By now most if not all of you have heard that Jello Jay Rockefeller has said there is no way he can vote for the Baucus Gift to the Ins. Companies. I wish I had a dime for every time the Sen. has said he could "never" vote for a Bill, Law, or Amendment.
Here is what was said in a call with Reporters today by the Sen. thanks to http://thinkprogress.org/...
The way it is right now, now we have an amendment process coming up next week. I’ll have many, many, many amendments and we will see what happens on that. But now, there is no way that I can vote for the Senate package. For a lot of reasons. Obviously the lack of a public option is one of them. So that I want to be very clear about.
I'm not the only with misgivings about Rockefeller. Jonathan Cohn over at The New Republic has more of the details on what was said.
Rockefeller cited four main concerns: The lack of a public insurance option, changes to Medicaid, changes to the State Children's Health Insurance Program, and overall affordability provisions. He did caution that he reserved the right to change judgments once the final bill comes out, although it's unlikely that bill will look much different than what Baucus has already released. http://www.tnr.com/...
Ever the one to keep a out in his pocket, we can tell Jay has not changed. There is a couple things that might make Jay push harder than ever before. Since Kennedy has passed Jay is being described as having a reason to commit, at least at the TNR.
No living senator has done as much to promote health reform as he has. It's the cause of his life and, for the first time, the goal is within reach. He admitted that voting against a package, even a flawed one, was difficult to imagine.
There is another one of those damn outs we have come to know and hate so much. Anyone else feel like they have been here before ? To top off Jays statement we have another one from Mitch McConnell and swings the other way according to Steve Benen over at his blog Political Animal where he says,
This afternoon, shortly after Baucus said there's a "very good chance" he'd get bipartisan support for his proposal, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Baucus' plan still isn't conservative enough to get GOP votes.
As if any HCR Bill would be deadly conservative enough.Of course we have still have our milquetoast leader, Harry Reid, that won't do anything unless at least one Republican vote gets him to 60. Sometimes it really is too bad Specter or Lieberman claim to be Democrats.