Ben Nelson Is Retiring

Yesterday Investors.com posted an article about Senator Ben Nelson announcing his retirement. Senator Nelson is a casualty of his vote on ObamaCare. He is retiring because it has become very obvious that he will not be re-elected because of his vote for ObamaCare (which was touted as the deciding vote on the unpopular bill). The article at Investors.com sees his retirement as the ticket for the Republicans to take over the Senate. The article points out that if President Obama is re-elected, Republican control of the Senate would give him more opportunity to blame Congress for everything that is not going right. If President Obama is not re-elected, a Republican President and a Republican Congress might be able to restore some fiscal sanity to the government.

Power Line posted a wonderful comment on the subject:

One of the sources of Nelson’s unpopularity in Nebraska was his vote for Obamacare. So this is an opportune moment to recall the Cornhusker Kickback, one of a number of acts of outright corruption on which Obamacare was based. The Kickback provided that the federal government would pick up Nebraska’s tab–but only Nebraska’s–for the new Medicaid recipients that would be created by the statute, apparently in perpetuity. That was the bribe that Obama needed to get Nelson’s vote, and Nelson evidently thought his sweetheart deal would insulate him against criticism for voting for the unpopular bill. One wonders: how can such a special arrangement for a single state possibly be constitutional? But constitutionality was never a big concern where Obamacare was concerned.

To Nelson’s surprise, perhaps, the kickback didn’t entirely placate his Cornhusker constituents. What is wrong with those people? Don’t they know a good payoff when they see one? Maybe Thomas Frank needs to write a new book called What’s the Matter With Nebraska?

I think many Americans are concerned about the rate of spending going on in Washington. The question is, “Can that spending be dealt with?” I think it can if it is dealt with in the next two to four years. Otherwise, when we reach the point where the majority of Americans do not pay income taxes (the number now is about 49 percent), there will be no incentive to cut spending. At that point we will become a third-world country.

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