House Democrats are telling me they aren’t paying much attention to the scuttlebutt on the opt-out public option idea that we’ve been covering all day at TPMDC.
As Brian detailed earlier, when asked about it, Speaker Nancy Pelosi reaffirmed her stance the House bill will have a “robust” public option.
All day the Dems I’ve checked in with have echoed the line, but privately some House aides are saying they have tuned out that debate. They are confident their bill will put more heft behind the public option and figure whatever the Senate has to do to get something passed will happen but may not look anything like the final compromise that reaches President Obama.
They also said they are girding for a long slog, and don’t expect the ball to be in their court for quite awhile.
As for the president, nothing has changed since we reported Robert Gibbs sidestepped the question this afternoon.
White House aides are keeping quiet, ignoring questions on the topic.
