This morning I noted how Joe Lieberman has, once again, managed to throw a monkey wrench into the health care reform works. Lieberman had made his position well known on the public option. (Can someone be more than 100% opposed?) So, when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced a compromise, to overcome the public option opposition, that included a Medicare buy-in for folks over 55 years old, he must have felt pretty confident he had Lieberman's support. After all, Lieberman had supported a Medicare buy in in 2000 when he was Al Gore's vice presidential pick.
The Lieberman staff has been working today to stem any charges the Senator is playing politics:
A spokesman for Lieberman told CNN that the senator had, in fact, changed his view, arguing that conditions had changed in the intervening years:
“This is nine years later, and we have a huge national deficit and a program [Medicare] that analysts indicate is in dire fiscal straits in 2009," Lieberman spokesman Marshall Wittmann said. "If anyone believes that the situation has not changed, they also believe that Tiger Woods is not a controversial figure at this moment."
That might fly had there not been this interview with a Connecticut newspaper just three months ago where Lieberman, once again, supported a Medicare buy in.
Senator Lieberman seems to support health care reform just so long as it doesn't actually include reform.
(h/t The Plum Line)
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