Steve Benen has been cataloguing all the lies Joementum has given to explain his opposition to the public option. Here are the first six…
Believe it or not, we’re up to seven arguments over seven months, none of which makes sense.
In June, Lieberman said, “I don’t favor a public option because I think there’s plenty of competition in the private insurance market.” That didn’t make sense, and it was quickly dropped from his talking points.
In July, Lieberman said he opposes a public option because “the public is going to end up paying for it.” No one could figure out exactly what that meant, and the senator moved on to other arguments.
In August, he said we’d have to wait “until the economy’s out of recession,” which is incoherent, since a public option, even if passed this year, still wouldn’t kick in for quite a while.
In September, Lieberman said he opposes a public option because “the public doesn’t support it.” A wide variety of credible polling proved otherwise.
In October, Lieberman said the public option would mean “trouble … for the national debt,” by creating “a whole new government entitlement program.” Soon after, Jon Chait explained that this “literally makes no sense whatsoever.”
In November, Lieberman said creating a public plan along the lines of Medicare is antithetical to “the way we’ve responded to the market in America in the past.” This, too, was quickly debunked.
Click through to see Lieberman’s latest lie.