Burris: Switch not a flip flop
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| Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (center) of Nevada, accompanied by Senate Democrats, speaks Wednesday during a health care news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington. In the front row are Sen. Patty Murray (from left), D-Wash.; Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich.; Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.; Reid; Senate Finance Committee Chairman Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont.; Sen. Roland Burris, D-Ill.; and Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md. (AP photo) |
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CHICAGO – Sen. Roland Burris made a solemn vow last fall: He would never vote for an overhaul of the nation’s health insurance system unless the bill included a strong public option.
“That position will not change,” he told an Associated Press reporter at the time.
At last, Burris – serving under a cloud after his appointment by disgraced former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, his opinions barely registering with fellow senators – could not be ignored. Democratic leaders needed every vote in their caucus to pass a bill over a wall of Republican opposition.
And last week the Senate finally did just that, with no government-run health insurance to serve as a public option for those seeking low-cost coverage, and with Burris’ vote.
A flip flop? Not so, says Burris.
“There’s no change, there’s no flip flop,” Burris told The Associated Press. “We don’t want to get caught up in language.”
He pointed to a news conference Nov. 2 at Chicago’s Stroger Hospital when he repeated his vow to vote against legislation that failed to include “a strong public option.”
“At that press conference, I spelled out what I meant by a public option,” he said. “A whole lot of definitions were being thrown around. I said there must be competition for the insurance companies, there must be cost containment, and there must be accountability.”
Once Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., finished fashioning the final version of the bill, leaders and administration officials stepped Burris through the provisions. It was a sales job that had to succeed or the bill would not get the 60 votes it needed.
And Burris said he began to see the light. He said it became clear to him that the bill would accomplish the same goals he wanted from the public option.
As examples, he pointed to restrictions on premiums in some cases and national insurance exchanges that would be set up to enable consumers to find the cheapest policy.
Burris is not the only lawmaker won over after previously demanding a public option. But his early stance drew notice because of the perception that he would have nothing to lose by defying Democratic leaders and President Obama.
After all, Burris had announced he would not run for his Senate seat. And he’d never received a warm welcome from fellow senators after Blagojevich, already facing federal corruption charges, appointed Burris last December to fill the remaining two years of Obama’s term.
Senate leaders at first tried to prevent him from being seated. They later swore him in grudgingly but launched an ethics committee investigation.
Some Illinoisans say they never placed much credence in Burris’s threat to vote no on the health care bill.
“I always thought of it as bluster, myself,” said Chicago political consultant Don Rose. With Democrats needing all 60 votes in their caucus to pass the bill, it was no time for Burris to play the role of a lone-wolf naysayer, Rose added.
“There’s nobody in the Senate bizarre enough to carry through with that,” Rose said. “He didn’t want to be the guy who sank health care for another generation. How is he going to live with that?”
Before the week was out, Burris was on the Senate floor reciting a poem about the health care bill patterned after “The Night Before Christmas.”
“Twas the night before Christmas and all through the Senate,” Burris began, “The right was stalling the health care bill no matter what was in it.”
Meanwhile, Illinois Republicans were asking whether Burris’s change of heart got anything in the way of a special sweetener for his home state.
“I’d be interested in knowing if anybody horse-traded him anything for his vote,” Illinois Republican Chairman Pat Brady said.
Burris spokesman Jim O’Connor says no.
“There is no quid pro quo,” O’Connor said. “He cast this vote because he believed that it was the right policy.”
Advocates of a public option don’t appear to hold any grudges – some say Burris did a good job by dramatizing the issue and campaigning for better health care for more people.
“The Senate bill isn’t as strong as we’d like but we know Sen. Burris has worked hard to improve it,” said James Meerdink, an organizer with Health Care for America Now, a coalition of unions and other groups.
“He put himself out there,” Meerdink said. “And we think he did stick up for people.”
