Reply #142: I understand your position is the President making a deal on the legislation

[laughingliberal]

was within his perogative.

Your point is ridiculous. My quote that you referenced above said, "We already established the deal with PhRMA was made." I don't see where I said, "secret deal." The deal was made. It's not in dispute. It is also not in dispute that Congress was not made aware of it until they started working on a provision to let Medicare negotiate rates. Billy Tauzin then demanded that the President acknowledge the deal which he then did. I don't get, at all, why the President did not let Congress in on it before they started working on it. I know whatever he does is fine with you. But I do have some issues with it. Who the hell is supposed to know he promised to keep certain things out of the legislation if not the very people who were writing it? If he promised PhRMA there would be no negotiating of drug prices in the bill, why would he not have told those who had to write the bill? Why did that snake in the grass Billy Tauzin get to call our President out in the media and 'demand' that he acknowledge his deal? I found it embarrassing and I think the Congressional committee that got pwned by Tauzin on this did, too. The people writing the bill had a right to the information. What the President did in not informing Congress of the constraints he already placed on them would be like telling me to make sure the patient gets all their medication and not giving me a list of the medications they take. I don't like the deal he made and I don't like it that Congress was left in the dark about it until much later.


Yes. He said everyone would have a seat at the table but they did not. 'Everyone' was not given a seat at the table. The single payer advocates not only did not have a seat, they weren't even allowed in the room. I think, looking back, he meant all the lobbyists would have a seat at the table.

You can't point to any proof there aren't 50 votes in the Senate for the public option. No one ever suggested there were not 50 votes. There was never a question of whether the Senate had 50. The whole problem, until the MA Senate election had been getting to 60. There have always been over 50 votes in the Senate for it and there still are. Reid knows it. Sanders knows it. Durbin knows it. And Obama knows it. You can't point to a single place where Reid or Durbin has said they don't have 50 votes for a public option. When Reid couldn't get 60 votes for the option he put in his blended bill for the public option with an opt out for the states (that had the support of well over 50 but not 60), he went with the Medicare expansion which Lieberman was on record supporting in September. When Lieberman went on FOX on a Sunday morning and said he'd filibuster any public option, Rahm Emanuel showed up in Reid's office that night and demanded Reid cave to Lieberman on it. Reid was pissed off as hell about it and said so. Russ Feingold, on Monday morning said people shouldn't be so hard on 'Joe,' that this (the Senate bill without the PO) was the bill the President wanted all along. I trust Feingold's statement on that. Feingold has given me no reason to believe he would say that if it were not true. I believe the President killed the PO in a deal he made with the hospital lobby and I believe we would have it today if it were not for him. I have my opinion on who is credible about this and you have yours. My opinion that the President sold out the public option is based on reports which were in the news from the beginning of the debate together with statements by people I have found credible based on their records like Russ Feingold and watching the behavior of the White House throughout the process in addition to the fact he tried to come out later and say he never campaigned on the public option. Your opinion is based on believing those you find credible. It is a gulf which will not be briefed.

I very well remember the report in the New York Times in July quoting a hospital lobbyist as saying they had a deal with the White House to keep the public option out. At the time we were still being told by some here that the President was playing chess and, at that time, I still believed that. I expected at the right time, the President would stand up to all these lobbyists who thought they were getting their way and we would see him fight for the PO. I did. I believed it and I fought people who said otherwise. As the whole thing unfolded, though, it became harder to believe. And the story changed from 'chess' where the President was just letting the lobbyists think they were winning to he's a pragmatist who is doing what he has to do to get a bill. Here's an article where a columnist talks about that story from NYT in July:

Several hospital lobbyists involved in the White House deals," he wrote, "said it was understood as a condition of their support that the final legislation would not include a government-run health plan ." Kirkpatrick went on to quote one of the industry lobbyists, Chip Kahn, who said: "We have an agreement with the White House that I'm very confident will be seen all the way through conference."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-hogarth/did-obama-kill-the-public_1_b_503975.html


I don't know anyone who had given up on getting the votes for a PO in JULY! It was not the time to decide we didn't have the votes and sell us out on it. Before the first committees had done any work to speak of on the bill. I don't like the way the President handled health care reform and you are. Fine. It's your right to think he handled it brilliantly and this bill is the best thing since sliced bread. I see it differently and I intend to keep working in every way I can to get a public option. And there are a few Senators (and mine is one of them) who are still prepared to keep fighting for it. I am grateful for them and intend to keep letting them know I support them in this.