Freedom Line Blog

According to the Wall Street Journal, President Obama is trying to reassure his closest allies that the Public Option (government-run health care) is still on the table.  As we noted yesterday, dropping the Public Option could mean losing over 100 votes in the House.

From the story:

“The government-run plan does not have the votes to pass in the Senate, and it never has,” said Michael Mahaffey, spokesman for Sen. Mike Enzi (R., Wyo.), a Finance Committee member. “So while Sen. Enzi is pleased to see the White House backing away from its insistence on including a government-run plan, the fact is this doesn’t change the dynamic in the Senate very much.”

The President no doubt has a difficult balancing act to walk in the next few months.  The fall of the Public Option could spell the demise of his health care overhaul and even possibly other heavy-handed legislative goals like Cap-and-Tax.

Perhaps most troubling, however, is that government control could be re-branded under new names like co-op or individual mandate.  Taxpayers should still be on the lookout for whatever derivation of government control that the White House conjures in the next few weeks.