Prometheus 6

Representative Charles B. Rangel, the New York Democrat who heads the House Ways and Means Committee, said Thursday: “...He still acts as if Republicans were in complete control and Democrats had lost the election.”

Nope. It's worse than that.

One measure of the political difficulty facing the president’s plan for Medicare and Medicaid is that he sought $20 billion less in savings from the two programs last year, when Republicans controlled Congress, and few of those proposals were adopted.

It's all posturing, so Republicans can claim Democrats block progress when the budget is so absurd that even discussing it seriously is an obstacle to progress. Better to throw out his budget and start from scratch.

Bush Seeks Big Medicare and Medicaid Saving
By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON, Feb. 1 — President Bush will ask Congress in his budget next week to squeeze more than $70 billion of savings from Medicare and Medicaid over the next five years, administration officials and health care lobbyists said Thursday.

The proposals, part of a White House plan to balance the budget by 2012, set the stage for a battle with Congress over entitlement spending. Even some administration officials say they cannot imagine approval of such large cutbacks in a Congress now controlled by Democrats.

Mr. Bush is also expected to propose changes in the Children’s Health Insurance Program to sharpen its focus on low-income families. The changes could reduce federal payments to states that cover children with family incomes exceeding twice the poverty level. Under federal guidelines, a family of four is considered poor if its annual income is less than $20,650.

The child health proposal, like those for Medicare and Medicaid, is likely to touch off a fight on Capitol Hill. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and other Democrats are seeking major expansions of the children’s health program, though they have not said how they would pay for the changes.

One measure of the political difficulty facing the president’s plan for Medicare and Medicaid is that he sought $20 billion less in savings from the two programs last year, when Republicans controlled Congress, and few of those proposals were adopted.

Representative Charles B. Rangel, the New York Democrat who heads the House Ways and Means Committee, said Thursday: “There is a large area for potential compromise and agreement, but with these latest Medicare proposals, the president is just asking for controversy. He still acts as if Republicans were in complete control and Democrats had lost the election.”

Mr. Bush has repeatedly said that Medicare has serious long-term financial problems, and many experts share his concern.

“If you want to balance the budget eventually and you do not want tax increases,” said Joseph R. Antos, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute, “you have no choice but to propose substantial reductions in Medicare. The president’s budget is an opening bid, the start of negotiations with Democrats over health care and other programs.”

Taken together, Medicare and Medicaid cover more than one in four Americans. Federal spending for the two programs totaled $554 billion last year, or about 21 percent of all federal spending — a little more than Social Security. With no change in existing law, spending on the two health programs is expected to rise at a brisk pace, averaging more than 7 percent a year in the next decade.