Have A Nice Summer: Rich Galen

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Mullings

A Political Cyber-Column

Friday  August 3, 2001

·         It appears that the reports of the imminent demise of the Bush Administration are … you know.

·         The August recess, which begins later today, marks the effective end of the first Six Months of the Administration.  The real six-month mark was July 20^th, but most reporters chose to wait until they got a sense of what happened this week.

·         The President is doing so well this week:  A good vote on his energy package, a good vote on his faith-based initiative, a good vote on his Patient’s Bill of Rights compromise, the confirmation of his pick for FBI Director, and very good poll numbers surrounding it all.

·         Here’s a secret as to why the Members of Congress do what they do when they do it:  They have to go home.

·         If a huge proportion of the population was opposed to the Bush agenda, I guarantee you he would not be winning the victories he has been.

·         Let’s take the Patient’s Bill of Rights, uh, bill.  This is an idea which has been floating around for the better part of a decade.

·         In the beginning, as someone once wrote, HMOs were seen as the answer to medical expenses which were exploding.  Medical bills were growing so fast that there was a real fear that traditional insurance companies would not be able to provide coverage at anything approaching affordable premiums.

·         Enter the HMOs.  HMOs were not the bad guys in green eye-shades we know today.  In the beginning HMOs were the ANTI-insurance company organizations.  The kumbaya crowd in the House and Senate waxed rhapsodic about a complete change in the way America would look at health care.

·         Someone’s healthy, Lord.  Kumbayah.  Here were organizations who were going to focus on keeping people healthy, which was how they were going to make their money.  They would reward doctors for keeping their patients healthy.

·         But everyone is NOT healthy all the time, so HMOs instituted strict guidelines on how healthcare dollars would be spent which is why they were invented in the first place.

·         In order to allow HMOs to compete, the law establishing them provided HMOs with special protections against law suits.

·         Oh, did you think this was a Republican idea?  The year this all happened was 1973.  Would you like to guess who controlled the House and Senate in 1973?  Does the word “Watergate” mean anything?

·         The only difference in the various bills is who can sue where and for how much.  The Democrats have turned this into the people against the insurance companies.

·         Someone’s suing, Lord.  Kumbaya.

·         What most of the population will hear is this:  The President worked out a compromise so that Patient’s Bill of Rights legislation could be signed into law.

·         Most people will see this as a good thing:  Their President working WITH the Congress to solve problems like:  Taxes, Energy, Health Care, and  Education to name four which just happened to come to mind.

·         On the other side we have Dick Gephardt (who yesterday morning looked like a man who needed close monitoring as he railed against the Patient’s Bill of Rights compromise) and Tom Daschle who are committed to keeping the President from claiming ANY victories.

·         Dave Espo, the AP’s senior Congressional Correspondent described Gephardt’s tirade this way: “His voice rising and his face growing red, he added, ‘In the name of God ... vote against this bill.’”

·          If we have been correct about the temperature of the American populace – that they want the two parties to work together to get to solutions and stop the macho strutting matches we had for most of the 90’s – then this is the correct approach.

·         The Washington Post-ABC poll released earlier this week shows President Bush at a personal favorability of 63-34; and a job approval of 59-38.

·         As a check point, the Congress’ job approval has dropped 10 points from 58 to 48 in this latest poll.  The National Association of Political Pundits are blaming it on Gary Condit. 

·         How about this for an alternative view:  The drop in Congressional job approval tracks the ascension of Tom Daschle as Majority Leader.

·         The country seems to be increasingly at ease walking along side this President even if they think he spends too much time thinking about big business.