Lieberman spokesman Marshall Wittman attempts to explain his boss's untenable position on the public option to the Huffington Post, and gets it exactly wrong. At least twice:
Contrary to the suggestion that Senator Lieberman is a "health care spoiler," the opposite is true because Senator Lieberman is working hard to build a coalition to pass a health care reform bill. Although he does not support a public option that would be cost prohibitive and would make it very unlikely to pass a bill, he strongly supports health care reform that expands access, lowers costs and increases quality of care.
1) The public option in the new HELP bill lowered the CBO price tag from $1 trillion over 10 years to $600 billion over 10 years.
2) All 13 Democrats on the HELP committee have now said they will support the public option proposal under consideration there. There would likely be many more than 50 Democratic votes for a public option in the Senate. The only way a public option makes it "unlikely" that that bill will pass the Senate is if Senators like Mitch McConnell and Joe Lieberman decide to block the bill through a filibuster. You know... if they act like "spoilers".
Furthermore, with more and more progressive Representatives - now including Rep. Nadler (D-NY) - pledging to vote against any final bill that does not include a public option, Wittman and his boss are (intentionally, of course) getting the politics wrong too.
A public option will be a necessity for this bill's passage through this Congress, not a hindrance.
Via FDL, Rosa DeLauro becomes the first Connecticut Representative to pledge to vote against any health care bill that does not include a robust public option.
Update: Posted too soon. Apparently Rosa's staff has clarified her position, and she has been moved out of the "committed" column.
For a more detailed take on why this particular strategy is so crucial, see this post.
Ask all of the members the Connecticut delegation (including Rosa) to pledge to vote against any bill that does not contain a public option that is (1) available nationwide, (2) on day one, and (3) accountable to Congress and the voters, and report any response to the FDL whip count tool here:
There is some real progress to note on the health care bill that will be coming out of the HELP committee, currently being led by Sen. Dodd in Sen. Kennedy's continued absence.
As Sen. Dodd hinted last week, he went back to the Congressional Budget Office after their initial $1+ trillion price tag for a plan with no public option to get a plan with a public option scored. The result? With a public option now included, the cost has been cut significantly:
Democrats on a key Senate Committee outlined a revised and far less costly health care plan Wednesday night that includes a government-run insurance option and an annual fee on employers who do not offer coverage to their workers.
The plan carries a 10-year price tag of slightly over $600 billion, and would lead toward an estimated 97 percent of all Americans having coverage, according to the Congressional Budget Office, Sens. Edward M. Kennedy and Chris Dodd said in a letter to other members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. The AP obtained a copy....
"We must not settle for legislation that merely gestures at reform," the two Democrats wrote. "We must deliver on the promise of true change."
Sen. Dodd promised the MLN community last month that he would stand up for the absent Sen. Kennedy and fight for a strong public option in the HELP committee, and from all appearances he is delivering on that promise. This new CBO score should change the debate significantly.
In the meantime, there is more good news coming out of the HELP committee fight. One is the massive pressure being brought to bear against the lone holdout for the public option in that committtee, Sen. Kay Hagan (D-NC), by NC breast cancer survivors and the local and national netroots:
Kay Hagan has been the sole obstacle keeping a public plan from coming out of the Senate HELP Committee. On Friday, Pam Spaulding and breast cancer survivors of North Carolina will go to Kay Hagan's office carrying their signatures and those of the people who stand with them, asking Hagan to stand with us, too. We want to get 20,000 signatures of support for them to deliver in the next 48 hours.
We survived because we had the medical treatment that many of our sisters who died did not. As survivors we want to speak out and demand access to health care for the women whose battle is before them.
And finally, early next week, Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) will finally be sworn in. One of the Senate committee slots being reserved for him? Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. He will be replacing Sen. Whitehouse (D-RI) who has been temporarily filling his empty slot there, but will hopefully be an invaluable ally for Sen. Dodd and Sen. Kennedy as they continue their fight to get to get a strong public option out of committee.
Jed at DKosTV catches another quote from Joe Lieberman in October 2006, where he seems to have promised specific support for his version of a public option:
"I've been working on health insurance reform for more than a dozen years. ... I have offered a comprehensive program. Small business health insurance reform, plus something I call MediKids to cover all the children in America on a sliding fee basis up until the age of 25.
"MediChoice to allow anybody in our country to buy into a national insurance pool like the health insurance pool that we federal employees and Members of Congress have. Medical malpractice reform.
"It will cover 95% of those who are not covered now, and it will reduce the pressure on rising costs for all the millions of others."
"MediChoice" seems to be a Lieberman health care proposal going back to his 2004 presidential run, when he described it in a questionnaire as a public option, but one only available to certain types of workers:
"My plan will also enable all Americans who don't have access to affordable, conventional health insurance to buy into new MediChoice health insurance pools, modeled on the health care program for federal employees. The MediChoice pools will be open to all workers who currently fall through insurance cracks. This includes self-employed, part-time, seasonal and temporary workers. It also will give stay-at-home moms, early retirees over 55 and workers in small companies with less than 50 employees access to affordable health benefits."
Lieberman touted his own "public option" back when he was running in (and losing) Democratic primaries - first for President, then for Senate. But Lieberman now?
"One is I'm fearful that at a time when we're spending much too much money here in Washington, going much too deeply in debt that a public option on health care, no matter how you structure it, will end up costing the taxpayers money.
"Secondly, we don't need it. There's more than 350 companies, maybe more than that, selling health insurance. There's going to be a lot of competition for health insurance once universal health insurance comes."
"I can do more for you and your families to... get universal health insurance."
