Sanders To Push Public Option Amendment (Update: Reconciliation Fix Could Be In Jeopardy)

Now let's see if Senator Durbin, who signed the Benett letter in its earlier days, will tell Bernie Sanders later today to not do this.

Senator Bernie Sanders, in a brief interview in the Capitol just now, confirmed to me that he’s willing to commit to introducing an amendment that would add the public option to the Senate bill’s reconciliation fix.

Anybody still uttering the sentence of "The public option is dead" is someone that really really is an idiot or hasn't been playing attention to the growing momentum for it in the last four weeks

This is important, because as far fetched as this seems, if this amendment is introduced, a vote on it would be very hard for the Senate Dem leadership to block. The only thing that could stop it from happening, according to Senate expert Robert Dove, is for the parliamentarian to rule that it’s not germane to the Senate bill somehow — something that seems unlikely.

“I think somebody should do that, and I’d certainly be prepared to do that,” Sanders told me when I asked him if he’d be willing to commit to introducing a public option amendment. This is, in effect, a commitment to introduce the amendment if no one else does.

As Sargent said, technically, it is really in the hands of Alan Frumin to prevent Bernie Sanders from introducing this amendment. But I really don't think that would be in the best interest of him to do that, and he is too much of a veteran in this position to even get himself embroiled in such a manner.

Now the moment of truth will seemingly come down on these Democratic Senators who signed Benett's letter to back up their actions on a final vote.

Do they support the public option or not? Simple as that.

Or will Durbin, Tom Harkin, someone from the White House, or anyone else try and stop Sanders from having this amendment come to a vote?

Let's hope for the honesty of the entire process of getting the best bill that they won't be impervious and block a very meaningful action. Because if they chose to unnecessarily do so, the ramifications could really sour the entire process once again.

Update: The Reconciliation fix bill may not be going down after all. This is huge, but not in a good way at all necessarily.

The Senate GOP leadership is confirming that the parliamentarian has informed them that the Senate bill must be passed into law before any reconciliation fix is passed — lessening the likelihood that such a fix will actually happen.

“The Senate Parliamentarian’s office has informed Senate Republicans that reconciliation instructions require the measure to make changes in law,” Don Stewart, a spokesman for Mitch McConnell, emails, confirming an anonymously sourced report in Roll Call.

If this bears out, it would effectively nix one route forward that House Dems had hoped would give them a guarantee of getting the bill fixed later. The hope had been that the House could pass the Senate bill and then get the reconciliation fix done before the whole package were signed into law — a route that would have increased the pressure on the Senate to do a fix.

Now, if the GOP Senate leadership is right, that may no longer be possible. To be clear, the Senate could pass a reconciliation fix after the Senate bill becomes law. But as Ryan Grim notes, there will now be much less pressure to do so.

It looks like the House will have to pass the Senate bill, with the Cornhusker Kickback (the Louisiana Purchase was a necessary fix, with only Media Matters as usual being the only ones to highlight that important characteristic) in it if this is the case.

And it will make passing ANY health care more arduous and potentially in serious doubt.

Then again, Ryan Grim puts out how Joe Biden could do the House a big favor here if he wanted to the moment he comes back from the Middle East :

Regardless of what the parliamentarian rules, Vice President Joe Biden could overrule him.

Though I really don't expect that to happen though.