Lieberman: No cloture on Reid package

(By Ed Morrissey, Hot Air) - This should surprise no one, but Democrats are howling about a double-cross after Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) told CBS yesterday that he would not vote for cloture on Harry Reids’ compromise bill. Lieberman’s colleagues thought they had an agreement with him to allow Reid’s bill to proceed to a vote. His apparent reversal — which is no reversal at all from his repeated public pronouncements — leaves them short of a cloture vote on ObamaCare:

In a surprise setback for Democratic leaders, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, said on Sunday that he would vote against the health care legislation in its current form.

The bill’s supporters had said earlier that they thought they had secured Mr. Lieberman’s agreement to go along with a compromise they worked out to overcome an impasse within the Democratic Party.

But on Sunday, Mr. Lieberman told the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, to scrap the idea of expanding Medicare and abandon any new government insurance plan or lose his vote.