Reply #137: Lieberman was never going to allow that to happen in a bill under regular process.

[eomer]

But that's irrelevant because once the Democrats invoked the budget reconciliation process then Lieberman's vote was no longer needed. Democrats invoked the budget reconciliation process by a simple majority vote. That vote didn't need Lieberman in order to pass and it didn't depend on whether the public option or anything else was in 3590, or on whether 3590 had passed or not in either house, or on whether 3590 even existed. The budget reconciliation process was always within the Democrats' power to use by the mere fact of having a simple majority in both houses. The only had to hold a vote to invoke it and win that vote by a simple majority, which is what they did. And once it was invoked then they could pass anything they wanted in it, so long as they followed its rules.

So Democrats had it in their power to pass anything they wanted so long as they followed the budget reconciliation rules. There was nothing that Lieberman or Republicans could do to stop them since Democrats held a simple majority in both houses.

And, yes, I'm familiar with the deal that Ben Nelson got, the controversy that arose over it, and so on. But the fact that I'm trying to expose is that Ben Nelson's vote, Lieberman's vote, or any Republican Senator's vote was never needed to get the public option or anything else into the reform bill. Nelson, Lieberman, and those one or two Republican Senators who were talked about were all out at the 60 vote margin. With 58 Democratic Senators (counting Sanders who caucuses with the Democrats) they had 8 Democratic votes to give away in the Senate. So they actually needed to work deals not with Nelson or Lieberman but with those Senators who were at the 50 vote margin rather than the 60 vote margin. And, of course, they needed to work deals in the House at the simple majority margin.

There has been a lot of misinformation (and I suspect some of it is intentional disinformation) claiming that Lieberman blocked the public option, or that a Republican filibuster blocked the public option, or that the last one or two Democratic Senators out at the 60 vote margin blocked the public option. None of this is true. Democrats always needed only a simple majority vote in both houses to do the public option if they merely used the procedures allowed them under the rules.