Legal Commentary

Harry Reid Plays 11 Dimensional Chess

By Big Tent Democrat

After NYTimes story reported that anonymous Senate aides said that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was going to kill the public option when he merged the BaucusCare bill with the Senate HELP bill, Reid's office pushed back, via Greg Sargent:

A spokesman for Harry Reid is aggressively shooting down this morning’s Times report that Reid has decided not to include a public option in the bill that will ultimately be voted on by the full Senate. The Times quoted senior Senate aides — though not necessarily from Reid’s office — claiming that the health care bill he creates by merging the bills created by two key committees won’t ultimately have a public option in it.

But Reid spokesman Rodell Mollineau strongly disputed the story, saying there had been no decision and indeed that the process wouldn’t permit for a decision to have been made already. “It would be wildly speculative of me to say that has been predetermined,” Mollineau told me in an interview.

Is it ok to have doubts about Reid on this? Or should we be applauding Reid's "formlessness?"

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on September 28, 2009 (boomark / email).