A report from Politico's Jonathon Martin this morning, hailed the SEIU as the pragmatic counterpoint to DFHers at the AFL-CIO on the public option.
A top-ranking SEIU official says that the powerful union could support a health care bill that doesn’t include a public option — a striking contrast to the more hard-line stance on the issue taken by the new president of the AFL-CIO....
[P]ressed as to what Service Employees International Union will do if — as some suggest is inevitable — a public option is not included in the final version of the legislation, Burger said even getting an imperfect bill is preferable to passing nothing at all. And, she said, this year’s efforts may be just a first step.
Burger’s realpolitik approach to both the public option and the broader bill comes after a media blitz by newly elected AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka in which he made a series of strong statements on the issue.
See how "pragmatic" (that's the word they use in the headline for this story) the SEIU is being? It's enough to make a Villager's heart swell. And has the added bonus of pitting one progressive group against another. But, not so fast, says (ironically) Politico's Ben Smith in a "clarification" from Burger of her conversation with Martin.
SEIU Secretary-Treasurer Anna Burger said Thursday that her union is working hard to include a public option in healthcare reform.
"We’re going to fight tooth and nail to include it in the bill," Burger said in a brief conversation. She predicted it would ultimately be included in the final legislation.
Martin did his best to stoke the fire of a rift in labor in his original story, despite Burger's strong words of warning for wavering Dems:
Burger echoes the wariness of Trumka and other liberals about the much-discussed prospect that an eventual health care compromise will include a public option "trigger," to be pulled if private insurers don’t sufficiently bring down the cost of coverage.
"I don’t want a pretend trigger," Burger said. "If it’s going to be a trigger that’s never going to get pulled, I don’t want to hear about it. I want live bullets, so to speak."
And she had a warning to those red-state Senate Democrats who may be tempted to water down the bill.
"They need to understand that their voters want what voters want across the country," Burger said. "Just because they live in North Dakota doesn’t mean they don’t worry about health care and want it solved."
Martin undoubtedly chose to spin his story to highlight the rift between SEIU and AFL-CIO, and in doing so made Burger, at least, feel the need to walk back her statements. But the SEIU's position here is worth keeping an eye on.
Update: Sam Stein has more:
In an interview with the Huffington Post, Burger stressed that the SEIU remained absolutely committed to fighting to keep the public option in the bill. "We believe very strongly that the public option is the key way to control cost," she said. "It is the way to hold insurance companies accountable and to keep them competitive. And unless we have the public option, I have not seen another mechanism yet to do that." She said the union looked at the idea of insurance co-ops and "we decided there is no way that this was going to work. And we fought against it."
Burger acknowledged that both she and the SEIU remained open to the possibility that another mechanism could arise which met the health care reform principles demanded by the union. "We have been studying these bills looking at every single one that comes out to figure out what works and doesn't work and what can make them stronger. And that's what we are going to do all the way through this," said Burger.
So SEIU is not taking the AFL-CIO position that the public option is the deal-breaker, but at the same time saying that there could be another mechanism that could do the trick of providing competition for private insurers. To date, the only mechanism forwarded has been the wholly inadequate co-ops.