Dusty Harry Reid has adopted the classic philosophy of high pressure salemen: “Money talks, and no body walks.”
Staffers on Capitol Hill were calling it the Louisiana Purchase.
On the eve of Saturday’s showdown in the Senate over health-care reform, Democratic leaders still hadn’t secured the support of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), one of the 60 votes needed to keep the legislation alive. The wavering lawmaker was offered a sweetener: at least $100 million in extra federal money for her home state.
And so it came to pass that Landrieu walked onto the Senate floor midafternoon Saturday to announce her aye vote — and to trumpet the financial “fix” she had arranged for Louisiana. “I am not going to be defensive,” she declared. “And it’s not a $100 million fix. It’s a $300 million fix.”
Her Freudian slip was showing…”$300 million fix”…indeed!
Other critical Donkey Party votes in the Senate used the occasion to extract whatever political payoff was most dear to their hearts from Reid.
Meanwhile, all concerned with the deals political bribes were hastening to deny that their maneuvers had anything to do with re-elections:
….the usually quiet [Blanche] Lincoln, [Donk-AR] who emerged from the cloakroom two hours later to announce her decision. Her attire was school-principal prim — blue suit with knee-length skirt, orange silk scarf tied tightly at the neck — and she was clearly uncomfortable in the spotlight. She spoke with the diction of somebody giving a dramatic reading, and she stumbled more than once as she read, botching the crucial line: “I will vote to support, of, the, the, will vote in support of cloture on the motion to proceed to this bill.”
She argued, a bit too strenuously, that “I’m not thinking about my reelection” in 2010.
If you believe THAT, pleased see me about a GREAT deal on tropical beachfront in NW Moody County, SD!
Here’s hoping that the conclusion of this WaPo piece doesn’t come true:
By the time this thing is done, the millions for Louisiana will look like a bargain.