Public Option Looks Promising

I finally have good news to report from the Senate.  The final bill will likely include a public option.

…Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid now thinks he has the votes, according to Jonathan Karl of ABC News, to bring a bill with a public option to the Senate floor, where it is almost sure to win. Karl writes:

Reid is now convinced that Democratic critics of the public option will support him when it counts – on the procedural motion, which requires 60 votes, to defeat a certain GOP-led filibuster of the bill. Once the filibuster is beaten, it only takes 51 votes to pass the bill.

And one health-care camper is said to be very unhappy: Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of Senate Finance Committee, whose bill purposefully omitted any public health plan. As Karl explains:

I am told that Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) – who worked for months to get Olympia Snowe’s support for the bill and has consistently said a public option cannot pass the Senate – was apoplectic when Reid told him he wanted to include the public option. “Baucus went to DEFCON 1,” said a source familiar with the negotiations, referring to the alert level the military uses for an imminent attack on the homeland. [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Alternet>

Poor Baucus!  Waaaaa!  He’s ballistic over BARF (Baucus Against a Real Fix bill).  He sees all that Big Insurance money growing wings and flying away.  Call your Senators and demand that any Democrats (or that turncoat Independent who caucuses with the Democrats) who betray their President, their party, their voters and their nation by voting with the GOP against cloture be stripped of all committee and subcommittee posts and offices.