Joe Lieberman's Medicare Dodge
He once supported expanding Medicare. Now he's standing in the way of the public option.
As the Senate begins voting on health care reform legislation, Sen. Joe Lieberman, the onetime Democrat from Connecticut, has continued to play a pivotal role. He has threatened to join a GOP filibuster against the bill if it contains a public option, referring to the last-resort government-run insurance plan as "a risk we can't afford." He depicts his position as one of principle, but in reaching his current stance, Lieberman has had to run away from his own history.
In a recent column for the Hartford Courant, Lieberman cited the rising costs of Medicare to justify his opposition to expanding the government's role in health care. But in 2000, when he was Al Gore's running mate, Lieberman campaigned on a platform of offering everyone 55 and older an option to "buy-in" to Medicare. That proposal—which was a central part of the Gore-Lieberman campaign's health care plan—essentially would have created a robust public option for people aged 55 to 65.
These days, as Lieberman rails against the public option, he won't comment on whether he still favors that idea. Asked if Lieberman believes Medicare should be expanded in this fashion, a spokeswoman for the senator said in an emailed statement, "Senator Lieberman is a strong supporter of Medicare and Medicaid and supports efforts to strengthen those programs and to help the millions of Americans who rely on those programs for their health care." That was a dodge. The statement did not indicate whether or not Lieberman currently backs his Medicare expansion proposal.
Lieberman has been moving to the right for years now. After Ned Lamont, an anti-war candidate, beat Lieberman, who supported George W. Bush's Iraq War, in the Democratic Senate primary in 2006, Lieberman ran—and won—as an independent. Although he still caucuses with the Democrats, Lieberman campaigned vigorously for his friend John McCain in the 2008 presidential election.
While he was always a hawk on foreign policy, Lieberman's domestic views have become increasingly conservative—especially since the election of Barack Obama. In a few years, he's gone from being a favorite of groups like the American Public Health Association that back single-payer health care reform, or "Medicare for all," to opposing the much more limited public option. Why has he changed so much? "For Lieberman, the personal has become political," Peter Beinart suggested in the Daily Beast last month:
[Lieberman is] bitter. According to former staffers and associates, he was upset by his dismal showing in the 2004 Democratic presidential primary. And he was enraged by the tepid support he got from many party leaders in 2006, when he lost the Democratic primary to an anti-war activist and won reelection as an independent. Gradually, this personal alienation has eaten away at his liberal domestic views. His staff has grown markedly more conservative in recent years, and his closest friends in Congress are now Republicans John McCain and Lindsey Graham.
With Lieberman threatening to deep-six Obama's top legislative priority, it's hard to believe that only nine years ago he held second billing on the Democrats' national ticket. In those days he proudly championed the expansion of government-run health insurance. Now, he's the scourge of government involvement in health care. The question is, why won't he acknowledge his shift?
Comments
Easy answer- Lieberman is a
Easy answer- Lieberman is a disgusting little worm. If we had strong leadership in the senate, he'd be long gone.
Oh...and Connecticut voters are fools.
What we need is to expel
What we need is to expel LIEberman from the Senate. Immediately.
"Lieberman is a disgusting little worm..."
C'mon, whats Lieberman's agenda? It can't be just that he's a jerk, or that he's bitter and has been therefore moving to the right (because they're all bitter on the right, I guess.) Really?
Maybe you should look a bit deeper. Use your imagination.
Senator from Isreal in bed with Aetna
Lieberman is a two faced, lying bastard with no real principles to speaks of. Hope the voters from CT have seen that as well. I think Lieberman knows that he's probably going to lose the next election so he's trying to fill those coffers and set himself up for an 'elder statesman' gig. Its similar to McCain getting all that TV time despite being throughly discredited in 2008. These old idiots are what's standing between getting stuff done and gridlock.
So what will LIEberman do now?
After all, the latest Senate proposal is EXACTLY THE SAME as what he personally campaigned on in the past: a Medicare buy-in option starting at age 55.
Maybe He Grew Up?
Most Democrats start out as True Believers.....I know I did, many years ago. We believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy and Honest Politicians and Free Lunch and all sorts of wonderful things. But at a certain point, you grow up and you realize that you've been believing in a whole bunch of baloney that doesn't work and is hopelessly corrupt. Maybe Lieberman had one of those "Aha!" moments and started thinking:
1. We can't really add 300 million Americans and 7 million illegal aliens to the health care welfare rolls at NO COST.
2. If we don't end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as promised, our credibility and our coffers will be bankrupt.
3. All these bailouts aren't free. They are causing runaway inflation and thereby inflicting the largest "tax" on Americans that has ever been placed on anyone anywhere in the history of the world.
4. Maybe giving up our national sovereignty to the United Nations isn't such a good thing. Other countries might take advantage of us, you think?
5. We can't spend our way to success as a nation any more than we can do that as individuals. Debt is debt.
6. Global Warming is just a theory and now there's a clear indication it has been trumped up for political purposes.
7. Oh, no, do you suppose there's no Santa Claus?
"1. We can't really add 300
"1. We can't really add 300 million Americans and 7 million illegal aliens to the health care welfare rolls at NO COST."
Did anyone claim it wouldn't cost anything? I think, rather, that people have said that we can do this without increasing the deficit or that we can introduce cost-cutting measures which will make it possible for us to keep total healthcare costs no more than they currently are (by reducing per capita healthcare costs).
"2. If we don't end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as promised, our credibility and our coffers will be bankrupt."
I tend to agree that these will eat away at us.
"3. All these bailouts aren't free. They are causing runaway inflation and thereby inflicting the largest "tax" on Americans that has ever been placed on anyone anywhere in the history of the world."
Where are you getting this? In the long run, yes debt increases inflation, but I've not read anything statistical that shows this is imminent. Down the road it will become a concern, but short term deficit spending is necessary to stimulate public demand since private demand is very low. I would expect the debt in itself, save the inflation, is going to be a considerable tax and more so than the inflation you describe? The question is, however, if we DO NOT increase our deficit in the short term to stimulate demand, what will happen in terms of lost productivity and human suffering? You seem to ignore this cost.
"4. Maybe giving up our national sovereignty to the United Nations isn't such a good thing. Other countries might take advantage of us, you think?"
Yes, we've clearly given up our national sovereignty, save for when we attacked Afghanistan, attacked Iraq, or when we continue to launch drone strikes into Pakistan. So... how exactly have we lost our national sovereignty to the UN?
"5. We can't spend our way to success as a nation any more than we can do that as individuals. Debt is debt."
You are either being hyperbolic or simply lack an understanding of basic economic theory. Individual debt is quite different from a nation's debt. To destroy subtlety and equate them is not only incorrect, but intellectually pathetic.
"6. Global Warming is just a theory and now there's a clear indication it has been trumped up for political purposes."
Global warming is a theory in the same way that the theory of gravity or the theory of evolution are theories. They each have universal ascension in the scientific community, so simply saying global warming is a theory as if this discredits it ipso facto is naive. As for the political purposes claim, I don't think anyone would claim that global warming has not been politicized at both ends. However, scientists have been forced to politicize the process in defense from those who have done the same. You suggest it is the other way around, that scientists politicized it first. I don't see how you can conclude this, unless you believe some sort of Green-conspiracy in which "tree-huggers" have forced scientists to trump up phony data. I won't even get into how absurd such a claim is.
"7. Oh, no, do you suppose there's no Santa Claus?"
I guess I'll smirk.
maybe its the money
it could be as simple as the big checks his wife earns as a paid lobbyist of pharmaceutical companies.
or it could be that he will take any position that gets him the most attention. he's a meet-the-press-whore.
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