The "world's greatest deliberative body" is increasingly being laid bare for what it is--utterly dysfunctional because of the massive egos and personal foibles of narcissists like Joe Lieberman, who can hijack the most critical of issues for their own narrow, personal reasons.
In that vein, today Roll Call [sub. req.] gives a forum to Olympia Snowe, to whine about how Harry Reid was mean to her by addressing the concerns of the majority of members in his own caucus rather than catering to her.
Snowe had hoped Reid would decide to include her proposal to establish a "trigger" for the public insurance option when he merged the Finance package with a Health, Education, Labor and Pensions measure. Instead, he chose a public option from which states could opt out, rather than first giving private companies the chance to reduce health care costs on their own, as her plan would do.
Not only did Reid choose a public option, he also described Snowe as "frightened" of the public option during the Oct. 27 press conference in which he announced his decision.
"I thought it was diminishing, the role and the risk that I took. I didn’t know anybody else taking that risk ... at that point in time," Snowe said, adding, "It is not easy frankly, you know, to play the role that I did in the Finance Committee standing alone. And I just thought that was diminished in the way that he, you know, expressed, you know, my views towards a public option."
She added that she expressed her surprise at Reid’s comments to him and that he apologized.
One well-placed Senate Democratic source said Reid’s decision to choose a public option over the trigger in his $848 billion package will likely make Snowe’s vote more difficult to secure because of the distrust it appears to have bred.
So her hurt feelings give her an excuse to join with the other prima donnas of the Senate, the good of the American people be damned. But this might mollify her a bit:
On Saturday, she met with Obama to discuss triggers and other elements of the reform proposal. She described Obama's position on the triggers as "supportive."