Let him who is without sin...

...make the first complaint about legislative horse-trading.

Blatant trade-offs have always accompanied tough legislation from both parties, and in the states, but it's also a very soft target for the opposition, as Arnold Schwarzenegger showed today, when he called the health care bill a "trough of bribes, deal, and loopholes," and demanded, at least, that California get in on Nebraska's deal.

His broadside prompted a Democrat to point out that Arnold is not, in fact, all that pure on this subject. Indeed, last February's California budget seems to have been fairly full of them, after Democrats "sprinkled the budget with concessions to recalcitrant legislators," per the L.A. Times.



The most entertaining of them:*

Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders lobbied the Republican heavily, even drafting a special measure to address one of [Sen. Abel] Maldonado's peeves: a $1-million contract for new furniture in the state controller's office.



Schwarzenegger's major water legislation last November was also passed, the paper reported, with "a time-honored tactic: The spreading of pork."

*UPDATE: A reader notes that the concession to Maldonado was a kind of reverse pork: He wanted the money stripped, not expended.