President Barack Obama's decision to increase the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan in the lead-up to Operation Strike of the Sword in June 2009. He further criticized the administration's decision to try suspected terrorists in civilian courts rather than military tribunals. Conway said he would have opposed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act because it did not allow insurance companies to sell their products across state lines and included a higher Medicaid reimbursement rate for Nebraska to secure support for the measure from Ben Nelson, a conservative Democratic Senator from Nebraska. When Congress later dropped Nebraska's Medicaid provision, Conway said the bill was still "far from perfect", but conceded he would have voted for it. Mongiardo opposed the bill, saying "If Jack Conway believes this is the magic solution to health care, it's proof that we need to send a doctor to the Senate, not just another politician." Conway also proposed that, as companies repaid the federal government for money directed to them by the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, those funds be used to support small business loans made by local banks and to provide a dollar-for-dollar tax credit to employers who created new domestic jobs, a plan he called the Hometown Tax Credit. In March 2010, a WHAS/Courier Journal poll showed Mongiardo leading Conway by 18 percentage points among likely primary voters. By April, Mongiardo's lead was down to 3 percentage points, falling within the poll's margin of error. WHAS noted that Conway's surge corresponded with the beginning of his television advertising campaign, particularly in western Kentucky. Two weeks before the primary, Mongiardo filed an ethics complaint against Conway alleging that Conway's receipt of more than $70,000 in donations from utility company lobbyists represented a conflict of interest because the Office of Rate Intervention, a division of the attorney general's office, routinely evaluates whether requests to increase utility rates are warranted. Conway's spokeswoman responded that, in his two and a half years as attorney general, Conway had saved ratepayers "$100 million dollars by forcing proposed rate hikes to be lower in 18 cases before the [Public Service Commission] since 2008". Mongiardo's complaint further alleged that Conway stood to benefit from a requested rate increase by Atmos Energy, a partner of Kinder Morgan, a company in which Conway had a financial interest. The Lexington Herald-Leader reported that Conway ultimately negotiated a 38 percent reduction in Atmos