An estimated crowd of 475 files out of Stamford High School to hold a candle light vigil outside of Sen. Joseph Lieberman's Strawberry Hill Ave. apartment building in Stamford, Conn. on Sunday, Nov. 15, 2009 urging to withdraw his opposition to the public option in the health care reform bill. The event was held by the Interfaith Fellowship for Universal Health Care. Photo: Chris Preovolos / Stamford Advocate
This has to send a potent message to Lieberman. The symbolism is simply stunning. Rabbis protesting outside Joe Lieberman's home in Stamford? Dan Malloy? Who thought they'd ever see this happening?
STAMFORD -- Quietly holding candles, hundreds of clergymen, congregants and reform advocates lined the sidewalks outside Independent U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman's Stamford home Sunday night in a show of support for universal health care.
"When we heard not only would he vote against it, but he'd use his power, his position as a swing vote ... to block it from coming to a vote, we had to send a message so he knows people who vote overwhelmingly favor the public option," said Rabbi Stephen Fuchs, of Congregation Beth Israel in West Hartford.
...
The vigil began at Stamford High School, Lieberman's alma mater, and ended at the senator's home, the Hayes House, across the street.
"In some sense, it's poetic," said Stamford Mayor Dannel Malloy, who attended the vigil. "The place where Sen. Joseph Lieberman received his high school education, the place he visited upon his announcement to seek the vice presidency, a place where his run for the presidency began -- and it just so happens, a place across the street from where he lives."
The following Resolution was approved and adopted unanimously by the Wilton Democratic Town Committee:
Resolution Urging Senator Joseph Lieberman to Drop Filibuster Threat
and Support U.S. Senate Vote on Health Care Reform with Public Insurance Plan Option
WHEREAS Senator Joseph Lieberman has threatened to filibuster health reform legislation in the United States Senate, and to block a vote on a bill including a public insurance plan option
Lieberman also says wants a probe of the Ft Hood "Terrorist attack", jumping to conclusions as ever. Lieberman said evidence indicates that Major Nidal Malik Hasan was probably a "self-radicalized, homegrown terrorist."
LIEBERMAN: A public option plan is unnecessary. It has been put forward, I'm convinced, by people who really want the government to take over all of health insurance. They've got a right to do that; I think that would be wrong.
But worse than that, we have a problem even greater than the health insurance problems, and that is a debt - $12 trillion today, projected to be $21 trillion in 10 years.
WALLACE: So at this point, I take it, you're a "no" vote in the Senate?
LIEBERMAN: If the public option plan is in there, as a matter of conscience, I will not allow this bill to come to a final vote because I believe debt can break America and send us into a recession that's worse than the one we're fighting our way out of today. I don't want to do that to our children and grandchildren.
h/t Heather at Video Cafe for the video and transcript.
Maddow: What do you think those consequences will be though? One of the things that we have to think about is what happens in Washington, whether or not the Democrats and the Senate allow him to keep his chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee-there's also the question of whether he faces political consequences at home. He seems to be planning to run again.
Lamont: I believe-I probably wouldn't know-I'd be the last person in Connecticut to know whether he's going to run again but I can tell you this; there's an awful lot of folks here who are looking forward to the opportunity of challenging Sen. Lieberman. You know during our race a few years ago he said nobody wants to have a Democrat elected president as much as I do. He supported health care reform. Nobody wanted to get the troops home more than he did. Three years is a long time. I think there are a number of folks, independent, moderates, Republicans and Democrats who are disappointed where the words aren't matching the action and are looking for a change.
Maddow: Why do you think he doesn't just become a Republican?
Lamont: I think he's been a Democrat for an awful long time, but I think tactically he's probably looking at his options right now. I've got to believe when you walk away from health care reform, when you deny your fellow Senators the right to vote on health care reform, that seems to be somebody that knows he was elected in 2006 with overwhelming Republican support. I think that's his base.
