I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
State Senator Dede Feldman, D-Albuquerque, is one of the more vocal advocates of health care reform in the New Mexico Legislature.
The North Valley lawmaker is currently attending a meeting of the National Conference of State Legislatures in Philadelphia — and taking time out of her schedule to talk up reform.
“We are not alone in our concern about high health care costs and the damage that they wreck on families,” Feldman writes to NMI in an e-mail. “Other states are suffering too and recognize that we need our federal partner to act now — not later. In spite of our many valiant efforts to expand coverage here or cut costs there. We cannot do it alone.”
In June, Feldman attended a Washington D.C. meeting hosted by the White House on health care reform with a number of other state legislators from around the nation.
On her blog, Feldman passed along the news that the National Conference of State Legislatures “endorsed several principles of national health care reform, including a public option.”
Feldman writes that New Mexico was one of “three quarters” of states to vote for the public option at the conference.
According to a press release from ProgressiveStates.org, the endorsement passed on a 38 to 11 vote.
Iowa state Senator Jack Hatch, D-Des Moines, said the reason for passing the bill was to spur Congress into action. Hatch introduced the public option amendment.
“Today, we sent a very clear message to people dragging their feet in Washington: the time to act on health reform is now, and states are not going to sit on the sidelines and watch,” Hatch said in a statement.
Meanwhile, in the U.S. Senate, the latest news is that Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., says that a health care reform bill will pass the Senate Finance Committee before senators go to recess on August 7. Previously, President Barack Obama had urged that the full Senate vote on a health care reform bill before the August recess.
Talking Points Memo notes skeptically, “The hallmark of bipartisan health care negotiations in the Senate Finance Committee has been its inability to get anything done, or offer benchmarks for progress.”
New Mexico’s senior U.S. senator, Jeff Bingaman, sits on the powerful Senate Finance Committee.
