WHY GOP WILL WIN ON MEDICARE

Special to the Southeast Missourian

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article was in the June 3 edition of Roll Call just prior to the release of the Medicare trustees' report.

This week, the annual trustees' report on the financial health of Medicare is due to be released, and its findings will surely have profound political implications for the upcoming Congressional and presidential elections.

The Clinton administration held up release of the report for two months, and it's no surprise why. The report will show that while Bill Clinton and the Democrats spent the last year demagoguing the Medicare issue, Medicare itself has been getting deeper and deeper into trouble. It will also show that by taking steps to save the program, Republicans have been doing the right thing all along.

In last year's report, the Medicare trustees, including three Clinton Cabinet members, warned Congress and the president that the Medicare hospital insurance trust fund would be bankrupt in seven years. It was this report that convinced congressional Republicans to take steps to save Medicare, culminating in passage of the Medicare Preservation Act of 1995 -- legislation Clinton later vetoed.

As party chairman, I am often asked to assess the political impact of various public policy issues, and I must admit that when Republican leaders in Congress approached me last year with plans to reform Medicare, I frankly advised them to delay tackling the issue. Medicare is such an important program for so many Americans that I feared by talk of changing it -- even for the better -- would be seized upon by our political opponents.

Although the Republican leaders understood the political risk of reforming Medicare, they thought it was important to go ahead anyway. They understood Medicare was in such deep financial trouble that action had to be taken immediately. By acting right away, Congress could make mild reforms that would save the program from bankruptcy while still allowing Medicare spending to increase at a reasonable rate (7 percent per year).

But if they waited, much more drastic reforms -- including either deep cuts in spending or sharp hikes in payroll taxes -- would be necessary. They made a courageous and correct decision to put sound policy ahead of what Clinton and the Democrats did.

The biggest scandal of this administration is how Clinton has swept Medicare's problems under the rug and failed to provide any leadership in solving them. If this were a court of law, Clinton would be charged with leaving the scene of a crime.

He and the Democratic leaders in Congress made a calculated political decision to sit back, let Republicans propose a plan, and then attack it. The White House even rebuffed a suggestion by Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, R-Kan., to form a bipartisan commission to save Medicare from bankruptcy, much as President Reagan had done in the 1980s when Social Security was going broke. Clinton and the Democrats were interested only in using Medicare as an issue in the next election.

With the help of millions of dollars in advertising from union bosses (who were less interested in saving Medicare than in sabotaging the Republican balanced budget), Clinton and the Democrats embarked last summer on a Medicare campaign designed to deceive and frighten senior citizens about Republican plans to save Medicare.

They carpet-bombed the districts of Republican members of Congress with phony TV ads claiming Republicans were "cutting" Medicare. But as even the AARP has acknowledged, under the Republican budget Clinton vetoed, Medicare spending would have increased 7 percent annually.

Mark Twain once said, "A lie can get half way around the world before the truth can get its boots on," and that was certainly true of these ads. Said Kentucky Democratic party chairman Terry McBrayer when his party won the governorship last year, "I think the white-haired people are scared, and that ultimately helps us."

While some in the media decried the Democrats' scare tactics, all too often the press repeated the Democrats' Big Lie that Republicans were cutting Medicare. An analysis by MediaNomics of all the stories about Medicare on network evening newscasts during a two-week period in May 1995 showed reporters referred to Republican "cuts" in Medicare twice as often as they correctly called our plans "slowing Medicare's growth."

But no amount of favorable press or TV ads can hide the truth that Medicare is going bankrupt on Clinton's watch. Judging from a string of recently released data, it is likely the trustees will report this week that Medicare will go bankrupt not in seven years, but in four or five years. The Congressional Budget Office indicates that over the budget cycle, Medicare is $91 billion worse off than the trustees estimated in 1995 -- $91 billion!

When the public -- and particularly seniors who have been the targets of the Mediscare campaign -- learn that Medicare will be insolvent in four or five years, they will know Republicans did the right thing to try to save it.

Indeed, by standing in the way of Medicare reforms, Clinton and the Democrats are not only hastening Medicare's bankruptcy and putting at risk the health care security of 37 million Americans, but their demagogic attacks have dismissed any hope of needed Medicare reform in the near future.

Now that's an election issue I'll gladly take to the voters.

Haley Barbour is chairman of the Republican National Committee.