President (To Win Colorado)
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(D) Kamala Harris
(R) Donald Trump
80%
20%
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
(R) V. Archuleta
98%
2%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
(R) Marshall Dawson
95%
5%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(D) Adam Frisch
(R) Jeff Hurd
50%
50%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert
(D) Trisha Calvarese
90%
10%
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Jeff Crank
(D) River Gassen
80%
20%
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
(R) John Fabbricatore
90%
10%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) B. Pettersen
(R) Sergei Matveyuk
90%
10%
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(D) Yadira Caraveo
(R) Gabe Evans
70%↑
30%
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
February 04, 2010 09:45 PM UTC
43 Comments
they fucked it up. But hey, this post mortem dog and pony act is getting some ink.
Excellent news for his reelection prospects (and others who can get their name attached to this issue). Meaningless news for us.
As a resident of Boulder, I’m proud to see that Polis is still touting the public option, which I think is necessary to meaningful reform. Unfortunately, I think this is too little too late; the Democrats are really having a hard time with this one.
Golly, that’s about the nicest thing that Pols has every said about me! I’m flattered.
My positions have been remarkably consistent over this entire health care debate with regard to ensuring that healthcare reform has a positive impact for small businesses, keeps costs down, improves the economy, and the American people. At times this has included fighting for and against various revenue provisions based on their impact as well as consistently supporting the public option. Pols itself has acknowledged my consistency in prior posts.
My tactics are based on unabashed advocacy of my principles which are why the people of the 2nd Congressional District have given me the honor of representing them.
The public option saves $25 billion to $110 billion as scored by the CBO and is an important part of reducing the tax burden. Without the public option, the Senate will likely need to turn to more of an excise tax approach, which is currently in the Senate bill.
We are getting close to finishing a long process and I’m optimistic that we will reach the goal soon.
Jared Polis
“We are getting close to finishing a long process and I’m optimistic that we will reach the goal soon”
Do we all get ponies too ? Are all the groups and individuals that conspired to not only kill the public option but kill any meaningful healthcare reform at all going to going to lie down now ?
When will Congress part the sea ?
Just health care for all!
the conservatives “NO” to a public option merely shows where republican allegiances lie. It is not to the American people… it is to denying President Obama any sort of victory or accomplishment whatsoever. It could be any other topic under the sun or even a good idea presented by their own party. If President Obama agrees with it they will automatically Disagree.
the Public Option was never considered in the senate Bill to appease conservative republicans yet they still voted no just to be against President Obama…
It has become apparent the conservatives are pathological in their hate towards President Obama. SO ardent is this hate they will object to anything that may benefit the Populace as a whole.
Keep up the Good fight Jared! MOST of us are Behind ya.
doesn’t mean Polis is on your side.
Pay attention for a minute or two.
Translation, I did my level best to make sure that middle-class people who negotiated for their benefits would bear the cost of this reform that I so deeply believe in. As much as I claim to believe in reform I and my wealthy friends cannot personally be burdened with actually helping to pay for this reform.
Reports suggest that the only way we’re going to see healthcare reform signed into law is for the House to vote for the Senate bill as it stands and for some sort of deal for amendments to the Senate bill to be voted on via the simple-majority reconcilliation process. There is no way that the Senate is going to pass a public option through reconcilliation. Even if it is technically possible to do so there’s clearly no leadership support for a public option in the Senate. Beyond that there very well may not even be 51 votes in favor of a public option.
Why take up this Quixotic fight at this late stage? If you really care about healthcare reform push House leadership to vote on the damn bill. Instead of doing something that would be, you know, actually constructive you’ve instead decided to push a proposal that has no hopes of passing at the most critical juncture in the process. The best bill that we can hope for is literally just sitting there and waiting for the House to vote on it.
This comes across as a preening stunt and nothing more. A politican trying to buy himself a little credibility for November by drafting a letter at a time when the real fight has already passed.
