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

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (504014)	12/5/2003 9:24:43 AM
From: JakeStraw	Respond to of 769667

Lessons of the Medicare bill: bad news for Democrats By Matthew Miller TRIBUNE MEDIA LESSONS In ways that have not been fully appreciated, the Republican triumph in enacting a prescription drug benefit for Medicare is one of those watershed events that will shape American politics for years. Among the central lessons: Republicans are stunningly effective. The White House has always known that adding a drug benefit to Medicare would co-opt an issue long thought to be "owned" by Democrats - and thereby seal Bush's image as a "compassionate conservative," making his re-election more likely. Picture the ads next year. "George Bush - tough enough to lead in perilous times. Yet even as he led a war against terror, George Bush brought both parties together to finally bring prescription drugs to America's seniors." The independent voters who swing presidential elections will think that sounds pretty darned good. And think how strategic Republicans have been. The moment Trent Lott faltered over his nostalgia for Strom Thurmond, Karl Rove wielded the stiletto to depose Lott and replace him with Doctor Bill Frist - the ideal face for a party out to convince voters that the GOP cares about health care. Then the GOP shrewdly courted AARP to win its endorsement for the bill, providing crucial momentum for its passage - and separating the powerful seniors group from its seemingly natural Democratic leanings. Democrats are stunningly incoherent. Democrats never seemed to realize that the political stakes of the prescription drug debate were as high as they were during the fight over the Clinton health plan a decade ago. Back then, the GOP judged that allowing any coverage expansion to pass that Bill Clinton could claim as a "victory" was a mortal threat to their party's political standing. So they demagogued "Clintoncare" and killed it. Democrats couldn't get their act together to do the same. First, Ted Kennedy played footsie all year with the GOP to get a bipartisan bill - only to find he couldn't support the final product. But by then the chance to craft a full-year strategy to deny a seminal GOP victory had been squandered. Yet even then, the final bill passed by a vote of only 54 to 44 - meaning that the more than 40 votes needed to sustain a Democratic filibuster should have been achievable. So why wasn't a filibuster sustained? You'd have to ask the 11 Democratic senators who voted against the final bill after voting in favor of closing debate on it: Joe Biden, Jon Corzine, Tom Daschle, Mark Dayton, Tim Johnson, Herb Kohl, Barbara Mikulski, Patty Murray, Bill Nelson, Mark Pryor and Harry Reid. If there was a good reason to vote against the final bill but not to actually kill it, it eludes me - just as it will haunt the eventual Democratic presidential nominee. Bush's passage of a "bipartisan" drug benefit supported by AARP will make it much harder for a Democrat to cast the bill as a payoff to big pharmaceutical firms and HMOs. Indeed, rather than blasting AARP for supporting an imperfect bill, Democrats would be better off asking themselves the tougher question: Who lost AARP? The missing voice. At this crucial juncture, there is simply no voice for generational equity and fiscal sanity in American politics. The bill's $400 billion over 10 years - which all sides know is just a down payment on seniors' drug costs - is all being borrowed from our children. The Democratic charge that the bill is too stingy would only deepen the fiscal hole. Consider the logic. Democrats look at the $400 billion the bill provides over the next 10 years, compare it to estimates that seniors' total drug costs over the same period will be $1.8 trillion, and conclude that the benefit is therefore "obviously inadequate." But wait a minute. Who says that younger taxpayers should be footing the bulk of the bill for non-poor seniors when there are already $25 trillion in unfunded liabilities in Social Security and Medicare today? Not to mention 44 million uninsured, and a host of other unmet needs for Americans who happen not to be senior citizens. Put another way, what will non-poor seniors' food bills be over the next decade? Or their clothing bill? Should younger workers be expected to fund most of those as well? In a few years the inexorable budget math of the boomers' retirement will place such questions at the heart of public debate. Yet today the constituency for these arguments - and the leaders who will make them - are nowhere in sight. tallahassee.com