President Bush on Friday threatened to veto any changes Congress tries to make to Medicare's new prescription drug benefit, which takes effect in January 2006.
"I signed Medicare reform proudly and any attempt to limit the choices of our seniors and to take away their prescription drug coverage under Medicare will meet my veto," Bush said at a swearing-in ceremony for Mike O. Leavitt, the new secretary of Health and Human Services.
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Bush pledged this week to "deal with the unfunded liabilities of Medicare" once Social Security is overhauled as he has proposed.
How nice of Bush to stand up for all those seniors he chose to gouge when signing a law that takes away the government's ability to negotiate with drug companies for lower prices. I applaud his sudden and recent interest in fiscal responsibility. It does, however, cause me to ask: precisely how does Bush plan on dealing with these "unfunded liabilities"?
When you have a deficit, there are only two ways of reducing it: cut spending, or raise revenue. With the greater deficit we already have from all other spending, I find the faith-based notion that economic growth alone will make up for it quite ridiculous. And I'd be really interested to see Bush try to argue that a whole bunch of little "entitlement" programs need to go in order to pay for one big one, so spending cuts--since he's already nixed any cuts at all to Medicare--would seem to be out.
Which to my eye, leaves raising taxes. The huge, irresponsible ones enacted at the beginning of Bush's term would seem to be a good start.
If any economists out there have other ideas, I'm open to it. But cutting non-Medicare spending and economic growth won't hack it, and Bush has taken cutting Medicare off the table, so I'm wondering what that really leaves.
Thus completes the evolution of the GOP from borrow-and-spend to tax-and-spend. True fiscal conservatives, the Democratic party welcomes you home!