| The Hill reports today on a letter to the Speaker signed by 22 members of the New Democrat and Blue Dog caucuses - including Chris Murphy and Joe Courtney, both New Dems - stating their support for a "robust" public option that competes on a level playing field with private health care plans.
(Update: download a PDF of the full letter here.)
The letter, unsurprisingly, doesn't address where these 22 members draw a line in the sand - the point at which they will refuse to vote for a health care reform bill that will surely be whittled away in the committee, floor, and conference fights to come in the coming weeks in both houses - or whether they are preemptively saying they will vote for any bill no matter how horrible it is.
It does, however, shed some light on what appears to be some real fracturing of the New Democrat Caucus on the health care fight:
Many New Dems criticized their leaders and said they have not liked being lumped in with opponents of the bill, particularly the public plan.
Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), a relatively new member of the group, said it should consider reviewing its practices....
"There is some concern that some decisions come only from talk among New Dem leadership rather than the broader leadership," said a New Democrat lawmaker. "A lot of decisions are made by New Dem leadership and not broadly discussed in membership meetings."
There's a very easy way for worried individual members interested in salvaging a real, workable public option - like 72% of Americans - to avoid being "lumped in" with those in their caucus who are pulling out all the stops to gut this bill even more and turn it into an insurance industry giveaway: by letting us know that you pledge to vote against any bill that does not contain a public option that is (1) available nationwide (2) on day one and (3) accountable to Congress and voters.
While there continues to be much talk of "support" for a public option, neither John Larson, Joe Courtney, Rosa DeLauro, Jim Himes, nor Chris Murphy have told us where their "line in the sand" is on this bill. If we want to have any chance of seeing a public option in the final bill, we need to know where they stand now.
So contact your Representative using the info here. If you're reading this and you're a member of Congress, you don't even have to wait for constituents to call you - you can sign the pledge yourself right here!
And in case anyone thought this was going away, it's not. More members are signing the pledge every day, and next week, ordinary Americans who want to see real health care reform are heading down to the hearing rooms in the Capitol.
Previous "Whipping the Public Option in CT" posts:
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