Obama lies about his role in the Cornhusker Kickback

The president went on Fox News yesterday for a rare interview with a network his former communications director once described as not practicing news. Obama's interviewer was Bret Baier, who asked tenaciously about the special deals and procedural tricks that have been used to push ObamaCare through Congress. This is perhaps the first time Obama has ever been directly asked about the procedural details of the bill.

At one point, Baier pressed the president on the Cornhusker Kickback, the infamous deal that would have paid off Nebraska's Medicaid bills indefinitely and forever. The deal was struck to persuade Sen. Ben Nelson to vote for ObamaCare despite his hang-ups about abortion. Regarding the Cornhusker Kickback, Obama declared, "I have said that there's certain provisions, like this Nebraska one, that don't make sense and that needed to be out. And we have removed those."

This is simply untrue. The White House was almost certainly the architect of the Cornhusker Kickback. After Nelson announced his concerns over the abortion language in the bill, Obama began persistently meeting with the Nebraska senator at the White House. Nelson had a number of private one-on-one sessions with the president, with whom he was close friends. It was after these meetings that the Cornhusker Kickback was announced and Nelson switched from a no to yes vote. Of course, the idea could have been proposed by Harry Reid or another Senate Democrat, but it was certainly inserted in the bill with Obama's blessing. Obama's claim that he was above all this dealmaking is false. This is his Chicago politics.

The Cornhusker Kickback was never actually removed from the Senate bill, as the president claimed. The president toyed around with the idea of paying off all the states' Medicaid bills, but only after Nelson's deal became so politically toxic that even Nelson came out against it. The reconciliation sidecar does away with the Cornhusker Kickback, but only after the deal was conveniently used to bribe Nelson to help break the filibuster.

Baier's full interview with the president was riveting and contentious. Here's the video: