Day: November 2, 2009

Lieberman to US: Drop Dead

Lieberman has officially and categorically joined the “Go Die in the Streets” brigade:

SCHIEFFER: But is what you’re also saying is that nothing is better than a government health insurance, or a health insurance reform that includes a public option? Nothing is better than that?

LIEBERMAN: Well, the truth is that nothing is better than that because I think we ought to follow, if I may, the doctor’s oath in Congress as we deal with health care reform, do no harm.

You’ll note that Lieberman also opposed the original, public option free version of the Baucus bill. He seriously just wants the CATO-inspired answer: yes, if you are poor and cannot afford care, you should just go die in the streets. Any other course of action would simply be unfair.

[People] are fed up – frustrated and fed up and angry about the way in which our government does not work, about the way in which we come down here and get into a lot of political games and seem to – partisan tugs of war and forget why we’re here, which is to serve the American people. And I think the filibuster has become not only in reality an obstacle to accomplishment here, but it also a symbol of a lot that ails Washington today.“

"But I do want to say that the Republicans were not the only perpetrators of filibuster gridlock, there were occasions when Democrats did it as well. And the long and the short of it is that the abuse of the filibuster was bipartisan and so its demise should be bipartisan as well.”

“The whole process of individual senators being able to hold up legislation, which in a sense is an extension of the filibuster because the hold has been understood in one way to be a threat to filibuster – it’s just unfair.

Joe Lieberman (yes, that Joe Lieberman), in 1994.