The Obama administration has "seen very clearly" that it must back a healthcare bill containing a public option for consumers after suffering the backlash of liberal members of Congress.
"What happened was that there was a great pushback from the progressives in this party, from the leadership of this party," Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) said during an appearance on MSNBC. "And I think they have seen very clearly that they must have a public option to get this bill passed."
The White House has backtracked from statements from some administration officials earlier this week that it could support a bill without a public option after liberal lawmakers made clear they wouldn't support such a bill.
The White House has also had to alternately manage relations with Congress after the New York Times reported Wednesday that they were set to abandon compromise efforts with Republicans in order to "go it alone" on healthcare.
Waters said she would "absolutely not" support a bill without a public (or "government-run") option, and insisted that lawmakers and President Obama needed to do a better job of explaining the controversial provision to Americans.
Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) said he "of course" stands by remarks publicized earlier this week that he would vote against the interests of his district on healthcare if he believes it's in his constituents' best interests.
"Of course I do," Massa said in an interview on Fox News when asked if he stood by his remarkts. "I am always going to cast a vote in the interest of helping my constituents."
"Until we can solve some of those problem, I'm not going to weathervane an opinion," he added. "Of course I have to do -- as I said clearly -- what is good for my constituents, and I'm not going to back off of that."
Massa is a proponent of a single-payer system favored by liberals, but is seen as unlikely to garner enough votes to pass out of Congress.
"I will vote adamantly against the interests of my district if I actually think what I am doing is going to be helpful," he said.
Massa defended those remarks, saying that Americans shouldn't want their representatives to be "weathervanes" on public opinion.
"You want your member of Congress to be deliberative," he said. "You don't want your member of Congress to stick his or her finger up in the wind and find out what people are saying today, because tomorrow it's going to be different."
A liberal House leader on Wednesday said that President Barack Obama has "earned the right to go it alone" in order to pass healthcare reform legislation.
"[Republican] leadership has demonstrated that they really don't want reform. Every opportunity he's taken to reach out to Republicans, he's been rebuffed," Rep. Donna Edwards (D-Md.), who is vice-chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told The Hill.
This morning, reports indicated that the Obama administration was ready to pass the bill with a party line vote.
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel told the New York Times that "The Republican leadership has made a strategic decision that defeating President Obama's health care proposal is more important for their political goals than solving the health insurance problems that Americans face every day."
Liberals in the House have thrown their support behind President Obama in recent days after the administration reaffirmed its support for a public health insurance option.
Congressional Progressive Caucus chairwoman Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) yesterday said she would "take the administration at its word" that "nothing has changed" on White House's position on the public plan.
Some liberal House members earlier in the week reacted negatively to statements made by two administration officials on Sunday that seemed to back away from the public option. Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) said that abandoning the public option could cost the bill 100 votes in the House.
House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) reacted defiantly to calls for Democrats to "go it alone" on healthcare reform.
"From day one, the White House has taken a go it alone approach on health care," Boehner said in a statment.
"The Administration rejected our efforts to work together, choosing instead to craft a costly government takeover of health care and to march forward on a partisan basis solely with Democrats in Congress," he added.
Democrats will pay a price at the polls if they decide to "go it alone" on healthcare reform legislation, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) vowed Wednesday.
DeMint said that if Democrats choose to abandon talks with Republicans, or even use procedural maneuvers to pass a healthcare bill containing a public option with only a simple majority in the Senate, they would suffer losses in the next election cycle.
"I think the American people are already outraged," DeMint said in an interview on CNBC. "If we get into this kind of backroom shenanigans, I think the American people are going to throw them out of office -- and they should."
The conservative South Carolinian asserted that it would harm everyone from President Obama to Democrats downballot.
"If he passes this without any Republican support -- or really, any American support -- I think it's going to hurt his presidency, I think it's going to hurt the Democrats in the next election," he said.
Maryland state Del. Jon Cardin (D), the nephew of U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), on Wednesday apologized for proposing to his girlfriends using on-duty Baltimore City Police officers and a city police helicopter.
The younger Cardin and girlfriend Megan Homer were on a yacht in Baltimore's Inner Harbor on August 7 when the officers boarded the boat pretending to search for contraband, according to the Baltimore Sun. The officers asked Homer to turn around to place her into custody as a helicopter hovered overhead. When she turned, Cardin was on one knee.
"During the evening, I was focused on making my fiancee's night perfect, the Baltimore County legislator said in a statement. "In retrospect I should have considered that city resources would be involved and used better judgment to put a stop to it."
The 39-year-old Cardin said that he would reimburse the city government for "whatever costs they deem appropriate." The Sun reported that he had already phoned the Baltimore chief of police to apologize.
The Obama administration's messages to lawmakers about whether or not it supports a public option have only resulted in confusion for one key healthcare negotiator, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).
