THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, January 30, 1997 TAG: 9701300340
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BILL SIZEMORE, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: 95 lines
Dru Boen, a Navy cook, saw the ad in USA Today and was intrigued.
There was Haley Barbour, chairman of the Republican National Committee, his round face sporting a toothy grin, holding an oversize check for a cool $1 million.
``Heard the one about Republicans `cutting' Medicare?'' the ad said. ``The fact is Republicans are increasing Medicare by more than half. I'm Haley Barbour, and I'm so sure of that fact I'm willing to give you this check for a million dollars if you can prove me wrong.''
``I thought, shoot, a chance at a million dollars, that's worth a stamp,'' Boen said Wednesday. So he went to the library and did some research, then entered the GOP's ``Million Dollar Medicare Challenge.''
That was in December 1995. Last week he got his prize by registered mail: 30 pages of legal gobbledygook.
The bottom line: Not only does he not get the $1 million; the GOP is suing him for trying.
Boen is one of 80 people nationwide who took the Republicans' bait in a bitter partisan debate over Medicare during last year's presidential campaign. What they got for their trouble was a federal lawsuit aimed at getting them off the GOP's back.
Included in the sheaf of legal documents was a summons demanding that Boen respond to the suit, filed in Barbour's home state of Mississippi. ``If you fail to do so,'' the summons says ominously, ``judgment by default will be taken against you for the relief demanded in the complaint.''
The complaint asks the court to bar the contest entrants from taking any legal action to collect the $1 million and to award the GOP court costs and ``further relief as may be just and proper.''
``I was shocked,'' Boen said. ``What's this big political party want to sue me for? I'm just Joe Blow, American citizen. I kind of feel like they're picking on me. I'm like, gee, what's this going to cost me now?''
Boen has an appointment with the Navy's legal assistance office next week to discuss his options.
Boen, 32 and divorced, is a petty officer second class assigned to Norfolk Naval Station. He takes home about $1,600 a month.
The lawsuit was the first Boen had heard from the GOP since last May, when the party sent him and the other 79 entrants a form letter saying ``Unfortunately, your response is incorrect.''
One of the entrants, RobertShireman, who works in the Office of Management and Budget at the White House, refused to let the matter drop. He sued the GOP last summer in a District of Columbia court, demanding the $1 million. The Republican lawsuit filed this month appears to be a pre-emptive maneuver aimed at heading off any other such suits.
``This is the only means we have from a legal standpoint to let everyone who responded know that if they choose to make a legal claim for $1 million, they have to do it at this particular time in one court,'' said Mary Crawford, a Republican spokeswoman.
Of the claims, Crawford said: ``We are completely confident that no one has or could possibly prove us wrong.''
The GOP ad promised $1 million to the first American who could prove this statement false: ``In November 1995, the U.S. House and Senate passed a balanced budget bill. It increases total federal spending on Medicare by more than 50 percent from 1995 to 2002, pursuant to Congressional Budget Office standards.''
The argument boils down to semantics. The Republicans argue that cutting the rate of growth of a program, as their budget did, isn't the same thing as cutting the program.
Boen disagrees. When he researched the topic in 1995, he learned that Medicare payouts were projected to reach $315 billion by 2002 under current law and that the Republican budget would have lowered that total to $244 billion. The way Boen figures it, that's a $71 billion cut.
David Halperin, contestant Shireman's lawyer, explains it this way: ``The ad says, `It increases spending.' That implies a cause-and-effect relationship between the bill and spending. The reality is that despite the bill, spending would go up every year.
``But the bill is not the cause of the increase. The cause of the increase is the existing demand for Medicare services. That would go up, and what the bill would do is impose a ceiling on spending. . . . Each year, spending would be less than it would have been in the absence of the bill.
``Congressional Budget Office estimates say just that, and they call the effect of the bill a decrease, not an increase. Indeed, they called it that in the same document that Haley Barbour sent to all the contestants telling them why they were losers - but they left out that page.''
Now, apparently, it will be left to the courts to sort it all out.
``It's like Ed McMahon suing all the Publishers Clearinghouse entrants,'' Halperin said.
MEMO: The Associated Press contributed to this report. ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
DO NOT COLLECT $1 MILLION, GO DIRECTLY TO COURT
LAWRENCE JACKSON
The Virginian-Pilot
Dru Boen, above, a cook in the Navy, holds court papers telling him
he's being sued by the Republican Party. Below is a reproduction of
the ad featuring Haley Barbour that promises $1 million to anyone
who can prove his statement about Medicare is wrong.
KEYWORDS: MEDICARE LAWSUIT REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE