So, your team just falls over and plays dead and gets steamrollered by the GOP on the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit. This occurs, mind you, while the AARP, previously one of your staunch allies, is spending 7 million dollars on an ad campaign to tell the public they disagree with you, yet you continue on. So what is the solution for your party’s woes? To keep fighting the really important issues:
The Democrats asked whether the Republican National Committee had gone to the White House with sound equipment to have Mr. Bush recite the line anew for what was the first Republican commercial of the campaign season here. That might have meant that the party was not being truthful when it said it had not coordinated with Mr. Bush when it made the advertisement, a possible violation of law.
The Republicans said there were no such doings. “The audio that you hear is from the State of the Union address, the video that you see is from the State of the Union address,” a spokeswoman for the national committee, Christine Iverson, said.
Party officials said the line in question was “cut and pasted.” Still, Democrats were ecstatic over the perceived chink in an advertisement that they have criticized for days as unfair.
The slow, steady fall into obsolescence is painful to watch. I guess I know what the problem is- they just aren’t attacking Bush enough!
Seriously, though- if they had the votes to block the Medicare bil, why didn’t they? Exactly what reason is there to vote for a Democrat? I hate the Medicare bill, but I see no damned reason to vote for Democrats after that performance. They are, quite simply, weak, ineffective, unprincipled, and without ideas. That was clearly demonstrated at that absurd debate last night (how many more of these are we going to have to suffer through?), where the carping ninnies alternately distorted each other’s records while taking pothsots at the President. This part of the debate was quite, ummm, illuminating:
KERRY: But you still haven’t answered my question.
DEAN: We’ve done a great job on kids.
KERRY: But you still haven’t answered my question.
DEAN: And Tom Beaumont wrote in the Des Moines Register weeks ago that Medicare is off the table.
BROKAW: Congressman?
KERRY: No, the question is will you slow the rate of growth? Do you intend to slow the rate of growth in Medicare because you said you were going to do that?
DEAN: Well, what I intend to do in Medicare is to increase reimbursements for states like Iowa and Vermont, which are 50th and 49th respectively.
KERRY: Are you going to slow the rate of growth, Governor, yes or no?
DEAN: We’re going to do what we have to do to make sure that Medicare lasts…
KERRY: Are you going to slow the rate of growth, Governor?
(LAUGHTER)
Because that’s a cut.
DEAN: Well, I’d like to slow the rate of growth of this debate, if I could…
(LAUGHTER)
… but we’re going to make sure that Medicare works.
KERRY: Well, I’m sure you’d like to avoid it altogether, but…
BROKAW: OK. Let me ask you, Senator Kerry…
DEAN: Medicare is off the table.
We are not going to cut Medicare in order to balance the budget. I’ve made that very clear. I’ll do it one more time.
It is nice to have John Kerry on record stating that the Democrats have been lying out their asses for forty years. A cut in spending is when you spend ten dollars year one, 12 dollars year two, and then ten dollars again in year three. A cut in spending is not when you spend ten dollars in year one, twelve dollars in year two, and 13 dollars in year three. That is a reduction in the size of the increase. We have all known this for years, but the Democrats have lied about it for as long as I can remember, claiming that slowing the growth of a project is “Slashing the funding.”
Idiots, and to be fair, some Democrsats are finally ready to depose Daschle.
Oliver
You conveniently gloss over the fact that I slammed the Dems for rolling over on Medicare and getting reamed in general.
Tom Daschle has got to go, and he can take some the Bush-friendlies with him.
John Cole
Actually- I didn’t get that far down your page- your post was the one that prompted that.
Andrew Lazarus
I can’t tell if you agree or disagree with Oliver.
I emailed DiFi twice against the Medicare bill, and I intend to send her the printed headline from the NY Times (“Victory for Bush”) to ask if she’s proud of herself.
The lack of party discipline is a real problem for Democrats. Maybe Dean’s cockroach line had something going for it besides offensiveness.
M. Scott Eiland
Well, it seems that Oliver and John agree that Daschle is a pathetic loser who deserves to be defenestrated at the first opportunity. Score one for objective reality!
JKC
If you only get a 2% raise at work, and inflation is up 5%, you may not have had your pay cut, but it’s not keeping up with inflation, either. So it is with “increases” in Medicare spending that don’t keep up with inflation.
Equating “slowing the rate of growth” with “slashing funding” is sloppy wordcraft. It’s not entirely fiction, though.
Karen
The inflation rate has been neglible for years. The Democrats have been equating a cut in the “projected growth” of spending as a decrease in funding. When funding increases 4% and the inflation rate is 1%, this is not maintaining the funding level, this is an increase in funding, even if the “projected growth” was 6%.
JKC
Karen, it may come as a shock to you that the overall inflation rate does not correspond with the rate of inflation in medicine. To wit:
That would be free-market forces at work there, Karen.
In other words, please don’t use “Inflation is dead” as an argument. It doesn’t apply here.
HH
DiFi is now rumored to run with Dean…
Kimmitt
“When funding increases 4% and the inflation rate is 1%, this is not maintaining the funding level, this is an increase in funding, even if the “projected growth” was 6%”
A valid point, but what if the population served by the program grows by 4%? Bigger cities, for example, need bigger police departments. This is not precisely program growth, as the per capita consumption of the program (and hence the per capita cost of the program) has not changed at all.