Harry Reid No Longer Deserves The Honor Of Serving In The Senate...

...let alone the priviledge of being the Democratic Majority Leader.

PUSSY!

Way to be Pam Gellar's bitch, asshole.

Its The Economy Stupid

The Democrats have been given the biggest break ever. The question is what will they do with it?

Shortly after the vote, the majority leader, Senator Harry Reid, turned to the small-business bill, one of the few items left on the Senate’s dwindling agenda before the August recess. Indeed, it had been on the floor intermittently over the last several weeks, only to be pulled to make way for other legislation including the extension of unemployment insurance.


But with some Democrats viewing the small-business bill as critical to their political prospects in November, Senate Republicans were not about to let it through easily, and have insisted on a chance to offer amendments.


In a bid to save the bill, Democrats released a new version of it on Wednesday night without a $30 billion lending program. But Mr. Reid immediately introduced an amendment that would restore the fund, and he continued to block any Republican amendments. Democratic aides said talks with the Republicans would continue, and they were still hopeful that some form of the measure would be approved.


President Obama called on the Senate to approve the bill in a statement in the Rose Garden on Monday. “We all have to continue our efforts to do everything in our power to spur growth and hiring,” he said. “And I hope the Senate acts this week on a package of tax cuts and expanded lending for small businesses, where most of America’s jobs are created.”


He also raised the issue in his weekly radio and Internet address on Saturday. The White House said Mr. Obama would continue pushing for the bill.


“Small businesses are the engine of private sector job creation, and the president will fight against any attempts by the partisan minority to block progress on legislation that helps our economic recovery,” a spokeswoman, Amy Brundage, said.


Senator Mary L. Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana and chairwoman of the small-business committee, who is a main author of the legislation, said the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, seemed intent on denying Mr. Obama and the Democrats a chance to pump up the economy ahead of the midterm elections.


“I think Senator McConnell knows and believes this bill could actually create millions of jobs and doesn’t want to give the president and Democrats credit for doing what we do, which is standing up for the middle class,” Ms. Landrieu said.


“If Democrats don’t stand for small business, I don’t know what we stand for,” she added. “I don’t want to go into this election standing for Wall Street and big business.”


The main point of disagreement is the centerpiece of the legislation: a proposed $30 billion lending program that would make credit available to small businesses through local banks. Some Republicans have decried the proposal as a mini “bailout” and said they would vote against it.


The most prominent potential Republican supporter of the bill, Senator Olympia J. Snowe of Maine and the senior Republican on the small-business committee, said Wednesday that she firmly opposed the $30 billion program because it echoed the huge bailout of Wall Street, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which has become a political liability for lawmakers who supported it even though many economists say it was a success.


“It has all the quality and features of the TARP program,” Ms. Snowe said in an interview outside the Senate chamber. “I think we’ve been down that road.”

NYTimes

Now Olympia Snowe basically signaled, whether she was trying to help Democrats or not, what the tact will be from Republicans to try to turn folks against the bill. They are going to call it TARP II or some such to try to demonize the bill.

First off if they try it the Democrats can co opt the message. The primary problem folks had with TARP wasn't the size or how effective it was, because in the end most realize it worked. The problem for most folks was that TARP was a bailout of the assholes who got us in this mess while the average person on "Mainstreet" was neglected.

So hey, Democrats can call this TARP II, a bailout of mainstreet. A bailout of the little guy. A bailout for the folks who weren't doing anything wrong but still got killed by the recession.

Framing a bailout as one that targets mainstream is pretty much a winner. It has the advantage of both being true AND of putting Republicans in a defensive posture for not supporting a bailout of mainstreet.

But on another front this situation can be pushed for as long and as hard as Democrats want to. THE number one issue in the midterms will be the economy. So how do you build up momentum going into the elections? You be seen fighting your ass off to create jobs.

One of the main tactical problems I have with Harry Reid is he hates taking losses. If he doesn't have the votes for cloture on a particular bill then he simply will never file for cloture. But while this keeps his scorecard pretty it allows Republicans to avoid taking tough votes. And in fact it lets some of his corporate Democrats off the hook as well. But he is looking to get reelected this fall as well so maybe, just maybe self preservation will kick in.

