Sherrod Brown, Chuck Schumer, and Michael Bennet all took a strong stand for the public option and health care reform yesterday, expressing confidence that health care reform -- with the opt-out public option intact -- will pass the Senate:
Transcript:
SHERROD BROWN: There are two weeks, three weeks, whatever, of debate. Senator Lieberman, everybody has a chance to offer amendments. I'm going to offer amendments on some pharmaceutical issues, because I think the bill could be strengthened there. I know that my colleagues are going to do the same on some other -- that and some other issues. So they will have their chance to do this. And I think, in the end, I don't want four Democratic senators dictating to the other 56 of us and to the country, when the public option has this much support, that it's not going to be in it.
And I echo what Michael said, is that people want every option. If we're going to -- if we're telling people you have to buy insurance, we shouldn't tell them they've got to buy insurance from a private insurance company.
But in the end, I think that all four of our colleagues surveyed this -- look at this bill in the end and say, I don't think they want to be on the wrong side of history. I don't think they want to go back and say, you know, on a procedural vote, I killed the most important bill in my political career. I don't think they want to be there on that. So I think in the end, we get them.
CHUCK SCHUMER: And I think the proposal that Leader Reed wisely put into his bill, which is a moderate, modest proposal, sort of in the middle of public option land--there are some on the left who don’t like it, they want it to be liberal, some on the right-- will at the end of the day be where we end up.
JOHN KING: If you get to the final point and you are a critical vote for health care reform, and every piece of evidence tells you, if you support that bill, you will lose your job, would you cast the vote and lose your job?
MICHAEL BENNET: Yes.
The basic premise of Brown's comments (and to a lesser extent, Schumer's) is that the four members of the Democratic caucus who are still holding out on the public option are just posturing and ultimately wouldn't vote to kill health care reform on a procedural vote merely because they disagree about the public option.
No matter what those four may say now, they know as well as Brown that if they nuke health care reform over the public option, they are nuking themselves in the Democratic Party. With the possible exception of Nelson, they wouldn't stand a chance in a Democratic primary (Lieberman is already toast) if they did that.
The big question is whether Senate Democrats will force them to make that choice or whether they will -- as Dick Durbin suggested is likely -- negotiate the public option down even further, or perhaps away altogether.
Schumer and Brown are adopting exactly the right posture by sticking to the opt-out public option. The top leadership on this bill -- Reid, Durbin, Dodd, Harkin, and Baucus -- should stand right at their side.