January 31, 2006
Where's the Budget Outrage?
By E.
J. Dionne Jr.
WASHINGTON -- This week, the Republican Party hopes to escape its
immediate past. House Republicans will elect new leaders. They hope
the party's corruption scandal will be forgotten and that the names
Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff will become as unmentionable in their
world as Lord Voldemort's is in Harry Potter's.
President
Bush hopes for a new start with his State of the Union address.
The words from last year he wants to wipe out of the political
lexicon include ``Brownie,'' ``Katrina,'' ``heck of a job'' and
``Social Security privatization.''
But there
is an uncomfortable bit of business left over from the Republican
disaster year of 2005 that will test the seriousness of the party's
supposed commitment to change. The cut-the-poor, help-the-big-interests
federal budget passed last year needs final ratification in the
House. The vote could take place as soon as Wednesday.
Let's be
clear: Anyone who votes for this fiscal mess will be standing
for the bad old ways of doing business in Washington. They will
have no claim to being ``reformers.''
At least
one Republican, Rep. Rob Simmons of Connecticut, has had a change
of heart, thanks to laudable grass-roots pressure -- which, to
his credit, Simmons acknowledged.
``I voted
for it in December,'' Simmons said of the budget in a statement
released last week. But after consulting with constituency groups,
Simmons decided that the bill ``remains unsatisfactory'' and that
``the budget, as it stands, falls short.'' Moderate Republicans
who had no business voting for this bill in the first place should
be challenged to join Simmons.
What was
known when the budget was last approved was bad enough: that in
merging the different fiscal plans passed by the House and Senate,
Republican leaders dropped Senate provisions that would have sought
savings from drug companies and preferred provider organizations
and instead imposed new burdens on lower-income Americans who
rely on Medicaid. The theme of this budget was: protect the well-connected,
bash the poor.
But since
the last vote, new information has emerged that would more than
justify a change of heart by Republicans who voted ``yes."
It's worth
citing in full the first paragraph of an important piece of investigative
reporting last week by The Washington Post's Jonathan
Weisman: ``House and Senate GOP negotiators, meeting behind closed
doors last month to complete a major budget-cutting bill, agreed
on a change to Senate-passed Medicare legislation that would save
the health insurance industry $22 billion over the next decade,
according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.''
What's wrong
with this picture? First, a group of legislators who claim to
want to reduce the deficit gutted a provision designed to save
taxpayers money, following heavy lobbying by the health insurance
industry.
Second,
a Congress saying it really, really wants to change the
way it does business ratified a backroom deal in the wee hours
of the morning that almost nobody who voted on it knew anything
about. Many on the right have been waging war on ``earmarks,''
those special projects that members of Congress insert into bills,
often at the last minute -- and have proliferated since the Republicans
took over the House. But secret special-interest deals can be
at least as costly, often more so, than many of those earmarks.
And on Monday,
The New York Times reported on a Congressional Budget
Office study of the impact of this budget on the health coverage
of poorer Americans. As the Times' Robert Pear reported,
the study found that ``millions of low-income people would have
to pay more for health care under a bill worked out by Congress,
and some of them would forgo care or drop out of Medicaid because
of the higher co-payments and premiums.''
How strange
it is that while the president claims he wants to help people
get health coverage, he and his party would support a budget that
could force some poor Americans to walk away from care.
It's hard
these days to get the media to pay attention to budgets and their
impact on the lives of citizens. Budgets are complicated and easy
to spin. It's much easier to generate immense moral outrage over
a memoir writer who tells lies.
But long
after we've forgotten the name of that writer, a mother on Medicaid
will be deciding whether she can afford to take her sick child
to see the doctor. Can we please spend at least a tiny bit of
our moral outrage on her behalf?
©
2006, Washington Post Writers Group
