Just when Americans thought the political corruption attending the power grab by radical liberals, enabled by their useful idiots, could not become more blatant and offensive to our Founding principles following the Louisiana Purchase of Senator Mary Landrieu, Senator Harry Reid showed yesterday that there is no limit to the fraud that liberals will perpetrate to seize and hold power.
Reid bought off Senator Landrieu with a $300 million bribe on November 20th, enabling the Senate health care bill to stay alive. Yesterday, he bought off, writ large, Senator Ben Nelson (D-Nebraska), in, perhaps, the most blatant and transparent display of public bribery.
Senator Nelson had made a presumably principled-stand against the liberal bill by refusing to provide his consent to a bill that provided federal funding for abortion. Given his previous position in the highly-charged abortion issue, on the surface, this push-back appeared reasonable. Unless the language in the bill was strengthened to prohibit federal funding for abortion, Senator Reid would not get the 60th vote he needed for cloture from Senator Nelson. Or so the narrative read...
In reality, what was really happening was classic back-room corruption but on a level never seen before. Harry Reid bought off Senator Nelson’s vote, not with the stronger language against federal funding of abortion that Senator Nelson claimed as the foundation of his principled opposition, but with a Medicaid bribe for the state of Nebraska that makes the $300 million bribery of Senator Landrieu look small-time. In return for his nod, Senator Nelson will have taxpayers in every other state pay Nebraska's share of Medicaid expenses... forever.
What makes the bribery of Senator Nelson so transparent is that the language regarding federal funding in the most recent bill is weaker than before Nelson made his “principled” stand. The hypocrisy and vile corruption is so utterly transparent.
As House Minority Leader Boehner writes in a 12/19 posting,
"...the Senate democrats' health care bill would require a monthly abortion fee paid by all tax-paying Americans. "... there is no prohibition on abortion coverage in federally subsidized plans participating in the Exchange. Instead the amendment includes layers of accounting gimmicks that demand that plans participating in the Exchange or the new government-run plan that will be managed by the Office of Personnel Management must establish “allocation accounts” when elective abortion is a covered benefit (p. 41). Everyone enrolled in these plans must pay a monthly abortion premium (p. 41, lines 5-8), and these funds will be used to pay for the elective abortion services. The Reid amendment directs insurance companies to assess the cost of elective abortion coverage (p. 43), and charge a minimum of $1 per enrollee per month (p. 43, lines 20-22).
In short, the Reid bill continues to defy the will of the American people and contradict longstanding federal policy by providing federal subsidies to private health plans that cover elective abortions. The new language does include a “state opt-out” provision if a state passes a law to prohibit insurance coverage of abortion, but it’s a sham because it does nothing to prevent one state’s tax dollars from paying for elective abortions in other states.
President Obama has promised transparency. We have it. President Obama has promised that the Health Care reform he has pushed will not raise taxes on the middle class or increase the deficit by "one dime". He is correct, It will raise taxes on the middle class and increase the deficit by a gazillion dimes.
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