By John Lyon
Arkansas News Bureau
LITTLE ROCK — Two days after giving Senate Democrats the crucial 60th vote they needed to move the health care debate forward, U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln told an audience in her home state today that the economy and agriculture, not health care, are at the top of her agenda.
“Creating jobs, putting our economy back on the right track, is my No. 1 priority,” Lincoln, D-Ark., said at a field hearing of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee, which she chairs, at the Clinton presidential library.
Without mentioning health care specifically, Lincoln said, “While there are many pressing issues facing our nation and our state, none are more important to me than fixing our economy and helping Arkansans get a good job.”
But Lincoln was not able to focus exclusively on the economy. Members of the pro-reform group Health Care for America Now! stood outside the presidential library holding signs thanking Lincoln for her vote, and in a brief meeting with reporters before the hearing Lincoln fielded eight questions, all but one of them about health care.
“Has anybody else got something about this (hearing), I hope?” Lincoln asked, then urged reporters, “Don’t forget what we’re doing today.”
Lincoln reiterated her statements over the weekend that despite voting to send the Senate’s health care bill to the Senate floor, she cannot support the bill if its current provision to create a government-run insurance option is not removed.
“I have said I don’t support a government-funded, government-run public option. I just don’t think it’s fair in these economic times to put at risk the taxpayers and the treasury.”
Lincoln was the last Senate Democrat to say she would vote Saturday to send the Senate health care bill to the Senate floor for debate.
Republicans said Lincoln’s vote was a victory for supporters of government-run health insurance.
“We’re afraid when the cow gets out of the barn it’s going to be hard to get it back in there,” Doyle Webb, chairman of the Republican Party of Arkansas, told the Arkansas News Bureau today.
Seven Republicans have said they will seek the GOP nomination to challenge Lincoln next year as she seeks re-election to a third term.
Lincoln has also faced criticism from liberal Democrats for her opposition to a public option. She dismissed criticism from both groups today.
“The political sides have been hitting me from both sides, whether it’s the left or whether it’s the right, and they going to continue to do that even after health care is long gone. My focus is doing what’s right for Arkansas,” she told reporters.
Several political blogs noted this morning that Lincoln’s Web site included the statement that options for reforming health care should include a “quality, affordable public plan” or a nonprofit plan that could accomplish the same goals as a public plan.
Spokespeople for Lincoln said later the statement, which was from an opinion piece Lincoln wrote in July, had been removed from the site.
Lincoln said in a prepared statement, “My statement in July that posed various health care options that could be used to compete with private plans, including (a) public option or nonprofit option, should not be interpreted as my endorsement of a government-run health care plan.
“In fact, during further Finance Committee deliberations in September, I determined that a robust, government-run public health care plan would expose taxpayers to too much risk in the future and I endorsed the committee’s plan to create a nonprofit option.”
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Arkansas News Bureau reporter Rob Moritz contributed to this report.
