Watch Senator Lieberman's Interview on WFSB's "Face the State"

http://www.wfsb.com/video/22334370/index.html

Great Politico Article!

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/31735.html

Dems have only themselves to blame
By: John Fortier

POLITICO
January 21, 2010

Democrats owe Joe Lieberman an apology. Not that he should expect one.

He and other Senate moderates have been reviled by the left during the health care debate. But if someone had listened more carefully to them, Democrats might already have passed health care reform and incoming GOP Sen. Scott Brown would not be driving to Washington in his pickup truck.

Moderates were always the key to getting health care reform done. For many months, the path to passing health care was clear. Democrats would have to accept most of what Sens. Lieberman (I-Conn.), Bayh, Landrieu, Lincoln, Baucus, Conrad, Carper, both Nelsons and other moderate Senate Democrats wanted. And realistically, they should have secured the votes of moderate Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, too.

Democrats had numerous chances to make a deal with moderates but continued to hold out in the belief that something more progressive might prevail.

The date that should stick in everyone’s head is Oct. 13, nearly two months before Democrat Martha Coakley won her primary in Massachusetts and when no one had even heard of Brown. Oct. 13 was the day the Senate Finance Committee voted 14-9 for a health care reform package. That vote won the support of a number of influential moderate Democrats and also Snowe. With only a small bit of tweaking, this approach might have brought on other Democratic moderates not on the committee and Collins, Snowe’s Maine colleague.

Democrats should have taken that deal and run. It would have given Democrats 80 percent of what they were looking for, and it would have been a major change of policy in a Democratic direction, at a time when health care reform still polled reasonably well.

But what followed was an endless set of negotiations to reflect more progressive concerns. Majority Leader Harry Reid’s decision to merge the Finance Committee’s bill with the more liberal Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee version fed liberal hopes for a robust public option. Even when the final Senate bill moved closer to Senate moderates’ preferences (although losing Snowe’s vote), the House, too, wanted to renegotiate the deal, to reflect its progressive priorities.

The result was three months of messy public debate within the Democratic Party.

To give President Barack Obama credit, in negotiations with congressional leaders, he has been the voice in favor of cutting a deal and accepting moderates’ wishes. He questioned Reid’s decision to fight for a more progressive bill rather than coalesce around the more moderate Finance Committee approach.

But Obama also deserves some blame. He did not put his foot down and insist on cutting a compromise deal early in the process. Nor did Speaker Nancy Pelosi or Majority Leader Reid. Whatever you think of President George W. Bush, he understood how to cut a deal. He had smaller congressional majorities but followed a formula of having the House pass a bill close to his priorities quickly and then negotiate one deal with a few key Senate moderates.

Even Democrats’ slow approach might have yielded a health care reform bill but for the fact that a special election in Massachusetts was scheduled for Jan. 19 and that the phenomenon that is Brown took advantage of the brewing discontent about health care, the economy and other issues.

The importance of his victory should not be underestimated. Even in Democratic Massachusetts, Brown tapped into voters’ worries that health care was too much change, too expensive and taking up legislative time that should have been dealing with more immediate economic problems.

Yet even after this political sea change, Democrats are still ignoring their moderate members. Many liberals continue to hold out for a more progressive approach through delaying seating Brown (not going to happen) or using reconciliation to pass a more comprehensive bill with only 51 votes in the Senate.

Even the more pragmatic president and Democratic leaders like Steny Hoyer favor the House passing the Senate’s version of health care, getting it done quickly and with a better deal than one could get with only 59 Democrats in the Senate.

But the Brown victory has shaken the political earth. What might have been acceptable ground for moderates to stand on a month ago has crumbled away.

Today, leaders will find that many moderate Democrats would rather drop health care reform altogether than be seen as shoving health care down the throats of an electorate that just sent a strong message to Washington in opposition.

Substantial health care reform is effectively dead — not because Republicans oppose it but because Democratic moderates will see the prospect of quick passage in the face of voter discontent as political suicide in the fall.

And Lieberman can say to his critics: “I told you so.”

John Fortier is a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

In Case You Missed It...

Lieberman Statement on Health Care Negotiations

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Senator Joe Lieberman (ID-CT) issued the following statement regarding the latest in Senate health care reform negotiations:

"I am encouraged that progress has been made toward passing health care reform legislation in the Senate in the very near future. As I have said all along, health care legislation must expand coverage, contain costs, reform the way health care is delivered, and impose consumer protection regulations on the health insurance industry. While I objected to some provisions that I believed would unnecessarily add to the national debt, raise taxes, or endanger the fiscal solvency of the Medicare program, there is much that is needed and worthy in the core bill that I support.

"There has been some misunderstanding about my past position on the Medicare buy-in proposal, which I would like to clarify. I have long been concerned about making health care more accessible and affordable. One idea that has been discussed for years is expanding Medicare to people younger than 65. For example, the Medicare buy-in proposal was part of the Gore/Lieberman platform in 2000, but in 2000 our nation's budget was balanced, debt levels were less than half current levels, Medicare was not on the verge of insolvency, and there was no viable proposal like the one we are debating today to provide affordable coverage to more than 30 million Americans who currently lack health insurance, including people 55 to 65.

"My comments reported by the Connecticut Post in September were related to past ideas for health care reform I have considered or supported, and were made before we had a bill for consideration on the Senate floor that contains extensive health insurance reforms, including limiting how much more insurance companies could charge individuals based on age and providing subsidies that would specifically help people between the ages of 55 and 65 to afford health insurance.

"Any inclusion of a Medicare buy-in for that same age group would be duplicative of what is already in the bill, would put the government on the hook for billions of additional dollars that are not paid for, and would potentially threaten the solvency of Medicare, which is already in a perilous state. I also had concerns that this provision would result in cost-shifting that would drive up premiums for the 180 million Americans who now have insurance.

"The process to reach agreement on a bill has often been difficult, but I sense we are now taking significant steps forward to obtain 60 votes on the Senate floor. I look forward to passing a bill that will give the American people genuine health care reform without impeding our recovery from the current recession or adding to our exploding national debt."