“Abortion Bill Ben” Nelson: I Was Gonna Filibuster, I Swear!

by John Hawkins | January 27, 2010 1:51 pm

This transcript of an interview of a Lifesitenews[1] interview with Ben Nelson may not be the biggest story of the day, but oh, it is good stuff!

LSN: OK, so you were planning on coming back…

NELSON: Absolutely. That is what I was just trying to tell the gentleman who was arguing about the 60th vote.

LSN: What made you think that it had a shot, after conference?

NELSON: Because they needed 60 votes again.

LSN: Right, but before, you voted for it even without it —

NELSON: To get it there….But, once it went to conference, as part of the conference, there was still another 60 vote threshold, and that is when I would have insisted and that is what Christy was talking about when I mentioned this on the phone — how we would approach this in conference to say, for my last 60th vote, it has to have Nelson/Hatch/Casey.

LSN: Why didn’t you stop it right then and there and say, “No Nelson/Hatch — nothing.”

NELSON: Because, at that point and time, the leverage wasn’t as strong — you have to play it […]

LSN: So, if we got to conference and it was just the Nelson not the Nelson/Hatch/Casey — you would say ‘yes’ because you think it was good enough.

NELSON: I could have but I was going to say — and this was all the plan — that I would insist that it be Nelson/Hatch/Casey.

The idea that Nelson passed the bill, but intended to filibuster later, in conference, is nonsense on stilts. The “leverage wasn’t as strong”? Ehr…Nelson had ALL THE LEVERAGE. He was the deciding vote and it couldn’t move forward without his say-so. Had he demanded that provision, it would have been in the bill.

Instead, he traded it away for a bribe: The Feds would pick up Nebraska’s Medicaid forevermore. Of course, when that turned into a political debacle, Ben Nelson tried to lie his way out of that, too. He said that he wanted EVERY state to get the same benefits.

However, that didn’t make any sense either. Having the government pay for Medicaid for every state would have been a a 100 billion dollar plus boondoggle, that would have required a new CBO score, at a time when any new expenditures could have blown up the deal. If Nelson really wanted a provision like that, he would have insisted on it upfront.

So, what really happened? Exactly what it looks like: Ben Nelson sold his pro-life supporters down the river for a bribe. Then, when Scott Brown got elected, he changed his tune to try to repair the damage this bill did to his reputation in Nebraska. Unfortunately for Ben Nelson, the only thing worse than selling out people who foolishly trusted you is selling them out and then telling transparent lies about your motives.