Joe Lieberman

The Senate Homeland Security Committee, chaired by Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT), is holding a hearing on successes and challenges the Department of Homeland Security has faced and now faces. The hearing is one of a number of hearings being held on Capitol Hill in the coming days to mark the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

It is probably appropriate that Lieberman is chairing the hearing, as he made the case to President George W. Bush that the country needed a Homeland Security Department in 2002. But, Lieberman has no problem with accelerating the assault on civil liberties and employing perversions of justice and the rule of law in the name of security. Lieberman is of the mind that terrorists are not to be treated as criminals because that would prevent the military and intelligence community from obtaining crucial information. This is why he opposes giving Miranda rights to “foreign terrorists.” Lieberman also does not consider waterboarding to be “torture.” He says it is all “psychological” and “not like putting burning coals on people’s bodies.”

With that made clear, I will be live blogging the hearing. Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Jane Holl Lute, Comptroller General Eugene L. Dodaro and Homeland Security and Justice Issues Cathleen A. Berrick will all be witnesses at the hearing. [When documents containing their prepared statements are posted, I will post a link.]

To watch the hearing, go here.

A starting point for discussion

This isn’t so much legislation as it is a wish list in op-ed form from a retiring, disliked Senator. But Joe Lieberman’s attack on Medicare is noteworthy, given the trajectory of his history with Medicare.

I’m so old I can remember when Lieberman wanted to expand Medicare. It was in 2009. He endorsed at that time a plan to lower the eligibility age for Medicare to 55 and allow people from 55 to 64 to buy into the program. Then he got wind that liberals liked that idea, and revoked his support, killing the idea when it was on the precipice of passing as part of the Affordable Care Act. Now, in this op-ed, he’s gone completely in the other direction, by endorsing a plan to “raise the Medicare eligibility age every year starting in 2014 by two months until it reaches 67 in 2025.”

This is a pretty cruel idea, mainly because it will actively harm seniors without any financial benefit.

This is not guesswork on our part; there’s clear evidence in the literature. In several papers, Michael McWilliams and colleagues found that utilization, spending, and outcomes for age-eligible Medicare beneficiaries differed for those who had been uninsured prior to turning 65 vs. those who had been insured. Their work was based on survey data, sometimes merged with Medicare claims. This is a relatively strong analytic approach since it exploits a discontinuity in coverage that potentially applies to nearly all individuals: the vast majority of the population enrolls in Medicare at age 65.

The authors found that, relative to those with insurance before age 65, those without insurance prior to Medicare eligibility spent much more money on health care after they became Medicare eligible. In other words, people wait to get care until their Medicare kicks in. This is bad both for health and for the federal government’s bottom line.

It makes no sense to raise the Medicare age. It costs more in the end and increases human suffering. In other words, it’s the perfect Joe Lieberman plan.

And the rest of his ideas in this op-ed are really not much better. He wants to shift costs to seniors by adding co-pays to Medicare and increasing premiums to 35% of program costs. He also wants to “reform Medigap,” which he says leads to overutilization, and he wants to raise additional taxes on the wealthy to pay for the program. But what Lieberman fails to address are delivery system reforms that would, at the root, attack overstuffed provider payments. Notice who Lieberman puts the burden on in his reforms: patients. Notice who he leaves out. He wouldn’t allow Medicare to negotiate for prescription drugs to lower costs. He wouldn’t put dual eligibles into Medicaid, to provide similar care to patients with lower provider costs for the government to pay. He wouldn’t touch reimbursement rates. He wouldn’t further phase out Medicare Advantage, the private insurance alternative to Medicare.

In other words, Lieberman’s plan lets all the industries around health care off the hook. And given that he has represented the interests of the Connecticut insurance and pharmaceutical industries throughout his entire career, none of this is surprising.

Lieberman calls his ideas “a starting point for discussion.” The fear is that, just as raising the retirement age gained traction in the Social Security debate, this just-as-wrong increase in the Medicare eligibility age would gain adherents. And seniors would lose.

I haven’t quite mastered that “party” atmosphere, yet, but you gotta start somewhere. So, without further adieu, I give you the inaugural edition of The Party Line.

graphic: twolf

(An original Pome by Thersey Thyshhe Therssey. Ahem.)

I met a traveller from an online land,

Who said: “A vastly dickish pompous toad

Squats in the Senate…. On Sundays, with his hands,

Are pundits stroked: he blows, and is blown.

His wrinkled lip, and sneer of faux command,

Help him pander, and bullshit spread:

Shite like nukes aloft on balsa wings,

Painted schools, kids somehow not really dead.

