TO OUR QUESTIONABLE HEALTH - AT 12:16 P.M. ET:  The Senate plods ahead, or sideways, on the health "reform" bill.  The idea of the Senate leaders is to pass something, anything, just to show that they can.  Senator Joe Lieberman, one of the independent voices holding out for a sane bill, comments on the status of the legislation.  From The Politico:

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) said Sunday the Senate can pass a health-reform bill this week with more than 60 votes if the majority agreed to take “a few things out of the bill as it is today.”

Speaking on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Lieberman said Democrats should drop the public option, Medicare buy-in provisions and the CLASS Act.

“It doesn’t take much more than that,” Lieberman said.

He's asking the liberal Democrats to reject their religion.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), however, said huge cuts to Medicare would prevent his party from supporting the legislation even if those three provisions were cut.

The Connecticut independent also said the only way the Senate will pass health-care reform by Christmas is to bring “open-minded” Republicans into the fold, such as Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe.

Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), sitting alongside Lieberman and public-option honcho Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W. Va.), said “every landmark legislation has had bi-partisan support" and adding that that's what's missing in this bill."

COMMENT:  The liberals would prefer to do it without bipartisan support, to keep their purity. 

Isn't it remarkable that it's the Republicans who are defending Medicare, once a Democratic program?

There are no certainties here, as Harry Reid doesn't have the numbers to pass the bill.  The country would be better off if the whole thing failed, forcing a new Congress, after the next election, to take another, hard look at health care, while taking into account the feelings of the American people.

December 13, 2009