Joe Lieberman on health care reform:

Morally, everyone of us would like to cover every American with health insurance but that’s where you spend most of the trillion dollars plus, or a little less that is estimated, the estimate said this health care plan will cost. And I’m afraid we’ve got to think about putting a lot of that off until the economy is out of recession. There’s no reason we have to do it all now.

Well, Joe, if you’d bother to read the bills in question, you’d see that the programs phase in over time (currently ranging from three to five years so far as I know; so far as Lieberman’s concerned the figure is five years, the number that the Baucus Plan puts on it).

I challenge Joe to find me an economist, any economist, that says we’ll be in as bad or worse shape in five years’ time. Furthermore, I challenge Joe to explain why it is that Congress should only be considering policy based on the conditions of the previous six months and not those spanning (and constituting) the next decade?

Harry Reid should immediately cut back Lieberman’s responsibilities in the Demomcratic Caucus such that he has more time to read extant pending legislation and also plan long-term.