FDL on the MSNBC gaggle this AM.
David Dayen Tuesday December 15, 2009 9:14 am
Lieberman Makes Grand Pronouncement, Ready To Vote For Health Care Bill(...)
Lieberman said that the basic core bill, expanding coverage and “bending the cost curve,” is solid enough for him to merit his vote. He used the same arguments about spiraling deficits and potential bailouts as a reason to reject the public option.
Lieberman claims that he didn’t change his position on the Medicare buy-in, despite running on such a program in two national campaigns and touting it as recently as three months ago. He said that the party platform had Medicare buy-in during the 2000 campaign, and he was just an innocent bystander who happened to be the Vice-Presidential nominee of the party with no control over its goals or principles (the last part is mine). He added that the bill on the floor would offer generous subsidies and lower the age rating – not enough subsidies to prevent people ages 55-64 from paying $5,000 a year more that their younger counterparts. He said that the September interview with the Connecticut Post occurred before the Senate Finance Committee reported the subsidies in their bill, which is completely nutty, as the subsidies were in all original drafts.
Lieberman closed by calling the bill he essentially authored by proxy “an historic achievement, health care reform such as we’ve not seen in this country for decades.” He sounded like nobody so much as
Nate Silver.Susan Collins, who was standing next to Lieberman during this exchange, praised her colleague for making the bill better, but termed it “too deeply flawed for me to support.”
more:
http://news.firedoglake.com/
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