Nebraska's Big Payout in Health Bill - Unconstitutional?

It was a single paragraph, added at the last minute on Page 2,129 of the Senate's mammoth health-care bill: a promise that the federal government would pay forever for extra poor people to join Medicaid in Nebraska. And it triggered a swift, partisan backlash.

The rebellion against the $100 million promise has spread to nearly one-third of the nation's attorneys general, including two Democrats. Meanwhile, the Nebraskan whose state would get the help -- Sen. Ben Nelson, a conservative Democrat who was the crucial 60th vote for the bill -- says he never asked for the favor to get his vote and wants it to go away.

The dispute is one of the issues Senate and House negotiators are trying to resolve as they work with the White House to mesh their health-care bills. On Friday, former president Bill Clinton joined the critics, telling House Democrats in a private speech in the U.S. Capitol, "That Nebraska thing is really hurting us."

As talks go on behind closed doors, debate rages off Capitol Hill over whether the Senate's offer of extra Medicaid money to one state is unconstitutional, as its critics allege, and whether any court would intervene. The furor comes from two sources: states' long-standing worries about the financial burden of Medicaid, and the polarized politics of health-care reform. - Washington Post Story