Think about the reprecussions if he decides to stay in session until a jobs bill of some sort gets passed. If he says screw an August recess and the one issue the Democrats are working on every day is jobs jobs jobs. And every day conversely the Republicans are seen working against jobs jobs jobs. And the media will have no choice but to cover it because staying in session through a recess is not a "normal" thing. So every day you get wall to wall coverage of Democrats going on the floor to yell at Republicans to let them pass a jobs bill. And every day you see Republicans squirming trying to figure out how to combat the line that they don't want to bailout mainstream.

It would make for compelling TV.

I realize this is probably a pipe dream but if it happened it would undoubtedly be a game changer. One that you can't buy. One group is fighting for jobs, one is fighting against and there won't be any bs excuses this time about it not being paid for because it IS paid for.

Lets hope someone has the sense to pick up on this...

Allow Me To Translate

John McCain:

Since the health care reform bill passed despite all of our fear mongering and lying we are now going to continue obstructing everything but now we are going to admit to it and blame it on health care reform.

Harry Reid:

John McCain is actin like a lil BITCH right now!

Quit Crying And Do Some Push Ups Or Something

Harry Reid sounding a lot like Bernie Mac today:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told reporters Tuesday that Republicans "should stop crying" about the possible use of the parliamentary procedure known as budget reconciliation to pass a health care reform bill.

Reid said reconciliation had been used 21 times since 1981, mostly by Republicans when they were in control of the Senate for the passage of items like the Bush tax cuts. (Here's a handy chart of when the procedure has been used.)

Under reconciliation, Democrats would need a simple majority in the Senate to pass legislation, as opposed to the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster.

"They should stop crying about reconciliation as if it's never been done before," Reid said.

Following Senate Democrats' weekly luncheon, Reid said "nothing is off the table" but that "realistically, they should stop crying about this. It's been done 21 times before."

"The question is: Is reconciliation the only way we can do health-care reform?" he said. "The answer to that is no. But I've been told that my Republican friends are lamenting reconciliation, but I would recommend for them to go back and look at history."

"It's done almost every Congress, and they're the ones that used it more than anyone else," he added.

Its taking him longer than any of us wanted or expected, but it seems he is FINALLY starting to sound like a real Majority Leader.

You Don't Say...

So Harry Reid rejects the Republican compromises in the jobs bill, pares it down to just the essentials which are very popular, doesn't rely on vote counting for once and puts the bill up for cloture and magically the Democrats overcome a filibuster gaining 5 Republican votes giving the bill an up or down vote.

Mind you ConservaDem extraordinaire, and a real asshole IMHO on a personal level, Ben Nelson voted against it, AND Democratic Senator Frank Lautenberg was out with illness.

Almost makes you think that maybe Harry Reid should put Republicans on the spot more often....

He Sees The Train Coming And Hes Getting Off The Tracks

A curious thing happened last week. Kathleen Sebelius went on The Rachel Maddow show, something most Obama administration officials have been loathe to do, and said this:

Maddow: "The private insurance company writ large hasn't done a great job. That's why we want a public option to compete with them. These 18 Democratic senators want to bring that back into the fold. If that happened, would the administration fight for it?"

Sebelius: "Well, I think if it's...Certainly. If it's part of the decision of the Senate leadership to move forward, absolutely."
.

At the time I said this in the comment section over at The Plum Line:

If Harry Reid is smart he will put the public option up for a vote via reconcilliation and let whatever is going to happen, happen. What Sebelius effectively did last night was lay him down right in front of the bus. Now if the public option doesn’t at least get an up and down vote via reconcilliation the only person who can and will be found at fault will be Harry Reid and that bus is going to run over him and back up a few times. Of course he should do it any way because its the right thing but he has signed his retirement papers now as a Senator if he doesn’t unless the White House walks back Sebelius words and I don’t see that happening.

Now comes this from The Hill:

Democrats will finish their health reform efforts within the next two months by using a majority-vote maneuver in the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said.

Reid said that congressional Democrats would likely opt for a procedural tactic in the Senate allowing the upper chamber to make final changes to its healthcare bill with only a simple majority of senators, instead of the 60 it takes to normally end a filibuster.

"I've had many conversations this week with the president, his chief of staff, and Speaker Pelosi," Reid said during an appearance Friday evening on "Face to Face with Jon Ralston" in Nevada. "And we're really trying to move forward on this."

