Credit where credit is due
Trent Lott finally said something that makes sense.
Congress could help pay for rebuilding efforts in Mississippi and other areas hit by Hurricane Katrina if it halted the $700 billion Medicare prescription drug program, former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott said Tuesday.Lott, R-Miss., told reporters his vote in November 2003 for the Medicare drug program, which has nearly doubled its projected cost, was one of two he most regretted in his 34 years on Capitol Hill.
The new Medicare drug benefit is scheduled to take effect in January. President Bush and House Majority leader Tom DeLay say the program is too far along to stop.
Lott was unconvinced by that argument.
"I never saw anything you couldn't stop if you made up your mind to," he said.
Lott is right. It's not too late, but it soon will be. This bill was the most disastrous fiscal mistake of the past five years. In addition to being hugely expensive, it also appears to be next to useless. After the winds of Katrina subsided, the first small, tentative winds of fiscal sanity began to stir. Let's take advantage of the current climate and undo it.
Comments
Damn! I get first say! Okay. I agree. Let's cut the Fed back to a sane level. Ronaldus Magnus told us that government wasn't the solution. It was the problem. When I heard the phrase: "compassionate conservative" something turned inside me. I fear that the Republicrats and the Demopublicans are up to their old tricks. They agree on many things. Government should grow. States should have less say in their own affairs. Property is a privilege, not a right.Individuals have no say about what they will do with their own bodies. The average man should shut up and obey.
F@#$ that.
Posted by: Paul Moore | September 22, 2005 05:59 PM
I was not a huge fan of this prescription drug program, either, because I didn't feel it did enough to help out our poor in affording their medication (the prices of which are exorbitant). But before I would cut even this small piece of help, which does help millions of people, I would look elsewhere for some savings, starting with this ill-advised foray into Iraq, which is draining us not only of cash, but of our precious young men and women.
Posted by: Tracy Miller | September 23, 2005 10:50 AM