Public Option gets beat up in Senate Finance Committee
So who was surprised that a committee chaired by Max Baucus would vote down the public option? Who? I’m not. Max hasn’t supported the public option from the start. Then you have Kent (“I love me some co-ops”) Conrad. He has also be anti-public option. Add Blanche Lincoln to the mix and the outcome of the vote was predictable.
McJoan has an update of where we are in the Senate after day’s voting:
One thing that that’s clear from today’s Finance Committee votes on the public option: Kent Conrad is the problem for the Dems. He provided the cover today for Lincoln, who was virtually invisible, to vote against the Schumer “level playing field” public option that would have done away with Conrad’s supposed problem with Rockefeller’s amendment–that it was tied to Medicare rates. If that was truly Conrad’s big problem with the bill, he should have had no problem with Schumer’s bill.
The action is going to take place in conference. At least that is what I see happening. This is where the action has always been. Once Obama supported the public option the only way that the Senate could support the much more liberal (thoughtful, American worker friendly) House version was in conference. The Wonk Room agrees:
Obviously, he’s the anti-public option problem in the Democratic caucus, if you take Baucus at his illogical word that he supports the public option, but had to vote against it because it didn’t have enough votes. But, on the other side, the most conservative of the committees to take up healthcare reform had 10 Dems supporting some form of public option–that’s more than I think anyone thought they’d get. Rockefeller told Ed Schultz today that he was suprised to have gotten eight votes for his.
Bottom line, the Finance Committee is going to pass out a bill without a public option, unless Rockefeller and Cantwell do indeed decide to oppose it and can find a third Dem (assuming Snowe will vote with the majority). But it’s also coming out of SFC with a strong majority of Democrats who will vote for the public option on the floor.
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