Let’s begin:
LIEBERMAN: A public option plan is unnecessary. It has been put forward, I’m convinced, by people who really want the government to take over all of health insurance. They’ve got a right to do that; I think that would be wrong.
But worse than that, we have a problem even greater than the health insurance problems, and that is a debt – $12 trillion today, projected to be $21 trillion in 10 years.
WALLACE: So at this point, I take it, you’re a “no” vote in the Senate?
LIEBERMAN: If the public option plan is in there, as a matter of conscience, I will not allow this bill to come to a final vote because I believe debt can break America and send us into a recession that’s worse than the one we’re fighting our way out of today. I don’t want to do that to our children and grandchildren.
That was Lieberman on FOXnews (where else?) this Sunday past. Doubtless just posturing, but let’s take him at his word: the deficit (and, by extension, the debt) is and should be held in absolute primacy to any and all other spending or policy decisions (which, of course, also have direct spending implications). Fair enough. We take that as a first principle.
The current GOP “plan” (in that it’s not even a plan so much as a policy statement) has been scored over the 10-year window as potentially resulting in a reduction of budget deficits by $68 billion while helping 3 million folks get coverage they wouldn’t otherwise have.
The plan passed by the House, on the other hand, extends coverage to 36 million currently uninsured Americans while cutting the deficit by $104 billion over the same 10-year window.
Which of those plans is more deficit neutral, Joe?
Of course, third option is do nothing. Joe himself has pushed this idea. Here’s what that looks like:
By all means, MSM, continue treating Joe Lieberman as a sober, deficits minded fellow only out for what’s best for the country. Let’s not once pause to ask him: Joe, just how does the public option contribute to the deficit?
Lemkin 