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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (498823)	11/26/2003 8:08:32 AM
From: JakeStraw	Respond to of 769667

Divided Democrats sell out November 26, 2003 WASHINGTON -- The battle over a Medicare prescription drug benefit proves that Republicans are ruthless and determined and that Democrats are divided and hapless. Republicans have changed the rules in Washington, but some Democrats pretend to be living in the good old days. And so there was much bitterness among Democrats as the Republicans' Medicare drug bulldozer rolled inexorably forward with critical help from two Democratic senators. A majority of Democrats believe the bill was a bad deal -- it gave President Bush a political victory without demanding enough in the return. "It's a combination of political stupidity and substantive gutlessness," said one influential Democratic congressional aide. What Democrats failed to understand, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., said in an interview, is that Republicans "are on an ideological march. They have no intention of playing fair. They want what they want when they want it." And they get it. If anyone doubted the rules had changed, House Republican leaders ended all illusions early Saturday morning by holding open a 15-minute roll call vote for an unprecedented two hours and 51 minutes. At the end of the normal time for voting, Republican leaders faced defeat by a two-vote margin. Eventually, two Republicans were hammered into switching their votes. "I don't mean to be alarmist, but this is the end of parliamentary democracy as we have known it, " said Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass. "The Republican Party in the House is the most ideologically cohesive and disciplined party in the democratic world." In response, House Democrats were more united in opposition than Democratic senators, who are operating as if the older system of give-and-take is still in force. Edward M. Kennedy was one senator who believed the old system could still work. He had urged his colleagues to pass an earlier version of the drug bill on the assumption that Republicans would agree to a compromise acceptable to Democrats. Instead, House and Senate negotiators pushed the Senate bill to the right by adding in Medicare privatization experiments, big HMO subsidies and medical savings accounts. These and other changes pushed Kennedy to lead the last-ditch fight against the final version. Kennedy said he had no regrets about trying to get the earlier bill passed. But he acknowledged that Republicans had shown far more discipline than Democrats have ever mustered. Whatever discontent liberals expressed toward Kennedy was mild compared with their irritation toward Sens. John Breaux of Louisiana and Max Baucus of Montana. Breaux and Baucus were the only Democrats allowed to negotiate with the Republicans, House Democrats having been excluded. Would Republicans have put up with that? Over the weekend, several Democrats complained that Breaux and Baucus promised to report back before reaching a deal. Instead, they announced their support for the Republican bill, setting in motion its rush to passage. Baucus poured salt into his party's wounds by opening his speech in defense of the bill on Sunday by taking issue with how House Democratic leaders had described his legislation. Bush must have been laughing as Baucus drove a wedge through the Democratic Party. If Democrats wanted to give Bush a political victory, they could have insisted on a much better deal. Instead, their negotiators sold out for a bill full of subsidies to the HMOs that will make it harder to control drug costs. The moral, yet again, is that Republicans are much tougher than Democrats and fight much harder to win. indystar.com