THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 29, 1995 TAG: 9510270007
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J4 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: PERRY MORGAN
LENGTH: Medium: 67 lines
Mulling it over: Some questions and opinionated answers about Medicare and other programs under the knife.
Q. Republicans are determined to cut $270 billion over seven years from the growth of Medicare. Under their House-approved bill, Medicare no longer would provide the same benefits for all recipients. According to a Wall Street Journal survey, the wealthy stand to gain and the poor may be hurt. Was this sort of change promised or implied in the Contract With America - the GOP's collective 1994 campaign promise?
A. No. The contract says nothing about Medicare. But Republicans seem more committed to reforming it than enacting some much-praised causes - term limits, for example.
Q. What's pushing them?
A. Two things: (1) Spending on Medicare does need to be curtailed because its rapid growth threatens to undermine it and other programs as well. (2) Republicans have to have the savings in order to give a tax cut to the better off while implementing a seven-year scheme to balance the budget. The tax cut comes to $245 billion, the Medicare cuts to $270 billion. The similarity of the figures is not accidental.
Q. If not to a tax cut, where could Medicare savings be applied?
A. To achieving more quickly and surely a balanced budget. And to less radical reform of Medicare and reduction of Medicaid. And to making smaller holes in the social safety net where Republican budget cuts are concentrated. And to backing off tax increases many lower-income families will receive if cutbacks in the earned-income tax credit go through. Aside from all that, there's an obvious loss of legitimacy to a government that cuts revenues while losing nearly $1 trillion dollars per presidential term.
Q. Don't Republicans say they were forced to make changes in Medicare in order to keep the program from collapsing?
A. They say that in television commercials that have a tone verging on altruism. What's true is that they are exercising initiative and party discipline and running risks in order to advance a legislative agenda. This once was thought to be the purpose of a political party. What's not true is the notion that Republicans cut from Medicare only the amounts needed to ``protect'' and ``defend'' the program. It was no mission of mercy that brought them to Medicare.
Q. Where do the Democrats stand?
A. Everywhere and nowhere. While denouncing Republican proposals on Medicare, President Clinton has advanced no coherent plan of his own. He wants to be identified with the idea of reform but not the action, just as he straddles on tax cuts. Distancing himself from both parties, he appears to be shaping a role as official sympathizer with both winners and losers in the budget battles. This perhaps was signaled when he first me-tooed Republicans on linking a tax cut to a balanced budget - quibbling over details while providing no principled position for his party. In the Congress, some Democrats have merely screeched at Republicans, but a group in the House has offered a genuine compromise that would: (1) defer any tax cut until a balanced budget is achieved rather than merely projected; (2) soften cuts in a host of social programs (including $182 billion from Medicaid) targeted by the majority. This view likely will have no voice, the president being tied up with his continuing campaign for re-election and the Republicans on balance more concerned with the ideology of reforms than the results in the lives of people. MEMO: Mr. Morgan is a former publisher of The Virginian-Pilot.
by CNB