Lindsey Graham: The Public Option Is Dead

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Appearing on FOX News Sunday this morning, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) declared that a health reform bill in the House “is dead” and that “we should just throw it in the garbage can.”

Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) agreed, sort of, saying that the House health care bill is “not gonna pass.”

Graham also pronounced that “the public option is dead.”

“It’s probably been dead a long time because the public is very afraid,” the GOP Senator said.

When FOX’s Chris Wallace asked Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) whether the public option was indeed dead, she said “I don’t know,” and suggested instead that “the public option in some ways has become a distraction.”

Over on ABC, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) said on This Week with George Stephanopoulos that “I’m going to keep fighting” for the public option.

And what of a more moderate trigger option of the sort supported by Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME)? “A phony baloney idea,” Graham said.

Well then. Sounds like there’s plenty of room for a bipartisan agreement on health reform.

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