The majority leader said that while Democrats have a number of options, they would likely use the budget reconciliation process to pass a series of fixes to the first healthcare bill passed by the Senate in November. These changes are needed to secure votes for passage of that original Senate bill in the House.

"We'll do a relatively small bill to take care of what we've already done," Reid said, affirming that Democrats would use the reconciliation process. "We're going to have that done in the next 60 days."

The move would allow Democrats to essentially go it alone on health reform, especially after losing their filibuter-proof majority in the Senate after Sen. Scott Brown's (R) special election victory in Massachusetts.

Now to be sure this doesn't mean that the public option will be in the bill that the Senate passes via reconcilliation. But for quite some time now the health care reform bill has been held up simply because the House could pass the Senate bill as is and have it on the President's desk almost immediately, but they wanted assurances that the Senate would pass some fixes ie compromises via reconcilliation to get around the fact that they no longer held a supermajority which meant if the bill changed in conference it would have to be passed in both Houses of Congress once again. Harry Reid had been reluctant to make that kind of promise about using reconcilliation to pass the fixes up until now. So you have to ask yourself, what exactly has changed his mind?

Well I can't say for sure, but Harry Reid is nobody's fool. He didn't get elected over and over again to the Senate by not seeing the writing on the wall. He could tell that if this bill didn't get passed he would end up as the scapegoat. And with horrible polling numbers already in Nevada I don't think he was going to let that happen.

Of course saying it will get passed in 60 days and passing it in 60 days are two different things. But I for one feel a lot more hopeful now about it getting passed than I have since the process started.

Stay tuned!

This However WAS Encouraging

It seems that Harry Reid is tired of letting President Baucus run the show and he's not going to play Charlie Brown to the GOP's Lucy anymore. (or at least not in this instance.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is rewriting a jobs bill after Democrats complained of too many concessions to Republicans.

Reid announced Thursday that he would cut drastically back on the jobs bill Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) introduced only hours earlier, essentially overruling the powerful chairman.

The Finance Committee estimated that Reid’s proposal would cost approximately $15 billion.

The Baucus bill, which was estimated at $85 billion, included $31 billion in tax extenders that Reid has decided to leave out. A Senate Democratic leadership aide said Reid decided to drop the tax extenders after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) declined to endorse the Baucus package.

“We’re going to move this afternoon to a smaller package than talked about in the press,” Reid said.

Max Baucus, after totally fucking up the health care reform bill, tried to make this jobs bill as Republican as possible. He has shown that he can't be trusted to handle major Democratic legislation. And its good to see that finally Reid has woken up to that fact.

Yeah, What He Said!

On Harry Reid's Comments

I am not about to go into a long ass post about Harry Reid's comments describing President Obama as a "light skinned" black person who doesn't speak with a "negro dialect" unless he wants to. For one, what he said is true. For two its all been said before, just with "nicer" words. Every time a political pundit last year said President Obama was "non threatening" because of his background and demeanor or anything close, they were saying the exact same thing that Harry Reid said in 2006. Want to take issue with "negro dialect"? Ok then explain to me what the hell ebonics is. I know some of us black folks don't like to admit that many of our people don't speak the King's English well, but its true and trying to act like it isn't is pretty damned disengenuous.

Was it racist? I guess the question I would have in response is who would it have been racist against? Every racist term or sentence or phrase that I know of is meant to demean a person based on their race. Harry Reid was actually speaking favorably of President Obama and talking about why he had a chance to be our first black President. And what do you know, he was right. I guess MAYBE you could try to make the case that it was racist against all black folks not named Barack Obama, bu then of course you would still have to show how its demeaning. As I pointed out before, just the existence of the word "ebonics" in our culture speaks to the fact that many people belive black folks and other minorities speak a different language. Is that a negative? Most of the time it is, especially if you are applying for a job. And wasn't there a story not too long ago about business not bringing people who "sounded black" over the phone in for interviews? But hey why let facts like that get in the way of a hysterical over reaction right?

In closing I will say this, if you ever have had the occasion to praise and or promote Rush Limbaugh or Pat Buchannan, you shouldn't have a got damn thing to say about any of this. And if the mainstream media types were doing their job they would point this out at every turn.

P.S. One more thing, was I the only one who read Reid's comments and immediately thought, "Damn, I guess that means Michael Steele could never be President" lmaooooo

P.S. 2: This still doesn't change my position that Harry Reid is doing a shitty job as Majority Leader. Thanks, that is all.

