Here’s The Brie To Go With Your Whine, Senator Nelson
Who let the dogs out?
My question is, who let the curs in in the first place?
If Senator Ben Nelson could turn back the clock (or buy his Kool-Aid from the same distributor as Obama), he’d have us all believing that Senator Harry (the Grinch) Reid pulled a fast one on him by slipping that 100% payment-in-perpetuity of Nebraska’s expanded Medicaid costs into the Senate’s health care “reform” bill so Ben would vote for it.
Either he thinks the American people really ARE that stupid or he’s the one who’s so stupid he didn’t understand the terms by which his vote was bought.
Personally, seeing as how old Ben’s a Congress critter with his hand caught in the proverbial cookie jar, I’m going to guess it’s the former.
Politico reports:
According to a copy of a memo sent by McMaster’s [South Carolina GOP Attorney General Henry McMaster] chief of staff to other GOP state attorneys general detailing the call, Nelson asked McMaster to “call off the dogs,” a reference to recent threats by the state AGs to file a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a Medicaid provision in the bill that benefits Nebraska at the expense of other states.
“Senator Nelson insisted that he had not asked for the Cornhusker Kickback to be placed in the U.S. Senate version of the health care bill to secure his vote. Senator Nelson told the attorney general that it was simply a ‘marker’ placed in the U.S. Senate version of the bill and assured the attorney general that it would be ‘fixed,’ says the memo.
The document goes on to say: “Senator Nelson said it would be ‘fixed’ by extending the Cornhusker Kickback (100% federal payment) on Medicaid to every state.”
Let’s try some math, shall we? It is estimated that what Reid expects the American taxpayer to send to Nebraska for Nelson’s vote is at least $100 million over the next ten years. If you simply multiply that by 50 (to cover all the states), that’s a cost of $5 billion. But we all know that those illegal immigrant-loving states like California and poverty-stricken progressive liberal Democrat strongholds like Michigan will incur higher costs so it’s quite conceivable that such a (stupid) plan would cost tax-paying Americans far, far more. Billions that rather neatly erase the much-touted-though-double-dipped-savings-false Democrat claims that Reid’s closed-door bill will cut the federal deficit.
So now we’re forced to decide whether Nelson is really so stupid as to think the American people are going to believe that everyone was supposed to get Nebraska’s special Medicaid costs treatment and think that’s a good thing, or that Senator Harry Reid is an even bigger liar than already proven by analysis of his bill.
We’ll have to flip a coin on this one.
The article goes on to say that:
…the goal of the GOP attorneys general was to remove the Nebraska Medicaid provision from the bill and that “he saw no way that he—nor any of the state attorneys general—will support extension of the Cornhusker Kickback to every state nor be a part of a deal like that.”
At least those busy flying pigs get a rest this time.
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How Long Since Congress Passed A Budget?
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