Tom Carper has backed off the statement that he expected to sign on to the public option via reconciliation letter, which I posted on earlier. He says he thought the question was about another letter, one that rumored a few weeks ago that never materialized, that would assure the House that the Senate would fix the hcr bill via reconciliation. He's apparently not on the memo list.
Chris Bowers has an udpate on where his count stands:
We have been counting votes here on Open Left. With the addition of Senator Inoyue this morning, there are now 25 Senators on the record as favoring passing a public option through reconciliation.... Six are opposed, and six others are likely supporters.
It is true that there are not enough Senators on record to pass the public option at this time. However, there are also not enough opponents on the public record to rule it out. For the public option to truly be dead, ten Democratic Senators have to state that they will never vote for it under any circumstances. That hasn't happened.
The House Dems have announced their summit attendees: Reps. Xavier Becerra (CA), Louise Slaughter (NY), Rob Andrews (NJ) and Jim Cooper (TN). Andrews has been prominent in opposition to the excise tax; Cooper is the Blue Dogs' representative; Becerra is a strong progressive, and Slaughter is Rules Committee chair. As of yet, I haven't been able to find a list of the House Republicans expected to attend. Boehner has said Republican House members will attend. “We shouldn’t let the White House have a six-hour, taxpayer-funded infomercial on Obama care.... We need to show up. We need to crash the party."
The Senate Dems attending will be: Sens. Harry Reid, Dick Durbin, Chuck Schumer, Patty Murray, Max Baucus, Chris Dodd, Tom Harkin, Jay Rockefeller and Kent Conrad. Republicans will send Mitch McConnell, Jon Kyl,, Lamar Alexander, Chuck Grassley, Mike Enzi, John McCain, Tom Coburn, and John Barrasso. There's a team to inspire some bipartisanship, eh?
Details of the summit are emerging. It will run from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m., EST.
- Discussion:
a. The President will offer opening comments, followed by Republican and Democratic Members chosen by their colleagues.
b. They'll then move to discussions around four themes:
i Controlling costs - introduced by the President
ii. Insurance reforms - introduced by Secretary Sebelius
iii. Reducing the deficit - introduced by the Vice President
iv. Expanding coverage - introduced by the President
- Logistics:
a. Participants will be seated at tables in a hollow square setup. They'll be identified with name cards.
b. There will be a leadership staff walk-through on Wednesday afternoon.
They'll get a break for a buffet lunch.
And, finally, Reid reminds Republicans about reconciliation (they're going to start calling it the "Nuclear Option"):
"I've been told that my Republican friends are lamenting reconciliation, but I would recommend for them to go back and look at history," Reid said.
"Since 1981, reconciliation has been used 21 times. The vast majority of those reconciliation efforts have been by Republicans," he said. "[T]hey should stop crying about reconciliation as if it's never been done before. It's done almost every Congress, and they're the ones that used it more than anyone else."
He added, "The Contract for America, most of the stuff in the Contract for America was done with reconciliation. Tax cuts, done with reconciliation. Medicare, done with reconciliation. So they better go back and look at history a little bit."