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Pelosi: "The Public Option Will Be in the Bill That Passes the House"

Brian Beutler | September 17, 2009, 12:48PM

Health Care, House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, Public Option

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This will come as a welcome moment of relief for House progressives and public option enthusiasts.

"I fully support the public option. The public option will be in the bill that passes the House," Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters today.

Last week, Pelosi said "This is about a goal. It's not about provisions. As long as our goal of affordability and accessibility and quality, meeting the four...goals that we have in the legislation, then we will go forward with that bill."

But all along she's been a strong proponent of the public option, and earlier in the process she insisted that a bill without a public option could not pass in the House.

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11 comments

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Xantar

September 17, 2009 1:08 PM

Oh ok, so today Nancy Pelosi is a strong supporter of the Public Option. Duly noted.

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mans_best_friend

September 17, 2009 1:51 PM in reply to Xantar

No wait. YESTERDAY she was a strong supporter of the public option. Today she's supposed to be abandoning it. Or did I miss a day?

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matyra

September 17, 2009 3:09 PM in reply to mans_best_friend

No, your 'today' was actually her opinion 'the day before yesterday'. Get a grip, man!

What this means, I think, is that we'll get a public option from the House bill, but that she won't be completely against negotiating with whatever the Senate churns out when it gets to the compromise bill?

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The Commenter Formerly Known as NCSteve

September 17, 2009 3:32 PM in reply to matyra

Not buyin' it. She hasn't advocated the use of nuclear weapons against anyone who would vote for a bill without a public option. That's a signficant tell.

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markg8

September 17, 2009 3:56 PM in reply to The Commenter Formerly Known as NCSteve

But she did remove the DCCC missile shield from their districts.

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matyra

September 17, 2009 4:16 PM in reply to markg8

Bah, the technology wasn't quite there anyway. It handled the Bachmanns of the world, but Republicans who could doublespeak with some fluency could still get through.

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markg8

September 17, 2009 4:56 PM in reply to matyra

You think Blue Dogs know the technology doesn't work? That's the beauty of it!

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dragnet

September 17, 2009 2:25 PM

I believe her. The Baucus bill has been savaged on the left and the right. SO why not just give us liberals what we wanted?? Either way, we're going to be passing it all by ourselves.

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ThinkerT

September 17, 2009 2:30 PM

Look closely at what she said:

"I fully support the public option. The public option will be in the bill that passes the House,"

Note that once the bill passes the House, it goes into the conference committee, and then a joint bill from that committee is voted on by both houses. There's nothing in that statement that says the final bill will contain a public option, nor that a public option is needed in the final bill to pass; only that the initial one from the House will.

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Steve LaBonne

September 17, 2009 3:07 PM in reply to ThinkerT

Yes, that's also exactly the point on which some key members of the putative Progressive Block have also been disconcertingly wobbly. Politicians are the masters at having things both ways and Congress has many, quite deliberately created, mechanisms for enabling members to be on both sides of issues. I'm afraid I have yet to generate much optimism about the final product. I'd love to be wrong; we'll see.

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Xantar

September 17, 2009 6:29 PM in reply to ThinkerT

There's nothing in that statement that says the final bill will contain a public option

True. That's also completely out of Nancy Pelosi's hands. She can only say what's going to happen in the House, not what's going to emerge from the conference committee. It's not as if she has any power to wrangle the Senate into including a public option in its own bill.

One step at a time. If she guarantees that the House bill contains a public option, she will have done her part. What more can you ask of her?

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