ShareThisWASHINGTON - All right class one more time: Who has the best legislature money can buy? Now in unison, "The United States of America."
Selling one's vote is a tradition of long standing in the land of the free and the home of the brave, particularly at Christmas time when the nation's elected representatives love to hang expensive ornaments on a crucial bill on their way out of town. This is a way to assure that their constituents know their value to them and cast their ballots accordingly when the next election comes around.
It doesn't make a whole lot of difference how noble a stance one has taken early in the debate; in the end the important thing is putting the right price on one's principle. You don't want to make it too cheap.
Even the bill reforming health care isn't immune from the auction block. Consider all that extra Medicaid money for the states of senators whose votes were crucial in assuring passage in this most ambitious of presidential initiatives. Sitting on the fence in the early debate, Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana got a $100 million boost in her state's program for the indigent. The wags that populate the hallways outside the Senate chambers promptly titled it the "Louisiana Purchase."
But while Republicans huffed and puffed over that, their grumbling morphed into full scale bellowing and snorting over Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson's last minute compromise that seemed clearly stimulated by promises of another $100 million in increased Medicaid payments to his state of Nebraska. Nelson, a no holds barred champion of the right to life movement, suddenly found a way to reconsider his theretofore unmovable objections and endorse a provision on abortion that pleased no one except the Democratic leadership because it gave them the 60 votes necessary to stave off a filibuster.
GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and a dozen others not only cried foul but also labeled the entire process of trading favors on such a monumental issue sleazy and corrupt. They demanded investigations, which, of course, will never take place, at least federally, because for one thing, their party is still wandering around in the wilderness from last year's election. If it weren't, many of them probably would be doing just about the same thing.
Interestingly, even the other senator from Nebraska, Republican Mike Johanns, showing an unusual amount of courage for a lawmaker in that position, condemned the Nelson deal arguing that it tarnished his state "thrusting (Cornhuskers) into the same pot with all the other special deals that get cut here." Well, Johanns had better hope that a lot of Nebraskans, especially with marginal incomes, feel the same way.
In the bill's more than 2,000 pages, it is probably possible to find goodies hidden everywhere, particularly in legislation that is as complex and controversial as this. Democratic Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut slipped in $100 million for a medical center in his state and the bill's initial author, Democrat Max Baucus, managed to provide a windfall for asbestos victims if they worked in his state of Montana.
There is something terribly monotonous about all this log rolling in what is supposed to be the world's greatest deliberative body, which in reality is one of the more tediously venal institutions in the world history of democracy. Sometimes the Senate works to the advantage of the people, other times it doesn't. It does better when there is bipartisanship. There is none now so what one gets is always tarnished by the necessity to use the worst of politics to get to the majority party's desired goal.
It is problematic whether or not the goodies extraneously hung on this bill in that tradition will remain in the House and Senate conference necessary to reconcile differences in the two versions of the bill. The abortion issue is a big one and certainly there will be a push by liberals for a public insurance option. But even if some of the extraneous provisions disappear it probably doesn't matter much.
What really matters in these cases is that the voters know you tried and that they reward you in the voting booth. That after all was the whole object of the exercise.
(E-mail Dan K. Thomasson, former editor of the Scripps Howard News Service, at thomassondan(at)aol.com.)
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