Joe says “No”, and he’s not the only Democrat – UPDATE: Snowementum

We detailed here how the President called the Baucus Bill bi-partisan. Well if Senator Snowe makes a bad health care bill bi-partisan … then the opposition mounting against this bill is truly bi-partisan.

Connecticut’s Junior Senator Joe Lieberman told Don Imus on FBN yesterday that he could not support the Baucus bill primarily because of cost. He reiterated hat stance again today and added that he is not the only Democratic Senator who feels like he does.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJDCF10JVFA

Perhaps this is why Joe is so dead set against this crummy bill.

The Baucus plan passed by the Senate Finance Committee yesterday amounts to a massive middle-class tax increase, according to one columnist today, and a dishonest shell game on taxes according to another.  Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former CBO director, argues that the Baucus plan will hit consumers with a deluge of taxes, many of which deliberately lack transparency, and 90% of which hit the middle class.

Read the rest at Hot Air.

It makes no sense to ask taxpayers to pay what the Cato Institute pegged this morning at $2 trillion, not $870 billion dollars over 10 years to insure 25 to 30 million additional people, under the guise that it will at some point down the road make insurance cheaper. That is doubtful for many of the reasons we have detailed on this blog. Even the CBO says it can only happen if Medicare is cut and everyone jumps in the pool. Add to that a long list of new taxes and penalties on everyone from medical equipment makers to the average American and it, as Joe knows, is the great deception

  • It is doubtful they can or will cut medicare by any amount because they never have.
  • It is doubtful they will create any savings through medical early intervention (a promise oft made during the HMO debate)
  • And it is doubtful that adding young people to the pool will add funding without taxing services any more. Experience shows that if a service is paid for, and offer at below market or subsidized rates … utilization goes up (see HMOs)
  • Nor there will be no savings, no cost cutting, only rationing and cuts (see Massachusetts)

Joe is correct to stand against this government care. Count me among the growing list of naysayers.

UPDATE: The politco is reporting this morning pretty much what Joe alluded to last night … no Snowementum.

If Democratic leadership hoped Republican Olympia Snowe’s decision to cross party lines Tuesday would inspire her fellow middle-of-the-roaders, they were mistaken.

And the moderates’ reluctance to commit showed just how far health reform still has to go, despite getting a boost from Tuesday’s Senate Finance Committee vote.

Moderate Democrats did draw plenty of inspiration from Snowe – but instead of using her “yes” vote as a reason to embrace health care reform, fence-sitters hailed the caveats in her public statement Tuesday as a rationale for withholding their own judgment.

In their own words:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHS1UPsGq1g

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Jim Vicevich

Jim is a veteran broadcaster and conservative/libertarian blogger with more than 25 years experience in TV and radio. Jim's was the long-term host of The Jim Vicevich Show on WTIC 1080 in Hartford from 2004 through 2019. Prior to radio, Jim worked as a business and financial reporter for NBC30 - the NBC owned TV station in Hartford - and as business editor at WFSB-TV in Hartford for 14 years while earning six Emmy nominations and three Telly Awards.

1 Comment

  1. Dimsdale on October 15, 2009 at 6:18 am

    What is wrong with women named Olympia anyway?  Snowe, Dukakis……

     

    Socialized medicine, like socialism, has been a epic failure every time it has been tried.

     

    If you are going to reinvent the wheel, is shouldn't be a square one.



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