Universal, single-payer health care has been a Democratic priority since FDR. Generations of Democrats have fought for universal health care. We now have a real movement behind Medicare For All.
And along comes Joe Biden to say that if Medicare For All passes the House and Senate. He would veto it.
The former vice president was asked what he would do if he won the race to the White House, and a compromised version of a Medicare for All bill pushed forward by Sanders, managed to get through the Senate, and land on his desk in the Oval Office.
"Do you veto it?" MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell asked Biden.
Biden replied: "I would veto anything that delays providing the security and the certainty of healthcare being available now. If they got that through by some miracle, there was an epiphany that occurred and some miracle occurred that said 'OK it's passed' then you got to look at the cost. I want to know, how do they find the $35 trillion?" — www.newsweek.com/...
In the same interview, Biden was asked about Iraq and why he voted for Bush’s AUMF. He says he voted for the AUMF to "prevent a war from happening." Then went on to explain he knew Bush was lying about nuclear weapons and WMDs, but voted to give him authority to go to war anyway. This raises very serious questions, but is in keeping with Biden’s tendency to get bamboozled by Republicans who pretend to be his friends.
He got bamboozled during the Clarence Thomas hearings when he allowed his back-slapping Republican buddies to limit the witnesses and railroad Anita Hill’s testimony. He got bamboozled by Paul Ryan and his buddies into supporting cuts to Social Security and Medicare, ostensibly because that’s “fiscally responsible”. Then when these same people began running Trillion dollar deficits during an economic boom so their billionaire backers could get tax-cuts, he falls silent. Biden’s been bamboozled by Republicans so many times, it’s become second nature to him.
For the vast majority of his career, Biden has been a deficit hawk who’s willing to sacrifice Social Security and Medicare benefits for the sake of achieving smaller budget gaps. He’s even bragged about it to establish a rhetorical contrast with Republican fiscal irresponsibility. And unlike some Biden-related controversies, this isn’t ancient history. It’s a position Biden maintained as Barack Obama’s vice president — and that Sanders and Warren fought against. — www.vox.com/...
That’s not some wild-eyed lefty publication, that’s Vox.
Biden now admits he also got bamboozled on Iraq:
Biden clarified again that the "rationale was not to go to war," but the events that unfolded were not what he had expected.
"I didn't believe [Hussein] had those nuclear weapons. I didn't believe he had weapons of mass destruction," he said. "What happened was we went in, determined that they hyped what in fact was occurring, there was no concrete proof of what he was doing and they still went to war."
Biden went on to admit that it "was a mistake" to take the "word of a president who said he wasn't going to go to war and this is a way to avoid going to war." — www.newsweek.com/...
Notice a pattern? Biden repeatedly gets bamboozled by his back-slapping Republican friends who pretend to be bi-partisan pals with him while pushing their own hard-line agendas. Biden just laughs along, whether it’s a war in Iraq, or Clarence Thomas or cutting Medicare/Social Security.
When it comes to progressive proposals like Medicare For All though, Biden is very concerned to double check everything. So he happily convinced himself that a vote to authorize military force was actually a vote against war. He happily convinced himself that Dick Cheney, who stood to profit handsomely from a was in Iraq would never lie to get a war with Iraq. Biden never asked a cost question about a war that cost over $6 Trillion and resulted in hundreds of thousands dead under false pretenses. But he now has “cost concerns” about Medicare For All. This sounds a lot like Republicans who suddenly discover fiscal responsibility when progressive programs are on the table. Maybe that’s what it means to be a self-described “most conservative Democrat”.
Do you get the sense that you’re the one being bamboozled here? Biden is the person these nurses below are mad at:
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The Biden campaign has issued a statement. It does not say he would sign the bill. Though Biden clearly says “veto” in the interview, the statement claims he did not say the word.
Tucker Higgins (@tuckerhiggins) Tweeted:
New: Biden campaign issues statement on last night’s Medicare for All veto comments
“Our opponents do not speak for us and should never be allowed by the press to put words in the Vice President's mouth,” spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement. “He did not say 'veto.'” https://t.co/2q5HQvDf2E
https://twitter.com/tuckerhiggins/status/1237452234675322880
— @subirgrewal