In an appearance on Face the State just two weeks ago, Sen. Dodd answered a question about Sen. Lieberman by stressing how hard he worked for Lieberman in the 2006 primary, how he thought Lieberman was the best candidate for Democrats in 2006, how he made an "impassioned plea" to keep him in the party in late 2008/early 2009, how he anticipates that Sen. Lieberman will remain a Democrat in 2012, and how that "would help" him earn Dodd's support in the 2012 campaign:
Q: Let's talk about your friend Senator Joe Lieberman, who has unequivocally endorsed you for re-election this year. Does he have to be a Democrat in order for you to support him in his next re-election bid? If he's an independent, will you support him over the Democrat?
DODD: It would help if he'd stay a Democrat. And I suspect he will. I made an impassioned plea on his behalf at the Democratic caucus in January, in opposition to several in the caucus who took a different point of view. But I've known Joe for 40 years. He had a position that was not unlike other Democrats on the Iraq war. And unfortunately, as you know, I campaigned hard for him in that primary, and believed he would have been our strongest candidate. And Joe wanted to be back in that caucus. There were several of us that spoke on his behalf. He's very much a member of that caucus, and I suspect he'll stay such.
Q: So if he says, that I'm going to run as an Independent, will you support him against a Democrat?
DODD: Well, I'm anticipating he's going to stay a Democrat.
Yesterday, of course, Sen. Dodd received his usual thank-you note.
But Lieberman's fellow Connecticut senator, Democrat Chris Dodd, who faces a tough reelection fight in 2010, dismissed the idea that Lieberman would incur any retribution.
"No, no, no. People are going to be all over the place," he said when asked if Lieberman should be punished. "The idea that people are going to be reprimanded because somehow they have a different point of view than someone else is ridiculous. That isn't going to happen."
In fairness, this forgiving attitude towards his junior colleague been a consistent stance of Sen. Dodd's for almost three years now. Unfortunately, it has been a consistently wrong-headed and almost unfathomably misguided one, which, despite Sen. Dodd's crucial work on multiple policy fronts these days, continually calls into question his personal and political judgment in a very serious way.
Update: This was the official statement from Sen. Dodd yesterday on Lieberman's filibuster threat:
"Joe and I disagree on the public option," said Dodd. "I and many others support a strong public option because it will save money, and it will introduce more choice and competition into an industry that badly needs both. And I'm optimistic Joe will join us."
"Joe and I are good friends," Dodd told me, "and there's a difference on this and that's certainly his right to express it.... I'm disappointed we're not in agreement on this, but that happens from time to time on issues."
He did acknowledge the consensus on the public option: "I believe it brings down costs, I think it's going to save money as well," Dodd said. "And so I'm still hopeful that before we complete this process there'll be a lot more support for the public option, possibly even a good colleague and friend from Connecticut."
Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), one of a handful of Senate wild cards in this fall's healthcare reform debate, says his concern about the Senate bill is based on the national deficit - not the insurers that dominate his state.
....
"Insurers aren't my biggest concern - I sued them once when I was attorney general, and I'm not afraid to end anti-trust exemptions," Lieberman said. "I am really worried about what this could do to the deficit.
...
One unlikely ally of Lieberman's is state GOP Chairman Chris Healy, who said he agrees with the senator's skepticism about the bill and that he sees few faults in Lieberman's support for home-state interests.
"What we have a lot of here in Connecticut is people in the pharmaceutical industry, biotech and physicians," Healy said. "They're the ones who can figure this out, not the government. Joe Lieberman, even though he's very liberal sometimes, understands that.
"I don't think the industry is going to have their feelings hurt if he's not waving pom-poms. They just don't want Congress to nationalize the management of risk. While I criticize him a lot, to me he's making the most sense out of all the Democrats on this."
Adding to speculation that he may be planning to retire at the end of his term in 2012, Sen. Lieberman has filed his October report with the FEC and reported raising only $4,100 in the third quarter (PDF). Lieberman now has $1.31 million cash on hand, down from $1.41 million at the end of Q2, continuing a downward trend in his bank account since the closing days of the 2006 campaign. He had raised over $70,000 in each of the previous two quarters of 2009.