And on the chyron, these words appear:

My name is Joezymandias, King (cough SENATOR cough) of Kings –

Look on my sags, ye bloggers, and despair!

But the primaries yet remain. Round the decay

Of that colossal Ass, lies boundless fail:

The lone Iraqi sands stretch far away.”

X-composted.

A Lieberman aide confirmed the motivational power of long odds to a Connecticut Fox affiliate, saying Joe-mentum “recognizes that it would be a tough fight.” For his part, however, the ever-pious Lieberman is expected to say that the fault lies not in himself, but in the stars:

He will quote Ecclesiastes — the passage: ‘To every thing there is a season and a time to every purpose under Heaven.’ So, after what will be 24 years in the Senate, and 40 years in public life, he believes that it is time for a new season and new purpose under Heaven for him.

Lame-ducking his last two years frees Lieberman to approach this session’s crucial debates on the budget deficit and war funding with a stronger focus on what has always mattered to the Senator: himself:

“He plans to spend the next two years focused on his work in the Senate. This decision frees him to be an honest broker between Democrats and Republicans, and to continue to do what he always does, which is to be a bipartisan bridge builder, and work across party lines, to put principle before partisanship,” the aide said. “He has a long record of getting things done for Connecticut and the country, and he is looking forward to having the freedom to do that in the next two years.”

In other words, prior to this decision, he wasn’t an honest broker? The truth shall set you free–or vice versa.

[Video feed--courtesy of Courant.com and WTIC--should begin at approximately 12:30 EST.]

Update 1:05pm EST: “Joey” has just finished speaking. He is indeed out after this term, though says this is not the end of his public life (McCain has already started the drumbeat for SecDef). He not only quoted Ecclesiastes, but Psalm 13, as well. . . oh, and he compared himself directly to JFK.

pic via matthewnstoller at flickr.com

But Broder hasn’t written a column in several weeks and somebody needs to get the hell into the breach and say something nice about Joe Lieberman as he departs for that seven figure FoxNews commenting deal.

Enter Ezra Klein, and whoever writes his headlines:

Joe Lieberman: Democratic hero?

Hey, thanks for the question mark at least.

Contained within the short prose, is the self-evident nature of Lieberman’s regard for no one but himself and his donors:

Among other things, he skipped the meetings where Democrats were trying to work out a compromise on the public option, and then he killed the Medicare buy-in proposal they’d developed — despite endorsing that exact proposal months before. In doing so, he doomed a great piece of policy, and by doing it at the last minute, endangered the rest of the bill, too.

But he ended up voting for the legislation he’d damage severely and made significantly worse for Americans but made better for the Hartford, AETNA, and Magellan. Oh, and he endorsed John McCain and Sarah Palin.

What a guy, what a Democrat.

Ever helpful, ever thoughtful Sen. Joe Lieberman (source: Wikimedia)

He’s the least popular man in the Senate with the public: only 24% of Connecticut voters say they’d vote for him again.  His sheer bottom-scraping numbers are causing likely opponents to drool at the thought of challenging him.  But in the House of Lords, they love him.  Politico reports “Senior Democrats” are urging Joe Lieberman to run again:

Along with other senior Democrats, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is quietly urging the Connecticut lawmaker to run for a fifth Senate term in 2012 — and to stick with the Democratic side of the aisle.

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He became even more alienated from his former party when he backed Republican Sen. John McCain in the 2008 presidential election. And it didn’t help his relationship with the left when he announced his opposition to the public option in the health care bill, even though he ultimately backed the plan that cleared Congress.

But while Lieberman has aligned with Republicans on national security, he’s maintained a fairly liberal voting record on other domestic issues – and he’s now leading the fight for gays to serve openly in the military – so he would be one of the most liberal Republicans in the Senate if he switched parties.

Blah blah, Joe sucks, blah blah. I’ve written it a hundred times, fill in the blanks with your favorite “I hate Joe Lieberman” story.

But please tell me nobody fell for the DADT flim-flam. Joe Lieberman works for the Department of Defense. They did not want “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repealed. The surest sign of that was when James Amos, Obama’s pick to lead the Marine Corps, said he opposed repealing DADT now. He would never have done that to his Commander in Chief without permission. It was an unmistakeable dog whistle to anyone who knew what they were listening for: the White House did not want this. And, clearly they don’t. Obama has the authority to make it happen if he wants. And you don’t see him waving that Presidential pen around, looking for a signing statement.

