Our book emphasizes deliberation. But it never denies the role of political bargaining, which has been on display as the Senate considers the health bill. Senate leaders won over wavering colleagues by providing special favors to their constituents. In particular, Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and Ben Nelson (D-NE) got extra federal Medicaid money for their states.
There is ample precedent for such deals. In The Triumph of Politics (p. 240 of the paper edition), Reagan budget director David Stockman recalled House passage of a key 1981 budget measure:
When I walked in the door, one of my deputies waved me over. Bill Thomas was on the phone. Thomas was a conservative Republican member from California, and one of the craftiest GOP tacticians and head-counters on the Hill."We ain't gonna make it," he said. "Not unless you open the soup kitchen."In the Congress, the "soup kitchen" is what you throw open in the last hours before a vote to get people off of the fence ... Thomas ticked off half a dozen deals he had already made with various Boll Weevils [conservative Southern Democrats] and wobbly Republicans ... What deals they were. They ranged from things that turned my stomach to things that made me only faintly ill, from reviving the sugar quota program to exempting state-owned cotton warehouses in Georgia from the new inspection user fee.