Lieberman also seems to have secured his standing in the Democratic caucus until at least 2010 with a $50,000 payment to the DSCC on September 29th and a $4,000 payment to Harry Reid's campaign on September 25th. Seems like a decent rate for a committee chairmanship.
One of Joe Lieberman's unhappy constituents acts out:
It wasn't Halloween but just sheer disdain for a well known senator that led a Connecticut man to dress up in ninja gear and go on a warpath.
Garland Eastman, 30, of Vernon was charged Sunday with breach of peace after he allegedly waved nunchucks on the corner of Route 83 and Regan Road and threatened to beat up U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman. ...
Authorities brought Eastman to Rockville General Hospital for a psychiatric evaluation, where he was later released.
Mike Stark caught up with Sen. Lieberman in Washington D.C. yesterday and asked him if he would consider joining a Republican-led filibuster to deny an up-or-down vote on the public option and health care reform:
But now you're standing against a public option. Will you join with the Republicans in filibustering if it comes to that?
"I'm not sure. But I haven't changed. People around me have changed. I haven't decided that yet."
Depending on the calcium levels in the spines of Senate Democrats on whatever particular day the decision is made, this could be a very costly position for Sen. Lieberman to take.
Rachel Maddow reported on MSNBC last night that there may be movement in the Senate to strip gavels from any Democratic committee chairs who would support a Republican filibuster and deny an up-or-down vote on health care:
We can report exclusively tonight, that two major power brokers on the left have told MSNBC that they are encouraging a Senate strategy now, in which the leadership would revoke chairmanships and other leadership positions from any Democrat who sides with a Republican filibuster to block a vote on health reform...
Regardless of how individual senators would vote ultimately on the bill, committee chairmen or subcommittee chairmen who allowed Republicans to force a 60-vote requirement for passing health care... under this type of strategy would be in danger of losing their chairmanships.
The Progressive Change Campaign Committee has also gone up with a petition demanding that Senate Democratic committee chairs who do not vote to allow an up-or-down vote on health care be removed from their positions. It has 6,700 14,900 signatures so far, and they are now aiming for 10,00020,000 before delivering to Harry Reid.
As Jon K. notes below, if there's one thing Sen. Lieberman values in his professional life, it is his precious chairman's gavel - to be used, of course, only in political attacks against Democratic administrations, and never to investigate silly inconsequential events like Iraq or Katrina.
If Sen. Lieberman supports a Republican filibuster, as he seems fully prepared to do, that gavel may now now imperiled.
According to Daniela Altimari at the Hartford Courant, who picked up on similar sentiment in a Politico article about fundraising for Democratic Senators up for re-election in 2012, Joe Lieberman's $1.4 million cash-on-hand is a sign that he is "quietly amassing his own fortune for an election that's still 37 months away."
However, the quarterly FEC reports filed by Sen. Lieberman since the 2006 general election reveal something entirely different, and seem to point to different intentions for a Senator who remains continually unpopular and is increasingly politically boxed in.
Lieberman's current warchest was actually almost entirely amassed during the closing days of the 2006 campaign, when the since-revoked "millionaire's amendment" allowed him to raise cash from right-wing sources in 5-digit chunks. According to FEC reports, Lieberman used his predicament to his full advantage, raising an astonishing $3,368,680 between the dates of October 19th and November 27th, 2006 alone, and ended that period with $2.55 million cash on hand.
But since then, it's been all downhill:
At the end of 2006, he had $2.24 million cash on hand.
At the end of 2007, he had $2.08 million cash on hand.
At the end of 2008, he had $1.81 million cash on hand.
And his most recent FEC filing shows a total of just $1.41 million cash on hand.
Possibly more telling about Lieberman's future plans has been the lack of any effort to raise any money whatsoever since November 2006. In the last two quarters, he has raised $73k and $70k respectively, paltry sums for an incumbent.
