Woolsey Supports State Single-Payer Option

By David Swanson

Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey spoke to a crowd of activists from around the country at Busboys and Poets restaurant in Washington, D.C., Thursday evening at a fifth year birthday party for Progressive Democrats of America (PDA). Woolsey opened by remarking that the Out of Iraq Caucus, following the August recess, would “get on top of Afghanistan.”

We were outraged by the Iraq War, Woolsey said, but now, as war is escalated in Afghanistan “because it’s our president we act as if it’s OK. This is NOT OK! And it’s going to come back and bite him in the butt.”

Presumably the Congress that funds the wars might also be bitten, but Congresswoman Woolsey didn’t say. Instead she turned to healthcare.

She said that she had collected 57 signatures on a letter stating that they would not vote for the Blue Dogs’ version of healthcare.

Congresswoman Woolsey also brought up the amendment introduced by Congressman Dennis Kucinich and passed by the Education and Labor Committee that would allow states to create single-payer. She did not say that she would vote No on any bill that did not include it. But she did say that she would demand a floor vote on it as a stand-alone amendment if it were stripped out of the bill.

Woolsey’s home state of California, with a population approximately the same as Canada’s, has already passed single-payer bills twice and had them vetoed by the governor.

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