By Kathleen Gilbert

WASHINGTON, D.C., January 26, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In an exclusive interview with LifeSiteNews.com (LSN) last Wednesday, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) explained the motivation behind his controversial vote last month to pass a health care bill that lacked Hyde-amendment restrictions on abortion funding. (full transcript here)

Nelson told LSN that he was saving his leverage as the 60th vote on the bill with the intention of pushing for the restrictions at a later point, when the bill went to conference committee. Yet he also said that if push came to shove, he would have been satisfied with his own abortion restriction language – the source of much criticism from pro-life leaders in Washington.

“Once it went to conference, as part of the conference, there was still another 60 vote threshold, and that is when I would have insisted … for my last 60th vote, it has to have Nelson/Hatch/Casey,” he said.

The senator stressed the same point at a private meeting of pro-life leaders earlier in the day, where he said it was his plan all along to push for the Hyde language as presented in the Nelson/Hatch/Casey amendment for the Senate health care bill. In early December, Nelson gave up his stance against the bill almost literally overnight to lend the critical 60th vote for the Senate bill, which allowed Democrats to surmount a GOP filibuster.

LSN asked Nelson why he did not use his 60th-vote leverage at the first opportunity in December, when Democrats would have been unable to pass the bill without his support. He replied that his leverage “wasn’t as strong” as if he waited until later.

Pressed on the point, Nelson replied: “Well, I thought my language was good enough if we all failed. I still do. I disagree with those who don’t like the language. They didn’t write it.”

Nelson was referring to abortion language leaders allowed in the bill as part of last-minute negotiations aimed at securing Nelson’s vote. That language segregates the premiums of taxpayer subsidy recipients with abortion-covering insurance plans. Nelson defended his provision earlier to pro-life leaders, claiming it essentially barred federal funds for abortion.

While Nelson insisted his language was adequately pro-life – “I will stand by that forever,” he told LSN – the language was firmly rejected by top pro-life leaders, including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), the latter of which called the amendment “light years” from the Hyde-amendment restriction in the House bill. Pro-abortion Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) dismissed the Nelson language earlier this month, in the words of the McClatchky News Service, as “only an ‘accounting procedure’ that will do nothing to restrict [abortion] coverage.”

Kristin Day of Democrats for Life told LSN that she agrees with Nelson’s take on the issue, and defended Nelson’s language as “the clearest separation [of funds] that has been offered thus far.”

Day said that, from the perspective of Democrats for Life, “if [the Nelson language] is all we could get at the end of the day, we would be satisfied with that.” “But we could get more,” she added.

Douglas Johnson of NRLC offered a different picture of the situation with the bill. “There’s not just one abortion problem – there’s six, or seven depending on how you count,” he told LSN. “The Stupak amendment fixed everything that needed to be fixed.”

A letter to lawmakers from NRLC this month detailed a list of pro-life concerns that remain in the Senate bill Nelson passed, including a provision that requires “at least one” insurance plan in each region cover abortion, inadequate conscience protections, and the failure to secure any abortion funding restrictions for the newly-reauthorized Indian health programs.

Nelson praised the renewed need for bipartisanship after the Massachusetts election Tuesday night handed Republicans an opportunity to filibuster the bill. “What it does mean is that there will have to be an effort at bipartisanship, and in that sense I think that is good,” he said.

Reiterating a point from his remarks to pro-life leaders, however, Nelson said that he felt the election robbed pro-life Democrats of leverage to demand Hyde-amendment language in the final bill.

The health bill would require “just one pro-life Republican stepping forward today, saying to the Democratic caucus, ‘I will support cloture and the conference report but here are my requirements,’ and then the Democratic caucus would have to decide whether or not that was worthwhile,” said Nelson.

The USCCB, a major player in the national pro-life lobby effort, has expressed optimism not unlike Nelson’s for the health bill’s success. Yet the sentiment put Nelson at odds with the participants in Wednesday’s meeting, where the consensus was against the health reform effort as having manifold pro-life problems, apart from the abortion funding issue.

Asked about the “Cornhusker Kickback” – a last-minute provision in the Senate bill exempting the state of Nebraska from paying for the bill’s Medicaid expansion – Nelson said he had not expected the angry backlash from Nebraskans that has caused the senator’s local approval ratings to plummet. The original plan, he said, was to get the exemption for all other states as well.

“The Cornhusker kickback – if it ever comes through – [will be] the Cornhusker kickoff for all states,” said Nelson, adding that he felt the controversial provision “was too complex for those who didn’t understand it, and just complex enough for those who did understand it to twist it.” Following the December vote, Democrat leaders indicated that expanding the costly exemption to other states was unlikely.

Nelson also revealed in the interview that he believed the Hyde amendment as it currently exists would apply to the bill, whether or not Nelson/Hatch/Casey succeeded. He described his original insistence on the specific Hyde language for the bill as a “belt-and-suspenders approach,” but “an important one to make the statement.”

“[Hyde] would apply to any federal legislation unless I think it specifically exempted it,” said Nelson. “The effort here was to make it very clear.”

Top pro-life forces have disagreed with that assessment, however: the claim that Hyde would apply to the health bill was decried as false and a “smokescreen” when advanced by the White House last year. The National Right to Life Committee and other top pro-life groups said the Hyde amendment, which is re-approved annually in Health and Human Services appropriations bills, would not apply to the independent stream of funding created by the bill.

At Wednesday’s meeting, Douglas Johnson argued that, “even if one accepted Senator Nelson’s argument on what his language does – which we don’t – it only patches one problem. And it’s a temporary patch.”

Johnson said the funding ban in the Senate bill was written in such a way that, if the Hyde amendment was repealed, “the spigot [of abortion funding] gets open all the way.” “That’s losing in slow motion,” he said.

(Read the full text of LSN’s interview with Sen. Nelson here)

See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:

‘Don’t Tell Me I Didn’t Stand My Ground’, Sen. Nelson Tells Pro-Life Leaders
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jan/10012207.html

“Craven Betrayal”?: Associates Baffled by Nelson’s Mysterious About-Face
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/dec/09122104.html

Sen. Nelson Caves, Supports Health Bill With Abortion Funding
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/dec/09121902.html