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Weiner: House liberals feeling shafted by president
The president's relative silence on the public option has created the impression he is "not fighting for the things we care about," one of the House's most vocal liberals said Friday.
As the Senate prepares an amendment that would ultimately strip that government plan from the chamber's healthcare bill, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) lamented on MSNBC this morning that "every time we turn around we're losing a fight."
"The problem is if i ask 10 or 15 members of the House of Representatives, 'What is Pres. Obama's position on the public option?,' I'm not sure any of them would be able to say, 'we know exactly what it is,'" Weiner said.
What we'd like to think is that "when doors close, and all of this negotiating is going on, the president is banging on the tables, grabbing lapels and saying 'please give us the public option, give us the help with this'... and for those of us who have compromised so many times in this process, I think that's where the concern is."
Liberals in both the House and Senate are still apoplectic with Senate Harry Majority Leader Harry Reid's (D-Nev.) decision to drop the public option from his chamber's bill. But whereas Senate Democrats are still ready to accept that inevitability in order to pass some reform by the year's end, many House Democrats remain steadfastly opposed to healthcare legislation without it.
Others, including Weiner, are now setting their sights on the forthcoming conference committee process, which will face the daunting task of combining the House and Senate's strikingly different healthcare bills. The New York Democrat stressed he believed the public option could survive that process -- but only if the president plays a key role in that debate.
"The question is now, when we're in a conference committee and the president really can put his finger on the scale, does he do it now?" Weiner asked.
"What we're saying is now's your moment, big guy, you're the Manuel Rivera of this situation," the congressman added, describing the N.Y. Yankees' famous closing pitcher. "You're going to come in at the end, and there's still a chance to do it."
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