Senate health legislation “would win Sen. Roland Burris’s (D-Ill.) vote in its current form unless the public option is removed, the senator said Monday,” according to The Hill.
Burris, the single-term Illinois lawmaker who had threatened to vote against a health bill without a strong public option, said he’d support the bill on which the Senate will begin debate today, though warning colleagues to not take his vote for granted.
"It’s not a perfect bill, but it has a lot of good parts to it. It certainly carries a public option, but I’m not happy with the opt-out provision," Burris told Essence magazine’s website. "When it’s debated on the floor, I certainly would like to improve it. If we can’t improve that, since the bill has so many other favorable parts to it, then we’ll go along with that."
Senator Burris warned “that if the public option is weakened or eliminated, as some centrist Democrats and Republicans may seek in the coming weeks, he’d vote against the bill.”
(credit image – getty)
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