Ezra Klein PWNS Joe Lieberman

Every Democratic strategist going on cable news this week should read this Ezra Klein post about Joe Lieberman's lame recession excuse against doing health care reform now because I can promise you that they will be hit over the head with what that asshole said yesterday on CNN.

Second, health-care reform is scheduled to begin in 2013, by which time we will almost certainly be out of recession, and if we're not, we have bigger problems. Lieberman might be uncommonly pessimistic about our prospects for growth, but that would imply support for health-care reform, as it will pump a trillion dollars into the economy and thus stimulate demand.

Third, the costs of reform largely manifest in the later years of the decade, namely 2015-2019, by which point we may or may not be in recession, but if we are, it will probably be a different recession than the one we're in now.

There is, in other words, no connection between whether GDP growth is slightly negative in the third quarter of 2009 and whether we should spend money between 2013 and 2019 building a universal health-care system. When people say we shouldn't do health-care reform because of the recession, they're saying something about their preferred approach to health-care reform, not to recessions.

Oh yeah, and by the way, FUCK JOE LIEBERMAN!

That is all.