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Bush Signs $400 Billion Prescription Drug Program Into Law: Bush Is A BIG GOVERNMENT Republican
December.8,2003

Posted on 12/08/2003 8:47:55 AM PST by Reagan Man

President Bush has made it official. By signing into law the new Medicare Prescription Drug Program, the President has given his approval to the largest increase in spending by the federal government since Medicare itself was created and signed into law by the liberal Democrat, President Johnson in 1965. The President has given his okay to raise government expenditures by $400 billion over the next ten years. We all know spending on this Medicare PDP, will not stop at $400 billion. As with all government entitlement programs, the costs to run this new addition to the federal bureaucracy will double or triple over the next ten years.

Bush does win on the politics, but its not a political victory for conservatives or for the GOP in the long term. Medicare is not on the road to privatization.

Throwing money at problems is the way liberal Democrats solved things throughout the 1960`s and 1970`s. That's how the governments entitlement programs grew to over 60% of the current budgetary expenditures. Most traditional conservatives don't oppose assisting the elderly poor, the seriously handicapped or America's military veterans. However, this addition to Medicare, is a boondoggle for government, the drug companies and financially secure seniors.

In the 2000 election campaign, candidate Bush ran on reforming Medicare. His plan called for $158 billion program that assisted the elderly poor, while injecting a much needed modernization phase into the system. What the President signed into law today, was not what he ran on in 2000. President Bush has proven, he is a BIG GOVERNMENT Republican.

The Hertitage Foundation did a solid analysis on the new Mediacre-PDP. You can find it here, Why Medicare Expansion Threatens the Bush Tax Cuts and Undermines Fundamental Tax Reform . Robert Samualson wrote a good piece on the subject. Medicare as Pork Barrel. Here's another good article, Analysts: Medicare Drug Costs Will Rise.

A snippet from the Heritage Foundation analysis.

The Medicare prescription drug proposal is bad health policy, exacerbating the flaws in a system that has almost no market-based incentives to improve service and control costs. But the House and Senate bills also will undermine sound tax and economic policy in several ways. Specifically:

The size of government will expand

A new entitlement will take America even faster down the road that has caused so much economic damage in Europe's welfare states. Indeed, the unfunded Medicare expansion is essentially a huge future tax increase since the population of Medicare recipients will nearly double once the baby-boom generation retires. Ironically, just when some European countries are waking up to the problem and restraining unfunded entitlements, America will be creating an enormous new entitlement.

President Bush's recently enacted tax cut and tax reform package will likely be the first casualty

Because of arcane budget rules, the bulk of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts expire at the end of 2008 and the end of 2010. Extending these tax cuts or making them permanent will be enormously difficult in an environment of skyrocketing spending for government-provided health care. Indeed, the creation of a prescription drug entitlement may be akin to repealing the Bush tax cuts.

By adding to the deficit, the huge new unfunded liability will likely be the death knell of further tax relief and fundamental tax reform

A prescription drug benefit means bigger deficits--a problem that will intensify as the baby boomers start to retire in the next decade. Once these demographic and fiscal variables become part of the budget forecast, lawmakers seeking to cut taxes and create a simple and fair tax code, such as the flat tax, in all probability will face insurmountable political obstacles.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; Your Opinion/Questions
KEYWORDS: healthcare; medicare; prescriptionswindle
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1 posted on 12/08/2003 8:47:56 AM PST by Reagan Man
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To: Reagan Man
Where was the "Bush signs Medicare bill -- the LIVE THREAD"? I was looking for it all this morning during his talk.
2 posted on 12/08/2003 8:52:58 AM PST by lelio
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To: onyx; Howlin; deport; Miss Marple; Wait4Truth
Thought you would be interested to see what one of the most conservative Senators has to say about why he, Senator Inhofe, supported the bill. Would say if my Senator supports the bill, then the naysayers better take another look at the bill before believing everything they read or hear:

Inhofe defends Medicare reform bill vote

by Sean Murphy
CHNI Capitol Bureau

Edmond - U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe took aim at environmental activists and defended his recent vote in favor of a landmark Medicare reform bill during a luncheon visit Wednesday in Edmond.