But even those numbers pale in comparison to his efforts throughout 2007 and 2008, when, perhaps preoccupied with helping out his good friend John McCain (and with the almost certainly assured promise of a cabinet position should McCain have won), he raised an average of just $2,400 per quarter:
Sure, it is still 3+ years out from Election Day 2012. But these numbers certainly do not reinforce any notions that Lieberman is actually considering the "all sorts of options" he claims to be looking at for his dubious route to re-election.
If anything, they raise the opposite question of whether Senator Lieberman is trying to coast by on numbers that at a cursory glance might protect him from lame duck whispers, all the while seriously contemplating whether to call it a career and take the easy way out.
Yes, Ned Lamont may be the most important name in 2009 politics. Right now, it may be a more important name than Barack Obama. Let me explain.
The fight for health care reform comes closer than it has ever been before, and the Republican party continues to demonstrate that no compromise, not even tort reform, will draw a single Republican vote. At this point, the last thing standing between us and a strong health care bill is conservative or moderate Democrats. The progressive blogosphere has drawn a line in the sand. And I am reminded of 2006, and the Lieberman vs Lamont primary. I am reminded that when progressives draw a line in the sand on the most important issues to voters, they will follow through on holding politicians accountable.
Anytime I receive a colored brochure with Senator Lieberman's picture emblazoned on it, I get curious. Especially when there are flags, stars, and scientific-doctor people helping, hand-holding and doing happy, hospital kind of things emblazened next to our Senator.
Did you know that Biotech Research Can Create New Cures and New Jobs for Americans?
"Joe's gotta go!" union members yelled at a rally on the Green during Thursday's lunch break....
Olsen said he plans to "pray" for Lieberman to change his position. He called health are reform an overriding "moral" issue, not just a "labor" issue."
He called it "a crucial time" for Lieberman ... "How can you say to someone you can wait about life or death? What if it was his mother who passed? What if it was his child that says, 'You have to wait and can't have health care now'? Joe has to reach down into his heart. This is a moral issue."
So was endorsing Lieberman's reelection a mistake?
He said he has no regrets; he prefers to "look forward," not "back."
Yes, who could have possibly predicted that, 15 years after Joe Lieberman last helped kill health care legislation proposed by a new Democratic president, he might try to do so again?
Apparently not Olsen, who seems just as shocked in 2009 as he was in 1994, with a similar refrain from his members ringing in his ears:
"Hey! Hey! Ho! Ho! Lieberman's health care plan has got to go!" they chanted.
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....
The rally was organized by the Connecticut State AFL-CIO, which represents about 200,000 people. Union President John W. Olsen, who spoke at a brief gathering after the rally outside the First Church of Christ, said the demonstration was intended to counter the heavy lobbying Lieberman and other lawmakers have received from the health and insurance industries....
(from "LIEBERMAN'S STAND ON HEALTH CARE DRAWS PROTEST; 40 AT RALLY PROTEST FOR REFORMS," Hartford Courant (Connecticut), July 29, 1994, MATTHEW DALY)
Regressive Senator Joe Lieberman sat down last week with the Connecticut Post for a long interview and online question session. Among the first questions was about his supposed change in support for a public option from 2004 when he ran an ill-fated campaign for President. Liberman explained that his proposal then was nothing like what is being proposed by others now. And that is true. It's certainly easier to call your plan something it isn't when you're running for the highest office in the land.
Lieberman was also mocked for his support of the Iraq invasion and subsequent occupation which will end up costing taxpayers north of a trillion dollars (more in real dollars than the Vietnam war, inflation adjusted) yet won't support meaningful health care reform. You can watch the full length video at the CT Post site. Apparently that was Donald Rumsfeld's fault...
STAMFORD -- U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman made it clear Wednesday that he would not vote for a health care bill that included a government-run option, but said that without it, he and most of Congress would support comprehensive health care reform.
Discussion on health care dominated an informal question-and-answer session with the fourth-term Connecticut senator, who spoke to the editors of The Advocate and Connecticut Post and answered e-mailed questions from readers.
If the public option "is off the table, we have the opportunity to achieve significant reform with bipartisan support," Lieberman said during the nearly two-hour meeting Wednesday afternoon.
