House Democrats can’t always get what they want, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told reporters today. But if they spin it right, he said, they just might find they got what they need.
Faced with a likely public option-free health care reform bill from the Senate, Hoyer said House Democrats will vote to move the reform process forward without government-run insurance included.
Much as his colleagues in the Senate Democratic leadership did last night, Hoyer said the political reality in the Senate means Democrats have to look past things like the public option to the “guts” of the bill itself.
“[Senate Majority Leader Harry] Reid does not have the votes for a public option, obviously,” Hoyer said. “In a world of alternatives, you have to take what you can get.”
Though they may have to sacrifice the public option in order to craft a reform package acceptable to the the fickle Senate Democratic coalition, Hoyer said House Democrats still reserve the right to tinker with the carefully-crafted Senate compromise, whatever it may be.
“Just take the Senate bill? That’s not gonna happen,” Hoyer said. “There are key differences between the Senate proposal and ours and we’ll just have to work that out.”
Asked about Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), the man progressives say are responsible for killing the public option, Hoyer lamented a “psychology of consensus” he said was more often than not “a psychology of one.”
But Hoyer said Democrats should be proud of what the Senate has accomplished, even if a final reform bill doesn’t include a public option. He said the “core” of the Senate health care bill will extend health care coverage to 30 million uninsured people, which Hoyer said was a victory Reid should be commended for.
“Reid has a majority of the Senate [voting] for health insurance reform,” Hoyer said, praising the proposal’s end to preexisting condition screening and subsidies to allow more Americans to buy coverage.
