Democrats Continue War Against the Public Option

The good news is that Democrats might have to include some form of
student loan reform in the reconciliation bill to meet the cost-saving
requirements of their reconciliation instructions. From Politico:

The Senate parliamentarian notified
Democratic leaders that, in order to meet the reconciliation
requirements, both the Senate health and finance committees would need
to produce $1 billion in deficit savings each over the next 10 years,
Conrad said.

With health care alone, the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions
Committee would not be able to show the items within its jurisdiction
save at least $1 billion. By inserting the education package, the
committee would satisfy the reconciliation instructions, Conrad said.

If this is the case, it is great news because it means student loan
reform will be dealt with this year. That means billions to help
students and struggling community colleges hurting because of the
economic downturn. Of course, the question remains as to what kind of
student loan reform it will be. Will it be like the student-friendly
reform that already passed the House, or will it be some baloney Sallie
Mae/JPMorgan Chase-created "compromise" that would allow them to
continue ripping off billions from American taxpayers?

But the bad news is that Democrats need to add student loan reform
because Democratic leadership is now in all-out war against the public
option. If Democrats add a public option, which would save $25-110
billion and is under the jurisdiction of the HELP committee, they could
get enough cost savings from that to not need to add student loan reform.

It is unfortunate that Democrats so desperately want to protect the
private health insurance companies that they are prepared to waste an
extra $25 billion of taxpayer's money to enrich the private insurance
companies by denying the American people the public option they
overwhelmingly want. If the public option isn't included in a final
reconciliation package, thank Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Harry Reid (D-NV), who aren't whipping for the public option-they are apparently whipping against it.

This begs the question: If we were told we could not have a public
option because it does not have the votes, why would Reid need to whip
against it?