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Senator Feingold released a statement today blaming the Obama administration for the loss of a public option in the health care reform bill.
Statement of U.S. Senator Russ Feingold in Support of the Senate Health Care Bill
Sunday, December 20, 2009I’ve been fighting all year for a strong public option to compete with the insurance industry and bring health care spending down. I continued that fight during recent negotiations, and I refused to sign onto a deal to drop the public option from the Senate bill. Unfortunately, the lack of support from the administration made keeping the public option in the bill an uphill struggle. Removing the public option from the Senate bill is the wrong move, and eliminates $25 billion in savings. I will be urging members of the House and Senate who draft the final bill to make sure this essential provision is included.
But while the loss of the public option is a bitter pill to swallow, on balance, the bill still delivers meaningful reform, and the cost of inaction is simply too high. This bill significantly expands coverage and helps protect Wisconsinites from high costs and insurance company abuses, such as denying or restricting coverage based on pre-existing conditions. The bill also improves a flawed Medicare formula that denies Wisconsin fair reimbursement rates, encourages the kind of low-cost, high-value care practiced in our state, increases access to home and community-based long-term care, and reduces federal budget deficits by $132 billion over the next decade.
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So what he’s really saying is, “I’m going to support this destructive, piece of crap health insurance industry giveaway, even though it’s all Obama’s fought.”
Yep, Bernie, Harkin, Joan Walsh, all of these progressives are spouting the company lines and telling us how this bill is so much better than what we have now. Joan went as far as saying that the mandate is a must in order for us to have universal health coverage. Rahm knows that although the progressives get on tv and bump their gums about what they are going to do in the end they all bow down and swallow the sausage. These same people will be used to coax us into coming out on election nite and supporting the same dems who just rolled us. Our vote is our leverage over the dems.
Exactly. “This is a piece of crap and it’s the President’s fault for caving and a lack of leadership and committment.
But me, Russ? I voted for it because????????
Hacker has also come out for the bill. There has been more than adequate cover provided now for the bill to be passed, regardless of what comes out of conference–if it goes to conference.
Russ can take a flying leap. That miserable sellout is every bit as bad as Obama. Feingold is a United States Senator. Not that you would ever know it by the way he bows and scrapes to his betters in the Executive Branch. Heaven forbid any of our useless “progressive” Senators ever exhibit a shred of independence befitting a co-equal branch. No, that wouldn’t do at all. They must be properly subservient to the President and their corporate campaign donors.
There is not a single progressive Senator in the United States Senate. Not one.
Actions speak louder than words and the actions of our so-called progressive representatives in DC are deafening.
phred speaks (the truth) for me.
Bernie Sanders too has revealed his true colors, and they make his claim to “Independent” status in Congress utterly laughable.
I hope Russ Feingold enjoyed the round of stage-managed applause from his cowering lickspittle Democratic colleagues at 1 a.m. Friday morning, when he voted to silence his conscience and help jam through full funding for more destructive war on innocent natives and intermingled foreign criminals in Iraq and Afghanistan, by voting to invoke cloture on the FY 2010 Defense Appropriations Bill. Just to prevent the possibility of anything even slowing down passage of the Democratic Party’s atrocious backroom-built health care deal.
I will repeat the mantra, until “progressive” senators are willing to walk away from a bad deal, we will keep getting bad deals from the senate. This may be overstated, because even if they held out for a pityful PO, it would be a bad bill, just not nearly so sucky as the one we’ll get from them now. The question will come up inevitably: Why do we need “progressive” senators if they can never stand for he liberal agenda? Looks like we could have got this deal if we had 60 Ben Nelsons.
Obama has not allowed us to see the White House log. Visits from all the lobbyists, Rham Emmanuel’s doctor brother, and everyone else involved in his sellout is in the log.
Freedom of information? How do we get it to expose him further, and is it doable?
This sellout is so outrageous and crass that it’s almost unbelievable.
As for Feingold and Sanders if they had any guts this would not have happened without a vote of 57, or nuclear option. Byrd? H’e ready to quit or die. Why didn’t he go out like a hero?
There is not one hero in the Senate. We’ll soon see how and who in the House cave. Black Caucus? It will be a disaster in the end but there may be an honest Representative in the House. We’ll see. Where are the African American intellectuals and progressives?
I’ve got sticker shock.
I believe the Democrats have checkmated themselves for years.
I blame Obama, too.
Had Obama been straight up about his campaign promises on HCR, we would be looking at a much better bill and one that many liberals could support. He would have given the progressive senators the cover they needed to timidly vote for something good, while not exposing to the country that they are actually liberals. So, I agree, Obama is a pathetic loser in this whole process as well.
