succeed in making other changes to the reconciliation bill. If there were no other changes, the amendment would be withdrawn.==
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Kucinich Hits Back At Gibbs: You've Read Liberals Wrong

Meanwhile, David Sirota, a liberal columnist, commentator and radio show host in Colorado, is pushing for action on the public option and is pressuring Senator Michael Bennet, Democrat of Colorado, who is facing a tough primary campaign ahead of a potentially even tougher re-election bid. “While the fact that no single Democratic senator has stepped up to promise to offer this amendment is a sad commentary on the state of politics right now, this is a rare chance to use the pressure of a Democratic primary to force this absolutely critical issue,” Mr. Sirota wrote in an e-mail message Monday to supporters of the public option.

The White House seems to be opposed to making any big changes to the bill, even though Mr. Obama has always expressed support for the public option. Aides to the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said he was working as hard as possible to complete the legislation without any further changes.

Even if 51 Senate Democrats agree to add the public option to the bill, the situation in the House is unsettled. The coalition that approved the legislation on Sunday now includes some fiscally conservative Democrats who opposed the legislation in the fall. And it is unclear, even to liberal supporters of the public option, that they could win the votes.

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Kucinich Hits Back At Gibbs: You've Read Liberals Wrong

Senate Democrats have been worried that Republicans would offer a public option amendment, and that some of them might even vote in favor of it, in order to force Democrats into a choice of approving the public plan and dragging out the legislative process or voting against the public plan and potentially angering the Democratic party’s liberal base.

On the other hand, Senate Republicans believe that the public plan is a big step toward a total government takeover of the health care system. And they are worried that Democrats, having already won enactment of the bulk of the health care legislation, might actually muster the votes to approve the public option.

Some liberal groups are circulating petitions and pressuring Democratic lawmakers to give the public option one last chance. Now that the health care bill is law, they say, why not take the final stop and create a public plan to compete with private insurers?

“Congress passed its health insurance reform bill last night. It’s an admirable first step, but the task of providing affordable health care to every American is still before us,” wrote the liberal blogger Jan Hamsher of Firedoglake.com in a message to public option supporters. “This week, the Senate will pass a series of fixes to the bill. This is the moment for a leader in the Senate to make the first step towards actual health care reform: putting the public option up for a vote.”

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Kucinich Hits Back At Gibbs: You've Read Liberals Wrong

2nd link - I read it. I found nothing in to prove your statement the earlier poster was wrong.

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http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/24/the-public-option-resurfaces/#more-23821

==So far, Senate Democrats have not offered any amendments to the reconciliation bill, which includes the final revisions to the health care legislation. Their goal is to prevent any changes whatsoever so that they can approve the bill on a simple majority vote, send it to Mr. Obama for his signature and seal their victory.

Republicans are hoping that they can win approval of an amendment that some Democrats might find irresistible, or at least punch holes in the bill on procedural grounds. Any such change would require that the bill be sent back to the House for another vote, and that could create all sorts of headaches for Democrats.

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