Grassley told Iowa reporters Wednedsay that he'd suggested to President Obama in a meeting in early August that he needed to make clear whether or not he could support a bill without a public (or "government-run") option.
"I thought a statement from him would be very helpful," explained Grassley, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, the lead group negotiating a bipartisan health bill in the Senate.
But while Grassley said that statements this past weekend about Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius about the necessity of the public option seemed like a trial balloon, White House backtracking has only resulted in confusion about the president's stance.
"When Sebelius said what she did -- I thought maybe it was a trial balloon," Grassley said. "But then I saw so much backtracking by White House personnel."
"I don't know, but I can tell you that we've had these trial balloons before," the Iowa Republican added. "So you just don't know is the best answer to your question."
It turns out Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) made more waves at the Netroots Nation conference on Saturday, accusing Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) of "treason" for saying that health reform would result in doctors "pulling the plug on grandma."
"I mean what Grassley said the other day was an act of treason. I'm sorry. It's not being called on," the outspoken Democrat said to a group of liberal activists.
The Senate Finance Committee ranking member made his claims about the end-of-life provisions in the House healthcare bill last Wednesday, but retracted his claims later in the week.
Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) also slammed Grassley for his comments last week, asking the Iowa Republican to stop spreading "myths" about "death panels."
Grassley said on Thursday that the Finance Committee would drop the end-of-life clause from its version of the bill.
Massa also criticized limited-government conservatives in colorful terms.
"Throw your hand grenade, pull the pin out, toss it back, let it blow up in their hands," he said at the event in Pittsburgh. "You think government's bad? Great! Let's stop all funding for NASA tomorrow."
In the same conversation, Massa said that he was prepared to "vote against my district" on the healthcare reform bill and expressed support for single-payer health insurance. Massa hails from a conservative, upstate New York district.
Democrats will not be able to "go it alone" on healthcare legislation and force through a bill with a public option on a party-lines vote, Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) said Wednesday.
"It's numerically not possible," Cooper, a centrist Blue Dog Democrat who has long focused on healthcare issues, said in an interview on MSNBC. "We don't have enough votes."
The New York Times reported Wednesday that Democratic leaders in Congress, along with the White House, had less faith in continuing to work with Republicans to craft a bipartisan health bill containing a public (or "government-run") option.
Cooper said that just as a matter of procedure, there is no way that Democrats would be able to accomplish such a thing.
"It's really not an ideological question; it's a question of how you pass a bill," he explained. "We don't have 60 Democratic votes in the Senate."
Cooper pointed to the prolonged absences of Sens. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) and Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), arguing that Senate Democrats were two votes short of forcing through any legislation past a filibuster, and would need to draw in at least two Republicans to support the final outcome.
"It's just a matter of arithmetic," he explained. "It's not ideology."
A public (or "government-run") healthcare option for Americans would function similarly to the way the post office does, Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-Ill.) suggested Tuesday night.
Jackson, in an appearance on CNN, said that just as the government-run post office keeps private mail carriers honest in their prices, so would the public option keep insurers honest.
"Look at it this way: There's Federal Express, there's UPS, and there's DHL," Jackson told CNN host Larry King. "The public option is a stamp; it's email. And because of the email system, because of the post office, it keeps DHL from charging $100 for an overnight letter, or UPS from charging $100 for an overnight letter."
The public option, in that sense, is a "market-based" plan, Jackson asserted.
Of course, that defense comes several days after President Obama ribbed the post office during one of his town hall meetings pushing for healthcare, which postal unions criticized.
"I mean, if you think about it, UPS and FedEx are doing just fine, right? No, they are," Obama said at his New Hampshire town hall, to point out that a public postal option hadn't forced out private companies.
"It's the post office that's always having problems," Obama added.
Jackson is one of several dozen liberal members of Congress who are demanding that the president commit to passing healthcare reform with a public option. He said any bill otherwise might be dead on arrival in the House.
"160 members of Congress already signed a letter indicating that without a strong public option, from their perspective -- including my signature -- that this bill is a non-starter," Jackson said.
The idea that 47 million Americans have no form of health insurance whatsoever and the idea that we would create a public option to help bring down costs is something that should be broadly accepted by the American people.
In one of the most heated exchanges of this August's town hall meetings, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) ripped an audience member on Tuesday who asked him why he supported the "Nazi" healthcare plan by responding "on what planet do you spend most of your time?"
Seemingly taken aback by the question, Frank said, "when you ask me that question I am going to revert to my ethnic heritage and ask you a question: On what planet do you spend most of your time?"
Raising his voice at the end of his answer, he said "having a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table, I have no interest in doing it."
The fifteenth-term Democrat also focused on a picture of President Obama altered to look like Hitler held by the audience member.
"It is a tribute to the First Amendment that this kind of vile contemptible nonsense is so freely propagated," he said forcefully.
Frank held his town hall yesterday in Dartmouth, Mass.
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