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Go Home Calling Out Joe Lieberman

THE TREATMENT NOVEMBER 9, 2009

Calling Out Joe Lieberman

BY JONATHAN COHN

Via Think Progress, Joe Liebeman was on Fox News Sunday this weekend, making filibuster threats again.

LIEBERMAN: A public option plan is unnecessary. It has been put forward, I’m convinced, by people who really want the government to take over all of health insurance. They’ve got a right to do that; I think that would be wrong.

But worse than that, we have a problem even greater than the health insurance problems, and that is a debt -- $12 trillion today, projected to be $21 trillion in 10 years.

CHRIS WALLACE: So at this point, I take it, you’re a “no” vote in the Senate?

LIEBERMAN: If the public option plan is in there, as a matter of conscience, I will not allow this bill to come to a final vote because I believe debt can break America and send us into a recession that’s worse than the one we’re fighting our way out of today. I don’t want to do that to our children and grandchildren.

Ezra Klein would like just a little more explanation:

This has been Lieberman's standard argument for the past few weeks, but he has not, to my knowledge, explained how it works. Every analysis of the public option I've seen has concluded that it will reduce federal, and consumer, spending. Indeed, the stronger the public option is, the more it reduces the deficit. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that a public option paying Medicare's rates would save the government more than $100 billion in the first 10 years, and more after that. ...

Lieberman says he cannot support the public option because he is worried about the national debt. But the public option, in its current form, shows some hope of reducing the deficit, and has no mechanism for increasing it. Any such mechanism would need to be added later, and would be subject to the filibuster.

Lieberman isn't much of a liberal, but he's not a stupid man. I'd really like to hear his explanation for how the public option increases the deficit. Maybe he sees something I don't.

Consider me equally bewildered. There are plenty of intellectually coherent--if, in my view wrong-headed--arguments against the public option. Fiscal responsibility is not one of them.

Senator Lieberman, care to elaborate?

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13 comments

Where was Chris Wallace in this encounter? Is it too much to ask that he challenge such an easily disproved lie? Leiberman has been saying this all week and he has yet to be challenged in the moment? Why?

- WandreyCer

November 9, 2009 at 12:23pm

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Wandrey, do you really need to be reminded where Chris Wallace works?

- wildboy

November 9, 2009 at 12:29pm

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Lieberman's true motives are petty and selfish -- he is self-important and embittered -- so it is no surprise that his pretenses about fiscal concerns turn out to be bogus in more than the superficial sense of being a false cover story. We will have to hope that Harry Reid can take this blowhard down; perhaps Obama can help.

- purcellneil

November 9, 2009 at 12:40pm

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Good point wildboy. But Holy Joe has been preening all over the place, find him a camera and he's sticking his face in it spewing toxic lies (and now demagoguing the Fort Hood shooting, Joe really wants that Prick of the Year award doesn't he?). Surely someone somewhere can do minimal follow up on his dangerous nonsense? (In all fairness, Jonathon just did - bless you!)

- WandreyCer

November 9, 2009 at 1:59pm

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I hold out the hope that this is all a kabuki dance by Lieberman so he can extract whatever concessions he really wants. 15 years ago Lieberman came out strongly against the filibuster when it impacted what he wanted, strange how he never explained why he has changed his mind.

- blackton

November 9, 2009 at 2:08pm

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Wandrey, I believe the Junior Senator from Connecticut is officially Prick Emeritus in the US Senate category. Quite a feat, that.

- wildboy

November 9, 2009 at 2:14pm

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I'd say you've nailed it wildboy.

- WandreyCer

November 9, 2009 at 2:47pm

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Any chance Reid & co. threaten him with stripping him of all seniority and kicking him out of the caucus if he makes good on the threat? Show him two can play this game. I just do not understand why the keep a turncoat in their midst. I know the answer; even if he does this, nothing will happen to Holy Joe.

- tnmats

November 9, 2009 at 3:32pm

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I don't want to get in the way of the dumping on Lieberman, but at the risk of getting dumped on myself, I wouldn't totally dismiss his concerns about the deficit. “Every analysis of the public option I've seen has concluded that it will reduce federal, and consumer, spending. Indeed, the stronger the public option is, the more it reduces the deficit I may be off base here, so maybe somebody out there who is familiar with how the CBO does its analysis can shed some light, but I personally remain skeptical of any claim that a public option will reduce the deficit, guaranteed. Every financial analysis I have seen in the Corporate world (I admit I have seen none in the area of health care spending) contain numerous assumptions and variables. I’m sure in an area as complex as health care, there must be dozens of such variables. Clearly nobody can predict with 100% accuracy the outcome of any specific variable, so any fair financial model will apply probability and risk factors, run several scenarios, and produce a range of outcomes with each outcome having a percentage probability. When somebody makes the point “every analysis of the public option I’ve seen has concluded it will reduce…..spending,” I suspect they are really saying that the outcomes being presented were above an acceptable probability of at least 50%. It may even be higher, say 70%. Hell, it may even be 90% making it an almost sure thing. Again, I don’t know how the CBO or anyone else involved in this runs their financial models or what probability factors they use, but my point is simply that probable is not the same as guaranteed. And when it comes to government financial promises, my natural inclination is to lower the probability in my own mind.

- nacnud1

November 9, 2009 at 5:18pm

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Nacnud1, I'd believe that Lieberman (or any other Republican) cared about deficit reduction if for the past 8 years he (they) had acted that way. He (they) never met a tax cut that they ever disliked nor found irresponsible. They all cared not one whit when in 2000 we had a balanced/surplus budget but turned into a colossal sea of red ink of historic proportions 8 years later. This is the same Holy Joe that voted for tax cuts while cheering the start of a useless war. He has zero moral standing on anything regarding deficit reduction. His and their cries are all pure show with no care about deficit spending; this is pure politics to stick it to the Democrats and protect insurance companies who line their pockets.

- tnmats

November 9, 2009 at 5:49pm

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tnmats....I don't disagree with anything you say, and I was not defending Lieberman or any other Republican. I was simply express my own opinion and my own skepticism about the claim that a public option will reduce the deficit.

- nacnud1

November 9, 2009 at 5:57pm

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nacnud1 said: "Again, I don’t know how the CBO or anyone else involved in this runs their financial models or what probability factors they use, but my point is simply that probable is not the same as guaranteed. And when it comes to government financial promises, my natural inclination is to lower the probability in my own mind." I'm not sure this argument takes us where you wanted it to. You're of course correct that the CBO's projections are the result of a very inexact science, but inaccuracy in these matters is measured in terms of plus or minus error, not just minus. The savings, in other words, may be even more substantial than they estimate. When a substantial body of experts say Plan A (for example, health care reform without public option) is likely to be more costly than Plan B (with public option), the smart money goes with Plan B unless someone makes a convincing argument to the contrary.

- Fishpeddler

November 10, 2009 at 1:01am

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Fishpeddler - you are correct, the error factor can be in the plus direction. In the end, I hope that will be the case, but it doesn't change my skepticism.

- nacnud1

November 10, 2009 at 1:41am

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