VIDEO: Watch Lieberman Endorse Medicare Buy-In Three Months Ago
Here’s some video of Joe Lieberman only three months ago appearing to endorse the Medicare buy-in idea — in seeming contradiction of his decision to bail on the Senate deal.
Lieberman discussed the Medicare buy-in a meeting with the Connecticut Post in September, according to an article in the paper at the time, as TPM noted today. But the article only paraphrased Lieberman.
I asked the paper to send over the video, and it’s worth watching, because it gives you Lieberman’s actual quotes — which seem at odds with the Lieberman camp’s claim today that he has real problems with the approach:
In the vid, Lieberman appeared to go further than the current Senate deal, which would expand Medicare to those aged 55-64, saying he supported the idea of expanding it to people aged 50 and over. Lieberman referenced his proposal along these lines during the 2006 campaign, and added:
“My proposals were to basically expand the existing successful public health insurance programs Medicare and Medicaid…
“When it came to Medicare I was very focused on a group — post 50, maybe more like post 55. People who have retired early, or unfortunately have been laid off early, who lose their health insurance and they’re too young to qualify for Medicare.
“What I was proposing was that they have an option to buy into Medicare early and again on the premise that that would be less expensive than the enormous cost. If you’re 55 or 60 and you’re without health insurance and you go in to try to buy it, because you’re older … you’re rated as a risk so you pay a lot of money.”
It’s not entirely clear that Lieberman was offering a full-throated current endorsement of the proposal, but his tone is clearly positive and approving. It’s yet another sign, as if you needed one, that Lieberman’s current opposition to the Senate proposal doesn’t appear to have any roots in a genuine policy disagreement.
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mike from A
We cannot stifle the voices, both supporting the Pres and his accomplishments nor the ones questioning them. I agree with Liam, the polls are premature, and you guys are listening too much to a few complainers that actually say they’ll sit the next election out, I have my doubts. All sorts of things can happen between now and then.
Suppose Sarah runs in 2012, I guarantee that will get the Dem vote out. If the economy turns north a little more, we pass something decent in HCR and financial reform, the naysayers won’t have so much to complain about and I think there will be some interesting Congressional races in 2010 to keep everyone interested.
By the same token, don’t expect all of us to be in love with everything Obama does, I personally think he could have done better, but what do I know. Sure as hell doesn’t mean I want to turn governing back over to the Party of No or the Tea Party.
And remember it’s threats from progressives that push forward the democratic agenda, doesn’t mean we’re all a bunch of idiots and don’t recognize what an alternative universe would be like.
Here’s the thing. If Congress could get the insurance pool with a strong public option available to everyone to Obama’s desk he would sign it.
Unfortunately, there’s reality. And what we’re witnessing is the ugliest examples of it. Congressmen doing the work of the industries, etc. What stinks about reality is you have to deal with it. That means cutting deals and hopefully improving the legislation down the road.
Yeah, it sucks. But loosing faith in this administration and Congress and bashing them at every opportunity rather than looking at what has and is about to be achieved I would think is very counter productive.
So, push for legislation. Good. Bash the admin and Dems as failures, not good.
Make your case as to why certain legislation is better. Good. Throwing in the towel because you aren’t getting 100% of what you want, bad.
OK. I gotta scadadle for now. Cheers all!
Wise up guys,Joe(moron)Lieberman is doing this for one of three reasons O.K.(1) He hates Obama (2)He is going to retire (3)He plans to run as the Republican He is become.
Why do you people even still bother with sbj?
Liebermann, like all the other Republicans, is a hypocritical buffoon. With dizzying speed he now opposes what he supported ten minutes ago. He is simply whoring for the insurance and pharma lobbies, so consistency matters not a whit to Joe. He will oppose ANY efforts at reform because it threatens the his paymasters’ rapacious ways of extorting profits from the American public.
Liebermann’s only guiding principle is to maintain the cash flow from the healthcare lobbies into his campaign coffers. To that end he will do, say, eat, or kiss anything that will keep the floodgates of tainted corporate money wide open.
When the insurance and pharma industries say “jump!”, Joe says, “how high?”
swinford. Holy joe couldn’t win in Conn as a repiglican. He is toast in terms of the senate so watch for corporate joe, health insurance lobbyist or employee.
Who is buying his vote? One guess only! Awwww come on, it’s not hard…..
I take a long view of history, and pay great heed to the long term trends.
