By Nicole Gaouette and Jonathan D. Salant
Lieberman, 67, has clout among Democrats as part of the 60- member party caucus Majority Leader Harry Reid needs to bring his health-care measure to a final vote without Republican support. On Nov. 8, Lieberman said he’ll oppose any bill containing a public plan that would compete with private insurers such as Aetna Inc., based in his home state, because it could swell U.S. debt. Reid’s bill has that provision.
Al Gore’s running mate in 2000, Lieberman backed Republican John McCain for president in 2008. While Lieberman still aligns himself with the Democratic caucus, his threat to block health legislation “as a matter of conscience” shows a growing willingness and confidence to stand on his own, analysts say.
“I don’t think he thinks of himself as a partisan any more,” said Howard L. Reiter, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, in an interview. “I don’t think he sees it as turning his back on his party. He feels liberated by what happened to him in 2006.”
Donald W. Greenberg, associate professor of politics at Fairfield University in Fairfield, Connecticut, said Democrats need Lieberman a lot more than he needs them.
‘Believes Sincerely’
“He feels now that he’s secure,” Greenberg said in an interview. “His history has always been as a social liberal. There are lots of issues where he might bolt the party, but you wouldn’t think this is the one. I do think he believes sincerely that this is very dangerous for the economy.”
Reid is trying to craft legislation in the Senate to cover tens of millions of uninsured Americans while curbing medical costs. The Democrats are wrestling with whether to create a government-run insurance program and how to pay for plans that top $800 billion over 10 years. A House version of the bill passed, 220-215, on Nov. 7.
Lieberman opposes a public option because he’s concerned the expansion of government would increase U.S. debt, projected to grow to $21 trillion in 10 years from $12 trillion today, he said in a Nov. 8 televised interview with “Fox News Sunday.” The Congressional Budget Office says the House’s $1.05 trillion version of a health-care expansion raises enough money to reduce the deficit.
‘No Other Choice’
“I have no other choice,” Lieberman said in an interview with Bloomberg News. “I have to use the right I have as a senator to stop something I think will be terrible. I really want to vote for health-care reform.”
Lieberman can influence the outcome because no Republicans have offered to support the overhaul measure from Reid, a Nevada Democrat. Lacking Republican allies, Democrats need all 60 members of their caucus, which includes Lieberman and Independent Bernard Sanders of Vermont, to bring the measure up for a final vote.
Democrats could also use a process known as reconciliation, which requires 51 votes instead of 60 votes, although some supporters of the plan don’t want to go that route.
The last time congressional Democrats tackled health care without success, in 1994, voters gave control of Congress to the Republicans. Lieberman opposed his party’s health-care overhaul then. Now as then, a failure to produce legislation may cost Democrats in mid-term elections.
‘Lot of Nerve’
“If you claim to be a Democrat or an independent like Joe Lieberman, you’ve got to have a lot of nerve to stick it to your party when so much is at stake,” said former Republican Senator David Durenberger of Minnesota, chairman of the nonprofit National Institute of Health Policy, a Minneapolis-based study group for health-care organizations in the Upper Midwest.
Lieberman’s stance reflects his ties to home-state insurers, say critics who protested outside his Washington office Nov. 10. Since 1989, his first year in the Senate, Lieberman has received $1 million from insurance company employees for his campaigns, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based research group.
Four of his top 10 donors are in the insurance business, including Hartford-based Aetna, whose workers have given him $112,618 since 1989. Aetna opposes the public-backed alternative.
Senator From Aetna
“Senator Lieberman’s actions represent the fact that he’s acting more like the senator from Aetna than the senator from Connecticut,” said Lacy MacAuley, a spokeswoman for Mobilization for Health Care for All, a group that supports extending government insurance to everyone. None of the legislative proposals for extending health coverage to tens of millions of Americans lacking insurance call for universal coverage.
Ronald A. Williams, Aetna’s chief executive officer, said in an e-mail that his company shares Lieberman’s “concern that the public plan is going to make coverage more expensive for the average American, who will end up subsidizing such a government- run plan.”
Connecticut’s other U.S. senator, Democrat Chris Dodd, has raised twice as much from the insurance industry, $2.3 million since 1989, including $1.2 million for his 2010 re-election campaign. Dodd, first elected in 1980, supports the public option and is a member of the Health committee, one of two Senate panels that wrote health-care legislation.
Lieberman unseated Republican Lowell P. Weicker Jr. in 1988, campaigning to his right and promising to be an independent, pro-business senator. Lieberman doesn’t run again until 2012.
Price Competition
Proponents of a government-backed insurer say it would force private companies to compete on price, thus lowering costs. President Barack Obama is among those saying the competition will keep the private companies “honest.”
Senator Susan Collins, the ranking Republican on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that Lieberman chairs, said her colleague is standing on principle.
“It’s not easy for him to oppose his leadership, but the courage to do so makes him a senator of such integrity,” said Collins, of Maine, also one of a handful of Republicans who may be persuaded to vote for a health-care overhaul.
In the health-care deliberations, at least two Democrats say Lieberman will eventually support an overhaul measure.
“It’s a view he holds strongly,” said Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which produced overhaul legislation that provides for non-profit cooperatives rather than a government plan. “You can bet that leadership is burning the midnight oil looking for a compromise.”
Dodd said he expected his colleague to be on board at the end.
“It will be all right,” Dodd said. “I promise that.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Nicole Gaouette in Washington at ngaouette@bloomberg.net; Jonathan D. Salant in Washington at jsalant@bloomberg.net
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