Liberman Twists the Knife.

[Stuart G]

Robert Sheer, Huffington Post.

Is there a more hypocritical figure in American politics than Joe Lieberman? The Connecticut senator declared Tuesday that he would support a filibuster of any health care reform bill that has a public option -- even the version with the "trigger" compromise accepted by Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe -- because it might cost money.

"I think that a lot of people may think that the public option is free," said Lieberman, one of the Senate's big spenders, in a suddenly frugal mood. "It's not. It's going to cost the taxpayers and people that have health insurance now, and if it doesn't, it's going to add terribly to our national debt."

This from a senator who, as much as anyone, helped run up the national debt since 9/11 by pushing to raise the military budget to its highest level since World War II. It is a budget inflated by enormous expenditures on high-tech weaponry irrelevant to combating terror, such as the $2-billion-a-piece submarines -- produced in his home state of Connecticut -- that he claimed were needed to combat al-Qaida, a landlocked enemy holed up in caves. Lieberman is worried about the impact of a very limited public option on the debt the same week as he and others in Congress passed a $680-billion defense bill larded with pork of the sort the Connecticut senator has always supported.

Lieberman, whose state is also home to insurance companies that are opposed to any consumer-friendly medical coverage alternative, boldly stated that his opposition to even the most limited version of a public option should not be surprising: "I think my colleagues know for a long time that I've been opposed to a government-created, government-run insurance company." Perhaps during his filibuster to prevent a vote on the public option Lieberman can square that position with his longtime support of the massive government-run insurance programs Medicare and Social Security.



Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-scheer/lieberman-twists-the-knif_b_336457.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-scheer/lieberman-twists-the-knif_b_336457.html

[liberalmike27]

1. Not that I needed convincing

But the way Liebermann is acting, has been acting, only serves to make me even more confident that I made the right choice in 2000 by voting for Nader.

I keep telling people that you need to choose a democrat that is far to the left, if you want legislation to end up in the center.

In fact, it was Gore's choice of Liebermann that sent me over the edge, to Nader. Outside of malprogrammed machines in Florida, Liebermann was probably the biggest reason Gore lost.

[riverwalker]

2. ditto

As much as I liked Gore, I could not vote for a Leiberman ticket. My Nader vote was more from revulsion of Leiberman, I've always despised him.

[mikeiddy]

3. Yeah but

had Gore won, Lieberman would have become VP (a position famously compared unfavorably to bucket of warm spit), and thereafter would not be a Senator, and thus no longer the persistent pain in our collective butts that he now is.