As most of you are probably aware, I am an unapologetic liberal, always have been, and always will be. That said; I am fully aware of the history of this country for the past forty years, and it is clearly a right of center nation.
from the 1968 presidential election through the 2004 election, this has been a Republican country. First exception was, when Gerald Ford was on the ticket. This was a guy who had never won anything except a congressional district. He was appointed VP, and then appointed President. Therefore he really was not an incumbent, or some one who had to fight to win his party’s nomination. Further more the country was pissed off at him for the Nixon pardon, so they defaulted to the guy from Georgia, who ran as a saint who would never lie to them.
It only took America one term to get back to their right of center norm, and elect Republican Presidents for the next three terms.
Bill Clinton broke up the Republican winning streak, but he would not have done so, if Ross Perot had not pulled so many right wing votes away from Bush One.
There you have it: out of ten presidential terms, the Democrats won three of them, and all three of them were flukes.
I have always viewed this President’s election as one of those lucky flukes. The economic collapse and John McCain’s bizarre wigging out about it, pushed states into the Obama column that would never have done so otherwise. Before the Financial meltdown was made public, McCain was actually leading in the polls.
I do not see Indiana, Ohio, etc going for Obama again. Those were States who were reacting to the Republican Economic Disaster.
They will revert to their norm in 2012.
Therefore, I have always looked at this as probably being a one term opportunity for Democrats to enact as much progressive legislation as they possibly can.
I wish they would run up large deficits, in order to help out as many struggling working class people as possible. I want them to pass massive spending bills on education, health care, and renewable clean energy.
I want them to get it all done, with very large deficit spending, so that when the Republicans return to the White House, most likely in 2012, the huge deficits we have run up, will not allow them to go for large tax cuts for their fat cat patrons, like they did under Bush 2.
In case people haven’t noticed, Republicans love to run up large deficits, by passing large tax cuts for people who do not need them. That is the Republican’s way of planting poison pills, so Democrats will be restrained from social spending, when thet win an occasional term.
We should give them a dose of their own medicine, and spend like crazy on massive social development programs, so that Republicans will not be able to reduce taxes for their fat cat patrons.
We need a sense of urgency and assertive leadership now, because history indicates that we probably have a very small time frame to get our agenda in place.
“mike from Arlington”, Nate Silver permanently lost me when Nate Silver used Republican Newt Gingrich’s nasty language* to attack the left.
Silver’s fine when he sticks with numbers but he’s clearly out of his depth when he’s tried to make spout political philosophy.
*It’s possible that Nate Silver and his acolytes don’t even know what I’m talking about with regards to “Republican Newt Gingrich’s nasty language” and that’s the problem.
If “mike from Arlington” doesn’t know what I’m talking about, perhaps one of the better informed posters can bring him up to speed.
Here’s a primer:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Newt+Gingrich+language
What amazed and saddened me was Nate Silver’s use of Republican Newt Gingrich’s nasty language to attack “the left” was applauded by some on the left.
Liam,
Like you, I am a lifer liberal, but I take an even longer term view of history than you. If you examine the most profound social issues that this country has ever faced, the ultimate solutions have consistently been the liberal ones. Slavery, organized labor, child labor, women’s suffrage, the Great Depression, and civil rights, to name but a few such issues, were eventually settled by employing the liberal solutions.
We believe ourselves to be center right, but when confronted with the most important issues, eventually we adopt the liberal position. We are not as far to the right as we let ourselves believe. If we were, none of those above issues would have been decided as they were.
When the injustice becomes too big to ignore, we will be sufficiently liberal as a nation. Healthcare may not quite be there yet, but it will be very soon. The whoring that the GOP is doing to help sustain the rapacious greed of the insurance and pharma industries will help to usher in universal care. We cannot sustain the rates of cost increases that the healthcare industries have been foisting upon us.
@Liam
I have some fundamental disagreements with certain apparent presumptions you voice above. First and foremost, by any number of different issues polled over decades, American citizens demonstrate affinity and loyalty to socially democratic policies. But one could certainly argue that the nation has become institutionalized towards conservativism (”wired for Republicans” as Josh puts it). And the mechanisms and history of that are nowhere better laid out than by Lewis Lapham in his essay The Tentacles of Rage… http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2004/Republican-Propaganda1sep04.htm
Liam, have you read:
Two Santa Clauses or How The Republican Party Has Conned America for Thirty Years.” by Thom Hartmann
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/01/26-0
It lays out much of the Republican strategy of DELIBERATELY indebting America. That Republican strategy is crucial to understanding what the right wing has done to our Nation.
I know it won’t be, but shouldn’t this video be a really big deal?
I mean, three months ago, he made a cogent, concise argument in favor of the precise policy provision that he now finds so upsetting, he won’t even let the bill come to an up and down vote.
Shouldn’t this video all but eviscerate any remaining credibility he has left on the health care issue? In other words, shouldn’t every person who interviews him run this clip and ask him to explain how he can argue that he is operating in good faith?
