With the fate of the Senate health reform bill hinging on three swing-vote Democrats, bloggers and tweeters are pouncing on their every move. Case in point: Twitter is abuzz (search "Landrieu") with speculation that Sen. Harry Reid is attempting to "buy" Sen. Mary Landrieu's critical support.
The story was started by Politico's Chris Frates, who published this item last night:
Mary Landrieu of Louisiana is one of three Democratic senators that Harry Reid has to win over to begin debate and there are few better ways of doing that then throwing a little home state sugar their way.
So perhaps it's no surprise that the health bill includes a 50 percent boost* in federal Medicaid money for states that have been declared disaster areas in the past seven years. Hurricane Katrina, of course, hit the Pelican State in 2005.
Conservative websites like the American Spectator pounced, as have dozens of Twitterers today.
It wouldn't be the first time a politician has thrown another lawmaker a bone to win support, but there are two problems with the story.
First, as Frates acknowledges in an update today, "the provision is a bit more nuanced than I first reported." That's a charitable way of putting it. Actually, there's no "50% boost" -- the provision (on page 432 - pdf) says that if a state's Medicaid spending goes up 3% or more, the feds will pick up half of the tab (that's where the 50% figure comes in).
Second, it's hard to see this as a political favor packaged for Louisiana and Landrieu. In the last seven years, FEMA has declared
411 major disasters covering nearly every state and territory in the country. So unless Reid is also trying to sneakily buy over the support of
Kansas, Oklahoma and American Samoa -- to cite just three areas covered in 2009 -- the argument makes no sense.
In reality, the measure is likely an attempt to overcome the severe deficiencies in
the Stafford Act, the key law governing the federal government's support to states for disasters. Katrina was only the most blatant display of the way
the Stafford Act handcuffs federal and state officials, for example by demanding that localities pay for 10% of rebuilding projects up front before they'll receive federal support -- a difficult challenge for any state hit by a major disaster.
The provision in the health bill opens up another way for the federal government to support states afflicted by disasters -- likely a necessary move, given the ongoing health crises and rising costs that states experience after a major calamity.
