[Mb-civic] Another Bush Deficit: Ideas - E. J. Dionne - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

Another Bush Deficit: Ideas

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Friday, February 3, 2006; A19

Think of it as the "Is That All There Is?" moment in politics.

It comes to pass when an incumbent president signals that the energy is 
rapidly draining from his political project. The opposition, if it 
possesses any sense and creativity, has an opening to move the country 
in a different direction.

President Bush's State of the Union message on Tuesday was an "Is That 
All There Is?" speech. The Democrats should be sued by one of their own 
trial lawyers if they fail to seize their opportunity. The speech had 
its rhetorical moments, but there were so many holes where policy should 
have been, and many of the policies that were there didn't much sound 
like Bush.

The most striking default was on health care, an issue that the 
president's team has signaled will be a big deal for the administration 
this year. Bush delivered not a lion but a mouse. He endorsed "wider use 
of electronic records and other health information technology," promised 
to "strengthen health savings accounts," pledged to make insurance more 
portable and issued yet another of his standard attacks on medical 
malpractice lawsuits.

Hurray for electronic records and portability. But this list does little 
to help either the uninsured or those who fear losing their coverage. 
And health savings accounts aren't really health plans. They are 
tax-avoidance investment vehicles -- Wall Street can't wait -- that will 
mostly help the healthy and the wealthy while raising costs for the 
sick. That's not wise.

Here is Opportunity No. 1 for a smart opposition. It's time for 
aggressive approaches to expanding the number of Americans with 
insurance. The government should commit itself to making sure that all 
children under 18 are covered, and workers between the ages of 55 and 65 
should be able to buy into Medicare, with subsidies if they need them, 
because many approaching retirement have a hard time buying private 
policies.

And it's time to open what might be thought of as both a dialogue and a 
negotiation with the business community on what the split between public 
and private spending on health care should be. Businesses that provide 
broad health coverage are indirectly subsidizing businesses that don't. 
Businesses that fail to provide coverage, especially for low-paid 
workers, often count on public programs, i.e., the taxpayers, to pay 
their employees' health bills.

The system is bad for capitalism, for social justice and for taxpayers. 
Employers who now pay nothing for health care should kick in to help pay 
the bills. Businesses being strangled by health costs deserve some 
relief. And, yes, the government will need to fill the gaps.

When Bush got around to calling for a bipartisan commission "to examine 
the full impact of baby boom retirements on Social Security, Medicare 
and Medicaid," Democrats chuckled. This from a president who tried to 
ram through the partial privatization of Social Security last year on 
the basis of the political "capital" he said he had earned. That capital 
is gone. The commission is his bailout.

Then there was Bush's line about how his administration had "reduced the 
growth of nonsecurity discretionary spending." That's cutting the 
budgetary salami mighty thin. A fiscally irresponsible president who 
sent the deficit through the roof uses a gobbledygook phrase that 
excludes most of the budget -- and then brags merely about reducing 
spending growth in that little piece of territory. Feel better now?

On some issues, Bush simply went over to the other side. Having once 
battled for tax giveaways to promote more oil drilling, Bush has decided 
that "America is addicted to oil." Next he'll take out a Sierra Club 
membership. And that program "to train 70,000 high school teachers to 
lead advanced placement courses in math and science" sounded like a Bill 
Clinton idea left at the bottom of some White House drawer.

Oh, yes, and whatever happened to rebuilding New Orleans? A few 
desultory sentences told us nothing, and everything.

Bush thinks he has a political winner in warrantless wiretapping. Maybe 
there is one more election for the Republicans in bashing "defeatism," 
"isolationism" and "retreat." But those words didn't exactly signal the 
"civil tone" and "spirit of good will" Bush had promised a couple of 
pages earlier.

The president's foreign policy rhetoric, like so much else on Tuesday, 
was predictable and familiar. Bush once dreamed of leading a political 
realignment. What his speech signaled is an opening for a realignment of 
ideas. His side is running out of them.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/02/AR2006020201565.html?nav=hcmodule
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