Skipping last fall’s vote on the Hurricane Katrina relief bill in order to get plastic surgery was worth it, says Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.), who loves her new look, ROLL CALL reports.

“For the last couple of years whenever I was on TV all I could do was look at my neck,” Berkley said in a recent online audio interview. “It was driving me crazy because my neck was starting to hang ... and it was making me very self conscious.”

Now, she joked in an interview with hosts of the Vegas-centric podcast show “The Strip,” “I have the neck of a 20-year-old and a 50-year-old body.” Until the Feb. 16 program, Berkley hadn’t said much about missing the September vote on the Katrina relief bill due to her nip-and-tuck job.

Berkley, 55, told the show’s co-hosts, Steve Friess and Miles Smith, “I decided that it was going to be very hard to hide and I’m a very public person.” And let’s face it, she said, that brilliant plastic surgeon “turned back the clock 10 years.”

Friess cracked Berkley up when he asked whether she thinks she’ll get more votes with her youthful, thinner neck. She laughed and said, “The 20-somethings! Maybe this will get them out to vote.”

President Bush can't change his scenery from Washington to Crawford without the press going nuts, making it as if he's just goofing off, but some Democrat skips a vote on a Katrina relief bill to get a neck lift... come on. And how about the fact this vote she missed was in September, and we are only hearly about it now--five months later. Another pass on Democratic secrecy.