Defiant Sen. Landrieu defends special Medicaid deal for La. in health care bill

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Sen. Landrieu defends Medicaid deal for La.

WASHINGTON — Called a prostitute by conservative talk show hosts, a Louisiana Democrat on Thursday defended a deal she cut for her Hurricane Katrina-ravaged state in the Senate health care bill.

Sen. Mary Landrieu insisted the Medicaid boost worth $300 million wasn’t the price for her vote for President Barack Obama’s sweeping health care plan and she noted that state Republicans backed the deal. Defiantly, she said she would do it all over again if she had to.

“I don’t need this job badly enough — maybe some people do, I don’t — to throw the people of my state under the bus to protect myself politically,” Landrieu said in an impassioned speech on the Senate floor.

The deal has been derided as the “Louisiana Purchase” and conservative talk show hosts Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck have both labeled Landrieu a “prostitute” for obtaining it.

In recent weeks, Obama has also alluded to messy dealmaking as a reason for public skepticism about the health care bill. He referred in his State of the Union speech to “lobbying and horse-trading” and told ABC News earlier, “It’s an ugly process and it looks like there are a bunch of backroom deals.”

Obama hasn’t referred specifically to Landrieu’s deal and Landrieu said Thursday that the administration supported it. She said she’d spoken several days ago to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and that Sebelius remained supportive.

Sebelius would not confirm that when questioned by a reporter.

But when asked at a House hearing Thursday about the side deals in the bill, Sebelius said they are an enduring problem of the legislative process. “In my experience unfortunately … there’s not an equal distribution of resources. I think that it does make people unhappy,” she said.

The developments came as House and Senate leaders met with Obama at the White House to try to find a way forward for the health bill, which remains stalled after Democrats lost the 60th vote they need to advance legislation in the Senate. Republican Scott Brown was sworn in Thursday afternoon to replace the late Democrat Edward M. Kennedy after his upset win in Massachusetts last month. Brown replaced a temporary appointee, Democrat Paul Kirk, who implored the Senate in a parting speech to pass health care and not “let so much dust settle that it buries all the sensible and necessary ideas that have been suggested.”

Returning from the White House meeting, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said the discussion had focused mostly on pending jobs legislation. He would not say whether Obama had indicated support for advancing the health care bill using a controversial procedure requiring a simple majority vote in the Senate — the leading option under consideration by congressional leaders.

“We’re still talking about that. The president favors moving forward, with the procedure of how to do that mainly in the hands of the Senate and the House leadership … but he wants to move forward,” Hoyer said.

Landrieu said that because it was unclear what would happen with the health legislation, which passed the House and Senate separately last year but has yet to be written in final form, she wanted to act to protect her deal.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana stood to lose federal reimbursements for Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program for the poor, because the state’s post-hurricane economic surge temporarily boosted per-capita income that’s used to measure Medicaid payments. Louisiana’s Republican governor, Bobby Jindal, was among those joining Landrieu in pushing for more money but since then he’s avoided most opportunities to defend her.

At a news conference in Baton Rouge, La., Jindal defended the need for the changes to the Medicaid formula, but said he opposed the Senate health care bill, even with the money included.

Asked whether Landrieu was wrong to put the money in the Senate bill, Jindal didn’t respond directly and instead said, “I’m not a member of Congress. I’m not going to tell them what bills to draft and what bills to amend.”

Conservative activist James O’Keefe cited the deal as a rationale for his recent attempt to capture hidden camera footage in Landrieu’s New Orleans office. O’Keefe and three others were arrested Jan. 25 in the incident. O’Keefe has said the group wanted to investigate complaints that constituents calling Landrieu’s office couldn’t get through to criticize her support of the health overhaul bill.

Landrieu said the incident was not the reason for her public comments Thursday.

“What I said about the gentleman that’s rattling off is he should save his excuses for the judge. He’s going to need them,” she told reporters after her speech.

Landrieu’s defiant stance stands in contrast to that of another moderate Democrat, Nebraska’s Ben Nelson, who also negotiated a Medicaid deal for his state, the so-called “Cornhusker Kickback.” So much controversy surrounded it that Nelson ultimately asked for it to be withdrawn, even while insisting that he never wanted anything special for Nebraska. Nelson’s deal would have protected Nebraska in perpetuity from the cost of a Medicaid expansion whereas Landrieu’s was to be a one-time deal.

Obama on Thursday night told Democrats at a fundraiser “we should take our time” getting to a final health care bill. He said it is most urgent to focus for the next few weeks on a jobs package, but that health care must be addressed after that.

“Here’s the key: is to not let the moment slip away,” he said.

Associated Press writers Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar in Washington and Melinda DeSlatte in Baton Rouge, La., contributed to this report.