public option

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee will be running a unique online debate on Saturday featuring all five Democratic candidates in the 5th Congressional District.

The debate, which will be held at 11 a.m. on Saturday, Aug. 10, will be run through the website OpenDebateQuestions.com, which the PCCC is debuting for this event. The public will submit questions and then vote on which questions they like. Massachusetts voters will pick the top 50 questions, and moderators will choose from those questions to ask the candidates. The candidates will participate via video from remote locations. So far, people have submitted more than 300 questions.

Democratic Senate candidate U.S. Rep. Edward Markey reached out to progressive activists around the country on Thursday, doing a 45-minute phone call with the Progressive Change Campaign Committee… [He] touted his history favoring public financing of campaigns, advocating for net neutrality, opposing the Defense of Marriage Act and supporting a public option in health insurance, and eventually a single payer system.

Adam Green talked about the work of his Progressive Change Campaign Committee, and the organization’s agenda for the 113th Congress.*He also outlined what progressives would like to see from President Obama in his second term.

Rep. Jason Altmire (D-PA)

During the debate over health care reform, Blue Dog Democrat Rep. Jason Altmire (PA) pushed against progressives, voting against one version of the health care bill because it included a wealth tax and also lead opposition to a public option.

Unfortunately, in Washington, siding with big corporations pays. Late last night, Altmire announced that he will be taking a lobbying position with Blue Cross/Blue Shield in Florida. His title will be “Senior Vice President for Public Policy, Government and Community Affairs.”

“Serving the people of Western Pennsylvania in the United States Congress has been the highest honor of my life,” said Altmire in a statement that failed to explain how moving to Florida to lobby for a health insurance company in any way honors the people he was supposed to represent in Pennsylvania.

Rep. Tom Reed (R-NY)

Some new independent expenditure disclosures just came out, and they show that a special interest group has just dumped over $200,000 on ads to re-elect Republican congressman Tom Reed (NY). Here’s a copy of the disclosures:

Mentzer Media Services, Inc.

600 Fairmount Avenue
Suite 306
Towson, Maryland 21286

Purpose of Expenditure: Television Advertising
Name of Federal Candidate supported or opposed by expenditure: Rep. Tom Reed
Office Sought: House of Representatives
State is New York in District 23
Date Expended = 09/28/2012
Person Completing Form: Ms. Melinda Hatton
Date Signed = 09/28/2012

Amount Expended = $211960.00
Calendar YTD Per Election for Office Sought = $223928.78

McCarthy Hennings Media, Inc.

1850 M Street, NW
Suite 235
Washington, DC 20036

Purpose of Expenditure: Television Production
Name of Federal Candidate supported or opposed by expenditure: Rep. Tom Reed
Office Sought: House of Representatives
State is New York in District 23
Date Expended = 09/28/2012
Person Completing Form: Ms. Melinda Hatton
Date Signed = 09/28/2012

Amount Expended = $11968.78
Calendar YTD Per Election for Office Sought = $223928.78

This huge media buy comes on behalf of the American Hospital Association’s (AHA) political action committee. AHA is not just some friendly group of hospitals that advocates for healing the sick and aiding the poor. It’s a massive lobby that represents hospitals that gouge patients and fight real reforms of the system.

In 2010, former Senator Tom Daschle — who himself has worked for the health care industry as an informal lobbyist — revealed that AHA had demanded that the White House oppose the public option in its health care reform bill. As we know now, that demand unfortunately succeeded.

Reed doesn’t just oppose the public option, he wants to repeal the entire Affordable Care Act, including patient protections that hospitals have stridently opposed.

Voters should know that these ads are simply designed to pay back a congressman …

President Obama leads Republican candidate Mitt Romney in New Hampshire, 51 percent to Romney’s 43.5 percent, according to a new poll from Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling and commissioned by the liberal-leaning Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC).

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) launched the effort after Republican Scott Brown was declared the winner of Massachusetts special Senate election to, giving the GOP its 41st vote to filibuster the healthcare overhaul.

The liberal Progressive Change Campaign Committee is launching a television ad in the Chicago area that takes White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to task over his handling of health care.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee is going up with this new spot — accompanied by an “emergency petition” — in Maine. It’s narrated by a former Obama campaign Maine staffer, who says Obama “campaigned on” the public option (it was in his policy statements, though he rarely mentioned it and generally ran from the right in the primary on health care) and that he owes it to Mainers to fight Olympia Snowe on the issue.

Several dozen former Obama campaign supporters gathered in front of the White House shortly after noon to demand that the president insist on the creation of a public option for health insurance – and threatened to work against Obama in 2012 if he doesn’t.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee will hold an event outside the White House today where former staffers of President Obama’s 2008 campaign will call on the president to sign health care reform with a public option.

Two major liberal groups launched petition drives Thursday demanding that President Obama endorse a public-insurance option as part of his drive for health-care reform.

A new ad from the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and Democracy for America, airing in modest buys in Iowa and Washington, D.C., goes after Senator Charles Grassley at some length for taking money from the insurance industry and opposing a public option.

Progressive groups are launching a new round of advertising against Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, (D-Mont.), in an effort to persuade him to support a public option.

The PCCC says that the ad will appear on CNN, MSNBC and on The Daily Show at Comedy Central. Adam Green, co-founder of the organization, asserted this morning that unlike other groups’ ads, this one isn’t “light and fluffy.”