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Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA)
Barney Frank has released a letter in response to inquiries from constituents as to whether he would take the pledge to oppose any bill that does not have a strong public option (PDF):
I am a strong supporter of single payer, and I do reluctantly accept a full public option as the best we can do. So I am strongly committed to a public option and I will not vote for a bill that does not include a nationwide, genuine public plan. But I do not agree that it has to be available on day one. It is conceivable that to get the votes to get this done, we might have to accept, for example, a six month delay on a public plan going forward. I am not talking now about a trigger, which I greatly oppose, but simply a time delay for reasons that might be put forward either legitimately but politically.
I responded to Frank’s spokesman, Harry Gural, and clarified:
From day one" doesn’t mean the plan gets implemented on day one, it means that the option is available from the first day that it is implemented, even if that’s a few years down the road — as opposed to being available when a trigger kicks in, or when there is sufficient demand for a state co-op (such that Ohio might make one available at a different time than Kansas).
Harry said that Rep. Frank "agrees with the ‘day one’ language as stated in your paragraph." I asked if he would vote against a bill that had triggers but wasn’t able to get clarification beyond the fact that he "opposes triggers."
But from the language in the letter, I take it to read that he does not think that triggers are part of a "nationwide, genuine public plan," and would therefore vote against any bill that had them. So I’m counting Barney in the "pledge" column — fourteen down, twenty-six to go.
If you’d like to call Barney’s office and firm up the trigger language, feel free. But while you’re at it, please give him lots of props for doing this. Barney is in leadership, and this is a big deal: (202) 225-5931 DC, (508) 999-6462 MA.
We’re also adding him to our Health Care Heroes page.
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I don’t think much of Frank since I consider him and his cronies responsible for bankrupting Freddie and Fannie but he has had some good thoughts on clamping down on corporate greed.
I’ll contact his office.
Jane
Read Leen’s #20 post in the prior thread.
interesting.
interesting because chaka fattah’s office told me that Rep. fattah won’t take “that meaningless pledge” because the bill we want him to support “doesn’t exist yet”.
all they say is “fattah supports a public option”, but they refuse to add “and nothing less will do.”
today, the staffer yelled at me and told me I am being mean and harassing them.
and yet, here’s a member of the house leadership taking “that meaningless pledge”, and doing so in writing.
curious…
I have been emailing with someone I know in Congressman Mike Michaud’s office. He is my congressman and i worked to help get him re-elected. one of the Maine reasons for my support was his stance on the public healthcare.
He is a Blue Dog and signed the Blue Dog Letter. i went crazy! i email my contact in his office and got a blistering email back describing how Rep. Michaud supports the public option and signed a letter to that effect to Leadership. His opposition to the Tri-Committee bill was based on the inequity of Medicare payments to rural hospitals and providers.
I then asked if that issue were solved would he then take a pledge to vote against any bill that did not include the robust public option he says he supports. I was directed to the website to see the Congressman’s position on his website. Since, i have emailed several web articles to this contact, including the story about Snowe’s betrayal and Rep. Pingree’s taking the pledge. I also emailed him the story about the Congresswoman, Blue Dog, who broke with them and took the pledge.
I sent him the story about the BLUE DOG PAC receiving all the health insurance cash and my contact told me no Congressman can receive more than 10k from the fund and i shouldn’t worry.
Well, I don’t know what to do. He says the Rep. Michaud is for the public option, but then he sides with the Blue Dogs. I’m sort of at my wits end and i’m thinking maybe we should start looking for someone to challenge him in the next Democratic Primary. Any suggestion?
Barney kept the Lieberman-Graham detainee photo amendment from going through. And he’s taking a big step here. It’s one thing for rank-and-file members to make commitments like this — quite another for leadership.
Very brave move on Barney’s part. Big props.
Thanks for being on Michaud. What can you say? 76% of the country wants a public plan, Michaud wants to shake down taxpayers.
