Georgia's GOP governor, senators want health care deal investigation

By Dan Chapman and Bob Keefe

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Georgia’s Republican leadership asked the state’s attorney general Wednesday to investigate the legality of last-minute deals made in Washington to ensure Senate passage of health care reform.

In letters to Thurbert Baker, U.S. Sens. Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson and Gov. Sonny Perdue asked Georgia’s top legal authority to determine whether the vote-buying deals were unconstitutional – and financially unfair to Georgia.

The Republicans, according to Perdue’s letter, request Baker to join seven other attorneys general “to explore the availability of any legal challenges that Georgia could pursue to oppose this unconscionable scenario.”

“Congress appears to be on the cusp of making a decision that will have ripple effects for decades to come,” Perdue wrote. “Now is the time to ensure that any decision that is made has been thoroughly vetted and deemed to meet the intent and spirit of our country’s Constitution.”

The Republican missives came a day before the U.S. Senate was expected to pass the politically charged health care bill sought by President Barack Obama and opposed by most congressional Republicans.

Perdue, Chambliss and Isakson, along with a growing number of state and national Republicans, point specifically to the deal Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, brokered with Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Nebraska. Nebraska won’t have to cover Medicaid expenses for newly eligible recipients if the health care bill is signed into law. Medicaid, paid for with federal and state money, covers health care costs for the poor and disabled.

A few other states, including Louisiana, also received so-called “sweetheart deals” to ensure their senators were legislatively on board.

Reid countered that compromises are common in major legislation, adding that, instead of complaining, other senators should have sought similar deals for their states.

Chambliss and Isakson weren’t mollified.

"While Georgia will have to struggle to come up with hundreds of millions of dollars to comply with the massive new federal Medicaid mandate,” the senators wrote Baker, “Nebraska does not have to come up with a single dollar.”

While Medicaid is a joint federal-state program, the Nebraska deal gives only Nebraska a permanent exemption. Critics claim that the U.S. Constitution ensures that all states be uniformly taxed.

In response, Baker indicated he wouldn't do anything until health care legislation runs its course.

"At this point we have no idea what will be in the law or even if there will be a final version of this law, so there is absolutely nothing to investigate, probe or challenge," Baker said. "No one can challenge the legality of legislation before it is enacted into law."

Bert Brantley, spokesman for Perdue, said it will be too late to fix the bill once Congress signs off.

“If you wait until it’s final, it’s too late,” he said. “Whether it becomes a bill or not, these deals have still been cut. And carving three, four or five states out for special treatment is still a problem.”

Health care reform could cost Georgia an additional $2.5 billion in Medicaid costs between 2014 and 2019, Brantley said. Another million Georgians could be eligible for the expanded Medicaid benefits, double the number of current enrollees.

“If this reform was truly the right policy for our country, we wouldn’t see waffling Senators lining up like game show contestants hoping to win today’s jackpot of a special deal from Harry Reid,” Perdue said in a Monday statement. “This bill places an unsustainable burden on the backs of Georgia’s taxpayers, and will lead to either higher state taxes or massive cuts to basic state services in years to come.”

Attorneys general in South Carolina, Alabama, Colorado, Michigan, North Dakota, Texas and Washington state -- all Republicans -- are weighing an investigation into the deal dubbed the "Nebraska compromise."