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The Price of ‘History’

Harry Reid delivers a bundle of special-interest favors.

 

Blanche Lincoln and Evan Bayh must feel like saps. The Arkansas and Indiana Democrats spent months caterwauling about this or that provision in the Senate health-care bill, then at 1 a.m. Monday they voted to speed its passage without getting so much as a lousy T-shirt.

In Harry Reid’s Senate, this qualifies as dereliction of duty, as the Majority Leader said himself on Monday in defense of his frantic deal-making to get 60 votes. “I don’t know if there is a Senator that doesn’t have something in this bill that was important to them,” Mr. Reid said at a press conference that offered an unintentional commentary on modern democracy. “And if they don’t have something in it important to them, then it doesn’t speak well of them.”

James Madison, phone home.

Truth be told, even Tom DeLay must be jealous of Mr. Reid’s handiwork. We summarize some of his most notorious political payoffs nearby, including the legendary $300 million “Louisiana Purchase” for Mary Landrieu, and $100 million for Chris Dodd’s favorite Connecticut hospital.

But special attention should go to Senator Ben Nelson, who played hard-to-get the longest and in return for being the 60th vote won an exemption for Nebraska from paying any of the additional costs for the bill’s Medicaid expansion, which is worth $100 million. He also won millions of dollars of exemptions from the $6.7 billion in health insurance fees for Nebraska-based companies like Mutual of Omaha.

This is the same Senator who declared a few weeks ago that “my vote is not for sale.” Well, he never said: at any price.

At first, Mr. Nelson defended his Medicaid buy-off as a service to his constituents, two-thirds of whom tell pollsters they oppose the overall bill. But the lucre was denounced by Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman and Republican Senator Mike Johanns.

“Nebraskans don’t want a special deal,” said Mr. Johanns. “The special deal for Nevada was wrong, the carve-outs for Louisiana, Vermont, and Massachusetts are wrong, and the same applies to the backroom deal for Nebraska. All of the special deals should be removed. If the bill cannot pass without carve-outs, what further evidence is needed that it is bad policy?”

  

Associated Press Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb.

But Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin replied that Mr. Nelson’s Cornhusker kickback was merely an example all 50 states will soon follow. “Every Governor in the country is going to say, why doesn’t our state” get that Medicaid deal, Mr. Harkin said, and the Nelson connivance is “going to be the impetus for” the federal government to pay 100% of the extra Medicaid costs for all the states.

And, sure enough, Mr. Nelson admitted yesterday amid a defensive near-meltdown on the Senate floor that “Three Senators came up to me just now on the [Senate] floor and said, ‘Now we understand what you did. We’ll be seeking this funding too.'” Mr. Nelson now says “it’s not a special deal for Nebraska. It is in fact an opportunity to get rid of an unfunded federal mandate.”

You have to admire his political dexterity. But if having the feds pay for these Medicaid expansions is such a great idea, then why wasn’t that part of the original bill? Answer: The $30 billion cost would be too high for all 50 states and would make the bill look even more expensive than it is, but as a bribe to buy off one or two Senators, it’s acceptable. The other states will have to get theirs later, after the Reid bill has been passed under the fantastical ruse that it is “deficit-neutral.” Taxpayers nationwide will pay sooner or later.

Meanwhile, the Reid bill’s fine print also solves the mystery of Florida Senator Bill Nelson, who is no relation to Ben but is just as crafty. How could a Florida Democrat, who has built his career denouncing Medicare “cuts,” vote for a bill that pays for a new entitlement for younger Americans by taking more than $400 billion from health-care for seniors?

His brilliant solution: Include a grandfather clause that exempts Florida seniors who currently have Medicare Advantage benefits from losing them. This little beauty is worth $3 billion to $5 billion. (Presumably Arizona, also the home to many retirees, didn’t qualify because its two Senators are Republicans.)

This does mean, of course, that if you turn 65 next year and move to Florida and want Medicare Advantage, you don’t qualify for the Nelson Advantage. So some seniors will be more equal than others. But at least Mr. Nelson was able to minimize the chance of a major senior revolt against his support for Medicare cuts.

Thus does your United States Senate, the world’s greatest nondeliberative deliverer of special-interest favors, practice political medicine. Get used to it. As President Obama likes to say, it’s “history” in the making.

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A20

 

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