Liberals Threaten Revolt After Blue Dog Deal on Health Care

Hours after the Blue Dog Democrats announced a deal on a scaled-back health care reform bill Wednesday, anger among liberal members threatened to derail the bill from the left.

"There's angst, there's questions, there's anger," said Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, coming out of a hastily scheduled meeting of the Energy and Commerce Committee. The committee had been scheduled to mark up the compromise bill Wednesday at 4 p.m., but canceled the public meeting after members complained they wanted more time to review the measure before moving forward.

"We need to consider if we've given away too much," said Engel, a liberal Democrat. Engel said that without the guarantee of a fully funded public option, he no longer knew if he would support the House version of health care reform. The Blue Dog deal reportedly keeps a public option, but adds a co-op option and trims subsidies to help people pay for either one. "We're talking about dogs here; I think the tail shouldn't wag the dog," Engel said.

The House Progressive Caucus called an emergency meeting after word came of the Blue Dog agreement. The caucus sent a letter to President Obama last week, telling him that a fully funded public option is its compromise position, instead of the single-payer system it had originally wanted. The caucus also warned that any threats to the public option would be non-negotiable. "We strongly oppose any triggers or conditions that would undermine or limiting the availability of the public option," they wrote.

Progressive Caucus member Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) told the Associated Press after the Blue Dog deal: "We do not support this. I think they have no idea how many people are against this. They can't possibly be taking us seriously if they're going to bring this forward."

Although the progressives do not hold as much sway as the Blue Dogs over the business-oriented Energy and Commerce Committee, no bill can pass the House without at least some support from the ranks of their 80-plus members.

UPDATE:

Despite the clashes inside their own party, senior Democrats on the committee insisted late Wednesday night that the progressives' angry initial reaction to changes in the bill would not be the final word. "We're making progress," said Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), the committee's past chairman, as he headed home for the night.

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the chairman of the committee, acknowledged that shrinking the subsidies in the bill to appease the Blue Dogs had angered his committee's liberals. "Members were very concerned about it," he said. When asked if he had the votes to pass the bill, Waxman paused for a beat and said, "We're going to proceed in regular order," adding, "I believe it will pass."