Putting Pressure on the Senate

Rep. Anthony Weiner, Congressman from New York on HuffingtonPost.com: This is the beginning of the end.

After a year of debate, we finally passed the Senate health care bill - along with a package of important improvements - in the House of Representatives.

We made historic progress, but this fight isn't over. Now we must put pressure on the Senate to take up every single one of our improvements to their bill.

I know that, even with the fixes, this bill was not close to what many of us wanted. We didn't get a chance to include a public option, even though I still believe it could have carried a majority in the Senate.

But I also believe that we could not afford to pass up this opportunity. The current bill will ensure that 32 million people without health insurance gain coverage. It will save $1.2 trillion. It will end the worst insurance company abuses. And it will create jobs at a time when we desperately need them.

This was not the best bill that we could have passed, but I am proud of what we achieved in the face of a Republican opposition that relied on the worst kind of lies and millions of dollars of insurance industry money poured through the halls of Congress.

We made historic progress, but this fight isn't over. Now we must put pressure on the Senate to take up every single one of our improvements to their bill.

We know that Republicans and insurance companies will descend to the lowest levels of deliberate misinformation to block progress. Last night was a big defeat for the GOP obstruction machine, but we still have work to do, and I'm counting on you to help keep pressure on the Senate.

Click here to sign my petition to tell the Senate to line up the final bill with the House's version.