This isn’t a new fight. Through the progressive caucus we helped make the public option part of the House bill in the first place, and the battle now moves on to the Senate. I sure hope that the Senate can come up with some good changes through reconciliation!
Thanks for joining the conversation Rep. Polis.
I worked on your campaign and hope you can get some piece meal reform accomplished. I agree with Fidel, there’s no way the Senate will pass a public option through reconciliation. That said we need to get some reform done…
With respect to perception, as you know because you were featured on CNN, perception speaks loudly. Every time a DEM decided to speak against parts of the health reform last fall it looked as though even the Dem’s were against the proposed reform. I truly think this played a big role in health reform getting in the rut that it did. Please chose your battles wisely as we need solutions to the economic, health care, education, national security deficit that we face.
Keep up the good fight
Good comment.
Yes, certainly House Democrats should be applauded for passing a far more progressive bill than what came out of the Senate. Your work on that is commendable.
That said there is no way in hell you’re going to get a public option through the Senate, even through reconciliation. You know that, I know that, Harry Reid knows that, Nancy Pelosi knows that, the President knows that and the Republicans know that.
So what I want to know is why, instead of working to get the House to vote on the Senate bill, you are tilting at the public option windmill? I’ll put my progressive bona fides up against yours any day Congressman and I am dumbfounded that a bill which would extend coverage to 30 million Americans is left to languish by House Democrats.
There is absolutely no way that any new bill that might arise out of negotiations with Congressional Republican’s will be better than the bill sitting in the House right now. None. The Senate bill is far from perfect but if the House does not vote for it and work out a deal for amendments through reconciliation we will not have healthcare reform for a decade, at least.
Pass the bill Congressman, the time for sanctimonious purity on the public option has passed.
so you’re trying to get into a progressive pissing match with somebody voted in by a very progressive electorate (I mean the primary voters, not the general voters). That’s cute. At any rate, the heat in your comments here reminds me exactly how hard it is to govern. I can’t imagine the ping pong match Jared deals with every day between those on the left shouting “public option or nothing!” and those on the left saying what you’re saying above.
that Polis just doesn’t represent his electorate very well.
Polis has a record of failure over a period of 12 months. The fact that he’s thinkin, and prayin, and wishin, and hopin for the public option to pass via reconciliation in the past two weeks doesn’t mean everyone who’s payin attention should forget about his record.
He had his staff members tell reporters in July that Pelosi was moving too fast on the health care bill. He personally convinced two dozen other Congresspeople to withhold support on a bill that was close to passage. So instead we had nothing accomplished before August recess, and a lot of angry morons yelling and screaming against the idea of a bill, and nothing for people to actually support. And all the momentum for health care was lost, and after that it was one retreat after another.
Although I guess the fact that teabaggers hate him and left-wingers think he’s a useless saboteur means Jared Polis must be doing everything exactly right.
ABT: Always be triangulating. It’s worked so well and accomplished so much.
c’mon, I know it obvious you hate Polis (and for the record, I’m agnostic, and I supported Will in the primary), but record of failure? As one of his constituents, I just don’t see it. Far as him personally convincing 24 other Reps to delay, that is hilariously funny. You’re giving him way too much credit, power and sway, and not enough credit to the 24 others. They go how they think their constituents want them to go, not how some frosh Rep from some backwoods state wants them to go.
But he organized a bloc of resistance with a united message that many more people listened to. Had they all made up their own minds independently, they might have all come to the same conclusion anyway. But it wouldn’t have become a press narrative.
Once it became a press narrative that even liberal Democrats don’t like the bill, it became extremely difficult for anyone to support it wholeheartedly and enthusiastically, and that continued to be true even once his pet issue was addressed.
He pulled a stunt to get what he wanted, because he thought passage of the bill was inevitable. It wasn’t. Perhaps he didn’t know that, but he deserves responsibility for it. And the fact that most people don’t know his name doesn’t mean he isn’t just as responsible for the bill’s failure as Ben Nelson.
