March 15, 2010 10:21AM # Axelrod: ‘Louisiana Purchase’ Somehow Not One of Those Corrupt, State-Specific Bribes By [Michael F. Cannon](https://www.cato.org/people/michael-f-cannon) --- SHARE The House leadership plans to hold a vote, more or less, on the Senate health care bill this week. President Obama says he wants to “ge\[t\] rid of many of the provisions that had no place in health care reform — [provisions that were more about winning individual votes…than improving health care](http://articles.latimes.com/2010/mar/03/nation/la-na-obama-healthcare-remarks4-2010mar04?pg=4).” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs says Democrats will “[take the pot-sweetening out of the process](http://www.nationaljournal.com/congressdaily/hcp_20100303_3017.php).” Yet Democrats have decided to retain the Senate bill’s $300 million subsidy for the state of Louisiana, commonly known as the “Louisiana Purchase,” and other state-specific bribes pot-sweeteners. On ABC News’s *This Week* yesterday, Obama advisor David Axelrod argued that [the “Louisiana Purchase” is not targeted solely at Louisiana](http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/week-transcript-wh-senior-advisor-david-axelrod-sen/story?id=10085253&page=2): > The president does believe that state-only carve-outs should not be in the bill. There are things in the bill that apply to groupings of states…for example…what has been portrayed as a provision relating to Louisiana says that if a state, if every county in a state is declared a disaster area, they get some extra Medicaid funds. Well, that would apply to any state… Sure, in theory. But as ABC News [reported](http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2009/11/the-100-million-health-care-vote.html) in November, the bill speaks of “certain states recovering from a major disaster” and “spends two pages describing what could be written with a single world: Louisiana.” Axelrod would have us believe that after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D‑NV) wrote the best darned bill he could, he slapped his head and said, “Omigosh! The way I worded this one subsidy provision, it would only apply to Louisiana — the home state of a senator whose vote I need! Gee whiz, what are the odds??” Using Axelrod’s rationale, if Reid had included a $10 billion pension for “all African-American former presidents,” that would *not* be an Obama-only pot-sweetener because it would apply to *any* African-American former president. ##### Related Tags [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics), [Health Care](https://www.cato.org/health-care) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).