Senate Democratic Leadership Will Pass Health Care Reform “By Any Legislative Means Necessary”

Source: ABC

Senate Democratic Leadership Will Pass Health Care Reform “By Any Legislative Means Necessary”

August 19, 2009 4:07 PM

Amidst questions of whether or not any Senate Republicans will support a health care reform bill, Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., today said that the “White House and the Senate Democratic leadership still prefer a bipartisan bill.”

The Reid spokesman said that “neither the White House nor the leadership have made a decision to pursue reconciliation,” the somewhat controversial legislative process by which a bill is introduced in such a manner so that it requires merely 50 votes instead of 60 to proceed to a vote, thus removing the threat of filibuster.

Manley said that “we will not make a decision to pursue reconciliation until we have exhausted efforts to produce a bipartisan bill.”

“However,” he cautioned, “patience is not unlimited and we are determined to get something done this year by any legislative means necessary.”

Read more: http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/08/senate-democratic-leadership-will-pass-health-care-reform-by-any-legislative-means-necessary.html

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another link CNN:
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/08/19/reid-spox-patience-is-not-unlimited/

He will have to actually do it before anyone believes this statement....

Why I am not celebrating any of this... not until we have a bill to be signed that has the issues that matter to me... read strong public option. I'd rather have single payer, but our "left" is too scared of industry and the right.

If Reid ever does anything requiring actual leadership and/or "stones", I'll fall out of my chair.

"..... as long as we dont upset those Republicans who really run the place"

exactamundo

:eyes:

I can hear things. Its far off, comin fast. The admin baited the right. They took the drugged bait, and went insane. They spewed ultrapartisanship, and started dancing on Obamas grave. This was not in secret. America saw this. We are about to do a piledrive. And the extent to which we like this pig, is up to us. Yell, holler, shout. He asked us to. Force his hand left. It;s what he wants. So it wil cost less political capital.

They just wanted to get us riled up and making some noise.

http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/08/17/key-feature-of-obama-health-plan-may-be-out-washingtonpost-com/

Obama’s Pre-emptive Health Care Surrender


snip;

Now, obviously (and this is will be explored in more detail in the forthcoming piece, which will be out this week), the public option was not a cure-all. In fact, the Democrats had in reality already managed to kill the public option by watering it down to the point of near-meaninglessness. But the notion that our president not only does not have any use anymore for a public option, but in fact “will be satisfied” if there is merely “choice and competition” in the market is, well, disgusting.

I’ll say this for George Bush: you’d never have caught him frantically negotiating against himself to take the meat out of a signature legislative initiative just because his approval ratings had a bad summer. Can you imagine Bush and Karl Rove allowing themselves to be paraded through Washington on a leash by some dimwit Republican Senator of a state with six people in it the way the Obama White House this summer is allowing Max Baucus (favorite son of the mighty state of Montana) to frog-march them to a one-term presidency?



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oh and don't miss this..........

Ambinder: White House “Won’t Buckle” To Liberal Demands For Public Plan
By: Jane Hamsher Wednesday August 19, 2009 2:33 pm

http://campaignsilo.firedoglake.com/2009/08/19/ambinder... /
I know people are reluctant to believe that the President has no plans to include a public option in his health care bill, but according to Marc Ambinder, that is indeed the truth:

The White House and Senate Democrats won't buckle to demands from liberals that they revise their health care strategy, officials said today.

Liberals are demanding the inclusion of a public plan. The White House won't "revise" their strategy to accommodate them.

Glenzilla:

The attempt to attract GOP support was the pretext which Democrats used to compromise continuously and water down the bill. But -- given the impossibility of achieving that goal -- isn't it fairly obvious that a desire for GOP support wasn't really the reason the Democrats were constantly watering down their own bill? Given the White House's central role in negotiating a secret deal with the pharmaceutical industry, its betrayal of Obama's clear promise to conduct negotiations out in the open (on C-SPAN no less), Rahm's protection of Blue Dogs and accompanying attacks on progressives, and the complete lack of any pressure exerted on allegedly obstructionists "centrists," it seems rather clear that the bill has been watered down, and the "public option" jettisoned, because that's the bill they want -- this was the plan all along.

Max Baucus (who is negotiating the White House's bill) today reaffirmed his commitment to have a "bipartisan" bill. Since Republicans will never sign off on a public plan, that's not-so-subtle code for "no public plan." And any time anyone says that, including President Obama, that is in fact what they're saying.

Now can you craft a bill that's worth a shit?

(Hint: fire that corporate tool and asshole Baucus...)

and by "reform" they better damn well mean Public Option.