The Foot Fist Way

NC Insurance Commissioner Wayne Goodwin posted last night about "the skullduggery" practiced by "one powerful state senator" in slipping into the Senate budget bill a provision that would have essentially relieved the Insurance Commissioner of his power to control and cap insurance rates.

The "powerful state senator" Goodwin was referring to was Marc Basnight, the Democratic leader of the NC Senate.

North Carolina Public Radio got on the story Wednesday, before anyone knew it was Basnight who slipped in the shiv:

Stripping an elected official of his power would be a major policy change, the kind of thing you might expect Senate budget writers to notice. They didn't.

Senator Katie Dorsett co-chairs the subcommittee that wrote that section of the budget. 'I do not know where it originated. It came to our committee. We included it. And I was not aware of it.' "

Later on Wednesday, Basnight owned up that he put the provision in the bill, but he indicated that it was a mistake, an inadvertent error, one of those missteps that become a misstep when someone notices it.

That, folks, is the arrogance of one powerful state senator.