Surprise! The Senate health “reform” bill is stuffed with pork. Two prominent examples involve Senators Dodd and Baucus. The former got $100 million for a university hospital in his state:
A $100 million item for construction of a university hospital was inserted in the Senate health care bill at the request of Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., who faces a difficult re-election campaign, his office said Sunday night.
Meanwhile Baucus, who spent much of the summer yammering about controlling health care spending, inserted a provision expanding Medicare coverage to a new set of beneficiaries unique to his state:
Buried in the deal-clinching health care package … is an inconspicuous proposal expanding Medicare to cover certain victims of ‘environmental health hazards.’ It turns out they are people exposed to asbestos from a vermiculite mine in Libby, Mont.
This kind of thing makes a lot of people uneasy, but Harry Reid says not to worry. This is the way sausage is made. If it grosses you out, too bad. If you want good sausage you need pork:
There are 100 senators here and I don’t know that there’s a senator that doesn’t have something in this bill that isn’t important to them … If they don’t have something in it important to them then it doesn’t speak well of them.
If you’ve got the stomach for it, here’s video (via Hot Air) showing Reid rationalizing this. Can you imagine the journalists in the room sitting quietly and accepting such talk from a Republican Senate leader?
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