Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) said Tuesday that he’d back a GOP filibuster of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s health care reform bill.Your move, Messrs. Reid and Obama. What now?
Lieberman, who caucuses with Democrats and is positioning himself as a fiscal hawk on the issue, said he opposes any health care bill that includes a government-run insurance program — even if it includes a provision allowing states to opt out of the program, as Reid has said the Senate bill will.
"We're trying to do too much at once," Lieberman said. “To put this government-created insurance company on top of everything else is just asking for trouble for the taxpayers, for the premium payers and for the national debt. I don’t think we need it now."
Lieberman added that he’d vote against a public option plan “even with an opt-out because it still creates a whole new government entitlement program for which taxpayers will be on the line."
His comments confirmed that Reid is short of the 60 votes needed to advance the bill out of the Senate, even after Reid included the opt-out provision. Several other moderate Democrats expressed skepticism at the proposal as well, but most of the wavering Democratic senators did not go as far as Lieberman Tuesday, saying they were waiting to see the details.
Lieberman did say he's "strongly inclined" to vote to proceed to the debate, but that he’ll ultimately vote to block a floor vote on the bill if it isn’t changed first.
[UPDATE 3:10 PM] As BTD says, fine then...let's muscle the robust public option through in reconciliation.
[UPDATE 3:52 PM] Marc Ambinder thinks Joementum is bluffing. Steve Benen does not. I'm with Steve. Joementum has screwed America over, and there's frankly not a damn thing Obama will do about it.
[UPDATE 4:47 PM] As expected, Lieberman's move has freed up the Snowe Queen and the other ConservaDems to hold the Reid bill hostage collectively.
Don't you mean Connecticut? And Lieberman has no principles, he's basically letting Reid know that his vote won't come cheap. I don't argue about the asshole part, but even the tone deaf Lieberman won't dare to stop this.
ReplyDeleteAnd here TPM is agreeing with me, and reminds me that it will take 60 votes to water down the bill with a trigger if it is introduced as an opt-out. Likelyhood of THAT happening? Lieberman would have to convince 59 Senators to vote with him, or he would just stop the bill in its tracks. Time to find some sort of weak point on this guy.
ReplyDeleteI sure did. Sigh, I'm that out of sorts from this.
ReplyDeleteDamn him. He just said last week he wasn't going to filibuster this.
Well if Harry doesn't castrate himself that nice pair of balls he just grew might come in handy (in fact he has said that the threat doesn't worry him that much). Call his bluff, make him stand up as the lonely non-GOPer to stop this bill.
ReplyDeleteObama should do something. But what? We've stuck with him so far and we've gotten all the way to this point just to see this sanctimonious asshole screw us all over?
ReplyDeleteGod this is frustrating.
Anything that pisses you off must be good for America.
ReplyDelete