The Bennet Letter on the public option

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http://whipcongress.com/letter-senate?source=med
by Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO), co-signed by Senators Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), and Sherrod Brown (D-OH)

These Senators showed bold leadership with this letter calling on Majority Leader Harry Reid to pass the public option through reconciliation.

Add your name as a citizen-signer.


Dear Leader Reid:

We respectfully ask that you bring for a vote before the full Senate a public health insurance option under budget reconciliation rules.

There are four fundamental reasons why we support this approach – its potential for billions of dollars in cost savings; the growing need to increase competition and lower costs for the consumer; the history of using reconciliation for significant pieces of health care legislation; and the continued public support for a public option.

More at link

[HereSince1628]

1. I'm was hoping Feingold was among them

I'd be surprised if he wasn't with them in spirit.

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2. The Bennet Letter

by Charles Lemos
http://mydd.com/2010/2/16/the-bennet-l

Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado today stood up for the American people and wrote a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid urging him to bring the public insurance option back up for a vote and to pass it via the reconciliation process which requires only 51 votes. The Bennet letter was co-signed by Senator Kristen Gillibrand of New York, Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon.

(snip)
More from Politico:

Bennet took the lead in the Senate to round up co-signers for the letter, which was spearheaded by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Democracy for America and Credo Action. A similar effort in the House netted 119 signers to a letter.

The senators have made the calculation that the public option is popular with Democrats, and the absence of one in the final bill is one reason that voters are unenthusiastic about it.

When the public option was still on the table, proponents in the Senate thought a majority of the Democratic caucus would vote it, making the inclusion of one in a bill passed through reconciliation a mathematical possibility.

The letter was spearheaded by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), Democracy for America, and Credo Action. Late today they issued a joint statement:

"This is a historic moment in the fight to give Americans the choice of a public option and senators Bennet, Gillibrand, Merkley, and Brown deserve immense praise for their leadership. Every day, it becomes increasingly clear that the best way to 'fix' the original Senate bill is to pass the highly popular public option through reconciliation. It's the populist reform that the House will need to pass both bills together and the key change Democratic and Independent voters will need in order to believe in health care reform again and show up in 2010."