The House Budget Committee this afternoon approved a budget reconciliation bill that jumpstarts the process that Democrats hope will end in the Senate passing sweeping health care reforms by a simple majority.
The reconciliation bill, which will be the vehicle for the health care “fixes” the Democrats will More…
Just hours after Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) announced that he’d whip “aggressively” for the public option if the House includes it in its reconciliation bill, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) killed the idea. The Washington Post quotes Pelosi saying today that the public option won’t be a part of More…
Over at Mother Jones, Kate Sheppard asks a good question: Was the Waxman-Markey energy and climate bill, debated ad nauseum and eventually passed by the House last June, just a waste of time? After all, the tripartisan Senate group now crafting similar legislation has decided to drop cap-and-trade More…
Back in the heat of the public option debate last fall, TWI created a scoreboard to track each senator’s position on a government insurance plan to compete with private insurers. Ultimately, Senate Democrats determined that they just couldn’t muster the necessary 60 votes for a bill with a public option, More…
If anyone doubted the willingness of the White House to stick its neck out for health care reform this year, President Obama likely put those questions to rest this afternoon. Speaking at the White House to promote his newly tweaked reform proposal, the president rejected the Republicans’ “tinker around the More…
Eight Democrats in the Senate have signed a letter pushing for a majority-rules reconciliation vote on a health care bill that includes a public insurance option. Now it looks like there might be a ninth one coming on board.
The Iowa Independent reports:
Several sources, including a a
Greg Sargent hears something similar to what I’m hearing about Republican plans for a possible Democratic push to pass elements of health care reform through reconciliation.
[A senior GOP aide] said the leadership — Senators Mitch McConnell, Jon Kyl, Lamar Alexander, etc. —
The National Republican Congressional Committee is up on the air in South Carolina with an ad not-so-secretly aimed at getting Rep. John Spratt (D-S.C.) to reconsider his career options. But the striking thing about the ad is its claim that “Spratt’s the architect of legislation Democrats may use to More…
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) press conference at the Capitol this morning is churning dramatic headlines about how health reform is dead. But she really doesn’t say that. In fact, she says just the opposite.
“We have to get a bill passed — we know that,” she More…
With Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) threatening to kill health insurance reform legislation unless it’s diluted considerably, liberals nationwide are urging Democrats to side-step Lieberman by using the budget reconciliation process, which would allow them to pass parts of the bill with a simple majority More…
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