@Gasman….you said…”If you examine the most profound social issues that this country has ever faced, the ultimate solutions have consistently been the liberal ones. Slavery, organized labor, child labor, women’s suffrage, the Great Depression, and civil rights, to name but a few such issues, were eventually settled by employing the liberal solutions.”
I say here! Here! Or as we used to say in the old days…Right On Brother!!!
Corporate America is “Wired for Republicans”
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Wired%20for%20Republicans%22
The “right wing” mirage is created by the right wing corporate media that consistently pushes Republican talking points while simultaneously making “punching hippies” a requirement to even being given a seat at the corporate media table.
Until the Internet came along there was NO “liberal media”, the closest thing to a “liberal media” was factual reporting that wasn’t altered to help right wing talking points.
The fake “balance” by corporate media is to put a factual reporter up against a lying right winger.
Rupert Murdoch’s Orwellian “fair and balanced” FOX Republican propaganda simply eliminated the ‘factual reporter’ and just pushed lying right wingers.
Until the ground was broken by actual Internet liberal media (like TalkingPointsMemo.com and HuffingtonPost.com), there was NO equivalent mass communication network on the left.
Typical Jew!
“Shouldn’t this video all but eviscerate any remaining credibility he [Joe Lieberman] has left on the health care issue?”
Yes, it should.
But while the video might show up on a few hours of MS-NBC it’s unlikely to even be mentioned on the other 20 plus hours of MS-NBC.
You think Republican Karl Rove’s dancing partner David Gregory on NBC would have the guts to bring that video up with Joe Lieberman?
Certainly right wing sycophant Bob Schieffer on CBS would never have the guts to confront the right wing talking points of Lieberman with Lie berman’s own words.
And Republican Nixon’s former employee Diane Sawyer certainly won’t bring it up on ABC.
You betcha the corporate media is “wired for Republicans”.
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Wired%20for%20Republicans%22
# Robski | December 14th, 2009 at 05:30 pm
Typical Jew!
………………..
Get lost, you hate mongering creep!
Now the trolls feel no compunction about openly using ethnic and religious bigotry.
I can’t stand Liebermann, but Robski, your comments are bigoted and narrow minded in the extreme. With any luck, the moderator will block your prejudiced b.s. from the site.
nothing trumps our demand for universal access to health care. Or as Exene Cervenka says
“We’re Desperate! Get Used to It!”
It would do this country good to have Joe Lieberman shipped back to whatever planet he came from, he can’t remember what he say’s from one day to the next, what kind of credibility could he possibly have, what a bone head.
Lieberman is an easy target and an obvious waste of bullets — he was bought by Aetna and CIGNA years ago.
The real question is: Will Dodd, Murphy, Larson, DeLauro, Courtney and Himes rubber-stamp a health care non-reform bill that:
- forces us to buy private insurance products that will not guarantee approval of treatment or payment for treatment;
- taxes our insurance benefits if our employers offer those deemed as “Cadillac coverage” regardless of whether or not we make less than $250,000 a year;
- cannot guarantee that employers will keep our current insurance plans and provider networks or that insurance companies will keep benefits and providers the same – therefore we cannot keep what we’ve got if we like it; and
- lacks any real public option for coverage??
Do they have any principles on health care, on justice??
I suppose we’ll soon find out….
We have to think over about this video. It attracts the attention not just of famous politicians, but a simple people, who are worried about the taxes and guarantees, which can be given to them as employees.
OK. I gotta scadadle for now. Cheers all!
The health care bill now looks like a political Hamburger
First opponents said they were vegetarians and wouldn’t go for anything with meat.
So cut the meat.
Then some Democrats said they were on the Atkins diet and couldn’t go for anything with carbohydrates. So out went the bun.
Pharma just didn’t like onions. Cut.
And insurance companies didn’t like Katchup. Cut
Finally the president declared that “We finally have a hamburger that everyone could agree on
Is it any wonder that after the delicious meal everyone felt like they hadn’t eaten anything at all.
It seems clear to me that Republicans (including Lieberman) are attempting to effect a bill that will give the American public as little assistance as possible–holding interference with the insurance industry to a minimum. After it passes, they will be crowing to all who will listen that it was they who gave the country “affordable” Health Care Reform–how they “saved Medicare.” Comparative details of proposed/actual costs, of course, will be conveniently glossed over or inaccurately presented.
The GOP’s dug-in heels and other foot-dragging on getting a bill passed also seems designed to prolong things until as close as possible to the mid-term elections this coming year–which supports my suspicions regarding the party’s planned pre-election propaganda campaign.
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