I blame them all. The difference here is that Feingold is the 60th vote and rather than use that vote to take a stand he is walking away from it. The same could be said for Sanders or really any of the so-called liberal Senators. As usual they all had the courage of their lack of conviction.
i blame hcan too.
Although I put the primary blame for the health care fiasco on the Obama administration, surely Sen. Feingold and other progressives and liberals deserve some of the onus as well.
I’ve been a huge supporter of Feingold on almost everything in the past; he’s really excellent on constitutional rights and on foreign policy.
But Russ fell down on the job with this (as did Al Franken, Bernie Sanders, Sen. Brown etc.). Howard Dean called it right: the bad in the bill outweighs the good. I’m afraid that Russ, who is up for relection next year, will vote for this pig gussied up to look like reform because he wants to stay on the right side of the party leaders who hand out finances. That’s understandable, but in a way, one expected more from him especially he ran his first campaign in the Senate on virtually no money.
I think Russ is also miscalculating the mood of the country (as is almost every Democrat). Anyone who votes for this bill will be pillaried for it and be in a much worse electoral position come 2010. This bill will be hugely unpopular and signing on to it will be the death warrant for countless Democrats.
Russ: you got this one wrong, really wrong.
I agree. It kills me that Russ is walking the plank.
The fact that there has been no real debate about freakin mandates is truly outrageous. Obama really has done nothing to explain or justify this to the American people. Lewis Black has a riff: The only thing worse than a Republican or a Democrat is the two working together. Here’s a really bad idea. Great, I’ll make it even crappier. Unfortunately for us, the Democrats don’t need the Republicans anymore as they can make it even crappier all by themselves. Just look at this monstrosity. Mandates? Mandates? Guess what, millions of people are going to be turned into criminals. Do they not know that? How could they not know that? When that comes to pass, every single senator voting for this bill and every senior member of this administration will be revealed as full bore morons who are not only completely out of touch with ordinary Americans, but are total ciphers when it comes to understanding human nature. Congratulations, Mr. President, you are sending drug company stocks to a 50 year high and increasing the number of criminals in the country by millions. And anybody who votes for this is not a progressive. Time to strip Feingold of his progressive title. Can’t be an idiot and a progressive both.
Same ol’ same ol’ where you make sure you have something for both sides. He voted for it so he wouldn’t have to risk the wrath of those who like it while complaining about it being someone else’s fault so as not to risk the wrath of those who hate it. As long as he saves his own skin, it’s all good. But I much prefer people who stand up for what’s right. If you don’t know which vote is right, tell leadership you need time and filibuster if you have to to get it and think it through. How can anyone respect just doing it and then not even taking responsibility for that decision? I didn’t watch the whole thing go down, but I’m doubting there were any guns to his head. Vote either your conscience or the will of your constituents and then own it!
Well said- -this is exactly the moment with Feingold and Sanders and who else….. a few of them at least would put it on the line and say we won’t vote for this insurance boondoggle. I usually respect Feingold, we need his leadership and courage now, not blaming and walking away…. If they would stop it and force a re-appraisal it would give the progressives more time to get the message out. The fast timeline only helps Obama/Rahm corporation.
These so-called Progressives better not be coming around asking me for money.
I blame Ralph Nader. If he hadn’t taken votes away from Gore, the Democratic Party would be an even stronger advocate for health care reform. Oh, wait…
Very funny.
It seems Obama got exactly what he and Rahm wanted and promised months ago.
There’s nothing quite like Senate arrogance. As far as they’re concerned, they don’t need no stinkin House conferences.
What a pussy.
He can take another crack at the PO by writing a “resolution of the Senate” and getting it passed with 60 votes to call for the conference committee (I assume there will be one) to include a PO in the final product. If it passes we get the PO. If it fails we can point fingers at who is to blame.
Those two mentions in his statement of benefits specifically to those in Wisconsin rather than all Americans look suspiciously like a Ben Nelson deal. Anyone found Feingold’s bribe in the bill or elsewhere, yet?
Obama is turning into the hole in the donut. With his lame attempts to appease and mollify the right and all of the loonies who’d run him down without looking back and his wimpy avoidance of anything remotely progressive (public option/ don’t ask don’t tell for starters) he’s proving them right. When they call him soft and challenge his leadership he kow tows when he oughtta be throwing at their heads. Am growing weary of the act.
When the Democrats lose in 2010, ObamaRahma will govern from where they are more comfortable; as conservative neo liberals aka business liberals aka Third Way Rubinites. They will be happy. People like Feingold will get what they can for their states and hope to fool their constituents one more time.
We are all Bolivians Now