Or even bigger, constitutional? So the Senate passes this bill, health care bill – you’ve heard of it, that imposes the same restrictions and burdens on every state in the union. Oh wait, no it doesn’t. In fact, the only way this bill got passed is because the Senate leadership engaged in the oldest game in Washington. And that’s got conservatives in the U.S. Senate, and taxpayers across the country fired up. The Charleston Post and Courier sums it up nicely:
Lawmakers have long played this variation on the “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” theme: “You change your bill the way I want, I’ll vote for it.” When practiced with prudent restraint, that tradition of legislative trading has helped advance worthy agendas via reasonable compromises.
But Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., went far beyond any sense of reason — or shame — with the brazen bargain he struck to advance the Senate health care reform bill. As South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham fairly pointed out Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” the “back-room deals that amount to bribes” to pass the Senate reform bill represent “the worst of Washington.”
The back-room deal the Democratic leadership reached with Sen. Nelson late Friday night obtained his vote in the wee hours Monday morning (and a bare-minimum 60-40 party-line margin) to avert a filibuster threat against that bill.
Senator Graham’s question – and this will be the rallying cry for anyone who thinks this is a raw deal – is whether or not this bill can even past a simple constitutional muster. He doesn’t think so, and he’s asked South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster to use his fine legal mind to study whether or not this bill is constitutionally appropriate.
It’s really troubling that Nebraska got a $45 million break on this bill. If a break on the tab of this bill is good enough for Nebraska it should be good enough for the rest of the country, right? Or maybe the good people of Nebraska are better than the rest of us – yeah that’s a good application of equality right there. Never mind the other hundreds of millions spent to get others Senators votes. Rough deal for voters, sweet deal for the politicians. Voters get stuck with less money in their pocket and a bigger government, and politicians get political victories (pork for the home district) to talk about in an election year.
UPDATE:
The South Carolina A.G. issued the following statement today on this matter: Read the rest of this entry »