Both Republicans and Democrats offered amendments to the health care bill today in the Rules Committee. They have no chance of getting a vote on the floor, but looking at the Republican amendments can provide some insights into the upcoming GOP campaign against the bill in the midterm.

According to the Huffington Post, Diana Degette has agreed, on behalf of the pro-choice caucus, to the language of an executive order that the President will issue to address Bart Stupak’s concerns regarding the health care bill. The Washington Post confirms that “it is likely at the very least to restate Obama’s commitment to upholding [...]

The White House is floating the idea to journalists that they will issue an executive order to “clarify” the government’s position on the use of federal funds and abortion. The White House secured Planned Parenthood’s and NARAL’s support for whatever hideous abortion language they wanted to include in the bill early in the game. NARAL’s [...]

According to a source involved in the health care negotiations in Congress, Henry Waxman is telling Democratic caucus members that Bart Stupak’s deal with Nancy Pelosi is dead.  Stupak had called a press conference to announce the deal at 11am this morning, but has now canceled it. The deal fell apart after news of the [...]

We are asking all of you fight like you have never fought before. Tonight, It has become clear that the our Democratic President Obama, Democratic Speaker of the House (Nancy Pelosi) and Democratic Leader (Harry Reid) are trading away women’s lives.

Every woman in Congress should MAKE HISTORY AND WALK OUT ! This is your chance to stand up for what is right! Forget politics, forget saving your seat! You must take a chance!

It appears Harry Reid (D-NV) has promised Senate liberals a vote on a public option in the next few months. It sounds like this vague promise of “fixing it later” was more than enough to get Bernie Sanders (I-VT) to completely flip-flop on offering a public option amendment during reconciliation. From Huffington Post: In the [...]

I’ll be on the new CNN show with Jon King that premieres at noon ET, available for live stream here — jh The Firedoglake health care team has been covering the debate in congress since it began last year. The health care bill will come up for a vote in the House on Sunday, and [...]

Previously, I have explained how if just one single senator that supported the public option offered an amendment during reconciliation, it would force an up or down vote on the matter. This means it would only take 51 votes to include a public option, and, at the very least, we would finally get to see [...]

Congressional Democrats seem extremely pleased with themselves over how they fiddled with the design of an excise tax on employer-provided insurance that will not kick in for eight years (and then grow faster after another two years) to make it look like it will bring in a huge amount of money in the years 2020 [...]

Matt Yglesias analyzes the “failure of the progressive block strategy,” and chalks it up to progressives not picking issues that “centrists” care about. He doesn’t note his own role in that failure, vilifying the leader of the progressive block Raul Grijalva as “the world’s greatest monster” unless he backs down. (Our own whip effort started [...]