Politico reports:
Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) said Tuesday that he’d back a GOP filibuster of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s health care reform bill.
Lieberman, who caucuses with Democrats and is positioning himself as a fiscal hawk on the issue, said he opposes any health care bill that includes a government-run insurance program — even if it includes a provision allowing states to opt out of the program, as Reid has said the Senate bill will. . .
His comments confirmed that Reid is short of the 60 votes needed to advance the bill out of the Senate, even after Reid included the opt-out provision.
(Via the Corner.)
All this talk of an “opt-out” is a fraud. In any particular state, either legislative chamber or the governor could impose the public option by blocking the resolution to opt-out. Only in nine states are Republicans fully in control (Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Missouri, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, and Utah), and some of those are decidedly iffy. So at least 41 states, and probably more, would get stuck with the public option. Moreover, states couldn’t decide later to opt-out; the opportunity expires in 2014.
An opt-in would be much more serious, but still unacceptable. The federal government has powerful tools of coercion at its disposal. (There never was a national speed limit; the federal government coerced individual states into imposing it.) Beyond that, states that opt-out would still be paying the taxes, and would get the whole rest of the deal (mandates, Medicare cuts, etc.).
The whole point to the “opt-out” is as a political fig leaf. Joe Lieberman just blew the whistle on it.
POSTSCRIPT: The Intrade contract on a public option passing this year is trading at 8 (that is, an 8% likelihood), down from 20 yesterday. By the middle of 2010, the likelihood is between 12 and 15, down from 25 or so yesterday.
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