Soccer Dad

"... looting the nation for local benefit ..."

"There are 100 senators here and I don't know that there's a senator that doesn't have something in this bill that isn't important to them. That's what legislating is all about; it's the art of compromise," he said.

So Harry Reid boasted.

But I read the details of the bribe (via Instapundit) extended to Sen Nelson of Nebraska. (via Hit and Run)

Nelson secured full federal funding for his state to expand Medicaid coverage to all individuals below 133 percent of the federal poverty level. Other states must pay a small portion of the additional cost. He won concessions for qualifying nonprofit insurers and for Medigap providers from a new insurance tax. He also was able to roll back cuts to health savings accounts.

Is there a stronger case to be made against this bill than that to get that last vote to achieve cloture, Majority Leader Reid needed to protect the last holdout against the effects of the bill? (There are strong cases to be made that the bill is a disaster no one knows everything that's in the bill, that the cloture vote took place in the dead of night and that it undercuts legislative authority, but when the bill's proponents implicitly agree that the bill will increase rather than lower health spending, that really says something.

Now a number of states are looking into the deal. (At least their Republican Attorneys General are.)

Prompted by an angry Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, the attorney general of that state and six others are looking at the Nelson deal, which they have dubbed the "Nebraska compromise," The Associated Press reported Tuesday.

He is not the only one to win concessions for his state, but he has become the focus of attention, partly because he was holding out so publicly for anti-abortion language even as he made Nebraska-friendly deals on the side.

While South Carolina tries to wring out more money itself, Senator Graham has vowed to make an example of Mr. Nelson. The South Carolina attorney general, Henry McMaster, is looking into the Nelson deal, as are his counterparts in Alabama, Colorado, Michigan, North Dakota, Texas and Washington state -- all Republicans.

It is not clear what, if anything, South Carolina or the other states could do about the Nelson arrangement. But Mr. Graham was apparently shocked, shocked, at the bargaining, calling it sleazy and saying it harmed citizens of every other state who would now be paying for Nebraska.

Now of course, the writer's sarcastic tone, aside (and the apparent political opportunism aside too) Sen. Graham does have a point. But that doesn't bother a Democratic Congressman from South Carolina.

And yet, many other members of Congress are eager to follow the Nelson example, including one from South Carolina: Representative James Clyburn, a Democrat. Mr. Clyburn told The A.P. that he wanted to get more money for his state when the Senate and House begin negotiating a final health care bill.

Mr. Clyburn said he hopeed to increase the federal portion of Medicaid payments to his state to 95 percent. That would be up from the 90 percent that most states get -- most except Nebraska, which will now get 100 percent of its Medicaid expansion picked up by the federal government, in perpetuity, thanks to Senator Nelson.

So Rep. Clyburn lets us know what this really is. It's not compromise as trumpeted by Majority Leader Reid; it's serial bribery. Or as George Will so elegantly and indelicately puts it:

Before equating Harry Reid to Henry Clay, understand that buying 60 Senate votes is a process more protracted than difficult. Reid was buying the votes of senators whose understanding of the duties of representation does not rise above looting the nation for local benefits. And Reid had two advantages -- the spending, taxing and borrowing powers of the federal leviathan, and an almost gorgeous absence of scruples or principles. Principles are general rules, such as: Nebraska should not be exempt from burdens imposed on the other 49 states.