Harry Reid and Joe Lieberman clear the air -- kind of

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This isn’t exactly like kissing and making up, but Sens. Harry Reid and Joe Lieberman insist they really don’t hate each other.

Both the Senate majority leader from Nevada and the lawmaker from Connecticut, a precarious independent vote who is key to the Democrats’ 60-vote hold on power in the Senate, issued statements today worthy of diplomatic talks at a G-20 summit.

This stemmed from a New York Times Magazine article published on its website this week this week that described ‘Reid’s distress, as related by associates,’’ after learning that Lieberman had announced on CBS/ ‘Face the Nation’ that he would not support a Reid-made compromise to create a government-run ‘public option’ to compete with private insurers.

The magazine reported that Reid, after hearing that Lieberman had announced on TV that he would oppose a Medicare ‘buy-in’’ for people 55 to 65 as part of that proposed compromise, exclaimed to associates: ‘He double-crossed me. Let’s not do what he wants. Let the bill just go down.’

In the end, Reid acceded to Lieberman’s objections and got the 60 votes needed to advance the healthcare bill to a final vote, 60-39.

‘Sen. Lieberman and I have a very open and honest working relationship,’’ Reid said in a statement issued by his office today. ‘On issues ranging from foreign policy to healthcare, even when we disagree, he has always been straight forward with me.’

‘I appreciate Sen. Reid’s statement in response to the comments attributed to him in the New York Times Magazine,’ Lieberman said. ‘As Sen. Reid indicated in his statement, he believes, as do I, that we have always been honest with each other and any suggestion otherwise is simply false and contrary to the truth.’

-- Mark Silva