In the 2006 general election, Joe Lieberman told reporters the same thing:
Lieberman devoted a conference call with reporters to an issue that his main rival in the U.S. Senate race, Democratic nominee Ned Lamont, has highlighted in recent days.
"I have long supported the goal of universal health care," Lieberman told reporters. "Ned Lamont can talk about it. I've been doing something about it all the time I've been here.
Of course, it was all a lie, and a particularly bad one.
At the time, it was easy to see that Lieberman's election-year rhetoric on health care was just as mendacious on its face as his claim that "no one wants to end the war in Iraq more than I do", or his promise to help Barack Obama "reach to the stars", or his vow that he would help "elect a Democratic president in 2008" and that it was his primary opponent who would "frustrate and defeat our hopes of doing that".
Now, in 2009, on the cusp of a 60-seat Senate majority and at a now-or-never moment on heath care reform, Democrats have the old Joe to deal with once again:
"If we create a public option, the public is going to end up paying for it," Lieberman said following an hour-long confab with public-health experts at the Ashmun Street community center of the Monterey Homes public housing complex. "That's a cost we can't take on."...
Lieberman hopes to help do that through the work of an informal, but busy, bipartisan group he formed last year with Republican U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander....
That common ground, in Lieberman's view, has no room for the public option.
Just six months removed from being saved by political irrelevancy by Preisdent Obama, Joe Lieberman has declared that he is now working to kill Obama's health care plan.... almost exactly 15 years after he helped kill President Clinton's.
This was the scene in Washington, D.C. in July 1994, as constituents rallied at Lieberman's office against his positions on health care:
About 40 labor union members, consumer advocates and other disaffected voters attended the brief rally, aimed at convincing the state's junior senator of the depth of the country's health care problem and the need for fundamental reform.
Unions, consumer advocates, women's groups and other traditional Democratic supporters have been unhappy with the New Haven Democrat for months, saying his stance on health reform is inadequate for the problems many Americans face.
The demonstrators said they want a health care package that includes basic coverage for all Americans, paid for primarily by employers, without taxation of benefits and with stepped-up controls on cost -- the outline of a bill materializing in the House of Representatives.
..."We need to bring more attention to the lousy record Joe Lieberman has on health care to make sure people know Joe Lieberman is wrong on this issue," said Leo Canty, president of the Connecticut State Federation of Teachers
(from "LIEBERMAN'S STAND ON HEALTH CARE DRAWS PROTEST; 40 AT RALLY PROTEST FOR REFORMS," Hartford Courant (Connecticut), July 29, 1994, MATTHEW DALY)
Throughout the early to mid 1990s, he showed the same willingness to fight hard against any health care reform:
Lieberman did not support President Clinton's sweeping 1993-94 reform plan, saying it was "too big, too bureaucratic, too governmental."...
The next year, he worked with a bipartisan coalition of senators, led by Majority Leader George Mitchell, D-Maine, who made a last-minute push to pass a health care plan. It would have required all insurers to accept anyone and offer them a standard-benefits plan. Lieberman ultimately opposed the measure because of its employer mandate.
His 1994 mission to kill health care utilized the same "death by compromise" tactic he seemingly plans to use now. But even if an observer somehow missed all of the above, his aversion to health care reform extended to his presidential run. In 2003, here's how one notable Democrat reacted to a Lieberman attack on Dick Gephardt's universal health care plan:
Mr. Lieberman, in a remark in the debate that was endorsed by aides to many of Mr. Gephardt's rivals today, suggested that Mr. Gephardt's health care plan could prove an irresistible target to Republicans should he win the nomination. Mr. Lieberman lumped the plan with ''big-spending Democratic ideas of the past,'' adding, ''We can't afford them.'...
How, [opponent's aides] asked, could a Democrat who is such a staunch supporter of the war, and who questioned the practicality of an ambitious universal health care plan, survive the left-leaning electorate that dominates the Democratic nominating process?
''What he's saying to Democratic voters is, 'You may not agree with me on major issues, but voters outside our party do, so I can win -- therefore vote for me,' '' said David Axelrod, an adviser to Mr. Edwards. ''I think it's a difficult task to win a nomination like that. There is a core, a heart and soul to the party, and you have to speak to it. You don't have to make yourself unelectable to win.''
Joe Lieberman has spent his entire career killing any shot at real health care reform. There is no reason to think he will not spend the rest of 2009 making sure it dies this time too. That's why it's so crucial to whip the Connecticut House delegation as part of a strategy to make sure a robust, workable, effective public option emerges out of this legislation.
Investor and financial commentator Peter Schiff is doing polling in Connecticut to gauge support for a potential Republican Senate run. Schiff has signed on prominent Republican polling firm Wilson Research Strategies to survey the state, his brother and spokesman Andrew Schiff told CQ Politics....
"We do think there's certainly room for the fiscally conservative, libertarian wing of the party to attract a lot of attention in the Northeast," Andrew said, adding that Peter is prepared to develop a policy portfolio not just on finance and monetary policy, his speciality, but also on hot-button issue like health care and energy.
And what would that "policy portfolio" look like? How about a simple fix for health care that involves treating broken limbs like homeowners treat clogged drains? In an article posted today that is already making the rounds within the right-wing echo chamber, Schiff makes just that comparison:
...no one carries home maintenance insurance to pay for a clogged drain or broken garage door. If insurance paid for the plumber visit every time a toilet overflowed, we would now have a plumbing crisis, and Congress would be looking to reign in runaway plumbing bills with "national plumbing insurance."
Because preventing and treating life-threatening disease and ensuring more Americans remain, you know, alive, really is exactly as important as fixing a backed-up toilet.
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