Ben Nelson starts on the comeback trail to nowhere
by Bob Hoig, Publisher
Midlands Business Journal
It didn’t take long for Sen. Ben (Cornhusker Kickback) Nelson to get back up, dust off what was left of his reputation after what amounted to selling his health care vote for a political deal with Barack Obama, and start all over again.
Having friends in power helps, especially when one, Obama, is in the White House and the other, Warren Buffett, is America’s second richest man.
The rehab mission for Nelson began with funds for an advertising blitz starring Nelson and Buffett purportedly paid for by the Nebraska Democrat Party. It might seem a bit strange to believe that the state party just happened to have a half million dollars laying around to put at the disposal of a tarnished lawmaker. The national party would have the money, but the state?
Buffett brought to the campaign a penchant for acting and for the public eye, plus an apparently unshakable belief in Obama and most of his works. He is certainly a longtime backer of Nelson’s.
One question is why Nelson, caught out in so clumsy a bit of corrupt legislation, rated any consideration from fellow Democrats. It is mainly Democrats, after all, upon whose collective heads Nelson has caused such national and international contempt to be rained down.
The “kickback” is so universally reviled it hardly needs telling again. But here goes:
Found on page 2,129 of Obama’s 2,700-plus page health bill was tucked away the deal that underpins Nelson’s problems.
In exchange for his vital 60th vote to allow ObamaCare to become law, Nebraska got $100 million for Medicaid from Obama via the Harry Reid conduit. The state also won a permanent exemption from paying anything into the federal program, ever. What Obama offered Nelson personally, who knows?
The bargaining was so smelly that after everything came out, Nelson said on second thought he wanted to give back the deal.
Nelson doesn’t face voters until 2012, if he ever does. He claims he will. What else could one say getting a half million three years away from election when imperiled Democrats actually running in November 2010 need the money far more. Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas is probably Exhibit A. She is up in 2010 and is getting clobbered in double digits by her most likely Republican opponent. No half million for Blanche.
The best of the ads featured Warren Buffett, backing Nelson for “doing the right thing.”
Buffett is a high profile Democrat, so his support for friend Nelson doesn’t surprise.
One of Buffett’s better-known maxims doesn’t square, that being to avoid doing things you wouldn’t want to read about on page 1. Well Nelson’s participating in Obama-style politics certainly has put him on the front pages.
Also, on this kind of, call it what you will, bribery or exchange of favors or whatever, I would not want to be one of Berkshire Hathaway’s unit managers having to report such a nasty bit of corporate wheeling and dealing to Buffett.
The entire aura broadcast by the Obama White House in just over a year might make one wonder how long Buffett’s probity can allow him to hang in there.
As for Nelson, this writer predicts he is on a comeback trail to nowhere.
February 12, 2010
