Nobody Expects the GOP Senators From Maine!
From the New York Times:
Democrats Focus on G.O.P. Senators From Maine
by Carl Hulse
Anxious about how little maneuvering room the weekend victory by Senate Democrats on health care provided, Obama administration officials and their Congressional allies are stepping up overtures to select Senate Republicans in hopes of winning their ultimate support.
The two moderate Republican senators from Maine, Susan M. Collins and Olympia J. Snowe, both say Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, reached out to them after he unveiled the Senate measure, encouraging them to bring forward their ideas and concerns.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
What's fun about this article, IMO, is that it's a bit of an STFU to Senators Lieberman and Nelson, who are wangling for relevance. bwahaha.
Also from the article, an encouraging quote from Jon Kyl (R-AZ):
"Ordinarily, when you do start debate on a bill like this, it ends up passing. When these senators, for example, say, well, we’ll vote to start the bill but that doesn’t guarantee our vote at the end, the pressure at the end of the process is enormous."
I would like to take this moment to thank POTUS, Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod, Robert Gibbs, Harry Reid, Max Baucus (who gave a quasi-redeeming speech on the Senate floor last night), and the 58 other Dems who have at least brought us this far in the HCR process. They've been doing SOMETHING right. Jeesh.
E.J. Dionne has a great piece in the Washington Post called, "Can’t we celebrate a little on health care?"
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/...
Here's a little excerpt:
Is it really so hard to remember that for the 15 years since the failure of President Clinton’s reforms, the conventional take was that health-care reform is impossible? Fred Hiatt reminds us in his column today that there are serious questions out there about whether we Americans can still govern ourselves and whether Congress is capable of doing anything big. Isn’t it worth noting that Congress is actually moving forward on what almost everyone agrees is the toughest domestic policy issue we face -- "toughest" defined by the complexity of the issue, the number of competing ideas for how to define and solve the problem, and how many interests would be affected by anything Congress might do.
I’m also bothered by a cynicism-as-realism trope that has affected so much of the commentary. There’s a standard line out there that the bills under discussion don’t do much about the rising costs of health care. But the bills themselves, and particularly the Senate version, actually do contain a lot of measures to control costs.
The fight is not over. I am particularly troubled by the bogus breast cancer and pap smear guidelines ploy. It seems obvious to me that this was the Republican propaganda machine's last-ditch effort to block HCR. David Gregory was pushing this garbage earlier today on Meet the Press. We must push back.
This is not a time to kick back and wait for any old bill to pass. We need to call our Senators tomorrow and tell them that triggers are unacceptable. (see math4barack's diary on the subject here: http://www.dailykos.com/...
But it is important to recognize when the historic moments are actually happening. Now is one of those moments.
And one more thing - even if none of the above glimmers of hope come to fruition, we still have the Reconciliation Option. Cheers.
UPDATE 1: The Boston Globe is reporting this morning:
Senators voice optimism on public option
Say bill can be adjusted to ease moderates’ qualms
By Lisa Wangsness
Buoyed by their weekend victory on a vote beginning the health care debate, several Senate Democrats expressed optimism yesterday they could find a way to keep a government-run insurance plan in the sweeping bill.
The public insurance option in the Senate’s health care overhaul is so modest that it "will, at the end of the day, be where we end up,’’ predicted Senator Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat who is working with moderates to find a compromise. He spoke on CBS’s "Face the Nation.’’
UPDATE II: 8:45AM EST - Joe Scarborough on Morning Joe - MSNBC (paraphrased):
"Thanks to Hilary Clinton's expertise on the Healthcare reform issue, and learning from all the mistakes that were made in 1994, we are closer than we've ever been before to passing a healthcare reform bill."
UPDATE III: 10:15AM EST - Sen. Bernie Sanders weighs in on Morning Meeting:
"For eight years under Bush there was no discussion. The President and Democratic Leadership at least deserve credit for putting it out there...I think it should have a Public Option. So does the President, and so do the American people."
For more on Sanders:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...