Throughout this long sausage making process on health care, if there's one group I've been most suspicious of, it's the Senate Finance Committee.
Meeting in secret, its members have had very little encouraging to say in public (short of Max Baucus's recent baby steps due to massive grassroots pressure - good job, everyone).
Given that record, this is the last diary in the world I thought I'd ever be writing. But I have to admit, this is big news:
Senator Kerry, from a Massachussetts town hall last night:
told a wry story about the death of the co-ops--that the Republicans had lost their taste for them when they found out the Democrats had backdoored the public option into them.
While Kerry is not a member of the gang of six, his presence on the Senate Finance Committee and his description of what happened to co-ops is really big news if you follow the implications.
What it suggests is that Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee who were for a co-op were only doing so to sneak in a public option and still get Republican votes. There is no other plausible interpretation of Kerry's words.
I remain skeptical about the Senate Finance Committee until they come up with a final bill, I still think they're the most frustrating and problematic committee involved in this process, and I especially don't trust the big insurance donations that make up a considerable share of these Senators' campaign contributions. However, Kerry's statement throws a bit of a monkey wrench into the certainty of my conclusions, and offers a reason for a bit of hope in an area of this process in which, frankly, I thought there was very little. Maybe the seemingly reluctant red-state Democratic Senators HAVE realized all along that they're absolutely cooked in 2010 if they have any part in killing the public option, no matter if they have as much money as Romney or Perot from getting insurance company donations, because money can't get you elected if everyone hates you.
I read Kerry's words again to see if I am reading into them too much, but I can find no other plausible explanation. He reportedly spent much of that town hall meeting talking about his support for the public option and why it was a good idea, even though he did not draw a line in the sand for it, so it seems unlikely he would be trying to deceive public option supporters by saying this. However, let say that he would - what logical purpose would this particular deception serve; if the finance committee lays a turd and is ultimately blamed later for the passage of a crappy bill, Kerry's statement here would do nothing to protect a Baucus or Conrad from the ire of the Democratic base. Nothing. The only other option: is it possible Kerry is being naive, and is assuming his fellow Democrats were using co-ops as a trojan horse for the public option when they weren't? It just seems hard to believe that's plausible either, given his time in the Senate and knowledge of policy.
We all have to redouble our efforts to push the Senate, the House, and the White House for a robust public option with the price-negotiating power of Medicare and NO triggers, and I will only believe the good intentions of any Democrat in Congress when I see their results, but I thought this glimmer of hope from the unlikeliest places would be a nice bit of encouragement as we go.
UPDATE: By request, I have removed "breaking" from the title and also added a question mark, since there is no direct quote from Senator Kerry. However, all indications remain that the diarist being sourced here IS credible, and I believe the information is nonetheless newsworthy and has the ring of truth to it; I would not have posted this otherwise.
UPDATE x2: A comment from the diarist who was at the town hall with Senator Kerry:
I'll try to remember the exact quote
He said the Dems changed the language so that the co-ops were in essence the same as the public option, and the Republicans didn't like that and changed their mind against the co-ops.