Well, how tall is Ben Nelson?
Remember this?
Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska is asking Senate leaders to eliminate a controversial Medicaid deal for his state in the health care bill.
The moderate Democrat, who provided the crucial 60th vote for the Senate health care bill, has been criticized because Nebraska was exempted paying any cost of a proposed expansion of Medicaid.
All other states would have to pick up a portion of the tab after the first few years.
Nelson's been arguing ever since that he never wanted a special deal for Nebraska and that he wants all states protected from burdensome new costs.
That didn't quiet the controversy so Nelson took it one step further on Friday and asked for the deal to be withdrawn and replaced with a provision treating all states equally.
Caught with his "fiscally responsible" hand in the cookie jar, Nelson was all contrition and crocodile tears...
...until it became possible that there might actually be a way to strip that money out after all, that is!
Three Democratic senators, Evan Bayh of Indiana, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, have declared that they won't support a plan to have the House pass the Senate health care bill whole, then pass fixes to the bill through the reconciliation process.
Don't even bother with the Senatorial Steak Sauce Bayh tries to slather on this. The reconciliation "sidecar," which is fast becoming the consensus pathway to finding a solution that leads to the passage of a health insurance reform bill, is the vehicle that can get this done.
And though their votes wouldn't by themselves determine the outcome this time, reactionary ConservaDems (and Senators very much on the election bubble, by the way) Bayh and Lincoln join Nelson in opposing the vehicle that would fix some of the Senate bill's most toxic assets -- the so-called Cadillac tax, "Cornhusker Kickback," and its close cousin, the "Louisiana Purchase."
Way to read those Massachusetts tealeaves, geniuses!
Get out of the way, please. People are trying to get something done here.