Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) said Tuesday that she intends to vote for the Senate Finance Committee’s health care reform package. She cautioned that her vote should be seen as a sign of her faith in the process going forward, not as support for the final package that will arrive on the Senate floor.
“Is this bill all that I would want? Far from it,” said Snowe. “Is it all that it can be? No. But when history calls, history calls, and I happen to think that the consequences of inaction dictate the urgency of Congress to take every opportunity to demonstrate its capacity to solve the monumental issues of our time.”
Snowe’s statement came several hours before a scheduled committee vote.
“My vote today is my vote today. It doesn’t forecast what my vote will be tomorrow,” she said. It does keep her at the negotiating table and at the center of the debate; Snowe risked marginalizing herself if she voted no.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.