Senators for Sale

A story has it that George Bernard Shaw walked up to a lady at a party and said, “Madam, if I gave you $50 million, would you sleep with me?”

“Of course,” she replied.

“How about if I gave you $10?” asked Shaw.

“Mr. Shaw,” she said, “What kind of woman do you think I am?”

Shaw replied, “We’ve already established what kind of woman you are. All we are doing now is haggling over the price.”

P.J. O’Rourke was correct when he termed the United States Congress “A Parliament of Whores”. Yesterday, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) became just the latest United States Senator to demonstrate the price for which he is willing to sell his vote. Nelson was reputedly a pro-life Senator who had stated that his conscience would not allow him to support the latest iteration of the current Omnibus Health Care Bill unless it contained strong prohibitions against using taxpayer funds for abortions.

Most pro-life advocates are such because we feel that abortion is a moral evil, the taking of an innocent life. It is a deep-seated conviction, not one that is customarily used as a negotiating tool. Sen. Nelson, however, went into a back room with the Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, to discuss this issue of conscience. He didn’t come out with the anti-abortion language he desired. In fact, he didn’t come out with anti-abortion language, at all. The language to which Nelson acquiesced promises that each state may individually choose whether or not federal taxpayer money will be used to provide coverage of abortions in the government’s insurance exchange. (Incidentally, the mechanism for how the states will decide this issue is not detailed, but you can bet it will not be left up to the voters.)

Any residual pangs of conscience that Nelson may have felt were apparently assuaged by another little side agreement resulting from the closed-door meeting. It seems that Medicare will be extended to everyone who makes less than 133% of the poverty level. Now that may be perfectly reasonable but, with Medicare, every state has to pay a percentage, typically about 33-50%, of that expanded coverage.

Every state, that is, except Nebraska.

Yes, you read that correctly. That means that if you live, as I do, in the People’s Republic of Michigan, with the worst economy in the country and an unemployment rate of almost 15%, your tax dollars will be paying for Medicare for the citizens of the great state of Nebraska (11^th best economy; 4.5% unemployment rate.) Nelson also scored some additional concessions for Nebraska, some regulation exemptions for physician owned hospitals and others, but the Medicare deal is the biggie.

(By the way, can we just drop the phrase “Pro-life Democrat Senator”? I think it has been amply demonstrated that there is no such creature.)

Of course, it would be unfair to single out Sen. Nelson for this type of extortion. Earlier in this process, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA), a “conservative” Democrat walked away with a deal so outrageous that it has earned the sobriquet, The Louisiana Purchase. It seems that Sen. Landrieu also had a crisis of conscience about voting for a bill that will almost certainly raise insurance rates, decrease quality and accessibility of health care, and cost the country trillions of dollars. Her guilt was salved by a provision written into the bill granting $100 million in Medicare subsidies to all states in which every county or parish were declared disaster areas within the preceding 7 fiscal years. Guess which one and only state in the US qualifies? If you said, “Louisiana,” you win the grand prize. And since these are matching funds, Landrieu correctly bragged, “I am not going to be defensive about asking for help in this situation and it is not a $100 million fix, it is a $300 million fix." Just to prove she has a sense of humor, Landrieu denied that this was the reason she decided to change her vote.

These are only the payoffs that we know of. Why don’t we know what other items may be in this bill? Because no one, except Harry Reid, has seen the bill, yet. That’s right, the bill over which the Senate has been debating is not the bill on which they will be voting. Only in Washington can this make an iota of sense. Sen. Reid plans of producing the bill at the last possible moment, just like the “stimulus” bill and the cap-and-tax bill, so that the Senators and, more importantly, the watchdogs and the media will not have time to study the bill before the vote.

Now, there is a huge rush to pass this bill before the Senate breaks for Christmas. In fact, according to Senate rules, the Senate cannot vote on the bill until Christmas Eve. Why the rush? Because health care is in such a crisis that people will be dying in the street until they get the new and improved Obamacare? If that were the case, why does the bill not even go into effect until 2014 (though we will start paying for it next year? How else can the Office of Management and Budget claim that it will not increase the deficit during its first 10 years? It is because we pay for 14 years and get coverage for 10.) No, the reason that Dirty Harry and crew are anxious to pass this is that it is a dog and they know it. They do not want to have happen what happened during the fall recess when members of Congress were confronted by their angry constituents over the bill. They want to go home with a fait accompli. Plus, 2010 is an election year and Congress is betting that the people’s memories will be short. They don’t want to be involved in this dispute in an election year.

Over the next several weeks, expect to hear of additional back-room deals, vote selling, and extortion. The Democrats know that passing this bill will cost them seats in Congress. Watch how many those “Blue Dog” Democrats that are voted out in 2010 land jobs in the Obama administration or liberal Washington think tanks. I suspect that if the public knew about all the deals that have been and will be struck, they would be appalled. This is the very reason that, according to the Gallup polling agency, Congressional approval ratings have been hovering around 25%. It is time for the public to get disgusted enough to send Congress to the unemployment line.

After all, it doesn’t matter how much she costs, beneath it all, a whore is still a whore.