the other votes against the bill

You'd like to think the goal of the legislative process -- all the debates, the amendments -- would be about making a bill better.  A lawmaker considers the unique needs of the people in his own state, and then offers ways of improving the bill until it meets his constituents' needs.

Certainly, we've seen some of that in this healthcare process.  Obviously the public option is gone because Joe Lieberman couldn't support the overall bill if the option was included.  The needs of Connecticut (and other less-outspoken Senators' states) become a sort of "least common denominator" in constructing the bill.  Without these states, there was insufficient support to get the legislation to a floor vote.

But there are states whose Senators took a different tack.  Massachusetts, Vermont and Florida get special treatment.  Mary Landrieu got $100-300M worth of special wording in the bill which will favor Louisiana alone without even mentioning the state by name.

Consider Ben Nelson.  The healthcare bill expands Medicaid, which is jointly funded by the states.  The federal government gets a bargain on Medicaid, since each dollar it contributes must be matched by a state dollar.  But this also means that when Congress appropriates money for the program it only appropriates half, leaving it up to the states to raise an equal amount.  All of the states are going to have problems living up to this requirement.

Except Nebraska.  As you probably know, Nelson held out for full funding of Nebraska's Medicaid expansion.  In addition to other Nebraska-specific wording, Nebraskans won't have to worry about the burden of Medicaid growth that will result from the bill -- people from the other 49 states will now all pay a little more to cover it.

As I said, you want to tell yourself that these guys are "improving" the bill to make it more viable.  Making it better, or at least good enough to vote for.  But all of these little loopholes that have been carved into the language of the Harry Reid's amendments -- they're not improvements as much as they're escape clauses.

Each of these state-specific exemptions represents some Democrat's desire to protect his constituents from an objectionable aspect of the proposal.  Even if you abandon all pretense of ideology or principle, at the very least each loophole comes down to some Senator saying, "This is so bad that it hurts my re-election chances."  And rather than fixing the bill to overcome the objection, Harry Reid has said, "Fine.  Then we will excuse your state from one of the worst parts, instead making it a little bit worse on all of the other states."

In doing so, Ben Nelson -- and Mary Landrieu and other Senators -- have all voted against the bill which will be shouldered upon the rest of us.  Because for each of these Senators' states it is effectively another bill, and an arguably better one for those states' voters.  They have voted for something else for themselves, and what the other states get is effectively bycatch.

One glaring exception to this appears to be Chris Dodd.  A single item in Reid's "manager's amendment" refers to an unnamed hospital in an unnamed state, for which $100 million will be provided.  Late last night, the Associated Press reported that money is going to Connecticut.

What's "glaring" about this is that Dodd's support for the legislation has never been in doubt.  No special deals, no favors are necessary to get Dodd to vote for healthcare reform -- liberal Connecticut voters are unlikely to oust Dodd for enacting the bill.

But Dodd is getting slaughtered in the polls over corruption, including his own sweetheart deal from Countrywide Mortgage.  So why not fight fire with fire?  What you see as a $100,000,000 pork expenditure is really just a tiny $.0001 trillion bribe for Connecticut voters -- bought and paid for with the help of the other 49 states, of course.

Update: Fox News provides a more detailed list of "sweetheart deals" that bought cloture on Reid's bill.

Michelle Malkin's "Cash for Cloture."