With in hours of losing the vote in the Senate Finance Committee on his public option amendment, Schumer fired off an email to his supports vowing to fight on. Schumer calls the vote in the Finance Committee, only “the opening day of the fight.” The email concludes with: If we continue to fight, I am [...]

Directly following the debate over Rockefeller’s robust public option amendment, the Senate Finance Committee next addressed Senator Chuck Schumer’s “level playing field” public option. The debate was much shorter and mainly repeated the same argues for or against Rockefeller’s amendment. Schumer’s public option amendment also failed, but by a smaller margin, 10-13 Again, all ten [...]

The entire morning of the Senate Finance Committee mark up was dominated with heated debate about Rockefeller’s robust public option amendment. Most Democrats agreed with Rockefeller, saying such a plan would be needed to increase choice, improve competition, and keep private insurance companies honest. Republicans claimed it would the start of a “slow walk” to [...]

When the Senate Finance Committee starts work again on Tuesday things should get heated. Here are some of the more interesting amendments to watch out for. Free Choice Amendment – Wyden C1 : What it hopes to do: It would allow employees who do not like their current employer provided health insurance to ask for [...]

It is not often that progressives and the Wall Street Journal are in complete agreement, but sometimes the facts are plain for everyone to see. The Wall Street Journal is running a story today about what a massive boon to the for-profit health insurance corporations Baucus’s health care bill would be. The health-system overhaul proposed [...]

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 [...]

In a stunning moment during the Senate Finance Committee markup Sen. Tom Carper defended a secret deal that the White House, Baucus, and PhRMA had reached. The White House has long denied the deal. Carper publicly acknowledges that part of the deal was that PhRMA would run millions of dollars worth of campaign ads in support of health care reform.

According to Carper the “golden rule” in Congress is that secret back room deals in exchange for advertising buys must be honored.