In a remarkable interview with LifeSite News, Ben Nelson, whose backroom dealing has significantly tarnished health care reform in the public consciousness, acknowledged that he wouldn’t have voted for the final bill and even would have joined a Republican-led filibuster if it didn’t include his original amendment on abortion, which was substantially similar to the one offered by Bart Stupak in the House:

LSN: OK, so you were planning on coming back…

NELSON: Absolutely. That is what I was just trying to tell the gentleman who was arguing about the 60th vote.

LSN: What made you think that it had a shot, after conference?

NELSON: Because they needed 60 votes again.

LSN: Right, but before, you voted for it even without it –

NELSON: To get it there….But, 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 and that is what Christy was talking about when I mentioned this on the phone – how we would approach this in conference to say, for my last 60th vote, it has to have Nelson/Hatch/Casey.

LSN: Why didn’t you stop it right then and there and say, “No Nelson/Hatch – nothing.”

NELSON: Because, at that point and time, the leverage wasn’t as strong – you have to play it [...]

LSN: So, if we got to conference and it was just the Nelson not the Nelson/Hatch/Casey – you would say ‘yes’ because you think it was good enough.

NELSON: I could have but I was going to say – and this was all the plan – that I would insist that it be Nelson/Hatch/Casey.

Let’s all remember that this was an interview with LifeSite News, an anti-abortion website. Nelson was certainly speaking to a particular audience, or at least he thought he was. And he later said he “could live” with his own amendment, which he oddly called “the Nelson amendment” as if he didn’t write it.

But there’s an amazing amount of chutzpah here (if they have that in Nebraska). Ben Nelson, as the final holdout on the Senate bill, accumulated an enormous amount of power, and used it to get all sorts of special deals for himself, including a carefully circumscribed policy on abortion funding which he personally authored. Now, he tells an anti-abortion group that he would have threatened to sink the bill AGAIN if it didn’t have something even more restrictive? Even while he acknowledges that the Hyde Amendment would have been enough to ensure no public funds for abortions anyway?

LSN: So, why did you push so hard for Nelson/Hatch?

NELSON: Because we wanted to make it imminently clear.

LSN: You wanted to make it clear, but you don’t feel it was necessary?

NELSON: I think it was probably necessary to clear up any question about it that somebody might have – but if Hyde truly applies…It was a belt and suspenders approach … to make sure that it was clear that it didn’t…In my language, that some didn’t care for, we also put in there that states had the right to ban insurance abortion coverage, whether for private or public plans. Public with it right now is banned, but private, we think, is open to question. Five states have banned abortion insurance coverage in their states. They say, “Well, they can do that now,” but I said that I didn’t want somebody to say that the passage of this new legislation pre-empted the states from doing that. This was just a belt and suspenders approach, but I think an important one to make the statement that, with these public exchanges that would be in the bill, that, somehow didn’t change things so that Hyde didn’t apply anymore. This was just to make it clear.

The health care bill was destroyed, particularly in the public mind, so Ben Nelson could make something clear.

This interview is exhibit A in why the filibuster must be nixed.

More at The Wonk Room and TPMDC.