Sen. John McCain yesterday blasted Democrats for “having to purchase” the 60 votes needed to finagle the $871 billion health-care bill to the floor — but reluctantly conceded there was little the GOP could do to stop the legislation in the Senate.
Even as he admitted there “probably” is no way the Republicans can block passage when the bill comes up for a vote Christmas Eve, the former presidential candidate vowed to continue the battle.
“We will fight until the last vote,” McCain (R-Ariz.) told “Fox News Sunday.”
“We owe that to our constituents, because we must do everything — we must look back and say we did everything to prevent this terrible mistake from taking place.”
In a reference to several backroom deals negotiated by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), McCain said the Democrats had to “purchase the last vote or two” to achieve the 60 votes required to avoid a Republican filibuster.
Early this morning the Senate passed the first of three procedural motions needed to cut off debate on health care by a 60-40 vote.
Before the vote, Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, the last Democrat to sign off on the health care plan, had said the bill didn’t do enough to stop federal funding of abortions.
But, in addition to getting what he believed were stronger firewalls on abortion funding, the pro-life Democrat also was given a special carve-out in which his state got a generous promise of full federal funding for Medicaid, which adds up to an extra $45 million over the next decade.
Other states have to fork over a portion of their Medicaid funds.
The pot-sweetening deal was dubbed the “Cornhusker Kickback” by furious Republicans.
Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who was a critic of the bill, now supports it after a provision was added to invest $10 billion in community health centers around the country.
Once-skeptical Dem Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana agreed to back the bill in November after Reid engineered some $300 million in Medicaid funds for her state.
Meanwhile, the Congressional Budget Office said the Senate bill may not reduce the federal deficit by as much as previously estimated.
When the CBO numbers came out originally, it was estimated that the deficit would be reduced by $1.3 trillion in the decade after 2019. That was revised yesterday to somewhere between $650 billion and $1.3 trillion.
jennifer.fermino@ny
post.com