A second high-profile Senator has slammed the “trigger” idea favored by Sen. Olympia Snowe and, according to published reports, the White House, saying that a bill without a real public option would have a hard time picking up his support. Appearing on Face The Nation, Sen. Russ Feingold joined Sen. Jay Rockefeller in opposing the trigger idea, calling it “an invitation to the insurance industry” to keep themselves in line for a couple years, only to find new ways to abuse the system thereafter. Feingold praised Sen. Harry Reid for moving toward putting a public option in the bill that would come to the Senate floor, and dismissed the suggestion by host Bob Schieffer that it would move the bill too far to the left, saying that liberals favor a single-payer solution and this represents a compromise. Faced with the question of whether he could vote for a reform bill that did not include the public option, Feingold said the following:

SCHIEFFER: But could you yourself vote for health care reform that did not include the public option if it came to that?

FEINGOLD: To me that would be a very serious gap and it would be a very strong reason not to support it. We need a public option. We need something that would cause some control over the abuses that have occurred in the insurance industry.

SCHIEFFER: Would we be better off with anything if it did not include a public option?

FEINGOLD: I, at this point I think we need to do something fundamental. When people start talking about having a trigger, that we might have a public option in two or three years, to me, that’s just an invitation to the insurance industry to manipulate the situation for a couple of years just so they can avoid the trigger, and so they can convince members of Congress to delay it again. We need to do something now. These costs are overwhelming people. The current system is actually a system of rationing through the insurance industry. We need to take action now.

Given the trajectory of the debate, with anonymous sources charging the White House with wanting to preserve the bipartisan nature of reform by including the trigger, Feingold’s trashing of that idea takes on more significance. With the 60-vote hurdle to break a Republican filibuster being demanded, it would only take two or three Democratic Senators (if Susan Collins can somehow be persuaded to join Snowe in support of a public option-less bill) opposing the bill from the left to block passage. Feingold is the kind of iconoclast who would be a likely candidate in that regard.

…video courtesy CBS:


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