Mad At The Wrong People/Person

I have been as mad as Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson and the rest of the ConservaDems in the Senate as anybody else. And I have been as disappointed in the Obama administration and their glaring weakness on pushing health care reform as anybody else. But today was actually an "aha" moment for me. As many problems as I have with those people, I am not convinced that I should have reserved some of my ire for some other folks and perhaps THEY are the ones who should have been pressured all along.

Who am I talking about you ask?

The so called progressives in the Senate.

Here is the thing, Joe Lieberman et al forced Harry Reid's and President Obama's hand at least publicly by announcing they wouldn't support cloture on this health care reform bill at various times. Now this may have been what President Obama had wanted all along as some folks are saying, hell I don't know. But I do know this. If Jay Rockerfeller or Chuck Schumer or Sheldon Whitehouse or Sherrod Brown had the guts/balls/courage, take your pick, to make the same stance and draw a line in the sand over the public option and or the Medicare buy in then we wouldn't be in this mess.

It all came clear when I saw Rockerfeller on MSNBC today and Robert Gibbs feverishly going after Howard Dean for saying kill the bill. They don't have ONE FUCKING WORD to say about Joe Lieberman, but Governor Dean, hell he's the enemy. For all of the lip service they paid to the public option and the Medicare buy in, not one, not one single solitary one of them EVER even alluded to perhaps not voting for cloture if they weren't in.

Now ask yourself a question, why is that?

Its because they know that they don't have to take such a courageous stance and all they have to do is offer a few amendments and then come out of a meeting with that "we did all we could" bullshit and folks will buy it. I mean who could challenge Rockerfeller or Whitehouse or Brown on their progressive cred?

I could, that's who.

This has been a total load of bullshit from the start. And it should have dawned on me when the only member of the WHOLE Senate Democratic Caucus who pledged not to vote for the bill without a public option was, of all people, Roland Burris. That ladies and gentlemen tells you how this game was rigged from the start. It shows you that even though they exhorted us to call our Senators and lied over and over again about the likelihood of getting a public option in, that all along they were planning on falling back when push came to shove.

And then we wonder why Republicans basically call them pussies to their face and they do nothing more than take it.

Hey, Joe Lieberman is an asshole, but at least he is a strong one. With everybody fucking with him and even his wife he still gave everybody the middle finger and said he wouldn't vote for the bill. Where is OUR asshole? A progressive asshole who is just as stubborn?

So here we are, now the White House and so called progressives in the Senate are attacking Governor Dean for speaking truth to power. They are flogging that 30 million people covered number, even though

A. The CBO hasn't scored the new bill. and

B. The CBO's earlier projection was based on people being mandated to buy coverage, not on their ability to pay for such coverage.

Basically the so called progressives are now coming out telling us all tho shut the fuck up. Well sorry, I ain't built that way.

So here is what happens now. For me waiting for midterm elections is too long. Here is what I plan on doing poste haste. The next emails I get from OFA and barackobama.com will be replied to with a "Remove me" email explaining that I will no longer be helping them in any way shape or form and health care reform is the reason. I will also refuse any email from the so called progressives in the Senate asking me to send money, phone bank, or organize and I will also let them know why. Basically I am cutting off anything associated with a so called progressive in the Senate and the White House until further notice.

I am also going to make sure to blog about the actual CBO score that should be out any day now and note how the numbers are invariably worse than the version with the public option in it. Because I can make a prediction right here and now, the Senate Dems are in such a rush to pass this shitty bill now that they won't even want to make any announcements about the new score because they KNOW it will be worse.

Now I am not jumping all the way off the ship, but I can tell you this much. Aside from taking potshots at Republicans which is basically my pleasure, I am not busting my ass for these assholes anymore. They feel like they don't need progressives. They think they can win elections with out us. They think they can sell us out at every turn and we will still stick by them.

They are wrong.

The Public Option Compromise

I haven't posted much on health care reform or the public option lately because since the bill has been in the Senate I have had a running headache every day over all the bullshit. Well supposedly last night the gang of 10 asshole coalition of Senators came to some kind of compromise. I have no idea if this means the bill will now pass or if its just another case of Democrats negotiating away the best policies for nothing, but Ezra Klein has a write up about it so I figured I would link it. This whole process has me so pissed off that I can't see straight at times, but I can tell you this, there will be a fallout if Democrats pass a bullshit bill.

