RSS FeedsLieberman Threatens To Filibuster Medicare Buy-In, As New Video Surfaces Showing Him Endorsing It
I discovered this video (courtesy of the Connecticut Post) via Digby, originating back to Greg Sargent. Hopefully, it will continue to make its way throughout the net roots. Pass it on! In the video — shot just three months ago on September 8, 2009 — Joe Lieberman explains his support for a Medicare buy-in.
The interviewer asks him, “Why do you now, in 2009, oppose a public option after for so long supporting it?” Here’s a transcript of Joe Lieberman’s response:
“I didn’t really support a public option in the way that it’s being recommended now. In other words, what’s being recommended now is a separate new government run health-insurance plan. What I supported then, and um … thanks for mentioning this, because it points out for some period of years I’ve been concerned about health care reform and devoted to doing something about health care reform, and trying to figure out how to best cover with insurance, people who are uncovered.
So what I did — and here’s the difference — my proposals um … were to ah … basically expand the existing successful public health insurance programs, Medicare and Medicaid. In the case of Medicaid, to allow people who were above the eligibility level to buy into the Medicaid system on the theory that it would be — up to a certain income level — a theory they’d be able to buy into it at less than the market rate of health insurance.
When it came to Medicare I was very focused on a group — post 50, maybe more like post 55 — people who have retired early or have unfortunately been laid off early, who lose their health insurance and they’re too young to qualify for Medicare, and what I was proposing was that they have an option to buy into Medicare early and again on the premise that that would be less expensive than the enormous cost — if you’re 55 or 60 and you’re without health insurance and you go into to try to buy it, because you’re older — although to me still young and vital — you’re rated as being; you’re rated as a risk, so you pay a lot of money.”
Here’s the actual video:
Joe Lieberman just articulated the merits of the EXACT bill that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid just put together — now being scored at the Congressional Budget Office — which includes a Medicare buy-in for those over 55.
And guess what? Just yesterday, the Huffington Post reported that Joe Lieberman told Harry Reid to his face that he would filibuster any bill that includes a public option OR a Medicare buy-in:
Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) informed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) in a face-to-face meeting on Sunday that he will vote against a health care bill that includes a public option or a provision that would expand Medicare, a Democratic Senate aide tells the Huffington Post. [...]
Lieberman punctuated the discussion by telling the majority leader directly that he will vote against the bill if the Medicare buy-in and public option provisions remain in it. Roll Call reports that Lieberman said he would also support a Republican filibuster of legislation that included these provisions.
And today, Huffington Post reports, that Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel demanded that Reid bend over for Joe Lieberman and pull the public-option and the Medicare buy-in out of the bill:
Rahm Emanuel visited Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in his Capitol office on Sunday evening and personally urged him to cut a deal with recalcitrant Sen. Joe Lieberman, two Democratic sources familiar with the situation said.
Emanuel, President Obama’s chief of staff, has long been identified as leading a faction of White House advisers who have been pushing the Senate simply to pass any health care bill, no matter how weak.
His direct message to Reid (D-Nev.), according to a source close to the negotiations: “Get it done. Just get it done.”
As if we required any evidence that Joe Lieberman was nothing, but an unprincipled, dishonest, insurance industry ‘fuck-boy’ — we now have the actual proof to be aired over and over again in his home state of Connecticut.
Senator Reid,
It’s time to give Rahm Emanuel the finger, pursue reconciliation with a Medicare Buy-In For All, AND it’s time to strip Joe Lieberman of all his committee chairs. After this video goes viral, anything short of that will make you look weak and spineless.
Obama’s Silence On Public Option Emboldens Obstructionists
Obama met with Democratic Senators yesterday at a rare Sunday Democratic caucus to give something of a ‘pep talk’ — which is how he described it to reporters — to encourage them to complete their job of passing health care reform. He didn’t take questions from the Senators, most of whom were reported as complimentary of the President’s speech.
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin told Walter Alarkon of The Hill:
“He reminded us why we’re here, he reminded us why we run for office and he reminded us how many people are counting on us to come through”
Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) said that:
Obama’s message was most effective when he was “putting into context how important [the healthcare bill] was to the economy and what this means in terms of how people judge this Congress and what happens to us.”
What was being discussed most, however, seemed to be what was missing from his speech — guidance on the hotly-contested public option — believed by many to be the most critical component of meaningful Health Care Reform.
