Betty Sutton (OH-13) tells Mike Stark there is “no doubt” she is “all for a public option.” Though she’s not quite ready to take the FDL pledge.

I have to give Politico credit — their business model was to cocoon the Hill at every level, from their beat sweeteners to the inside baseball gossip to the process stories that bored the general public. But they wholly succeeded in becoming the publication that told the Hill what it thinks about itself. If it doesn’t register in Politico, it didn’t happen as far as most Hill staffers are concerned.

Rep. Tim Bishop (NY-01) tells FDL’s Mike Stark he is a “very strong supporter of the public option.” And then makes excuses about why he can’t take the pledge.

From the WSJ this morning: The Blue Dogs’ clout arises from simple math — they account for 52 seats in the House, enough to topple any law in cooperation with Republicans — and some irony. Hungry to retake Congress, Democrats actively recruited moderate candidates in conservative districts. The strategy was strikingly successful in recapturing the majority.

Another great video from Stark, this time he catches up with Representative Zack Space (OH-18) who was full of excuses for why he didn’t have time to tell the public where he stands on health care. Oh, and Rep. Space would like us all to know he’s “very busy.”

We’ve added Chellie Pingree and Carolyn Maloney. We put up the statement from Pingree on Friday, want to make sure everyone saw the statement from Maloney as well: I have always been a strong supporter of the public option (including co-sponsoring single-payer) and pledged to you several weeks ago to fight like heck to make [...]

Mike Stark caught up with Representive GK Butterfield on the Hill.

Gabrielle Giffords, a Blue Dog Democrat, wrote an editorial in the Arizona Daily Star, about the need for health care reform that includes a strong public option that lowers everybody’s costs and competes with private insurers. Here’s an excerpt from her editorial about the public option: We need reform that puts patients first. It is not right [...]

The Republican position in a nutshell: Most of them know there’s a crisis, and they just don’t care. It doesn’t matter what’s best for the country, only what’s best for the Republican Party, their wealthy friends, and their corporate donors. It doesn’t matter if 20,000 people die every year, as long as the victims’ families are so pissed off that they start voting Republican.

The latest word out of the Hill after the talks broke down so famously between Chairman Waxman and the Blue Dogs, is that the tentative agreements are back on, and that the mark-ups of H.R. 3200, the health care bill, will resume on Monday. When that happens, I’ll be posting a mark-up liveblogging diary right here on Campaign Silo [...]