This morning, Senator Chuck Schumer declared fellow senators Harry Reid, Max Baucus, and Chris Dodd the “three horsemen” of the health care bill that finally passed the Senate on the first Christmas Eve vote since the nineteenth century.
“This is an amazing accomplishment. It would be under ordinary times. It’s even more amazing under Read More
All year, the biggest fault line in the health care debate has been the public option—a proposed government-run insurance plan that Americans without access to group coverage would be eligible to sign up for.
To liberals, it has been the reason for doing health care reform, an innovative tool that will break up private insurers’ Read More
Mention Joe Lieberman’s name to a Democratic activist these days and you’ll probably hear some variation of the question: This is what we get for letting him keep his chairmanship? It was last November, you’ll remember, that Senate Democrats opted to hand Lieberman—who had just spent nearly a year championing John McCain’s White House bid Read More
Chuck Schumer continued his exuberant cheerleading for Harry Reid yesterday, in keeping with his insistence that he doesn’t have designs on Mr. Reid’s majority leader post. On Morning Joe, he called the Senate Majority Leader “a great, great bringer-of us-together.” Then, at an afternoon news conference, Mr. Schumer called Mr. Reid “the Read More
Morning Joe may be losing its steam, but Chuck Schumer seemed well-caffeinated in a pre-dawn interview this morning, launching into long defenses of Harry Reid, health care, and Eric Holder.
The segment began with Mr. Schumer’s least favorite subject: His desire (unstated, hypothetical, overwhelmingly probably) to be majority leader of the United Read More
The rather surprising news that Harry Reid may now be ready to include a public option in the health care reform bill he will bring to the Senate floor next week has potentially huge short- and long-term political implications.
First, it would resolve the issue of whether Senate Democrats, who have exactly the 60 Read More
In the nearly five years that Harry Reid has been the Senate’s Democratic leader, public tension between him and Chuck Schumer—who serves with Reid in the leadership—has essentially been nonexistent. Until now.
At issue is the fate of the public option in the Reid-guided negotiations that are supposed to produce a unified Senate Read More
Harry Reid should be well suited to the delicate, grueling, and thoroughly thankless task of merging the health care packages passed by the Senate’s two committees of jurisdiction, a process that kicked off with the Finance Committee’s approval of a bill on Tuesday.
The majority leader enjoys the trust and respect of Read More
When three of his fellow Democrats bailed on him on Tuesday and his public option amendment was defeated by the Senate Finance Committee, Chuck Schumer nonetheless expressed optimism that the Senate will ultimately pass a reform package that includes one.
If he’s right and it does, New York’s senior senator could emerge Read More
Chuck Schumer’s public option amendment lost 13 to 10 in the Senate Finance Committee today, while Jay Rockefeller’s lost 15 to 8. The two bills are almost identical, except that Schumer’s doesn’t tie reimbursement rates to those of Medicare, which made it more palatable to two committee Democrats.
Steve Kornacki explains how this Read More
