[NOTE: This post has been Updated]
Ordinarily I’d say that commitment to principle, or its absence, is bi-partisan, that Republicans are neither more virtuous nor more concerned with the public interest than Democrats (or, obviously, vice versa), but a glaringly obvious yet under-remarked aspect of Harry Reid’s recent “Cash for Cloture” auction for health care votes calls that assumption into question: all of the bribes financial inducements were taken by Democrats.
First there was the “Louisiana Purchase,” $100 million in extra Medicaid money for the Bayou State, requested by Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.).
Then came the “Cornhusker Kickback,” another $100 million in extra Medicaid money, this time for Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.).
This was followed by word that Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) had written into the legislation $100 million meant for a medical center in his state. This one was quickly dubbed the “U Con.”
Earlier, when GOP staff member mistakenly thought the medical center was destined for Indiana rather than Connecticut, they named it the “Bayh Off” for Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.).
For Democratic leaders, this created an appearance problem
Only “appearance”? Oh well. The list goes on:
Indeed, the proliferation of deals has outpaced the ability of Capitol Hill cynics to name them.
Gator Aid: Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) inserted a grandfather clause that would allow Floridians to preserve their pricey Medicare Advantage program.
Handout Montana: Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) secured Medicare coverage for anybody exposed to asbestos — as long as they worked in a mine in Libby, Mont.
Iowa Pork and Omaha Prime Cuts: Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) won more Medicare money for low-volume hospitals of the sort commonly found in Iowa, while Nebraska’s Nelson won a “carve out” provision that would reduce fees for Mutual of Omaha and other Nebraska insurers.
Meanwhile, Sens. Byron Dorgan and Kent Conrad, both North Dakota Democrats, would enjoy a provision bringing higher Medicare payments to hospitals and doctors in “frontier counties” of states such as — let’s see here — North Dakota!
Hawaii, with two Democratic senators, would get richer payments to hospitals that treat many uninsured people. Michigan, home of two other Democrats, would earn higher Medicare payments and some reduced fees for Blue Cross/Blue Shield. Vermont’s Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) held out for larger Medicaid payments for his state (neighboring Massachusetts would get some, too).
There are probably even more bribes deal sweeteners that we don’t know about, yet, or that haven’t been made yet but will. Indeed, Fox News reports this morning that Sen. Cornhusker Kickback Nelson
said Tuesday that three other senators have told him they want to bargain for the same kind of special treatment.
“Three senators came up to me just now on the (Senate) floor, and said, ‘Now we understand what you did. We’ll be seeking this funding too’,” Nelson said.
All the known (and presumably these three unknown future) bribes deals involve Democrats. But it defies belief that Obama and Reid did not offer equally generous bribes concessions to Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, and even Lindsey Graham and other Republicans. Remember, Reid needed 60 votes to ram his partisan bill through the Senate, but they didn’t every one have to be Democratic votes.
According to Harry Reid, every Senator who was worth his or her salt got something.
“I don’t know if there is a senator that doesn’t have something in this bill that was important to them,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) reasoned when asked at a news conference Monday about the cash-for-cloture accusation. “And if they don’t have something in it important to them, then it doesn’t speak well of them.”
Presumably Reid means every Democratic Senator, since no Republicans voted for cloture. As a Virginian, I wonder what my Senators, Jim Webb and Mark Warner, got. Does their silence about the bribes goodies for Virginia they secured mean they are embarrassed because they gave their votes away for free, meaning they liked the Reid bill so much they didn’t have to be bribed induced to vote for it? Or are they embarrassed to admit their votes were for sale? Or perhaps they are embarrassed for having sold too cheaply? I assume we’ll find out.
But, to return to my initial questions, why did no Republican succumb to the temptations that surely were offered? It can’t be simple political self-interest, since Snowe, Collins, and perhaps some other Republicans would have benefitted politically by a show of bi-partisanship.
I hesitate even to suggest it, but could it be that devotion to principle is not randomly distributed between the parties after all?
UPDATE
Iowa Senator Tom Harkin calls the bribes “catering to self-interest” of wavering Democratic Senators no big deal.
Harkin dismissed deals dubbed vote-buying by GOP senators as “small stuff” that distracted Americans from the primary focus of the overhaul bill.
“We have to keep our eyes on what we’re trying to do here. We’re trying to cross a demarcation line,” Harkin told “Early Show” co-anchor Maggie Rodriguez. “On one side is health care as a privilege, on the other side is health care as a right. With these votes, with the vote that we’ll take before Christmas, we will cross that line finally and say that health care is a right of all Americans.”
I actually agree with Harkin: the Democrats did cross the line.
Each of those bribes in and of itself may indeed be no big deal, as Harkin says. However, the aggregate of those bribes has contrived the passage of a bill that could not pass on its own merits. What is that, but corruption?
The Dems may try to pretend that health care itself is somehow a “right”, but it isn’t, never was, and never will be, a real right. A right to engage in trade and commerce is a real right, as it can be maintained in all places and at all times, and one can exercise his right of engaging in trade and commerce to acquire medical care and services for a voluntarily-agreed exchange. But to claim health care itself as a right is to claim that people have a superior right to a doctor’s own labor, which is what medical services are. And to deny that a doctor has an absolute property right in his own labor is to deny his inalienable right of self-ownership. And denial of one’s right to self-ownership is the essence of SLAVERY. That’s why services of another human being, whether it’s medical care, or education, or insurance, is not, can not, never was, and NEVER CAN be a right. To claim such as a right is to do a grave wrong.