And as for the Blue Dog PAC excuse — well, take a look at Michaud’s PAC donations. They far exceed anything that comes in from the Blue Dogs, but they are from industries that benefit tremendously when the Blue Dogs stick together like this:
http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-b…../H2ME02097
This may actually be more helpful to you. For the current election cycle, lots of health care stakeholders:
http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-b…../H2ME02097
Also, take a look here. He’s getting money as individual contributions from lobbyists (many of the firms listed as being in DC, VA & MD are lobbying firms even if the person lists “sr. vp,” “executive” or “partner”:
http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-b….._H2ME02097
These are frequently “pass-throughs,” where companies will pay fees to lobbying firms and the money gets laundered as individual contributions from people who work for the firms.
You can look up any firm to see who their lobbying clients here:
http://lobbyingdisclosure.hous…..l?alpha=65
Detailed lobbying reports here (if you want to see what clients a specific lobbyist is working for):
http://soprweb.senate.gov/inde…..oosefields
If you need help with research let me know, always happy to help, and would LOVE to have a write-up on what you find at Silo.
What would be helpful to me is some understanding of where the health care reform bills will ultimately end up. Just because a Finance committee bill has no public option that does not mean the issue is dead right? The HELP version is still in the process. A house bill from Waxman is still being worked on. So, how does the process work exactly? Is the final bill going to be created in a joint committee process? How will this all play out?
did ya know he has facebook page ? – and that you can become a fan and write on his wall ? (you can un-friend later)
and slinkerwink was promoting something called Friendroots on Facebook:
Click on FriendRoots.
Choose the House campaign to ask your friends to contact their lawmakers.
Ask your friend to contact his or her other friends in the district as well with the FriendRoots application
none dare call it harassment :D
Good news, Jane! Maybe this will happen yet, despite all the MSM memes making it sound like the public option is DOA. Great great work. Now I need to make more calls…
comes down to a contest between the profit margins of the Insurance companies and the welfare of the American people.
How our Reps vote demonstrates who they went with.
Really appreciate that Obama was willing to come out during his health care speech and say “the profit margin needs to be taken out” And Insurance Companies “have had record breaking profits while the American people are being hammered”
Insurance Company executives heads were collectively doing 360’s.
Call in the profit margin exorcists
Jane do you think
folks should be calling MSM outlets. Ask them if they will be covering the Health Care Now march on Thursday. Or should this march have been held in Iran so that we could have received 24 hour a day coverage?
So Day One doesn’t mean what I thought it means?
Considering how much the Supreme Court agonizes over each word of the Constitution and every other document they reference; I say let the debate of language continue. But, don’t let it prevent action from happening.
-Politics.com intern
What next? Are we redefining robust?
Jane,
are you familiar with Strategic Healthcare ??
it seems they provide a Fundraising Venue and welcome all comers
found it while researching where all the playahs would be for their ‘recess’
Thank you Rep. Barney Frank!
BUT None of this Public Option “years down the road” crap. WE Need a Public Option NOW! 2010 is realistic – if you do not let the Repugs and the blue dogs drag out the implementation with every i dotted and every t crossed.
14,000 Americans per day are losing their health insurance and cannot get Affordable Health Care.
2010 – Not “years down the road.”
Great news. I like Barney. he often makes a lot of sense and votes the right way most of the time.
Is it my imagination, or has there been a bit more movement now on this? Seems like we’re starting to average one recruit a day when we’d been lucky to get one every four days for a while there.
I’m really happy that Barney Frank has taken the pledge. But I do have to wonder if he has read the House bill if he is saying that it might take six months to get a public option. As it stands now, we’re looking at 2013.
What health care march on Thursday are we talking about?
I thought I’d been on top of the health care issue every day and I didn’t know about a march. Perhaps it’s my brain fog addled mind, but where is the push to publicize and organize for this?
Geez, I am so frustrated.