Conrad Asks House To Remove North Dakota Deal

Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND)
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After taking heat for a “special deal” in the House’s health care reconciliation bill that would benefit the Bank of North Dakota, House leadership will submit a manager’s amendment to remove the deal.

The provision, seen as a deal for Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND), would have allowed the Bank of North Dakota, a state bank, to continue receiving federal subsidies for student loans, even as the bill eliminated such subsidies for other banks. Student loan legislation is tied into the health care bill.

So Conrad had his staff call leadership and ask to get it removed.

“I’ve just sent a signal that they should remove that before they send the package, because in this heated environment, it is virtually impossible to discuss the merits or demerits of a difference,” Conrad told reporters today. “So I just called my staff and said, ‘call the House.'”

Adding a manager’s amendment will not restart the 72-hour clock in between when the bill is posted and when it’s voted on.

“This is way too important to have it misrepresented by people who want to defeat something,” he said.

Conrad, who has been a vocal critic of the various health care bills in Congress, defended the deal to Roll Call earlier today.

Conrad said Thursday that the Bank of North Dakota “is a unique institution” because it is “owned by the people of North Dakota. … And they service the loans that they write, so they are not like these other institutions that have created this problem. They don’t farm out servicing of their loans. They retain it.”

He added that the bank’s “default rate is 1.8 percent. The default rate nationally is 7.2 percent. So we think there’s a pretty strong argument for them continuing to operate as effectively as they have.”

The deal had taken some heat from the right. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), for example, called it “another sweetheart deal.”

Additional reporting by Brian Beutler

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