I’m not even sure how destructive the latest thing is (I think Pols might be overstating the case here), but I wish more of his constituents were aware of what he did last summer, and how harmful it really was. He helped kill the bill.
Polis is raising a lot of money for House (and some Senate) Democrats. His influence outweighs his “frosh from some backwoods state” status.
His spot on the Democratic Policy and Steering Committee is highly influential.
his membership on the powerful House Rules Committee (he’s one of nine Democrats and four Republicans).
From my view it looks like cleaver strategy by Pelosi and team. You see Polis and progressives fighting for the public option to try to bring along progressive members i doubt they will get a public option. But they still could get a national exchange instead of a state base exchange and call it a victory and vote for the bill. Polis has expressed support already for the senate bill but he is only one member of the progressive caucus. Now you are seeing Markey and Perriello positioning to get rid of the ugly tax exemptions, a move that will likely give them cover to vote for the bill. And Pelosi will need members that voted no the 1st time around to vote yes assuming Stupak and company vote no on the senate version.
Steve you clearly don’t like Polis, that is clear. But do you have a better strategy on how you get 218 votes because one Congress person seems to be listening if you do
The public option would be great and save a bunch of money too. But, as I said when I called your office the other day, the worst result would be for nothing to pass. It broke my heart when Clinton’s plan went down in flames, and nobody wanted to deal with it for what, 17 years? Don’t break my heart again. If push comes to shove, pass the Senate bill, please.
Your constituents need to be able to get insurance even if they were sick once, They need to not have it go away if they get extra sick one year. They need to not hit a lifetime cap if they get sick for a long time.
Competition is great and so is saving money, but health care is a basic necessity that fewer people can get every year.
to the entire Congress, including Rep Polis. Perhaps instead of the Hail Mary analogy I’ll say, it’s like someone who just about fouls out of the game and misses repeated opportunities, then at the end of the game makes a three-pointer — but his team still loses by 9.
In the final analysis what matters is the final analysis: If we get meaningful health care reform that helps reduce skyrocketing health care costs and provides access to most if not all of those millions who don’t currently have access, then efforts like this one will be seen as a positive and important move. If we don’t get reform, it will not be seen as a plus.
http://coloradoindependent.com…
If Polis had let the House pass the damn bill in July, rather than threatening to sabotage the entire process over a slight increase in his personal taxes, maybe we wouldn’t have had the process dragged out to the point where it looks like health care won’t pass at all.
Good job, Congressman. Thanks for slowing down the process. Those months of debate really helped get the public behind the bill.
The House did pass the public option as part of health care reform. The House has gone much faster than the Senate, and there remains no barrier to House passage of comprehensive health care reform.
And the Dean of the Colorado Congressional delegation and Chief Deputy Whip now calling the idea of reconciliation a “gimmick” and that she wants Republicans to cooperate even if that means taking many more months.
I don’t think any of our House delegation’s contributions since the nude centerfold took Massachusetts by storm have been particularly helpful.
after your little stunt. And the fact that nothing had been accomplished helped fuel the anti-bill sentiment among right-wing nutjobs, while completely demoralizing all potential supporters. For months.
If you’d passed a bill in the House, you might have gotten supporters rallying behind some movement to pass it in the Senate. Instead the House had nothing to show, for all those months wasted by Baucus.
So thanks. Great job, thinking strategically.
Oh wait, I forgot, it’s enough that you hope and wish and pray that a good bill passes, you don’t ever have to worry about actually getting anything done.
Thanks again for serving as the Max Baucus of the House: waste time pushing for the perfect conditions everyone knows you’ll never get, while you watch actual opportunities slip away. And everyone who actually watches what you do (rather than what you say) has to wonder what your ultimate goal is: to pass a bill warts and all, or to kill the bill with kindness.