And so Lieberman was picked to run the show in the Senate. Know why so many Republicans piped up and said they’d support ending DADT? ‘Cos they knew they’d never have to take a vote. Lieberman put on a fine show, replete with press conferences and breathless announcements, then he and Susan Collins went through a superb theatrical moment as the whole thing melted down in “procedural issues” (cough).

It’s Harry Reid’s specialty.

I wanted to be wrong this time, to think there was a piece of decency in the guy, but it was a pretty sure signal that the whole thing was going to explode when Lieberman was designated to run point. Obama never reached out to Joe Manchin at any time (the one Democratic “no” vote), which one assumes he would have done if they were actually serious about passing it.

Lieberman is no hero, and he’s not going to champion DADT repeal through the Senate.  Please don’t kick that football. You’ll be stuck in the trap of the Senate procedural flim-flam until you realize that the Senate Majority Leader has all kinds of tricks at his disposal that he uses to get what he wants, especially if he’s got the votes. He got what he wanted. Lieberman was just the half-time show, there to make sure everyone thought they might actually get something — before he stuck it to the liberals once again.

When Ellsberg published—made public—the Pentagon Papers nearly 40 years ago, he released a historical book—a more or less coherent, linear, systematic study of decision-making during the Vietnam war, commissioned by Robert S. McNamara when he was secretary of defense, and a systematic revelation of a pattern of government lies and distortions repeatedly issued to the American people.

I’m trying to decipher what the hell that means other than the Pentagon Papers had a more compact narrative, and more importantly, that it happened 40 years ago?

There’s one guy who doesn’t see a hell of a lot of difference and I think he’d be in a position to know:

(image courtesy of Michael Whitney and LOLbuilder)

Joe Lieberman has introduced what he claims to be a law targeted at WikiLeaks.

“The recent dissemination by Wikileaks of thousands of State Department cables and other documents is just the latest example of how our national security interests, the interests of our allies, and the safety of government employees and countless other individuals are jeopardized by the illegal release of classified and sensitive information,” said Lieberman in a written statement.

“This legislation will help hold people criminally accountable who endanger these sources of information that are vital to protecting our national security interests,” he continued.

The so-called SHIELD Act (Securing Human Intelligence and Enforcing Lawful Dissemination) would amend a section of the Espionage Act that already forbids publishing classified information on U.S. cryptographic secrets or overseas communications intelligence — i.e., wiretapping. The bill would extend that prohibition to information on HUMINT, human intelligence, making it a crime to publish information “concerning the identity of a classified source or informant of an element of the intelligence community of the United States,” or “concerning the human intelligence activities of the United States or any foreign government” if such publication is prejudicial to U.S. interests.

Problem is, not only would it not endanger WikiLeaks (as far as we know). But it would put both good journalists — like Dexter Filkins — and bad ones — like Judy Miller and Bob Novak — in jail.

As far as we know, WikiLeaks has been successful in its dumps at hiding the identities of any intelligence sources. (It has exposed one of State Department’s moles in Germany, who has been fired. But a diplomatic source is not an intelligence source, is it?)

But other journalists do expose sources. Such as when Dexter Filkins reported on how much the CIA has been shoveling at Ahmed Wali Karzai. Or when Judy Judy Judy exposed the CIA ties of a Ahmed Chalabi rival. And then, of course, there’s that little matter of Bob Novak and Valerie Plame.

This is all getting really, really stupid. Doesn’t Joe Lieberman have anything better to do with his time? Like funnelling money to the TSA for some other invasive search machine? Or giving the uber-rich big tax breaks?

Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT)

Mike Bloomberg’s new “grassroots” (cough) “centrist” party, No Labels, is off to a smashing start:

The group has raised more than $1 million to seed its effort against what it calls “hyper-partisanship.” Backers include co-chairman of Loews Corp. Andrew Tisch, Panera Bread founder Ron Shaich and ex-Facebook executive Dave Morin. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, as well as U.S. senators Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut and Michigan’s Debbie Stabenow, will attend the New York launch.

From PPP’s November 8 polling, Joe Lieberman is far and away the most unpopular member of the Senate up for reelection in 2012:

I’m always careful to make the distinction between “transpartisan” and “bipartisan”: “transpartisan” is what happens when people reach across party lines to battle entrenched insiders who are ripping them off. Joe Lieberman’s “bipartisanship,” on the other hand, happens when insiders of both parties get together to screw the public.

Bloomberg’s new “grassroots” (chortle) party definitely has all the trappings of the latter, and now they’re dragging a -21 point albatross.

Genius.