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Medicare--I ask for your help...as Majority Leader and as a physician. I know the liberal bias in the media is trying to discredit the momentous achievement by President Bush and Senate Republicans in passing a Medicare bill that will benefit millions and millions of seniors and individuals with disabilities who don't have access to prescription drugs. These drugs are life-saving. It is a challenge to overcome this bias. The only way you are going to get the facts straight up, without the media filter, is straight from the source. As you know, I have been working on this for 6...

When Social Security was founded, offering a federal pension at age 65, most of the people born 65 years earlier couldn't take advantage of it. They were dead. For the lucky ones who lived long enough to collect, the new pension system, founded in 1935, was meant as a modest support in the brief span before they passed on to glory. No more. Since then, life expectancy at birth in America has increased to more than 77 years. For the majority of people, that means lots of time being supported by the government. A working life is now just a...

President Bush signed legislation today that creates a prescription drug benefit for the elderly, launching the biggest changes to the Medicare system since its creation in 1965. "For the first time, we're giving seniors peace of mind that they will not have to face unlimited expenses for their medicine," Mr. Bush said just before sitting down at a desk in Constitution Hall, near the White House, and signing the new law, surrounded by applauding supporters and an audience of several hundred people. Presidential bill signings typically are set at the White House, on smaller scale. The bill, which the government...

President Bush has made it official. By signing into law the new Medicare Prescription Drug Program, the President has given his approval to the largest increase in spending by the federal government since Medicare itself was created and signed into law by the liberal Democrat, President Johnson in 1965. The President has given his okay to raise government expenditures by $400 billion over the next ten years. We all know spending on this Medicare PDP, will not stop at $400 billion. As with all government entitlement programs, the costs to run this new addition to the federal bureaucracy will double...

The Medicare prescription drug bill passed by Congress last week may prove to be a watershed event for political conservatives in America. This latest expansion of the federal government, potentially the largest in our nation’s history, is firmly in keeping with the failed New Deal and Great Society programs of the utopian left. This leaves true conservatives, who believe strongly in limited government and identify with the Goldwater- era Republican party, wondering whether they still have a political home in the modern GOP. In the eyes of many conservatives, today’s GOP simply has abandoned its limited-government heritage to buy votes...

<p>In politics, there's nothing like having the other side steamroll your party -- using your own steamroller -- to jangle the emotions.</p> <p>Democrats have owned the Medicare issue for nearly 40 years. But this week, the Republicans climbed into the driver's seat and mashed the gas pedal. In closed-door sessions that excluded nearly all Democrats, through rule-bending roll calls, dishing out goodies to friends and twisting arms of the recalcitrant, the Republicans passed $400 billion worth of changes. Democrats spent the day picking carpet fibers out of their hairdos and sorting out their reactions.</p>

<p>President Bush hit the stump yesterday to promote congressional passage of the prescription-drug bill. In meetings with seniors out West, he assured those with high drug costs that his administration was delivering the relief they need. Medicare "was becoming old and it needed help," said the president. When he signs the legislation into law, "the Medicare system will be modern and it will be strong." Because of the promise of the program, the traditionally pro-Democratic AARP took the unusual move of backing the Republican bill in the strongest manner. The new entitlement will help many Americans, and it may pull new voters into the Republican Party.</p>

During 14 years in the Michigan Legislature and 11 years in Congress, Rep. Nick Smith had never experienced anything like it. House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, in the wee hours last Saturday morning, pressed him to vote for the Medicare bill. But Smith refused. Then things got personal. Smith, self term-limited, is leaving Congress. His lawyer son Brad is one of five Republicans seeking to replace him from a GOP district in Michigan's southern tier. On the House floor, Nick Smith was told business interests would give his son $100,000 in return for...

<p>Federal splurge causes worry Critics see the Medicare bill as the latest sign that U.S. spending is out of control. By David Westphal -- Bee Washington Bureau Chief Published 2:15 a.m. PST Thursday, November 27, 2003 WASHINGTON -- Almost lost in the harsh partisan rhetoric of the Medicare prescription drug legislation now headed for President Bush's signature was a pointed question raised repeatedly by a handful of economic conservatives in Congress. How, they asked, does the federal government expect to pay for all this? More than a few experts contend that the $395 billion, 10-year cost estimate is a false indication of the legislation's true impact -- especially when the baby-boom generation's retirement gets in full swing beyond the next decade.</p>