All of a sudden, Ben Nelson’s saying that even if his abortion demands are met, he’s got a problem with the Medicaid expansion, parroting Governor Heineman’s claim that it must be shot down because it’s an “unfunded mandate.” Alec MacGillis of the Washington Post did a little fact-checking, comparing Nelson’s claims to the actual legislation, and demonstrated how shallow these concerns are (not that this would surprise anyone at this point).

Matthew Yglesias gets to the significant point, though:

Let me also note that this whole process has been going on for months and Medicaid expansion has been at the core from the beginning. Nelson has had plenty of opportunity to try to come up with ideas on this score, and didn’t. The bill is also phased in very slowly, so if he wants to tweak the details of financing Medicaid expansion he could easily do so in 2010 or 2011 or 2012 or 2013 or 2014 or 2015 or 2016 before Nebraska has to pay a single cent on this. Derailing the process at this point over the idea that paying 7.2 percent of the cost (!) of Medicaid expansion in 2019 (!) will bankrupt the state reeks of someone who’s searching for reason to say “no.”

Paul Fell had some harsh words for Senator Ben Nelson in his e-mail newsletter this morning (which you can and should subscribe to here) in a piece called “A Bad Faith Liar”:

Over the weekend, on CBS’ “Face The Nation”, both Lieberman and Nelson seemed to argue vigorously against the new health care proposal – one that Sen. Nelson disingenuously helped to create – the details of which haven’t even been released to the entire Senate yet.

…

In the meantime, Sen. Nelson seems to think it’s acceptable to operate in bad faith, both to his colleagues, and to the Nebraskans he nominally represents in the Senate.

Mr. Nelson, we’re going to ask you for a present this holiday season: start telling the truth. Quit being a fraud. Be yourself instead of some lapdog for the insurance lobby.

If you’re against health care reform because the insurance companies own you, then please just have the courage to say it. Most Nebraskans already believe that you’re a lackey of the insurance companies anyway.

At least if you came out and HONESTLY opposed ANY health care reform, everyone would know where you stand – squarely in the pockets of big insurance.

I’m trying to think — the only one I can picture is the one on the 84th Street exit in Omaha and I’m not sure if that’s still there. Long ago, my roommate and I used to take regular early-morning trips to the one at the airport in Lincoln for second dinner, but I know that’s long gone.

Obama Drastically Scales Back Goals For America After Visiting Denny’s

Good comment from visitor dsimon on a Bruce Bartlett post differentiating between actual deficit hawks and jokers like Evan Bayh:

If our politicians can’t make hard choices–or even easy ones–maybe it’s because the public doesn’t really want to make them. If our budgets are consistently fiscally irresponsible, perhaps it’s because voters have wanted it that way. It’s been too easy from the time of Reagan to believe in the free lunch, and now we howl any time we’re asked to actually pay for the programs or tax cuts we say we want. But thing we care about are things we should be willing to do something about. When was the last time we were asked to actually do something regarding what we said we wanted from our government?