Lieberman dictates the terms on health reform

Call him Judas Lieberman.

Democrats are accustomed to Sen. Joe Lieberman voting with Republicans on defense. But he has mostly hewed to his Democratic roots on domestic issues.

Recall that as a vice-presidential candidate running with Al Gore in 2000, he championed a plan to allow people aged 55 and older to buy into Medicare. As recently as three months ago, Lieberman talked favorably about such a plan in an interview with a Connecticut newspaper.

Joe Lieberman

“My proposals were to basically expand the existing successful public health insurance programs Medicare and Medicaid,” he told The Connecticut Post.

So the Connecticut independent who still caucuses with the Democrats stunned many when he announced on a Sunday talk show that he opposed a compromise plan to allow uninsured individuals between the ages of 55 and 64 to buy into Medicare, and threatened to join a Republican filibuster to stop it. “It will add taxpayer costs. It will add to the deficit. It’s unnecessary,” he said.

By a strange quirk of fate, the onetime Democrat who campaigned tirelessly for GOP presidential candidate John McCain in 2008 now controls the fate of President Obama’s most important domestic policy promise. Indeed, the Medicare buy-in was the central element of a compromise touted as a way to ease the concerns of moderate Democrats about the public option.

But as the potential 60th vote needed to turn back a GOP filibuster, Lieberman’s defection effectively killed the deal, unless Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid can persuade Republicans Olympia Snowe or Susan Collins to vote with Democrats – both unlikely scenarios.

What is the political calculus of this wily survivor who retains his chairmanship of the Senate Homeland Security Committee at the pleasure of the Democratic leadership?

Explanations range from his desire to settle scores with the liberal Democrats who deserted him in 2006 when anti-war businessman Ned Lamont successfully challenged him in a Democratic primary, to his need to curry favor with Republican and independent voters whose support he will need to win re-election in 2012. (After being defeated by Lamont, Lieberman won the 2006 election by knitting together a coalition that included 70 percent of the Republican vote and only 33 percent of the Democratic vote.)

Some have accused him of being beholden to the insurance industry, a major player in Connecticut, not to mention a heavy campaign contributor. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the lawmaker has received more than $1 million from insurance interests since 1998. Especially without a party organization, it will help him to have the cash and clout of a company like Aetna at his disposal.

Then there are the professional ties of his wife, Hadassah, who has represented the interests of both the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. Before recently becoming the paid global ambassador for the Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a breast cancer advocacy and research foundation, Hadassah Lieberman worked for Pfizer as a director for policy, planning, and communications, and for Hill & Knowlton on a range of health care accounts.

So great is the rage against her husband that blogger Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake has demanded that the foundation, which supports the goal of health reform, sever its relationship with Hadassah Lieberman.

“As a three time breast cancer survivor, I call on Susan G. Komen for the Cure and the Komen Foundation to ask Hadassah Lieberman to step down as a ‘Global Ambassador’ for the organization in light of the inherent conflict of interest her continued presence brings,” Hamsher wrote. “It is counterproductive not only to Susan G. Komen for the Cure’s positions and goals, but is also unfair to the millions of families that depend on its work.”

But it looks like Joe Lieberman may have already won this battle. Politico is reporting that Senate Democrats are prepared to drop the idea of the Medicare buy-in to get his vote for cloture. Next watch Lieberman hold onto his chairmanship when the health care debate is over.

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