Yesterday in an interview with TPMDC, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) said that a public option is still the “most important thing” to him in the health care debate, and he wants progressives to keep speaking out:
“The White House should not take progressives for granted,” an animated Brown told me. “It’s not just the conservatives he needs to be in the fold. It’s the progressives who’ve been in the vineyards fighting for reform for years.”
“The most important thing is the public option,” Brown said. “I don’t know for sure if I would support it with out a public option but it would be hard to get there…. We’re not going through this to write some namby pamby bill so we can check a box and say we did health care reform.“
In the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) yesterday said that any bill “without a strong public option will not pass the House.”
Update
In less than a day, more than 200 former Obama staffers, 13,000 Obama volunteers, and 23,000 Obama donors have signed a Progressive Change Committee petition saying that a bill without a public option “would not be change we can believe in.”
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