December
27, 2005
When the Cutting Is Corrupted
By E.
J. Dionne Jr.
WASHINGTON -- With
indicted super lobbyist Jack Abramoff reportedly ready to cooperate
with prosecutors and his partner, Michael Scanlon, already singing,
2006 is expected to be the year of congressional scandals.
Lord knows, a housecleaning
in the Capitol is definitely in order. But the Abramoff scandal
is just part of the corruption of our political system. There
is another level of special-interest influence that cannot be
handled by prosecutors: Only the voters can render a judgment
on a politics of favoritism that has created a new Gilded Age.
It's clear that the national government has placed itself squarely
on the side of the wealthy, the privileged and the connected.
Rarely does a single
action by Congress serve as so powerful an example of how the
system is working. The recent budget bill, which squeaked through
the House and the Senate just before Christmas, is a road map
of insider dealing. It shows that when choices have to be made,
the interests of the poor and the middle class fall before the
wishes of interest groups with powerful lobbies and awesome piles
of campaign money to distribute.
Republican majorities
in both the Senate and the House insisted that they wanted to
cut the federal budget. But the Senate and House offered competing
plans for achieving savings. When it came time to meld the two
proposals together, almost every choice congressional leaders
made favored the interest groups.
Consider federal
health programs. The House bill proposed substantial cuts for
Medicaid beneficiaries, but the Senate bill -- partly because
of pressure from moderate Republicans -- did not include them.
Instead, the Senate proposed to save taxpayer money by eliminating
a $10 billion fund to encourage regional Preferred Provider Organizations,
known as PPOs, to participate in the Medicare program. It also
sought more rebates to the federal government from drug manufacturers
participating in Medicaid.
Note the difference:
Instead of imposing cuts on the poor, the Senate sought savings
from corporate interests. Surprise, surprise: The final bill dropped
the $10 billion cut to the PPOs, and also dropped most of the
rebate demands on drug manufacturers. Instead, the agreement hammered
Medicaid recipients with $16 billion in gross cuts over the next
decade. (The net cuts are lower because of new Medicaid spending,
partly to help cover the scattered victims of Hurricane Katrina.)
The Medicaid
cuts include increased co-payments and premiums on low-income
Americans, and the budget assumes savings because fewer poor people
will visit the doctor. As Kevin Freking of The Associated
Press reported: ``The Congressional Budget Office has concluded
that such increases would lead many poor people to forgo health
care or not to enroll in Medicaid at all -- contributing to some
of the $4.8 billion in Medicaid savings envisioned over the next
five years.''
Ah, say
their defenders, but these cuts will be good for poor
people. According to The New York Times, Rep. Joe L.
Barton, R-Texas, an architect of the Medicaid proposals, said
the higher co-payments were needed to ``encourage personal responsibility''
among low-income people. Spoken like a congressman who never has
to worry about his taxpayer-provided health coverage.
And that is just
one instance among many of where corporate interests were shielded
from cuts, while child support enforcement and foster care programs
were sliced. Shortly before the bill came to the House floor,
Republicans leaders, at the insistence of a group of Ohio GOP
members, dropped a $1.9 billion cut that would have changed Medicare
payments to oxygen manufacturers. The main beneficiary of this
change was the Invacare Corp. of Elyria, Ohio.
Sen. Norm
Coleman, R-Minn., opposed the original, milder Senate budget bill
but turned around and voted for the final harsher bill. According
to Congress Daily, Coleman backed the final budget ``after
negotiators took out cuts affecting his state's sugar beet growers.''
Coleman told the paper: ``Karl Rove called me and asked what I
wanted. A few hours later it was out of the bill.''
The good news is
that this budget is not law yet. Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., used
a clever procedural maneuver to force it back to the House for
one more vote next year.
When this 774-page
behemoth hit the House floor shortly after 1 a.m. on Dec. 19,
many members were not fully aware of what was in it. Now that
they know, maybe some of the moderate Republicans who caved to
their leadership and voted for it will save their party's honor
by killing this special interest mess. If I may borrow from Mr.
Barton, doing so would definitely ``encourage personal responsibility''
among Republican leaders.
©
2005, Washington Post Writers Group