Speaking to a group of about 25 Edmond city officials and community leaders at a local restaurant, Inhofe, R-Tulsa, said that despite overwhelming opposition to the Medicare reform bill, he supported the measure because of the help it will bring to rural hospitals in Oklahoma.

Specifically, he praised a provision in the bill that would increase the cap on Medical payments to Oklahoma's critical-access hospitals, which serve a large number of low-income Medicare and Medicaid patients, from 5.25 percent to 12 percent in 2004.

"These provisions (in the bill) will probably save 40 hospitals in Oklahoma," Inhofe said.

Inhofe said the measure provides a voluntary prescription drug benefit program for Medicare beneficiaries and will expand drug benefits to the nation's poorest citizens.

"This will allow a lot of very poor people to have access to drugs," Inhofe said. "I felt it was a good vote, and I'm not ashamed of it."

3 posted on 12/08/2003 8:53:14 AM PST by PhiKapMom (AOII Mom -- OU Sooners are #1in the BCS)
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To: Reagan Man
I'm not happy with this bill at all, but I'll crawl through broken glass to make sure a Democrat doesn't get elected next year. Some you win, some you lose.
4 posted on 12/08/2003 8:53:15 AM PST by Trust but Verify (Will work for W)
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To: Reagan Man
Bush does win on the politics, but its not a political victory for conservatives or for the GOP in the long term.

And you can give me a stock tip to make a million dollars tomorrow?

Yeah, Yeah, you will say that the tax cuts will be the first casualty. I don't think so, JMO. I think Bush will go into the 2004 campaign to make the tax cuts permanent and call for a permanent end to the death tax.

But have fun doing your best Chicken Little impression.

5 posted on 12/08/2003 8:53:39 AM PST by Dane
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To: Reagan Man
I have lost sympathy for these so called 'Conservative' institution who continue to ignore that welfare always follows warfare. Had they made a bigger stink about the debt financed war in Iraq and Afghanistan, perhaps they could have been more effective in preventing the passage of this bill in the first place.

6 posted on 12/08/2003 8:55:08 AM PST by JohnGalt (How few were left who had seen the Republic!---Tacitus)
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To: Reagan Man
Bush is just filling another campaign promise. Did you think he was just bullsh*tting to win the 2000 election?
7 posted on 12/08/2003 8:55:29 AM PST by SunStar (Democrats piss me off!)
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To: Reagan Man
This goes along with the funding, for the NEA, farm bill bail out.

The pubbies are becoming the junior slave masters in the US.

8 posted on 12/08/2003 8:55:46 AM PST by dts32041 (Democrats party of slave holders. More Demo rat presidents owned slaves than any other party.)
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To: Reagan Man
Mo money mo money mo money.
9 posted on 12/08/2003 8:56:15 AM PST by Dan from Michigan ("if you wanna run cool, you got to run, on heavy heavy fuel" - Dire Straits)
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To: Reagan Man
Alternate title:

"Its the Bush reelection campaign, Stupid"

10 posted on 12/08/2003 8:56:40 AM PST by BureaucratusMaximus (if we're not going to act like a constitutional republic...lets be the best empire we can be...)
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To: Reagan Man
Tax cuts do not mean reduced tax revenue, and, as a Reagan admirer, you should know that. The Medicare Bill, as faulty as it is, will not mean the end of tax cuts.

Additionally, I believe Bush will go back to this issue, and get more reform, just as he did with the second round of tax cuts.

My father-in-law is a lifelong democrat and he thinks Bush took what he could get and will be back for round two.

11 posted on 12/08/2003 9:00:09 AM PST by Trust but Verify (Will work for W)
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To: PhiKapMom
Inhofe, R-Tulsa, said that despite overwhelming opposition to the Medicare reform bill, he supported the measure because of the help it will bring to rural hospitals in Oklahoma.

