Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is saying that the Senate has a majority for a public option–in direct contradiction to claims by President Obama. From TPM: Sanders said he thinks Democrats have 50 votes in the Senate to pass a bill “certainly to include a public option.” It was a bit of good news for progressives, who [...]

Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) is demanding that the abortion language in health care reform be fixed before they pass the current comprehensive Senate health care bill in the House. In itself this is not an insane request given that once the bill passes, Stupak has no more leverage. With almost 300 House bills stalled in [...]

Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is reportedly planning to hold hearing in the Senate Rules Committee to examine possible filibuster reform. This follows last month’s public endorsement by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) for a bill that would end the option to permanently kill a bill via filibuster. If current Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) loses this [...]

I don’t believe in getting people worked up when it’s not necessary. Energy is a finite resource, and when you don’t have a lot to work with anyway (especially relative to the opposition), the key to successful organizing is selectively applying carefully targeted effort to achieve maximum impact. It’s like the difference between hitting your [...]

According to Politico, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is apparently trying to revive the “Gang of 14” idea, but this time to stop Democrats from using reconciliation to pass some changes to the Senate health care bill. He claims that a bipartisan group in the Senate could agree to a new smaller health care bill if Democrats [...]

It seems that President Obama’s former senior health-care adviser, David Cutler, is following in the proud tradition of Jonathan Gruber by conveniently ignoring potentially huge cost-saving ideas to make Obama’s health care proposal sound better than it really is. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, David Cutler claims there have been 10 broad ideas offered [...]

Student loan lobbyists have been distributing a memo around Capitol Hill, with the misleading claim that if the FFEL program is eliminated in favor of direct lending, all of these jobs in the industry will be lost.

The bottom line: job losses in a tough economy are nothing to treat lightly, but the claims made by lobbyists don’t hold to close scrutiny, and the jobs impact must be weighed against the number of students currently enrolled in each state if money that could be going to schools is instead propping up a costly and unnecessary industry that is surviving only because of government subsidy.

Find out more about the Students, Not Banks campaign and sign the petition.

In a moment of great unintentional comedy, Rush Limbaugh said he would flee this health care reform if it passed by moving to Costa Rica. The irony is overwhelming given that Costa Rica has a universal, single payer health care system with large government ownership over health care providers like hospitals. From Media Matters, via [...]

A big part of the final push for this health care reform effort is focused on how terrible the private insurance companies are. On the White House blog, communications director Dan Pfeiffer is attacking the huge premium increases and monopoly power of some private insurers. HCAN is doing a “mass citizens’ arrest of the insurance [...]

Today, FDL launches its Students Not Banks campaign, with a petition calling on Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and members of Congress to pass student loan reform quickly through reconciliation.

Find out more about the Students, Not Banks campaign and sign the petition.