Can't pass a 2nd stimulus bill (& thus continue to increase federal spending)? No problem. Put it in something called health care reform legislation.

From The Washington Post:

Wedged in the House health-care bill is $23.5 billion that looks a lot more like new federal stimulus spending than anything to do with national health-care reform.

The barely debated pot of money would allow Congress to continue pumping billions in new short-term aid to states to cover Medicaid costs that have increased with rising unemployment in the past year.

Medicaid relief for states comprised one of the biggest pieces of February's $787 billion federal stimulus package, but that funding will run out next year, halfway through states' next round of spending plans.

Under the Affordable Health Care for America Act, the federal government would continue to pay a higher share of all Medicaid costs -- 66 percent on average, up from 57 percent before the stimulus -- for an additional six months, and erase in one fell swoop a major chunk of states' projected shortfalls for the coming year.

House Republicans, who had repeatedly blasted the cost of the bill, never directly attacked the additional state funding in the final floor debate leading up to the Nov. 7 vote, even as they charged in other contexts in recent weeks that Democrats were trying to increase federal spending without introducing a second stimulus package.