Senate Dems Look to Obama to Move Health-Care Votes

[kentuck]

I do believe it is time for the President to take a stand here. He should declare where he stands on the public option. The proof in the pudding will be if these Democratic Senators vote to kill debate on the public option altogether? If they join the Republicans to filibuster, they have betrayed our Party, pure and simple. If they refuse to permit a vote on it, up or down, they are not Democrats. It is time for the President to say where he stands.
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http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2009/09/29/senate_looks_to_obama_to_move.html

<snip>

For many months, advocates of health care reform have implored President Obama to outline in greater detail the provisions he's prepared to push and defend. So far he has largely resisted, offering broad principles but still leaving the details to Congress. But the time of hanging back is quickly coming to an end if he hopes to find the 60 votes needed to pass a bill in the Senate.

Tuesday's votes in the Senate Finance Committee against the public health insurance option -- which saw five and then three Democrats vote no -- moved the health care debate to a new point, though one long anticipated.

With all Republican and a number of centrist Democrats, including Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, opposed to the public option, it has been clear for some time that it would not survive debate in the committee. The option now faces potentially insurmountable odds in the whole Senate, though proponents vowed to keep pushing for it.

Obama supported the public option, but has strongly signaled his willingness to allow it to die if that is the price of winning broader support for overhauling the health care system. He will soon have to choose between those Democrats who favor it, including many of his most passionate supporters from last year's election, and those who oppose it, many of whom come from states or districts won last year by Sen. John McCain. And he will have to persuade the losing side to stick with him, regardless.

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), the new chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, dismissed the Finance Committee vote on the public option, saying "a vast majority" of Democrats senators favor the public option and that he expects the president to continue to support it.

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[bluestateguy]

1. Georgetown Cocktail Party Analysis from the Washington Post

nt

[Cant trust em]

2. The finance committe just needs to finish their work and get a bill out.

I think the horse trading will begin more earnestly when the senate begins working on the full bill.

[babylonsister]

3. No time or need to panic, for anyone. The Dems know their future

might/will depend on doing this right.

[Pirate Smile]

4. Just get a Bill out of that f#$king committee. Do what you have to do to get it passed in the Senate

Get the best Bill possible out of the House THEN the time for the WH to start twisting arms begins - when the Bills are in conference.

Whatever comes out of Conference can't be amended - everyone in the Senate will have to vote Up or Down, Yes or No. Is the inclusion of a PO a reason to vote against legislation getting rid of exclusions based on preexisting conditions, expanding coverage to the uninsured and subsidizing working and middle class families getting killed by the price of health care will be the question Lincoln, Conrad, Ben Nelson, Landrieu, etc. That will be the question they all have to answer.

Just get it out of that hell-hole of a Committee.

The arm-twisting will come. We aren't there yet.

We are closely watching the sausage get made which is always ugly. What matters is what is in the final Bill which Obama signs. No one will care who voted what way on what amendment in any Committee.