They are calling it the "Cornhusker Kickback," and it's got a lot of Republican attorneys general huffing and puffing about a legal challenge to whatever Democratic Party health care reform bill becomes law in the near future.
Here's what happened: In order to pass an unpopular -- if you go by the polls -- health care reform bill, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., had to make a lot of political deals with senators that involved tossing taxpayer dollars to those senators' states. The "Cornhusker Kickback" refers to a Medicaid payment exemption Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., received for his state in return for his support of the bill. The deal, worth about $100 million, exempts Nebraska from Medicaid payments. Vermont and Massachusetts also received similar Medicaid exemptions.
Thirteen Republican state attorneys general, including Utah's AG Mark Shurtleff, have sent a letter to Reid and U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., demanding that the deal with Nelson be removed from a final bill. If it isn't, they promise a court battle.
Democrats have called the attorneys general's move a political ploy that has no chance of success.
The irony is that both the Democrats and Republicans are right in some respects. The so-called "Cornhusker Kickback" is politics at its worse. The political bribery that Reid dealt to several senators to get a health care bill passed would be a crime in the private sector. The worst thing about the Senate financial shenanigans is that it has badly discredited President Obama's efforts to achieve both a health care reform package and his efforts to improve the tone of political debate. No one who witnessed the exhileration and hope of President Obama's inauguration a year ago could have imagined that his signature effort, a health care reform effort, would be so unpopular today. Public cynicism of the political class is at an all-time high.
Having said that, we do believe the AG's efforts are both politically motivated and likely to fail. The sad truth is that the kind of despicable political deals that occurred to get the health care reform bill through the Senate is the norm in the U.S. Congress. It's been going on for a very long time. In fact, similar events occurred several years ago when the Republican-majority Congress passed the Medicare prescription drug legislation. We don't recall Republican attorneys general getting all huffy over the constitutionality of that budget-busting legislation.
We hope the "Cornhusker Kickback," and other deals that were made, don't make it into the final health care bill. But it will take more than a partisan lawsuit to change the polluted ethics of the U.S. Congress. Frankly, that clean up job is the voters' responsibility.
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