Flash! GOP and Dems Agree on Contentious Bills

All the turkeys this week won’t be served up with cranberry sauce if Congress does what it has threatened for the past several years.

Two long awaited agreements -- a prescription drugs benefit for Medicare, and increased energy supplies -- have been lathered with applesauce for quick passage.

The bills are more suited for Christmas gifts. They have a little something for everyone but not enough to please any one -- an indication that the circle has been squared.

The most controversial measure would provide prescription drugs for seniors. Democrats are in a tizzy -- not so much because free, universal healthcare has been rejected again; but because the American Association of Retired People (AARP) fled the plantation to endorse the measure.

Worst of all, AARP chief executive William Novelli says his board has earmarked $7 million in advertising to promote the bill that would impose some charges for medication benefits.

AARP says it helped craft the measure first proposed years ago by – gasp! – former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and brought into reality by President Bush conservatives.

Some AARP freeloaders gathered in the rain outside AARP’s Washington headquarters to cut up their membership cards. Email complaints are said to be “flooding” the organization’s computers.

Senate Minority Leader Daschle and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi dashed off a letter to Novelli expressing “our profound concern” and demanding an explanation for the decision.

Why is it that liberals always “demand” when “request” would get results easier?

Democrat and labor union leaders, including all nine presidential hopefuls, accuse the AARP of caving to big healthcare companies.

Not so. AARP leadership remembers how it persuaded Congress in 1988 to provide catastrophic medical expenses. Old folks rioted in the streets, literally, when they discovered the benefit required an extra premium.

Half a loaf is better than none. The new benefits are the largest in Medicare’s 38-year history.

Drug benefits would begin in 2006 for 75 percent of individual costs up to $2,200 a year. An additional premium averaging $35 a month, plus a $275 annual deductible, would be levied.

After this, Medicare would pay nothing until the beneficiary has spent $3,600 total out of pocket. Then, Medicare would pay 95 percent of prescription costs.

The bill also would allow retirees to keep private health plans, and buy lower-priced drugs from foreign countries.

New benefits would add another $40 billion a year to the present accrued liability (promissory notes) for Medicare of $17 trillion. Don’t forget that the liability assumed by Social Security is another $17 trillion.

The 1945-50 “baby boomers” have put a lot of cash into Social Security and Medicare. Within the next 10 years they will start taking cash out – they hope. As of now there is no cash in the till.

The energy bill is an orphan unclaimed by its guardians.

Environmentalists are pleased that it requires the gasoline industry to double its use of ethanol from corn, and prohibits oil wells in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Democrats are upset that a mandate requiring public utilities to generate a set amount of electricity by windmills and solar panels is not included. However, tax incentives are expected to revive nuclear power plants and develop clean burning coal.

The bill offers a tax credit of l.85 cents per kilowatt- hour for companies installing advanced-nuclear reactors.

Other conservation methods would eliminate 130 conventional power plants by 2020. A new tran-Alaska pipeline would bring natural gas to the Midwest.

Most controversial feature of the bill would limit product liability lawsuits against makers of the gasoline additive MBTE. The substance was authorized a few years ago to reduce exhaust emissions but now is said to contaminate drinking water.

No one has estimated the net costs of the new regulations, but all agree it would exceed President Bush’s budget proposal.

Nevertheless, the recent electricity blackout, rising cost of gasoline and uncertain Middle East oil supply goaded reluctant Democrats to accept Republican initiatives.

Politics does indeed make strange bedfellows. Enjoy and give thanks on Thursday.

PARTING SHOTS

Minority Leader Sen. Daschle threatens to filibuster all of Dubya’s court nominees. Majority Leader Sen. Frist says he will reverse filibuster right back. Just what we need. Matching filibusters.

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Mickey Mouse is celebrating his 75th birthday. He looks the same as he was when driving a steamboat way back when, while the Mousketeers have developed grey hair and wrinkles.

Williams – drugs & energy

Sunday – nov. 23, 2003

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