Lieberman is a soulless sleaze

You can always look at the negatives, or you can seek out and support the positive things that the Democrats are doing.

I have taken to voting against the incumbent. If I have to vote for a crook than I think we should spread the wealth among many crooks.

Now Lieberman the committee chairman says he’ll oppose the health care bill if it has a public option, because that will add too much to the deficit. That makes no sense to me, since the public option is actually a vehicle to control health costs. But there you are. Connecticut is a state full of insurance companies, and maybe it should come as no surprise that he’s caving in to their concerns.

.But now he’s running around on the Sunday talk shows announcing that he’ll support a filibuster " keep the whole plan from coming up for a vote unless the public option goes. And he says he’s doing this as a matter of conscience. He wants the world to admire him for stopping the Senate from having an opportunity to vote on a health care plan the president campaigned for and a majority of the chamber supports.

If Lieberman had just said “look, this is bad for a big industry in my state and I’m going to use whatever tools I can get my hands on to stop it in its tracks” I would still be in despair, but not in my current state of door-pounding, head-banging rage.

But he wants us to admire him! As if he was risking his career to save puppies or fight unemployment!

Published: December 13, 2009
WASHINGTON " In a surprise setback for Democratic leaders, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, said on Sunday that he would vote against the health care legislation in its current form.

But on Sunday, Mr. Lieberman told the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, to scrap the idea of expanding Medicare and abandon any new government insurance plan or lose his vote

I think the evidence is overwhelming that Lieberman double-crossed Reid, Schumer and the rest of his colleagues.


The Medicare buy-in compromise was not announced until it had been cleared with Lieberman. I was in close touch with the negotiations at the time, and everyone involved thought Lieberman was on board. I don’t think they misunderstood what Lieberman was telling them, since his own public statement at the time, while cautious, was positive. “I am encouraged by the progress toward a consensus on proposals to send to the Congressional Budget Office to review,” he said on Dec. 9. "It is my understanding that at this point there is no legislative language so I look forward to analyzing the details of the plan and reviewing analysis from the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of the Actuary in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid." But of course Lieberman did not so “look forward” to the Congressional Budget Office analysis that he actually waited to see it. He dropped the hammer on the buy-in before the analysis appeared. This is not about substance. It’s about political positioning. It may also be, as some bloggers have suggested, about Lieberman’s determination to torture liberals. And you have to worry about whether Lieberman will not turn around and find some new objection to the health-care bill after he gets this concession