Seriously. Polis can’t say this, but I’m sure he’s thinking it so I’ll say it for him: you go try it. It’s way too easy to sit back here in the bubble and get mad at how our elected politicos are handling the millions of pressures we’re putting on them to do things. He didn’t make his political calculations the same way you would have. You can lob grenades at him, or you can go try it yourself. I’m not trying to be snide.
It’s not all that easy to keep repeating the same sorts of criticisms given that hardly anyone agrees. It’s rather frustrating.
But I would hope Polis is more mature than to think, “If I make a mistake, it must have been a mistake everyone else would make in my position.” None of this was inevitable. We’d all probably screw up in our own unique ways, and we’d probably get a lot of crap about it. Rightly so, I think.
It makes me feel bad when students complain about my class, but it’s part of the job. Things don’t always go smoothly, and all you can do is try to learn from it. If Polis just goes and pouts every time I “lob grenades” at him, he’s not doing his job correctly.
When a client is dissatisfied with my business, I take a hard look to see if it’s an anomaly or something on my end that needs retooling. Quite honestly, it’s usually me that needs to take the criticism to heart and make a change.
i was a full-time college prof for a couple of years (3/2 load) and now a consultant working with clients. In neither case do you have competing constituencies constantly coming at you (I know you love the alliteration), asking for contradictory things and screaming at you when you don’t deliver them. You guys are right about taking feedback, but that’s not what I’m talking about here, I’m talking about having to make decisions when different members of your constituency want completely different things. And don’t doubt Polis has people in his district screaming at him for voting for this thing. I don’t envy Polis for having to walk that line.
Some people think you’re moving too fast, some think you’re moving too slowly. (That’s the most obvious one.) Some people want the class to be easy so they can get an A, others really want to learn it well because they like it or because they think they need it later in life. Sometimes you even get a single student demanding contradictory things (give us less homework but make us understand better).
Aside from being very rich and very powerful, Polis isn’t all that different from the rest of us.
running a software business? That’s the analogy we’d be hearing if a certain someone wasn’t off running his software business.
you know as well as I that we’re talking about totally different stakes here. Your 100 undergrads bitching at you about your class are nowhere near the same level as a constant stream of CEO’s from your district, city managers, county commissioners, individual citizens, etc. Whole different ballgame.
Lifting an X-wing fighter is the same as lifting a rock, just a different order of magnitude.
And trying to out me is not cool. Knock it off.
You don’t have to buy anything because I’m not selling, sugar.
in spite of your doing everything you could to fuck up the passage of the House bill (and what you did is worse than what Stupak did, because at least he waited until passage was near instead of trying to delay passage for months), the House bill passed.
And yet you don’t get to claim a little gold star, because no matter what, the Senate has to be able to pass your bill as well. And the fact that House members beg and plead for Senators to throw away their established procedures really isn’t enough to make them do anything. I bet it makes you feel good though.
Lots of Democrats did everything they could to fuck up the process and kill health care. Joe Lieberman. Max Baucus. Bart Stupak. Mary Landrieu. Jared Polis. Blanche Lincoln. A bunch of right-wing douchebags who dress up as Democrats whenever an election comes around, and then there’s you.
We watched it happen; don’t try to tell us not to believe our lying eyes.
Thanks for killing health care, hope you enjoy those few extra bucks you got to keep in your pocket.
about this TOTAL FUCKING FAIL from Congress and Polis’ disengenuous behavior, and his part in this whole sack of crap.
You had YOUR chance last summer and got wrapped around the axle about keeping your millionare buddies millionares. I’m voting AGAINST your rich, arrogant ass! I’m voting for ANYONE other than a spoiled shit who thinks he can buy elected seats!
You disgust me!
you’re worse than me ! Amen though.
Wish I was represented by Polis and I have told Polis that. In fact, of ALL of our delegation only Markey, Degette, Perlmutter and Polis are working for what I’d call “everyman”.
I really hope that some redistricting occurs that puts Leadville in a different district. My representative embarrasses me.