Independent Senator: ‘Couple of Republicans’ could back health care reform

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By David Edwards

Published: July 2, 2009
Updated 4 months ago

An Independent Senator believes that Democrats should do all they can to steamroll through any potential Republican filibuster threatening to block a vote on fixing health care.

On MSNBC’s Countdown Wednesday night, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders told MSNBC’s David Shuster, that “in my view, what the American people want, what the polls show, is the American people overwhelmingly want a national health care program, guaranteeing health care to all people. They want to make sure that people are not going bankrupt. And they want to make sure that we do it in a cost-effective way.”

Sanders added,

My view is that it is wrong to say that it takes 60 votes in the Senate to pass a bill. It doesn‘t. It takes 60 votes, as you have just indicated, to end the Republican filibuster. Republicans are filibustering every other day on virtually every important coming down the pike. They want to do nothing.

We now, with Al Franken on board, have 60 votes in the caucus. And my view is that every one of those people in the Democratic caucus should be saying to the Republicans, sorry, you are not going to prevent health care reform; we are voting for cloture. We are voting to end your filibuster. And now we are going to go forward and pass a strong health care bill, which begins to address the very serious crises facing millions of Americans.

What I also think is that of some of the Democrats, for whatever reasons, choose not to vote for final passage, that‘s their business. I can understand that. But the key issue here is stopping the Republican filibuster. And then, if we end up with 52 or 53 votes in the Senate, to pass a strong bill, strong bill, with among other things, a public option to compete with the private insurance companies, that‘s good enough for me.

“You know, at the end of the day, if we can rally public support for a strong health care reform, piece of legislation, you may get a couple of Republicans as well,” Sanders predicted.

This video is from MSNBC’s Countdown, broadcast July 1, 2009.

Download video via RawReplay.com

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