GOP's political inoculation

WASHINGTON -- President Bush's departure this week for a less-than-friendly reception in Britain while his most important piece of domestic legislation is in jeopardy looks like the wrong trip to the wrong place at the wrong time. The House Republican leadership trying to pass a prescription drug subsidy is not happy about his absence. But many rank-and-file GOP lawmakers will be delighted if the bill sinks while the president is away.

Odds are that Medicare legislation, after nearly four months in a Senate-House conference following passage by both houses, will not sink. It is intended to inoculate Bush's re-election campaign from charges he has no compassion for senior citizens. Whether it actually achieves that end, the strategy worries many Republicans.

The inoculation's side effects could depress the Republican political base in next year's election with disastrous consequences for the president. Apart from any political downside, the first fully Republican government -- presidency, Senate and House -- in 38 years is building a major addition to the welfare state. The prescription drug subsidy will be the first major new federal entitlement since Medicare in 1965.

The danger of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy leading a lethal filibuster was diminished with a legislative sleight of hand that is standard practice on Capitol Hill. The bill's "premium support" provision -- attempting to graft free market competition onto this 1965 government program -- is anathema to Kennedy and friends. So, the Senate-House conference miniaturized premium support into a six-region pilot project, an effective death sentence for privatization.

That won support for the bill from two key Senate Finance Committee Democrats: Sens. Max Baucus of Montana and John Breaux of Louisiana. The powerful American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) soon followed. Liberal contempt for a pilot project was sounded by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York. Proposing to limit the contaminating impact of private enterprise to Republican "red" states of 2000, Clinton added: "Let them experiment on people who voted for them."

Rep. Bill Thomas, the House Ways and Means Committee chairman and a Medicare conferee who knows more about the subject than anybody else in Congress, was infuriated. He stormed out of the session and said he was driving to the airport to fly home to California. He cooled off, however, and amended the pilot project.

The agreement reached last Saturday, however, did not satisfy House conservatives such as Rep. Mike Pence, a second-term member from Indiana who is regarded highly enough by the party leadership to be named a deputy whip. When Pence heard the news at the Restoration Weekend attended by conservatives at The Breakers in Palm Beach, Fla., he informed House Majority Leader Tom DeLay he could not vote for this bill. DeLay was not happy.

DeLay, arguably the single most powerful House member, had told colleagues that the prescription drug subsidy was the price for market reform of Medicare. Now, in the opinion of Pence, Rep. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and other conservatives, DeLay has delivered the subsidy but not reform. The tough Texas conservative, in trying to fix Medicare, has become one of its bigger fans -- sounding like Col. Nicholson building the bridge in "The Bridge on the River Kwai."

"A great opportunity for the Republican Party has been lost," Pence told me. "We should not be the party of entitlements." Scores of Pence's colleagues agree with him, but only 19 voted against the bill in June and fewer will do so this time. Many might contemplate defying George W. Bush, but breaking with Tom DeLay would be more painful. The AARP and the pharmaceutical industry have joined arms supporting this bill. Bush senior adviser Karl Rove, the author of the inoculation theory, assembled private lobbyists late Monday in Room 450 of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building for a pep rally.

But will the Republican inoculation turn out to be an infection? Republican seniors who now get their prescription drugs through supplementary private programs will not be happy about being driven into Medicare. The new bill's "means testing" turns out to be a tax increase for upper income senior Americans. Democrats who are raging over this bill sound like they are protesting being thrown into the briar patch.

We're selling out by passing The Prescription Drug Panderation Act. I hold Gingrich and DeLay both in the utmost contempt. It's time for Gingrich to go away and collect his entitlements like the good socialist sellout that he is.

On the bright side, however, Toomey is running as a conservative against Arlen SPECTRE, the evil anti-Bork.

"miniaturized premium support into a six-region pilot project, an effective death sentence for privatization"

Sigh. The more I read Novak, the more I'm convinced he hates Bush, and deliberately slants things so as to infuriate the "right" knowing that the Left will take care of its side. What he wrote above is pure BS.

I work in academia---in a bureaucracy. Do any of you know what it means when you have a "pilot project?" It doesn't mean what common sense says it means. It means, "THIS WILL BECOME A REALITY, ONLY SLOWER THAN WE'D LIKE." I have never, ever, seen one "pilot" that didn't become implemented fully. Even "vouchers" are spreading rapidly, and probably in five years will be pretty common almost everywhere.

Despite what all the "big-government gloomsters" think, this provision is the key to the whole bill, and is in fact the item that is going to end Medicare.

The amazing thing is that the greedy-geezer ARPies have signed on to it, taking the short-term benefits over the long-term privatization that is coming. In this, the 9 dwarves have this exactly right!

Getting the career government bureaucrats out of as much as practically possible shows compassion for all Americans. Get the government out of the way and let the Free Market work! The Democrats don't have genuine compassion for seniors, they do not want to lose the prescription drug issue by allowing a solution to be implemented, same as social security. They had eight years, was anything proposed? They only want the issues.

I have been convinced that Novak is loosing it for some time. His pro-Arab, Anti-Bush, Anti-Jew bias is effecting his thinking.

If the Dems are able to stop the passage of this bill it will cost them dearly in the next election. Polls show very strong support for prescription drug coverage for seniors - especially among the seniors (who all vote.) That would probably end up giving the Pubs a 60+ majority in the Senate. This is a loose - loose for the Dems.

"We should not be the party of entitlements."

Sadly, the trend for the GOP is in the wrong direction. Republican's keep slipping towards support for more and more entitlement programs. Helping out the elderly poor is one thing, but supplying prescription drug payouts for financially secure seniors is dead wrong. What's next? This is a $400 billion waste, that will eventually turn into a trillion dollar waste. This has got to stop, or in 25 years, 95% of federal taxes will be spent on social security, medicare and defense, with overwhelming emphasis on the New Deal and Great Society programs. A nightmare scenario for America's future.

I'm paying less taxes too and that's great, but my remarks were about a new entitlement program being advanced by the GOP. While the new prescription drug program contains some much needed reform for the overall Medicare program, government spending is out of control. There needs to be an all out effort to control discreationary spending and real reform for social security. Republicans shouldn't be supporting the biggest increase in government since Medicare itself was created in 1965. That is not part of the GOP's conservative agenda.

In your attempts to be pithy, I think you're missing my point. On the issue of tax cuts, the Republican agenda is headed in the right direction, but on the issue of spending, the GOP is headed in the wrong direction. The Bush administration and the GOP Congress is only addressing half of the issue related to fiscal responsibility. I do see the glass as half full, but would also like to see Bush-Cheney address federal spending in their second term.

>>>You claim a trend in the wrong direction; I disagree.

Okay. But I claim a trend for good reason. The Farm Bill was excessive spending, the Education Bill was excessive spending and the "new" initiative, the Medicare prescription drug bill is the largest increase in spending by the federal government in 40 years. That shows a trend by the controlling GOP majority, headed in the wrong direction.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.