Ryan Grimm of The Huffington Post reported that Senator Joe Lieberman — one of a few non-Republican holdouts vowing to filibuster anything resembling a public option — was virtually “beaming” about its absence from Obama’s speech:
The independent who still caucuses with Democrats wanted to point something out to the Majority Leader: Obama didn’t mention the public option.
Lieberman was beaming as he left the room and happy to re-point it out when HuffPost asked him what Obama had said about the public health insurance option, perhaps the most contentious issue still facing Democrats as they negotiate their way toward a final health care reform bill.
“Well, it was interesting to me — of course everybody hears with their own ears — that he didn’t say anything about the public option,” said Lieberman. “In other words, when he outlined how far we’ve come on the bill, he talked about the cost-containment provisions; he talked about the insurance market reforms; and he talked about enabling 30 million more people to get insurance. He said these are historic accomplishments, the most significant social legislation, or whatever you call it, in decades, so don’t lose it.”
Reid told reporters that Lieberman had approached him after the meeting to note the absence of the public option, but that folks shouldn’t read too much into Obama’s silence on the issue. “That doesn’t mean it’s not an issue, because the president didn’t talk about it,” said Reid.
What I find so unsettling about Obama’s continued silence on the public option — especially since we’re now in the 11th hour — is what it reveals about the President himself: that he doesn’t seem to really care if the final bill is a legitimate health care reform bill, or not. The public option is the ONLY THING that would reign in health care costs. Everything else being proposed (outside the public option) is just a workaround for the health insurance industry, which is why the industry has been so relentless in defeating the public option.
Obama is keenly aware of the public option’s significance to meaningful health care reform. He advocated for it in great detail as a candidate on the campaign trail, and yet as President — before the health care debate had even begun — his White House was putting it out to the press that he’d sign a health care reform bill without one. Either Obama has been compromised (i.e. has cut a backroom deal with the health insurance industry), or his only motivation all along has been to score a quick political victory at any cost; even if it produces a bill so watered down as to be ineffective in providing affordable health care to all Americans.
In my entire lifetime, I’ve never seen such an inspiring, articulate, intelligent, mobilizing candidate instantly mutate after his victory into a hyper-conciliatory-to-the-point-of-appearing-timid President. Most Presidents — rightly or wrongly — believe their election victories accord them a mandate to push through whatever promises got them elected. They aggressively take ownership of their party’s legislative agenda. When a President wins a decisive victory while his party controls both Houses in Congress, it is like a resounding mandate to run roughshod over the opposition.
And yet, here is President Obama, our ‘change agent’ — having won a decisive victory and whose party controls both Houses — gone MIA on what has been described as his biggest priority initiative — health care reform. Instead of promoting HIS priorities, and lobbying members of Congress to get on board — essentially leading — he sheepishly punts to Congress to figure it all out, offering no leadership, nor insight into what he expects to see in the bill. Which would suggest that he doesn’t really care; he just wants a bill — any bill — whether it provides meaningful health care reform, or not.
By failing to display some much-needed party leadership — i.e. by resisting to pressure Joe Lieberman and the Blue Dogs to join Democrats in achieving their most important legislative victory since FDR — Obama’s ‘pep talk’ seemed to only embolden their resolve for further obstructionism on meaningful health care reform.
Which brings me to the question: whose side are you on, Mr. President?
What Makes America Safer: Fiscal Stability, Or Chasing 100 Terrorists Around Afghanistan?
In Obama’s Afghanistan speech at West Point, he announced he would be escalating our troop levels in Afghanistan by 30,000-35,000 to ensure those who attacked us on 9-11 are resoundingly defeated. ABC News notes that Obama conveniently left out a very significant fact, when making his case:
A senior U.S. intelligence official told ABCNews.com the approximate estimate of 100 al Qaeda members left in Afghanistan reflects the conclusion of American intelligence agencies and the Defense Department. The relatively small number was part of the intelligence passed on to the White House as President Obama conducted his deliberations.
So, Obama is committing 30,000-35,000 new U.S. troops — at $1 million per soldier per year, which comes to $30-35 billion dollars in more U.S. national debt — to defeat 100 Al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan? That works out to $300-350 million per Al Qaeda operative! Has he lost his marbles?!