It is what it is.

A Lesson Not Learned

There was a remarkable political lesson last year that wasn't really learned because of subsequent events. However someone should point this lesson out to Harry Reid as we head into a cloture vote tonight just to start debate on health care reform, and then head into a final cloture vote later.

Last year with the financial markets on the edge of collapse the House held a vote for TARP. At the time the people of this country were made aware of how dire of a circumstance we were in and how easily we could have slipped into a depression. A couple of big name financial firms had already essential been vaporized and more were right over the horizon.

In the midst of this some of the Republicans in the House decided to vote against TARP. At the time I don't know if their leadership had miscounted or were stabbed in the back by some of their caucus but the result was the bill came up short of the votes needed to pass and chaos on the floor of the House ensued. What happened next was utterly predictable.

The markets fell sharply and GOP members of the House were raked over the coals for being insufficiently serious about the problem our nation was facing. In the end this episode probably as much as anything else helped to sweep Democrats into both halls of Congress in major majorities last year. When push came to shove it appeared to most anyone that these Republicans were more interested in playing politics than fixing a problem, and they paid for it.

Now the problem of course is that TARP has been such a PR disaster on a lot of fronts and Democrats have been so fucking inept at defending it even at all that nobody really wants to look back at the days that led up to its actual passage. If they did then they would remember that Republicans were so surprised but the country's reaction to their fuckery on the first vote that they panicked. All of a sudden McCain was suspending his campaign and on the second vote some off those Republicans who just couldn't find their way to voting for it the first time got on board to take the heat off. What that means is that when there is a crisis in this country and people play games like not voting to at least attempt to fix the problem, the American people are not going to be happy. The important thing is that in the end the fix actualy works and can be sold on an ongoing basis.

Which brings us to health care reform and a few corporatist Democratic Senators who are holding out for sweeteners.

Here is what Harry Reid should say to each and every one of them: "Fuck you, pay me!"

What I mean is he should literally tell them to step the fuck off and bring the bill up for a cloture vote tonight and dare them to vote against cloture. Dare them to put their careers in the Senate on the line by refusing to even allow the Senate to debate health care reform, a reform that an overwhelming majority of Americans agree we need even if they don't agree what it should entail. Dare the sorry muthafuckas to totally abandon the base of their party and join with the Republicans.

Matter of fact, double dare them.

See the thing of it is, this can be what they like to call these days a "teachable moment". There is no rule that says Harry Reid can't bring the bill back again in the next few days and put it up for debate again. Basically the bill has to truly be defeated for that to happen and he still has to the power to keep bringing it back. But what some of these assholes need to see is what will happen to their poll numbers if they should happen to vote against cloture.

I am thinking specifically of Blanche Lincoln who is fighting to get reelected next year, but her poll numbers would also be an example to her corporatist bretheren like Mary Landrieu and Ben Nelson. Its about time we stopped caving these assholes and instead putting their ass on the spot and making THEM cave. Fuck it, if they have the balls to say no when the bill is up for cloture then so be it, let them live with the consequences for a few days.

But my money is on them folding like a bad hand and from that point on they will be dealing fom a point of weakness.

If Harry Reid never stands up to them you can expect that every single item on the Democratic agenda will go through the same bunch of bullshit. And we already have seen what the result is when that happens, just take a look at the stimulus bill. Had we punched their asses in the throat earlier this year and rammed through a better bill then its highly likely that all the economic numbers, including unemployment, would look substantially better. Instead we gave them practically everything they wanted, fucked up the bill, and now the Democratic brand is damaged because of it.

So Harry Reid just go back and google the headlines after that House vote last year. The get on the floor tonight with confidence and put the bright lights on the ConservaDems and make them follow through on their hollow threats while the world is watching.

Trust me on this, they wont be able to take the heat.

SCOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOREEEEEEE

The Senate health care reform bill now has a CBO score.

He's On A Roll

FINALLY someone or something has woken up Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and he has started attacking the Republicans for their unprecedented obstructionism!!!

Now if he could just take some of that and aim it at certain members of his own caucus...

