There are times when you have to wonder how progressive some progressives really are.

There is Rep. Lynn Woolsey, (D-CA) and co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus fundraising for Blue Dog Jane Harman (D-CA) the wealthiest member of the House who supported Bush's terrible agenda.  Woolsey is ignoring a popular progressive Democrat, Marcy Winograd, who is again challenging Harman in the upcoming election.

Then we have Darcy Burner who ran twice for representative in Washington's 8th congressional district and narrowly lost.  She is now executive director of the American Progressive Caucus Policy Foundation. 

She wrote a very good blog piece at Daily Kos about an important upcoming bill in Congress.

"Next week, there’s going to be a test in Congress. A real litmus test about whose side various Representatives and Senators are on. It’s a stunningly straightforward bill – only two pages long – that would simply remove the antitrust exemption for health insurers. It would keep insurers from being able to collude and price fix, requiring them to compete in the marketplace for business.

"Unlike nearly everything else that’s been done in the last year, this bill is completely uncompromised – no deals have been cut to water down the bill in favor of health insurance companies. It is an unambiguously populist bill, and a clean cut against corporatism. It’s building off of work that key progressives in the House, including Reps. DeFazio, Slaughter, and DeGette, have been teeing up for years.

"Yesterday, Reps. Tom Perriello and Betsy Markey, the lead sponsors of the bill, had a press conference in the snow in DC. And the insurance industry was scared enough to show up and start passing out information indicating that if they had to compete with each other and stop colluding, that would somehow result in insurance prices going up. I kid you not.

"So here’s the deal: we need to watch the bill, and see who’s on which side. And then, I think, we need to make a really big deal of it. Because this is the first unambiguous litmus test we’ve had, and it’s so straightforward that even my Republican dad will agree. Vote against this bill, and it means you’re in the pocket of the insurance companies. Very, very simple."

A progressive....and yet here is another view of Burner by Russell Mokhiber at Single Payer Action that calls into question Burner's (and others) "progressive" credentials.

It involved a speaker before the Progressive Caucus of the House of Representatives about single payer health care last June.

Mokhiber wrote:  [Nick] "Skala is a true believer in single payer — having spent four years with Physicians for a National Health Program.

"So, yes of course, he would love to speak before the Progressive Caucus to explain why single payer was the only way to control costs and cover everyone.

"And that Obama’s public option was bound to fail.

"He sent his presentation ahead of time to Bill Goold, the executive director of the Progressive Caucus, and Darcy Burner, executive director of the American Progressive Caucus Foundation.

Both were not pleased with Skala.

“ 'Bill Gould (sic) emailed me after reading my testimony and materials I was going to present to tell me that they were not acceptable and that there could be no comparison between single payer and the public option with side by side comparison,' Skala told Single Payer Action. 'Darcy Burner told me that they would construe talking about the public option  — even comparing it to single payer — as an attack on the members of the Progressive Caucus.' ”  (Bold added).

Just how progressive is that of Burner and Goold?

Mokhiber provides the answer.  

“Now, I can’t see how honest discourse about whether or not a public option will work — especially when it comes from 16,000 doctors and the majority of nurses — as an attack on anybody who supports it. We see it as telling the truth.”  (Bold added.)

"Despite Goold’s and Burner’s objections, on June 4, Skala went ahead and made his presentation to the caucus.

"And what exactly was Skala’s crime?

"He believes the public option being pushed by Obama and the Democrats will fail.

“ 'The public option preserves all the systemic deficiencies that we see in the current system,' Skala said. 'It maintains a finance system that is based on private insurance and private insurers and their drive to fight claims, issue denials, screen out the sick and make a big profit generate tremendous administrative waste — 400 billion dollars a year.'

“ 'Now the definition of insanity is to repeat what has gone on in the past and expect a different result. Yet that’s what we’re doing with the public option. And as a representative of physicians in that capacity, and certainly the relationship I have with nurses and patients, I feel it’s my duty to be honest about the best policy research, the best literature, and the best experience that we have and that all indicates that the public option is going to fail.' "