Sometimes, doesn't it just seem like Republicans are out of touch with the American people? Yesterday, Sen. Orrin Hatch proposed an amendment focusing on ensuring that abortions are not paid for with taxpayer money. While it was voted down 13-10, the Senate Finance Committee spent precious time debating an amendment that was frankly irrelevant.

Before wasting the committee's time, Sen. Hatch would have been wise to listen to the results of a new poll conducted by the Mellman Group. In discussing the poll, group President Mark Mellman noted that Americans overwhelmingly "do not want a battle over abortion to bog down health care reform." There is a time and place to debate issues as contentious as abortion, and the SFC amendment hearings are clearly not it.

That same poll also found that 73% of those polled support some sort of meaningful reform. So it would seem that by hemming and hawing in a desperate attempt to stall meaningful health care reform, the Republicans are yet again working against the will of the American people.

Finally, the poll found that 86% of those polled favor requiring insurance companies to provide maternity care as part of basic coverage. Take that, Sen. Kyl!

We've known all along that Republicans just don't get it, but now there are even more poll numbers on our sides. Perhaps, given cold figures that can be translated into election results, the Republicans will finally understand that the people they represent really do want health care reform. And they want it now.

Congress can't seem to reach a consensus, but the American people have overwhelmingly made up their minds: we need a public health insurance option.

A new poll conducted by NBC and the Wall Street Journal [.pdf] is the latest in a series of polls to show convincing support for a choice between a private or public health insurance plan among the American people:

On the one hand, the American public overwhelmingly favors a choice between getting insurance coverage either through the private market or a government run option. Indeed, 76 percent of respondents said it was either "extremely" or "quite" important to "give people a choice of both a public plan administered by the federal government and a private plan for their health insurance." [From the Huffington Post]

The poll also showed clear majority support for key ingredients to fixing health care like shared responsibility among employers, government, and individuals to solve the health care crisis with strong protections for small businesses. In fact, every major proposal in President Obama's health care plan received strong support.

There's just one problem: many people didn't know it was the President's plan. Despite his aggressive push to pass health care reform, more than a third of all Americans still don't know enough about the President's plan for health care to know whether or not they support it. Once the pollsters described Obama's plan, people supported it overwhelmingly.

So that's where we come in. We've got to tell everyone we know that the President has proposed a strong plan to fix health care and it's moving through Congress as we speak. We're going to discuss the best way to do that tonight on a conference call with Senator Chris Dodd at 6pm EDT.

I hope you'll join us, and I hope you'll help us urge Congress to join the American people in supporting President Obama's plan to solve the health care crisis once and for all.

What do polling participants want? Pragmatic proposals that move America forward! When do they want it? Now!

The American people want our country's broken immigration system to be fixed--and they want Congress to make it happen within the year. According to new polling, public support for comprehensive immigration support remains unwavering despite the country's economic downturn.

The recent national poll from Beneson Strategy Group for America's Voice demonstrates that the solution-oriented mindset of American people in tough times is actually leading to increased support for a broad overhaul of the nation's immigration policies. While approximately 2/3 of voters (64 percent) support reform prior to being given a full explanation of key components of the legislation, when given a detailed description of a comprehensive immigration reform proposal, support for Congress to pass reform increased to nearly 9 in 10 voters.

These stunning polling figures of 1,000 likely voters throughout the country for America's Voice show strong favor for reform proposal specifics that would allow undocumented immigrants to come out of the shadows and gain citizenship if they meet certain conditions. Voters also broadly rejected proposals calling for mass-deportation of the nation's roughly 12 million undocumented immigrants, as well as tactics using enforcement-only punishment tactics.

Kos (founder of political blog Daily Kos) expresses our sentiments surrounding these poll results to a "T":

Can there possibly be a bigger win-win? The American people strongly support what is a moral and practical imperative -- to bring 12 million undocumented immigrants out of the shadows and integrate them into our society. Now all we need is our politicians to do the right thing.