Ben Nelson to SC Attorney General: “Call off the dogs”
New developments from politico.com in the potential legal challenge that SD Attorney General Marty Jackley has promised to sign on to if the “Nebraska Compromise” remains:
Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) reached out Thursday evening to South Carolina GOP Attorney General Henry McMaster, the leader of a group of 13 Republican state attorneys general who are threatening to file suit against the Senate health care bill, and urged him to forgo any legal action, POLITICO has learned.
According to a copy of a memo sent by McMaster’s chief of staff to other GOP state attorneys general detailing the call, Nelson asked McMaster to “call off the dogs,” a reference to recent threats by the state AGs to file a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a Medicaid provision in the bill that benefits Nebraska at the expense of other states.
the article goes on to say:
“Senator Nelson insisted that he had not asked for the Cornhusker Kickback to be placed in the U.S. Senate version of the health care bill to secure his vote. Senator Nelson told the attorney general that it was simply a ‘marker’ placed in the U.S. Senate version of the bill and assured the attorney general that it would be ‘fixed,’ says the memo.
The document goes on to say: “Senator Nelson said it would be ‘fixed’ by extending the Cornhusker Kickback (100% federal payment) on Medicaid to every state.”
Senate Democratic leaders have made no reference to a plan to expand the Nebraska deal to the remaining 49 states — a move that would be prohibitively expensive to the federal government and raise serious questions about whether health reform would lower the expected federal deficit, as President Barack Obama claims it would.
At the same time, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) said after the Nebraska deal came to light that he envisions other states lining up to seek a similar deal down the road. Under the Nebraska provision, all added expenses from expanding Medicaid to cover the uninsured in Nebraska starting in 2017 would be borne by the federal government forever, not split with the state as they are now.
According to the memo, McMaster responded to Nelson by saying that the goal of the GOP attorneys general was to remove the Nebraska Medicaid provision from the bill and that “he saw no way that he—nor any of the state attorneys general—will support extension of the Cornhusker Kickback to every state nor be a part of a deal like that.”
Read the story here
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Comments
Go, AG’s!!! Ben Nelson is just trying to cover his backside. If this had nothing to do with this vote, he would have voted NO!
Well, if they did reimburse all states and it was no longer deficit neutral, Obama would have to veto it. After all, he promised not to sign it if it wasn’t deficit neutral. And he keeps all his promises. Oh, wait……
Let’s just GROW the federal government a bit more–Let’s just hand over what little power that the states still hold.
Shame! We need to just DUMP this whole bill and start over–no reform at all is better than this bill
I agree with springer…Ben is just trying to cover up..he does not have my respect, nor do any who sell out to interest groups..not there or here in South Dakota…oh, by the way, I see that Tad Parry is probably running for the legislature..speaking of people who are running to promote an agenda, that being to represent the Board of Regents and
all of their ridiculous wish lists..hope he has some good competition.
Interesting… The question is, which would be easier to kill, an unconstitutional bill that is passed and signed into law, or stopping a bill in Congress because it is too expensive? Would any Blue Dog like to comment on this? I doubt it.
I guess we’ll still have the mandatory purchase of insurance to challenge in court.
I urge everyone to watch 11-22-09’s Saturday Night Live opening skit of President Obama and China’s Hu. It hit the nail on the head concerning the lunacy of spending more on health care to save a nearly bankrupt government.
I think they should should file a RICO suit against the democratic leadership. Is there anything preventing them from doing so?
Huh. That’s not how I expected things to go. I figured that they would remove Nebraska’s Medicaid deal from the conference bill. I didn’t expect them to try to give the same deal to all the other states. I agree with the article that doing that would screw up the deficit savings that are in the current bills.
I mean, if Nelson says he’ll vote for health care reform without that deal, then they need to take it out.