Senator Mary Landrieu Proposes a Poll


NPR asks her a question

Asked about polls showing public support for a government plan, Landrieu said the questions should be phrased differently.

"I think if you asked, do you want a public option but it would force the government to go bankrupt, people would say no," she said.

Yep Senator Landrieu sure knows more than Joe Public about the public option, and she knows way more than the CBO which predicts that it would cut $ 100 B off the Federal debt over ten years. I don't know how exactly that would bankrupt the Federal Government.

As Matt Yglesias notes, Sen. Landrieu shows no hint of knowing what the public option is.

I recommend you just click the link and skip the rest of this post.

The relatively charitable explanations of her repeated claims that it will be subsidized by taxpayers are beginning to be implausible. She does not phrase them as predictions about what will happen no matter what the CBO says. She claims that the public option is just like taxpayer financed programs such as medicaid and medicare

Describing the public option as a "government-run, taxpayer subsidized, national insurance plan," Landrieu said it would likely replicate the problems faced by Medicare and Medicaid.

""Why don't we fix the two public options we have now instead of creating a third one," she told NPR's "Tell Me More."

Her count is off (she forgot her own health insurance for example) but more to the (unoriginal) point, there is nothing optional about medicaid. You pay for it via your 1040 or else.

The charitable might assume she is lying, but I am getting the horrible sensation taht she is honestly ignorant.