An Unlikely Hero

I haven't had a lot of good to say about Roland Burris since he accepted his Senate seat from the tainted Rod Blagojevich, but I always give credit where credit is due. And as far as I can tell out of all of the 60 Senators that caucus with the Democrats, Roland Burris is the ONLY one who has come out and said unequivically that he will not vote for a health care reform bill that does not include a public option. Now to be sure he hasn't gone as far as his ideological opposite in Joe LIEberman in saying he would filibuster the bill if it doesn't include a public option. But the truth is if there were 9 other actual Democrats who claim they are for a public option would come out and say the same thing that Burris has said then any talk of trying to get cloture would be moot. Instead of trying to pandering to the LIEberman party of one, Harry Reid would HAVE to find a way to pass the bill without taking out the public option. I don't give a damn what Burris has done up to this point, on this issue he is doing the right thing.

If only we could get a few more "reputable" Democrats who are for health care reform to do the same damn thing...

Did A Light Bulb Come On?

My head is about to explode. After a week where we saw Harry Reid put forth a health care reform bill with a public option in it, then make a video urging people to contact their members of Congress to lobby for keeping the public option, now comes news that last night he guilted Republican Senators into dropping their hold on Surgeon General nominee Regina Benjamin and she was confirmed by a voice vote.

Now the truth of course is that with this H1N1 outbreat she should have been confirmed weeks if not months ago. But still man where the hell has THIS Harry Reid been and what will it take to keep him around?!

He is about to mess around and have me phone banking for him and ish if he keeps this up!!!

HOLY SHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Who the fuck gave Harry Reid a cup of courage? Hell I can get behind THIS Harry Reid!



(h/t HuffPo)

The REAL Question We Should Be Asking

I know that since Joe LIEberman pissed in the punch yesterday many of us on the left have been apoplectic over it. By in large the questions have been asked over and over again to the effect of "What will they do about Joe LIEberman?". Meaning what will Harry Reid do? Will he threaten LIEberman with his seniority and committee chairmanships? What will President Obama do? Threaten to campaign against him and run him out of the party and politics? Cut off all of his earmarks?

That is all find and good, and if you have read this blog for any period of time you know that I have no problem and in fact encourage Democratic leadership to cut LIEberman off at the knees. And that was before he was threatening a filibuster. But here is the thing, there is another way of looking at this.

It is time to ask what are our progressive leaders in the Senate willing to do to counter LIEberman? He has pledged to join a filibuster if there is a public option in the bill. Is there a Democrat in the Senate who has the courage to now come out and say that THEY will filibuster any bill that does not have one?

This is a very important question and it goes to the heart of whether Joe LIEberman will be allowed to ruin this health care reform bill. You see if our side is not willing to show that we will be just as strong in our advocacy for the public option as he will be in his opposition to the public option just who do you think President Obama and Harry Reid are going to defer to? They will defer to the person or persons that they feel most threaten the passage of the bill. And until we are sitting on that equal platform we will not be taken seriously.

So if you are worried about Joe LIEberman and his opposition to the public option our path should be clear. We need to pressure all of the proponents of a public option in the Senate to come out with their own statements about cloture. Its really that simple. It is time to meet fire with fire and prove that progressives in the Senate are not just all talk. Getting Harry Reid to put a public option in the bill was basically just the first step. Now we have to put pressure on people like Chuck Schumer and Jay Rockerfeller to draw a line in the sand to show that we won't allow it to be removed.

It is what it is.

Breaking: Ladies And Gentlemen WE HAVE A PUBLIC OPTION!!!!!!!

Majority Leader Harry Reid just confirmed that we WILL have a public option with an opt out provision in the health care reform bill that gets voted on in the Senate. A lot of hard work, phone calls and emails have been heard. Remember, this is still not the end game. We still have to make sure all 60 Democrats vote for cloture and the bills in the House and Senate still have to be merged. But this is, to say the least, GREAT news for advocates of health care reform.

As much as I have called him out in the past in this case Leader Reid got it right.

Opt Out FTW!

Its looking very likely that Harry Reid will be unveiling a unifed Senate health care reform bill today with an "opt out" public option included. Since the day this idea was floated I have made no bones about my very enthusiastic but somewhat conditional support for this option both from a policy and a political stand point. Now for me all it comes down to is how strong they make the public option since states who don't like it or want it can opt out of it. I am hoping Harry Reid sees the opportunity here and goes for a Medicare +5 kind of public option like the House is proposing.

Stay tuned.