I was at the offices of the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday afternoon.

The leadership class from the combined chambers of commerce in Sebastian and Crawford counties was having its annual state government day in Little Rock. It’s been my assignment and honor most years to hold forth for the group on current matters.

I was explaining that the state House of Representatives might hope to reach 75 votes for the private-option form of Medicaid expansion only by letting the issue simmer for a few days. Conceivably that could give a few legislators time to think of an explanation for voting “yes” in the end, when it counted, after having voted “no” four times.

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I offered up an extemporaneous speech as an example of what these legislators might say by way of explanation. It went more or less as follows:

“I told Rep. Nate Bell before the session began that, if he could get his restrictive and conservative amendment put on the appropriation bill, as he has done, then I would support the private option in this fiscal session, but only then. I said I would do so because I agreed with the points he cited,mainly the impracticality of ending the program altogether so abruptly in this off-year fiscal-only session.

“Then I thought better of it, knowing how opposed many of my constituents are to the program, and that they are more interested in real results than our internal process and tactics.

“But now I have reconsidered my commitment to Rep. Bell, and the practicalities of this situation, as well as the genuine restrictiveness Rep. Bell’s amendment places on promoting this program to add new enrollees.

“In light of all that, and in light of the impasse at which we find ourselves, I have decided to honor my original word to my good conservative friend, and to yield to the practical considerations, and to vote ‘yes’ at this time.

“I do so in hopes that we can avoid a Washington-style budgetary meltdown, which could do more damage to the state and its people in the short term than a few more months of this ill-conceived federal spending.

“But make no mistake: I do this only grudgingly and only for the time being.

“Next year in the full policy session, I want the private option held in the Joint Budget Committee and fully reconsidered from top to bottom … and discontinued, at least in anything resembling its current and unaffordable form.”

So I asked the class if anyone would buy that, and several said yes.

But then, in the back of the room, I saw a special guest.

This was Randy Zook, president of the hosting Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce, and himself a highly placed lobbyist of this General Assembly.

He was shaking his head-to say“no.”

So I called on him. Why no?

Zook replied that it was his informed opinion that the “no” votes were entirely too locked in on their opposition to embrace such eloquence.

Afterward Zook told me he’d been privy to back-room meetings of the “no” voters, and that the talk was tough and the opposition firm.

About the same time, a few blocks away at the state Capitol, state Rep. Greg Leding of Fayetteville, head of the House Democratic Caucus, was trying to call someone out from the shadows of that tough-talking opposition.

He proposed an amendment to a highway budget bill to provide that no former Highway Commission chairman or legislative transportation committee chairman could be honored by the naming of a federally funded highway or section of highway.

He didn’t intend to pass it, and, of course, he didn’t. He intended to make a point, which he might not have accomplished either.

State Rep. Jonathan Barnett of Siloam Springs is, you see, four things-a former highway commission chairman, a former transportation committee chairman, an honoree in the naming of a section of highway and, as it happens, the enforcer in a clique composed of friends of state Rep. Terry Rice of Waldron who resist the private option perhaps in some measure for principle and certainly because House Speaker Davy Carter, who wrested the speakership from Rice at the last minute, supports it.

Leding wanted to make the point that there is a contradiction in supporting federal money for highways-as Barnett wholly does-but turning down federal money for poor people’s health insurance on account of the federal deficit and debt.

There is some difference, actually. Federal highway money comes from a trust fund made up of dedicated tax revenue.

But the difference is lessened by the fact that we’ve been spending more on highways than the trust fund covers for several years.

Meanwhile, it turns out that the 27 “no” voters in the House had indeed been at work on verbiage. But it was not for a speech to accompany and explain a change of vote.

It was for a letter to Carter calling for negotiations.

Carter replied that negotiations had taken place already, on the Nate Bell amendment, and that some members had reneged.

So it seems that Zook might have sized up the situation well. But it also seems that a couple of people need to make my speech, or one better.

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John Brummett’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected]. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.

Editorial, Pages 15 on 02/27/2014