Lieberman was on CNN's State of the Union this morning, spouting his usual quackery. This time it was calling the Senate Finance Committee efforts to draft a bipartisan bill "the great hope now."
"Morally every one of us would like to cover every American with health insurance, but that's where you spend most of the trillion-plus dollars, said the Independent from Connecticut, who caucuses with the Democrats. "I'm afraid we've got to think about putting a lot of that off until the economy's out of recession."
"I think it's a real mistake to try to jam through the total health insurance reform--health care reform plan that the public is either opposed to or of very passionate mixed minds about. It's just not good for the system-frankly, it won't be good for the Obama presidency....There are other fights to fight," Lieberman said on "State of the Union," listing climate change, regulatory reform, and the war in Afghanistan.
"Great changes in our country often have come in steps....let's focus now on how to reduce costs," Lieberman said, adding that the six members of the Finance Committee - three Democrats and three Republicans - "agree on about three-quarters of what needs to get done."
Staying true to his comments from yesterday, Joe Lieberman is now officially working to block health care reform in this Congress.
Today, Lieberman joined Ben Nelson and 4 other Senators in a letter sent to Senate leadership asking for a delay in the process - once again spitting in his good friend Chris Dodd's face, a mere 48 hours after Dodd's HELP bill with a public option was voted out of committee.
A bipartisan group of centrist and conservative senators sent a letter to the Democratic and Republican leaders on Friday urging delay in consideration of health care reform.
The letter, obtained by the Huffington Post, was drafted by Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and is also signed by Democratic Reps. Mary Landrieu (La.) and Ron Wyden (Ore.). Independent Joe Lieberman (Conn.), who caucuses with Democrats, signed on, as did Maine Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins -- moderates heavily courted by President Obama.
The organized effort to slow down the process is a blow to the reform effort. Obama has pushed hard for a final vote before the August recess, arguing that delaying until September could slow momentum and risk missing a historic opportunity.
Never mind that Joe Lieberman has had more than 15 years to think about how to get health care reform done since the last time he helped kill it. He still needs "additional time."
"I believe a lot of Democrats who had previously voted for President Reagan and President Bush voted for President Clinton because they really felt he was a different kind of Democrat," said Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, who is a vice-chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council....
"In the first four months of the Government, there has been some disappointment both on a policy ground and a personnel ground," Mr. Lieberman said....
The Democratic moderates point to a long list of signals they feel send a message of overwhelming liberalism to voters: a budget that favors raising taxes over cutting spending; a Cabinet dominated by liberal Washington insiders; a fondness for ambitious and expensive programs like the proposal to overhaul health care...
-- "'New Democrats' Say Clinton Has Veered Left and Left Them," By Michael Kelly, New York Times, Sunday, May 23, 1993
After months of posturing, Congress is trying to come to grips with health care reform. But with only about two weeks left before the July 4 recess, the Clinton administration and supporters of universal health care in Congress must move quickly. Although the search for consensus is going badly, it must not fail....
Conservative Democrats, such as Connecticut's Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, are becoming equivocating artists. Mr. Lieberman is not being helpful to the case of health care by saying reform may not pass this fall.
Pinning down Connecticut's Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman on health care is like trying to hold quicksilver in your hands.
Mr. Lieberman has said he is not fully behind President Clinton's proposal or Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell's alternative or any of the bills that have come from various Senate committees. He's said little about what he is for....
Mr. Lieberman acknowledges that he has studied the health care issue for months if not years and has had briefings from all sides. By now, he should have a clear position.
-- "Sen. Lieberman, Please Stand Up," Editorial, Hartford Courant, August 10, 1994
Mr. Lieberman has also attracted support as a result of his strong stance against the President's health-care plan. According to the National Library on Money and Politics, a nonpartisan research group in Washington advocating campaign financing reform, he garnered $128,400 from health and insurance political action committees in 1993, the eighth highest total in the Senate.
-- "6 Years After Squeaker, Lieberman's Star Rises," By Jonathan Rabinovitz, New York Times, Tuesday, November 8, 1994
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.
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.
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