• Do the twist! Say­ing that the abor­tion con­ces­sions weren’t enough, Fox News claims that Nel­son sold his vote for health care to win kickbacks. “It’s pretty obvi­ous votes have been bought,” Sen. Saxby Cham­b­liss of Geor­gia said. Nel­son did get Reid to agree to help pick up his state’s future Med­ic­aid tab, at a cost of $45 mil­lion. Most other states will get their tab picked up, but only over a short period.
• Fair & bal­anced Politico cov­ers the issue dif­fer­ently – they note it’s the kind of con­ces­sion­ary agree­ment made with leg­is­la­tion like this. Nelson’s fel­low Demo­c­ra­tic Nebraska sen­a­tor, Tom Harkin, makes a good point: “… it is going to be the impe­tus for all the states to stay at 100 per­cent. So he might have done all of us a favor.” That’s right, the Feds might pay the bal­ance of Med­ic­aid for every­one eventually.

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