Since other unions outside the AFL-CIO are working the yo-yo on the trigger, Trumka is the lone holdout.  He’s the mainstay, and there is tremendous pressure building within the AFL in response to arm twisting from the White House for him to cave.  And if he falls, it’s going to be difficult for the rest of the veal pen not to follow suit.  So, he’s being directly threatened. 

The message is clear:  “Get in line or we pay for your precious ‘public option’ by fucking you on health care benefits.”

If Trumka suddenly starts singing the praises of triggers (even if they instantly “yo-yo” it back and insist he was misquoted), you’ll know it worked.

Live Pulse has a letter from the US Chamber of Commerce attacking four amendments that have yet to be voted on in the Senate Finance Committee. (Rockefeller C1 – Applying new rating rules to the large and self-insured (ERISA) market, Schumer C1/C2 – Public Option Amendments, Wyden C1 – Healthy Americans Act) The Chamber attacked [...]

I’ve heard some in the establishment media argue that progressives have become too fixated on the issue of a robust public option. The fight to include a public option is not a simply philosophical argument or an insider policy battle. The fight for the public option is inseparable from the fight to make health insurance [...]

There are 13 Democrats and 10 Republicans on the committee, which means they can only lose 2 Democratic votes and still pass the amendment. So in order for a public plan to come out of Finance, 3 of these are going to have to get off the fence.

According to the Las Vegas Sun, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said that he thought Snowe’s trigger proposal was, a “pretty doggone good idea.” I think the whole idea of a trigger is inherently flawed. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich did a good job explaining that Washington is full of lobbyists whose job it is [...]

Ezra: A new New York Times poll shows that the public option is stil la god 20 percent more popular than health-care reform in general.  Big Tent on Blue Dogs and "fiscal responsibility": (1) Conrad’s Co-ops Are Useless. (2) Wyden’s Exchanges Are Useless. (3) Robust Public Option Saves $110 Billion.  Who are the deficit hawks [...]

Sen. Kent Conrad has come up with a new argument against the public option. When asked by Ezra Klein, why he opposes a public option he said, he doesn’t “think a government-run plan best fits this culture.” I would be very curious to know how Sen. Conrad came to his conclusion. Just today a new [...]

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus said at the begining of today’s hearing that there would not be time to get to the public option amendments today. He expects to debate and vote on the public option amendments on Tuesday. Yesterday, Sen. Schumer and Rockefeller pushed hard for a vote today on their public option [...]

Ryan Grim over at the Huffington Post has an update on the Blue Dogs’ whip count. The Blue Dogs have been surveying their membership over the last several days; coalition co-chair Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-S.D.) has been collecting the responses. She listed the four top priorities that have emerged: Keeping the cost under $900 billion, [...]

The Congressional Budget Office just said that a public option based on Medicare reimbursement rates would save the government hundreds of millions dollars in comparison to a public option that would have to individually negotiate reimbursement rates with medical providers. This goes against the Blue Dogs’s so-called fiscal conservatism in opposing a robust public option. [...]