Nelson’s vote gave socialized medicine toehold in U.S.
by Bob Hoig, Publisher
Midlands Business Journal
It’s nice that Nebraska’s Ben Nelson finally sees parts of ObamaCare he can’t stand.
That catches him up with the majority of his constituents.
The Democrat senator made headlines this week in the New York Times and elsewhere that he finds “troubling” some alterations in the reconciliation bill before the Senate, and that he will vote against the bill.
Reconciliation seeks to bring House-passed changes to ObamaCare into line with the Senate’s bill, for which Nelson cast the decisive 60th vote, allowing passage by closing down a Republican filibuster.
Nelson told reporter David M. Herszenhorn of the Times that he stands behind the Democrat (ObamaCare) health bill in general. But he said he cannot support several key reconciliation features, including incorporating an unrelated student loan “reform” (the inverted commas are ours) into it.
That idea, hatched by House Democrats under Speaker Nancy Pelosi, effectively nationalizes the student loan industry.
In a statement to the Times, Nelson opposed another House feature — Pelosi’s add-on taking $9 billion from the apparently soon to be government-run student loan program to pay for health care.
Nelson also objects to Pelosi’s creation of what he described as a “troubling new payroll tax on unearned income (read investment income) that would go into general health funds,” possibly imperiling some Medicare revenues later.
What Nelson seems to be attempting with this high profile protest is walking back as best he can the damning political and personal consequences of that 60th vote greasing the way forward for Obama.
Veteran Nelson watchers have learned the signs.
In the current case study, because 60 Democrat votes are no longer needed to seal ObamaCare — only 50 are needed now — Nelson can move to grandstanding.
At this late stage of needing only the 50 votes, Majority Leader Harry Reid has seven or eight free passes for imperiled Democrats facing elections in Republican-dominated states.
It’s Reid’s way of saying, “Ben, this one is in the bag. You know those Cornhuskers. Use any approach you need to get yourself off the hook with them.”
It paid off this past Monday morning with a page one headline above the fold in the Omaha World-Herald, “Nelson plans to vote no.” Accompanied by a picture of the senator and next to a major story topped by a large headline “Health care fights moving to new arenas,” it was useful to Nelson to position him anywhere near the word “No” and an ObamaCare story.
Nelson obviously misread his voters when he got himself gummed up in the infamous “Cornhusker Kickback” — $100 million a year in perpetuity for Nebraska to off-set coming ruinous increases in state Medicaid costs because of ObamaCare. The response to this obvious and odious bribe of federal largess in exchange for Nelson’s vote for Obama’s deal seemed genuinely to surprise him.
Far from learning, he seems to have doubled down on the position because, amazingly, the reconciliation bill he now opposes repealed the kickbacks, Cornhusker included, and adds billions to the cost of the bill.
What seems to be happening here is Nelson’s way of offering his spotlight to other senators — the Washington, D.C., way of ducking out with an “Everybody’s doing it” appeal.
Nelson professes political independence. Being a Democrat in a heavily Republican state, he has to. He is, however, as his record shows, always a dependable Democrat vote every time the issue really counts.
Much of what is happening now in Congress is just smoke and procedure. The runaway horse of government-controlled health, medicine and insurance is out of the barn. Whatever nuance or magic dust Nelson sprinkles around cannot change that fact.
Only an aroused public can do it — starting next November and continuing in the presidential election in November, 2012.
Every move going forward — like the World-Herald’s “Nelson plans to vote no” headline — will be aimed at making Nebraskans forget that Ben Nelson gave socialized medicine its beachhead in America.
March 26, 2010
