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President Obama was quoted yesterday at a ceremony at the White House as hoping that he’ll get a "bipartisan" health insurance bill: Earlier today, at a White House ceremony honoring NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson President Obama said he’s "absolutely confident that we are going to get a [health care] bill, and I hope it’s bipartisan." That hope [...]

I wrote over at Huffington Post a month ago about Rick Scott, with the Conservatives For Patient Rights organization, crowing that he’d managed to kill the public option by delaying the passage of health care reform until after August recess: "Keep Up the Fight – Victory is in Sight! Thanks to a collective effort by a loose [...]

Sam Stein over at Huffington Post reports that in a closed conference call meeting, the House Democratic Caucus stood in strong support of the public option, and more importantly, wanted it to be in the final conference report coming out of the conference committee: "Everyone has said on the record that they would support [the [...]

Earlier, I posted about how Senator Conrad told his constituents that he would vote against the public option in health care reform in an article that appeared in the Jamestown newspaper. That news spread over to Talking Points Memo, and over to DailyKos.   And Alex Koppelman at Salon.com says that Senator Conrad’s communications director denied the story, saying the characterization [...]

In a town hall meeting with his constituents, Senator Conrad pushed his co-operative plan, and said that he would vote against the public option in any Senate health care package.  CARRINGTON, N.D. — Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D. presented his cooperative health care proposal here Thursday and told an audience of 100 that he would not vote for [...]

Jane Hamsher has tirelessly reported on the political kabuki within the White House in forcing the progressives in the House to swallow crap sandwiches in form of the stimulus, the ACES bill, and the war supplemental funding, and how Rahm was behind a great deal of the "negotiations" with the Blue Dogs and the Democratic [...]

For a while, the Energy and Commerce Committee was the last House committee standing on the Hill, and that’s now changed with the passage of the House Tri-Committee out of the committee on a vote of 31-28 today. All the three House committees and the Senate HELP committee were able to pass the health care legislation out of their [...]

The House Energy and Commerce Committee is having its mark-up of the Tri-Committee health care bill at 10 a.m. today. This could be the last mark-up for the committee on health care reform–that is, if one of the Blue Dogs doesn’t flip and decide to vote against the final passage of the bill out of the committee. [...]

The upcoming August recess, which begins on July 31st, is when Members of Congress go home to meet their constituents, listen to them, attend local community events, and brag about their legislative accomplishments like cocky roosters in the hopes that their constituents will vote them back into office. These lawmakers also work hard to hold [...]

The Energy and Commerce Committee is having their mark-up on health care reform at 10AM, after being delayed for days to wrangle compromises with the Blue Dog Democrats. Apparently the word is that now four of the seven Blue Dog Democrats on the committee will vote for the passage of the bill.  This is the liveblog thread [...]