Durbin: Progressives Forced Our Hand On Public Option

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

Democratic leaders were forced to include a national public health insurance option as part of health care reform by progressive Democratic senators who refused to support anything less, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said on Monday.

Durbin's assessment was made to a handful of reporters following the announcement by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) that after weeks of talks with his colleagues he had determined that including a public option that states could opt out of was the best way to go.

For many years, it's been centrist and conservative-leaning senators who have been scoring legislative victories by digging in their heels, so this represented a quite dramatic turnabout. It is difficult to remember the last time that progressives won a legislative victory by laying down firm demands and sticking to them. In the House, the Congressional Progressive Caucus has found its feet, too, and is locked in a final battle with conservative Democrats over the shape of a public option.

At the end of last week, Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, the lone Republican that Democrats are still trying to woo, said that she couldn't support a bill that had a public option with an opt-out provision. Snowe preferred a public option that would be "triggered" into being by a failure by the insurance industry to meet certain benchmarks.


Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/26/durbin-progressives-force_n_334438.html



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/26/durbin-progressives-force_n_334438.html

[budkin]

1. Damn straight!

[glitch]

2. Bravo Progressives!

Hopefully they'll feel their oats and aim higher.

[Jackpine Radical]

3. Let's hear it for the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party!

[maxpower]

4. Durbin is a good man

I am happy he represents me.



Peace,
Max

[high density]

5. I'm glad they decided to woo the progressive Dems instead of Olympia "Ass Trigger" Snowe.

It sounds to me like the progressive Democrats are actually trying to give voters a reason to keep Democrats in power in the coming years.

[Tom Rinaldo]

6. It's working with me so far

If Reid can get his caucus to vote for cloture I'm on board with continued support for the National Democratic Party as a Party. The alternative for me is giving my support exclusively to progressives, but I'll work for strong Democratic majorities in Congress if those majorities act like Democrats.

[mkultra]

7. sounds good, lets keep calling.

[Stardust]

8. Bravo, Progressives! Keep their damn feet to the fire! nt (K&R)

[HopeOverFear]

9. Word

[Hippo_Tron]

10. If opt out is what comes out of the Senate then we're doing pretty damn good

The House Progressives will fight tooth and nail against opt out and honestly I think they will end up coneding on that point but only after the Senate has made significant concessions to get them on board. That means more generous subsidies and more stringent regulations of the industry and price controls.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

11. Why oh why didn't the progressives shut up when told?

Duers warned time and again that progressives needed to shut the fuck up lest their "whining" interfere with an imaginary game of five-dimensional space-chess.

But the filthy hippies wouldn't STFU, and now look where we are.

[mkultra]

12. actually, you where told to whine at congress

which is what has worked here.