Lemons, lemons everywhere...all to let Sen. Bingaman know we feel the Baucus bill is a lemon without the Public Option!

Lemons...60 juicy lemons...one pitcher-full that said PLEASE MAKE LEMONADE and two baskets-full all hand-signed by Santa Feans in favor of the PUBLIC OPTION NOW! ... all were delivered today to Senator Bingaman's Santa Fe office at noon by 20 volunteers from Grassroots4PublicOption!  

We want to let Sen. Bingaman know that we think the Senate Finance Committee health-care bill authored by Sen. Max Baucus, which does not include the public option, is a lemon!  We are urging Sen. Bingaman to continue his efforts to fight for the public option, and that we will not take 'no public option' for an answer. We want him to make lemonade out of these lemons.  (The lemon concept was part of a nationwide MoveOn effort, and Bingaman's office had already received quite a few lemons prior to our arrival, but nowhere near 60!!!)

Before we entered Sen. Bingaman's office, we gathered outside for approx 30 minutes, holding up a banner and signs PUBLIC OPTION NOW! and HONK IF YOU SUPPORT PUBLIC OPTION.   We also continued gathering signatures from passersby on our petition that asks for the public health-insurance option to be included in any healthcare reform passed by Congress.

Grassroots4PublicOption delivered about 850 copies of petition signatures today to Bingaman.  About half of the petitions were collected at the Sept. 13 March4Healthcare and the balance before and after the event.  The originals are being delivered to the White House by Friday.

A gracious Bingaman staffer ushered all of us into their Conference Room and spent at least 15 to 20 minutes to accept our lemons and petitions, answer our questions, assure us that Sen Bingaman supports the public option and promise that she would convey our messages to him.  She also quipped that they office staff have been checking out lemon recipes!  That got a great laugh from us.