The New York Times reports that Independent Democrat Joseph Lieberman has ruled out voting for the health care legislation currently considered by the Senate. Yet Barack Obama stated in an interview on CBS’ 60 Minutes that he thinks that the bill will pass the Senate before Christmas.
Obama needs 60 votes in the Senate, but, with Lieberman out, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will not be able to deliver 60 votes without at least one Republican vote. Florida Pundit first reported on one attack by Obama’s campaign organization targeting Republican Senator George LeMieux.
In addition, several moderate Democrats, most notably Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson, are troubled by the expansion of government power (whether by the public option or through expansion of Medicare to people under 65), the funding of abortion and the sheer scale of additional spending of the proposed legislation.
Senator Lieberman was opposed by the Democratic Party in his 2008 reelection bid and endorsed John McCain for President. His current term in the Senate ends in 2015, so he has no immediate concerns about re-election. Historically, Lieberman has been a principled Democrat who has been strong on national security and the Global War on Terror. He has won support from people you would not expect to support a Democrat who is liberal on many domestic issues. In 1988, the late William F. Buckley, Jr., editor of National Review and by many accounts the most important conservative intellectual of the second half of the 20th century, endorsed Lieberman over a liberal Republican incumbent.
So with Lieberman and potentially one or more Democrats opposed to ending debate in the Senate, Harry Reid must get at least one and possibly two to three Republicans to switch sides.
The most frequently cited prospects for switching sides are the two Senators from Maine, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins. Snowe has flirted with a trigger for a public option. Collins has now teamed up with Democrat Ron Wyden on proposing amendments to the bill. The eagerness of these two senators to find some “middle ground” compromise is disconcerting.
No one who wants to maintain the strengths of America’s health care system while addressing the real issues of cost and access should support a bill that will not lower costs, will not insure many of the uninsured Americans and will in fact accelerate increases in insurance premiums, raise taxes, drive doctors to early retirement, gut Medicare and increase rationing of health care.
In the past week, Harry Reid’s latest version of the bill has gotten devastating reviews. Hugh Hewitt provided a summary on Friday:
The news of sticker shock to health care premiums under Obamacare had already begun to circulate today when suddenly a bad news cycle became truly awful for the high priests of Obamacare. First the American Cancer Society and other groups noticed that the Senate bill had snuck in the authority of insurance companies to set annual or lifetime benefit caps which shocked some Obamacare supporters.
And then the roof fell in: The Office of the Actuary in the Department of Health and Human Services issued a devastating assessment of the Senate plan which concluded it would drive overall health care costs higher, that it would lead to Medicare benefit cuts, that its long-term care insurance plan would likely be a costly failure, that 33 million people would remain uninsured after the plan was in effect, and that the cuts to doctors and hospitals envisioned by the plan were unsustainable, and that one in five hospitals would move to unprofitability under the plan.
This obviously non-partisan report from within the Obama Administration should be enough to kill the bill in any reasonable era, but will probably only lead the current Congressional leadership to devise changes to the plan to spend even more money in order to achieve even less reform.
Opponents of Obamacare need to stay vigilant and make sure they communicate not just with swing Democrats and the Republican Senators from Maine, but also any other Republicans who could conceivably be convinced to switch sides.
Consider Florida Senator George LeMieux. With the exception of Ted Kennedy’s temporary replacement, he is the newest and, at 40, the youngest member of the Senate. He was appointed in August by Florida Governor Charlie Crist to fill a vacancy in the seat that Crist is running for in 2010. LeMieux, Crist’s former Chief of Staff, is not running for re-election next year and is supporting Crist.
As previously reported exclusively by Florida Pundit, the Obama permanent campaign group “Organizing for America” announced Friday evening that it will target Florida on Wednesday, Dec. 16 with phone calls and events throughout the state to drum up support for the health care bill debated in the Senate.
The other Florida senator, Bill Nelson, is a firm supporter of Obamacare. So the only possible reason for the Obama campaign to specifically target Florida days before the Senate will vote, is that they consider Senator LeMieux a weak link in the opposition to Obamacare despite LeMieux’s strong statements of opposition to the current bill. Given that his political mentor, Florida Governor Charlie Crist, endorsed Obama’s stimulus bill in February, one has to wonder whether LeMieux can also be seduced by Obama.
The next two weeks are a critical time for the future of American health care. The Senate vote to end debate requires 60 votes and is the last remaining opportunity to stop Obamacare. Obama and Reid are willing to enter corrupt deals to buy votes as demonstrated by the $300 million deal to buy Louisiana Democrat Mary Landrieu’s support for the last important vote.
Florida Pundit has reported on one potential attempt to flip a senator’s vote. Opponents of Obamacare in other states should watch for and expose similar attacks on senators that currently oppose Obamacare, but who may cave under pressure from organized attacks and / or a few hundred million dollars of taxpayers’ money to buy their vote.
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