Specifically, he praised a provision in the bill that would increase the cap on Medical payments to Oklahoma's critical-access hospitals, which serve a large number of low-income Medicare and Medicaid patients, from 5.25 percent to 12 percent in 2004.

This just means Inhofe got his pork in up front, rather than waiting to be bribed with it. Bad legislation. Period. But I still generally support the administration.

12 posted on 12/08/2003 9:01:11 AM PST by Mr. Bird
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To: Reagan Man
Good analysis. You're exactly right on this, of course. The GOP has passed tax cuts that will expire shortly after a potential second term; now they've done the same with a huge new entitlement program. Whether by design or out of necessity, they've created an environment where 8-10 years down the road the government will have some impossible decisions to make. They've delivered in the short-term, but any right-thinking conservative has to know we'll be left holding the bag in just a few years.

If limited government is the correct philosophy, why is it the GOP is so afraid of trying it?

13 posted on 12/08/2003 9:01:23 AM PST by NittanyLion
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To: PhiKapMom
You have to have a little fodder for the malcontents, luddites, doom and gloomers.... Heck some of them even supported that McClintock boy I believe...

But this bill along with others is loaded with pork, enough to rid the US of A of most all Muslims if'n they were required to eat of it.... Reform is needed but it takes a Congress of which we don't have to complete the process... thus the porkers will 'bring home the bacon' so to speak.

BUSH/CHENEY 2004 in a romp........... especially if the Dean boy is the opposing candidate
14 posted on 12/08/2003 9:05:22 AM PST by deport
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To: lelio
Too bad we can't find a judicial court that would strike this down as unconstitutional.
15 posted on 12/08/2003 9:05:27 AM PST by xrp
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To: Mr. Bird
I personally don't count it pork when you have rural hospitals that will close without this bill. I happen to live in Norman so it didn't affect me but a lot of our State is rural and those hospitals were going to close. It would have taken some people two hours or more to reach a hospital which could cost lives.

I agree with my Senator on that portion of the bill.

Thanks for your support!
16 posted on 12/08/2003 9:06:06 AM PST by PhiKapMom (AOII Mom -- OU Sooners are #1in the BCS)
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To: PhiKapMom
The purists and the RATS hate the bill...so what else is new? I am proud of President Bush for keeping the promise he made when he was campaigning for the presidency. Promise made, promise kept. Everyone knew in 2000 that he would fight for this and he did.
17 posted on 12/08/2003 9:08:43 AM PST by Wait4Truth
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To: Reagan Man
Now watch how fast Teddy K and Nancy Pelosy line up some 'suffering Senior Citizens' to wail and moan about how terrible this legislation REALLY is.
18 posted on 12/08/2003 9:09:31 AM PST by Khurkris (Ranger On...The Big Ranger in the Sky is there for You)
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To: Reagan Man
What the President signed into law today, was not what he ran on in 2000. President Bush has proven, he is a BIG GOVERNMENT Republican.

BIG GOVERNMENT Republican is synonymous to the new LIBERAL Republican! There is NO difference. When you*re getting porked it doesn*t matter whether a Liberal Democrat is doing it or a Liberal Republican is. The bottom line is still the same, and taxpayers are going to pay.

19 posted on 12/08/2003 9:10:53 AM PST by NRA2BFree (If I told you Hillary Clinton is a bwitch, would you know what two words I used to make bwitch?)
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To: NittanyLion; Jim Robinson; Admin Moderator
It would appear that the powers that be don't want this subject to appear in breaking news. I thought that Free Republic was "working to roll back decades of governmental largesse". If this new Medicare PDP isn't government largesse, I don't know what is.

>>>If limited government is the correct philosophy, why is it the GOP is so afraid of trying it?

I don't know. Conservatism will never triumph over liberalism, if the GOP doesn't stand up and fight these additions to the ever growing size and scope of the federal bureaucracy.

20 posted on 12/08/2003 9:11:10 AM PST by Reagan Man (The few, the proud, the conservatives.)
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