Sen. Ben Nelson’s (D., Neb.) home-state Medicaid racket is, it appears, not long for this earth. Senate Democrats on both the progressive and moderate ends have signaled at town-hall meetings that the “Cornhusker Kickback” will be stripped from whatever health-care bill emerges from the Democrats’ closed-door negotiations.But that hasn’t stopped Nelson from offering a series of curiously evolving explanations for the special deal — which would see the federal government pick up the tab for $100 million in Medicaid funding for Nebraska — in the face of withering criticism from his constituents. Nelson’s latest explanation is — get this — that the kickback was never meant to make it out of conference committee...
But as criticism mounted leading up to the Christmas Eve vote, Nelson said that the deal was not his idea but came from Nebraska’s Republican governor, Dave Heineman, who had previously written to him expressing concerns about an unfunded mandate for Medicaid expansion. Nelson said that he’d merely shared Heineman’s letter with the Democratic leadership, and that they wrote in the Medicaid provision of their own accord. He even referred to the deal as “the Heineman exemption” on multiple occasions. But Heineman vigorously denied his complicity and urged Nelson to reconsider his vote on the Reid bill.
“That’s not the way we operate,” Heineman said, calling the deal an “attack on [Nebraskans’] integrity.”
Only then did Nelson begin in earnest to characterize his marker as part of a “legislative strategy” that would lead to a Medicaid opt-out provision for all states in the final version of the bill...
Read the rest of Daniel Foster's National Review article here.
