Liberals Claim 51 Votes for Public Option in Senate

Three groups pushing for a public insurance option in health care reform--the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Democracy for America, and Credo Action--launched a television ad Monday going after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for not including a public option in the health care legislation being considered by the House this week.

The ad, which will run on MSNBC, CNN and a local San Francisco affiliate, begins by saying, "Speaker Pelosi says the Senate lacks the votes for the public option," and then shows Arianna Huffington rightly stating that 41 senators have signed a letter circulated by the PCCC to support a public option in health care reform under reconciliation. After ticking through images of 10 Democratic senators, the ad concludes, "The Senate has the votes."

So where do the other 10 votes come from? The ad includes video clips of nine Democratic senators offering some sort of endorsement for the concept of a public option. But at vote 51, Sen. Robert Byrd's clip shows him being wheeled into the health care vote last December and saying, "This is for Ted."

Is that really an endorsement of the public option from the West Virginia senator?

That's not the point, says Adam Green, co-founder of PCCC. "The question isn't, 'Did he commit to voting for a public option.' It's, "Would he vote against it?'" Green said. "This is his best friend Ted Kennedy's legacy. In our view it's absurd to think that Robert Byrd would be against the final vote."

Confused? Green said that his group has two parallel counts going--one asking which senators would proactively vote for a public option to be added to health care reform, which he pegs at "somewhere around 45 or so."

The second count is how many senators would vote for a bill that already includes a public option, which they want Nancy Pelosi to write into her bill. That's the one they say is at 51-ish.

Byrd has never endorsed the public option, but the PCCC believes that he will vote for the bill, no matter what. "Our point with Robert Byrd is that there is no way in Hell he votes against the final bill if it has the public option in it," Green said.

OK. So is that 50 or 51?

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), another of the 10 shown in the ad, has endorsed the idea of a public option in the past, but always with strong qualifications. In a clip Green sent over to demonstrate McCaskill's support for it, the senator sad, "yeah, probably" she would vote for a bill with a public option in it. But she added quickly, "I would never commit to vote for something I haven't seen. That's just not going to happen."

Are those assurances enough for Pelosi to risk her bill over? She doesn't seem to think so.

Video below.