10/27/09: TWD's Agenda For The Day: Schumer Says White House Preferred Public Option Over Trigger

A lot of people are going to not believe Schumer on this story, and believe he is covering up for the White House. But does that even matter at this point? No, it doesn't

The debate over what happened behind the scenes is a big deal: It goes to the heart of who really deserves credit for the startling turn of events yesterday. The claims that the White House wanted a trigger, and tried to bigfoot Harry Reid into inserting one, infuriated liberals who saw it as Obama’s latest stiff-arming of the left-wing base.

But Schumer says that’s not so. Here’s what he told TPM about this:

“I think substantively the White House probably preferred a stronger public option than a trigger,” Schumer said. “We talked about this for a while in leadership and the White House wanted to hear our thoughts — and when they heard them they thought that this was the right strategy to get our caucus together.”

What matters now is the progress of the final Senate bill to be debated on the floor, and whether the opt-out will be even replaced itself by a non opt-out public option. That public option that will not leave it up to states to decide whether they want it or not (or want to keep it or not, which would be better in my mind) is still being pushed in the Senate by Ron Wyden.

And we haven't even mentioned the House, which hopefully will still stay at the same position it is in now when the final bill comes to the floor for the 218 vote. That same position featuring a robust non-opt out public option.