This evening, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) took to the Senate floor to “declare” his support for the health care bill and explain his opposition to the public option and the Medicare buy-in. Lieberman, who has previously insisted that the White House never pressured him to support the public plan, argued that the popular provision is “not necessary” and suggested that President Obama never advocated on its behalf:

The creation of a new government-run health care, so-called public option or the expansion of Medicare to people under 65 is not necessary. Neither proposal would extend coverage to one person who will not be benefited by the new provisions of this bill….I believe President Obama never said a public option was essential to the reform goals he set out to achieve and that most of us have. When the president spoke earlier this year to the joint session of Congress, he said that a public option is, and I quote — ‘an additional step we can take’ end quote. An additional step, he said, but not an essential one. And then he added, and I quote again — ‘the public option is only a means to that end’ end quote. And concluded that we should remain, and I quote again — ‘open to other ideas that accomplish our ultimate goal.’

Watch a compilation of Lieberman’s speech:

During his address, Lieberman delighted — without the slightest hint of irony — in the fact that the Senate bill would expand coverage to “31 million more Americans.” “We say that so often, I think we forget the power of it,” he said. “Thirty-one million people who don’t have health insurance today will have it after this bill passes. That is a giant step forward for our society.”

Lieberman also warned against changing the Senate bill in conference. “This bill as it appears it will emerge from the Senate is delicately balanced,” he said. “I hope there will be no attempt to reinsert a so-called public option in any form in the conference report. That would mean that I would not be able to support the report, and I want to support it.”

Over at Firedoglake, Jane Hamsher outlines 10 reasons to kill the Senate health care bill. The comprehensive list relies on the competent work of FDL’s team of health care bloggers and some of the critique is not without merit; other points are overstated. For instance, the claim that “many will be forced to buy poor-quality insurance they can’t afford to use,” is a bit baffling. The newly uninsured would have access to a minimum benefits package that is far more comprehensive than the available options in the individual market. Two-thirds of these “forced” Americans would pay less for more substantive coverage, not more. And the poorest Americans would have their out-of-pocket costs capped.

Hamsher claims that the bill “allows insurance companies to charge people who are older 300% more than others.” This is true, but it’s a massive improvement from the status quo, which allows insurers to charge older people as much a 11 times more for equivalent coverage. The 3:1 ratio may be excessive but it also recognizes that older people use more care than younger people and permits insurers to attract younger applicants with lower rates. Finally, the argument that “the cost of medical care will continue to rise,” also misses the point. National health expenditures will naturally increase, but under the Senate bill, they will raise at a slower rate.

On the whole, Hamsher is right to argue that the Senate bill is a deeply flawed piece of legislation which, as Paul Krugman observes, “we’ll spend years if not decades fixing it.” In fact, “with few exceptions, sweeping initiatives in the U.S. system start small, are often flawed, and then are expanded, sometimes improved, sometimes not.” Medicare began as smaller program that was expanded to cover “hospice benefits, mammograms and pap smears to detect cancer, and most recently, under the Republicans, prescription drugs.”

Fixing something that’s broken is better than not having anything to fix. Buying a fixer-up home is more appealing than remaining homeless for the next 10 to 20 years. In time, you’ll be able afford to change the tile in the bathroom or fix the leaky roof patch, but for the time being you’ll have a place to sleep, eat, and keep warm. A newer house would have caused less problems, but it — like the Senate health care bill — was simply out of reach.

The top 10 list isn’t reason to kill the bill, it’s reason to improve it in the years to come. After all, the choice isn’t between passing this bill or a better bill — it’s between passing this bill or nothing at all. Seen in this context, the Senate health care bill provides an adequate foundation for transforming the system in the years to come.

Here is a graphic representation of the choice lawmakers face:

This afternoon, on a press call with reporters, RNC Chairman Michael Steele suggested that the Democrats’ effort to pass the health care bill in the Senate was equivalent to flipping the bird to the American people:

STEELE: I mean, it just annoys and irritates me on something so fundamentally important. That this Congress, this leadership, is so tone deaf and so hell bent on propping up a policy that the American people doesn’t want, that they’re willing to basically flip the bird to the American people on this issue and slip it in in the dead of night.

Listen:

Of course, the only reason why Congress held the cloture vote at 1am this morning, was because Republicans filibustered the bill. Last night, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) offered a unanimous consent agreement to move the 1am vote to 9am this morning if Republicans agreed to forgo the optional 30 hours of debate between each cloture vote and still pass the final legislation before Christmas. Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY), who had also sternly criticized the early morning vote, objected to the measure.

While the public is weary of health care reform, public disapproval of health care reform intensified as progressives were forced to sacrifice liberal provisions to find common ground with more moderate lawmakers. As the bill became more conservative, public option began to wane. A recent CBS News/New York Times Poll found that while 50% of Americans disapprove of the way “Barack Obama is handling health care,” 59% favored “offering some people who are uninsured the choice of a government-administered health insurance plan.”

Moments ago, the Senate voted 60-40 to end the Republican filibuster of the manager’s amendment to the Senate health care bill, clearing an important hurdle to passing health care reform before the end of the year.

The Senators voted from their desks — a customary practice reserved for the most significant votes. Once the presiding president read the final tally, Democrats rushed over to congratulate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV).

Watch it:

This bill “acknowledges finally that health care is a fundamental right,” Reid said before the vote. It’s “a human right, not just a privilege for the most fortunate.” Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) insisted that “this is not the end of health care reform. It’s the beginning. But we must make this beginning in order to fulfill that dream and really make health care a right, not a privilege.”

Harkin recalled Sen.Ted Kennedy’s influence over the process, reminding his colleagues that health care reform was Kennedy’s life work. “There is really only one author of this bill, Sen. Ted Kennedy, it’s his bill.”

“The other side says fear, we say hope. The other side says no way, we say yes. We say yes to progress, yes to people, yes to health care as an inalienable right for every American citizen,” Harkin insisted.

The Senate will vote on Tuesday, December 22nd at 7am to adopt the amendment and will hold another cloture vote on the Reid substitute — the Senate’s version of the health care bill. On Wednesday December 23 at 1pm, the Senate will vote to adopt the substitute and to invoke cloture on the underlining bill. A final vote on the Senate bill is scheduled for Thursday, December 24th at 7pm. It requires a simple majority.