Use health care reform "stealth pork" and strategies to save money

Health care reform may help you with your strategies to save money. After all, traditional saving takes work and sacrifice. That is for us little people. If it seems like too much effort, you've got to wonder why you should bother. Especially if you can somehow get in on the fun in Washington D.C. Here's one example.

Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu (who is known as a "moderate" Democrat), has been a holdout on the latest version of the health care reform bill now being paraded before the Senate. But, oh, what a little "pork" won't do to help her make up her mind.

Pork, of course, is money that gets attached to a bill - any bill - that Congress passes. Little additions to the bill are added and targeted at a particular state of local government. Pork is used to "encourage" (you could say bribe) a particular congressman or senator to vote for a given bill.

The sponsors of the current version of the health care reform bill must feel they need Senator Landrieu's vote. They've put in a nice $100 million slab of pork for her state. Of course you and I wouldn't know it. In fact, even if you had the time and energy to carefully read through the almost 2,000 pages of the bill, chances are you'd miss it.

Here's a quote from ABC reporter Johathan Karl's recent report that helps explain why:

On page 432 of the Reid bill, there is a section increasing federal Medicaid subsidies for “certain states recovering from a major disaster.”

The section spends two pages defining which “states” would qualify, saying, among other things, that it would be states that “during the preceding 7 fiscal years” have been declared a “major disaster area.”

I am told the section applies to exactly one state: Louisiana, the home of moderate Democrat Mary Landrieu, who has been playing hard to get on the health care bill.

In other words, the bill spends two pages describing would could be written with a single world: Louisiana. (This may also help explain why the bill is long.)

So it's not just pork - it's a kind of "stealth" pork. Think about the time and effort put into this clever deception (what else can you call it?) that tries to hide the (dare we say it) "payoff" to the Louisianna senator in order to get her vote.

Let's think some more about this.

We all remember the devastation of hurricane Katrina. And one assumes there is ample justification for the federal government to chip in and help the state of Louisiana rebuild. So if there is such justification, why not announce the rationale and just say the federal government's giving more money to the state. Why the deception?

Do they believe that perhaps, in these tough times, people from states besides Louisiana might want a pretty well-justified reason why their tax dollars are going to that state, vs. their own state or city? Or maybe those reasons really aren't all that well-justified to begin with. Hmmm.

Well, once again, politician's avoid the hard decisions that you and I must make regarding cutting back on spending and pursuing strategies to save money in this tough economy. Tucking this stuff safely away in that massive health care reform bill, they're probably counting on you and I not knowing what they're up to. Ya think?