Al Qaeda is a loosely affiliated network with operatives all over the world: Somalia, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Germany, Britain, Spain, United States, etc. and we’re to dig ourselves into an even greater financial ditch chasing after just 100 of these operatives who may very well be somewhere beyond the Pakistani border, or possibly now in Somalia, or Saudi Arabia?
Al Qaeda can nearly claim themselves ‘victors’ in their war against the world’s last superpower. Not because of anything they did — 9-11 was mostly about inadequate airport security and a Bush Administration unwilling to read their national security memos, like the one entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” — a memo which sat on Condi Rice’s desk for one month and a week before the planes hit the twin towers.
Rather Al Qaeda is winning, because of our ineffective, money-bleeding, military occupations. We have effectively self-destructed as the world’s largest financial power. Essentially, we became so shortsighted — so determined to fix a menacing fly buzzing around our face, we reached for a twelve gauge shotgun, targeted the fly resting upon our forehead — and pulled the trigger.
American al Qaeda figure Adam Gadahn — no, I didn’t say Afghan, I said American — gloated in a recent video about how they were defeating the West:
Gadahn called on Muslims to support jihad with “men and money,” while claiming that the West was now on the verge of collapse under the strikes of the militants.
“The enemy under the leadership of the unbelieving West has began to stagger and falter, and the results of its unabated bleeding has began to show on its economy, which is on the brink of failure,” said Gadahn.
All they have to do is keep some operative alive, in some Muslim country, and America will fiscally come apart looking under every single rock until he’s found.
Is it any wonder that Americans have had enough of this lunacy? New polls show Americans are turning sharply towards isolationism:
At the very moment when President Barack Obama is looking to thrust the U.S. ever more into global affairs, from Afghanistan to climate change, the American public is turning more isolationist and unilateralist than it has at any time in decades, according to a new poll released Thursday.
The survey by the Pew Research Center found a plurality of Americans — 49 percent — think that the U.S. should “mind its own business internationally” and leave it to other countries to fend for themselves.
It was the first time in more than 40 years of polling that the ranks of Americans with isolationist sentiment outnumbered those with a more international outlook, Pew said. [...]
The shift in sentiment comes after more than eight years of war in Afghanistan and almost seven in Iraq, as well as the worst economy since the Great Depression.
Just 32 percent of the public favors increasing U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and only 46 percent say it’s likely that Afghanistan will be able to withstand the threat posed by the Taliban.
The Hill reports that a significant majority of Americans now view overseas war expenditures as a direct threat to fixing a collapsing economic system here at home:
Seventy-three percent told Gallup in its latest measure, released Friday, that they were “very” or “somewhat” fearful the White House’s newly announced troop surge would make it difficult for Congress and the president to tackle such issues as healthcare and the economy in the coming months.
By contrast, only 26 percent signaled they were not concerned the new strategy’s cost — estimated to be about $30 billion — would in any way complicate domestic policymaking.
It would be wise to remember the former U.S.S.R.’s experience in trying to militarily tame Afghanistan:
It was Moscow’s Vietnam, we have come to accept. A bloody quagmire with disastrous consequences that left a million Afghans dead and a generation of Soviet men pulverised by trauma, as had happened to their American counterparts in southeast Asia in the 1960s and 1970s. The conflict lasted 10 years and the Soviet army retreated only to see its very existence crumble a few years later with the collapse of Communism.
Mr. President, it’s time to bring our troops home, rebuild our economy and our health care system, and get our financial house in order. I’ve never felt so insecure as an American in my life, and it has absolutely nothing to do with those 100 Al Qaeda cave-dwellers in Afghanistan. Claim victory, and withdraw already.
UPDATE (Dec. 6, 2009):
Here’s a good read by Sam Stein / Huffington Post on Senator Russ Feingold’s appearance on ABC’s “This Week” with George Stephanopoulos this morning. Feingold makes a similar point:
Pakistan, in the border region near Afghanistan, is perhaps the epicenter [of global terrorism], although al Qaida is operating all over the world, in Yemen, in Somalia, in northern Africa, affiliates in Southeast Asia. Why would we build up 100,000 or more troops in parts of Afghanistan included that are not even near the border? You know, this buildup is in Helmand Province. That’s not next door to Waziristan. So I’m wondering, what exactly is this strategy, given the fact that we have seen that there is a minimal presence of Al Qaida in Afghanistan, but a significant presence in Pakistan? It just defies common sense that a huge boots on the ground presence in a place where these people are not is the right strategy. It doesn’t make any sense to me.
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