Governor Spitzer must have felt very strongly about cutting $1 billion out of the state's Medicaid program. How strongly? When hospitals and unions started lambasting the plan in TV ads, he put up half a million of his own money to launch a counterstrike, as the Daily News reported today. Mind you, Spitzer began by spending close to $3 million of his leftover campaign funds; it's only when that money ran out that he dipped into his own wallet. "I needed to make sure our perspective stayed on the air," the governor explained to the paper. According to Spitzer's camp, the plan's foes spent a whopping $10 million propping up their perspective in TV ads and direct mail. All of which makes you wonder: If everyone involved in the mess, including the unions, had so much dough to flush down the media toilet, couldn't some of it just have been spent on health care?

Gov's Own Dough Put Him on a Medicaid Roll [NYDN]