Reply #8: St. Howard People Are Jujitsu Masters Of Spin [View All]

[DrFunkenstein]

In the last few days, sensing the political fallout, Dean has come up with a fresh explanation: He was doing something that Clinton supported and actually signed into law. This is even more misleading, an apples and oranges mixture that makes what happened two years later sound like what happened in 1995-96.

Nothing could be further from the truth. What Clinton signed in 1997 was a law that finally produced a tax cut for ordinary families (introducing the child tax credit, subsequent increases in which Dean now says he wants repealed), and containing spending cuts to pay for it. It is often referred to as the Balanced Budget Act, but in fact it was the booming economy that produced the huge surplus at the end of the '90s. This law, more accurately, produced a tax cut that was responsibly funded.

The spending cuts included a large bite out of Medicare but not the same kind of bite the Republicans fought for with Dean's help in '95. This time around, instead of attacking the beneficiaries (which Clinton opposed), it reduced Medicare payments to providers like hospitals, nursing homes, and physicians. By bipartisan consensus it went too far, especially in its harmful effect on large teaching hospitals, and much of the money has since been restored.

Dean now says his willingness to go after middle-class entitlements reflected the deficit crisis of the mid-'90s, but this is also a misleading position. The fact is that the deficit reduction program enacted in Clinton's first year had already put the country on the right road. What the Republicans were pushing in '95 was revolution.

Moreover, the reemergence of fiscal crisis has made Dean's views in the mid-'90s relevant: He has said Medicare should again be on the table if he is president.

Bottom line: Gephardt and Kerry have a legitimate point, and Dean will have trouble expanding his remarkable base to the elderly and to voters of moderate means unless he does a more forthright job of facing up to his past.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2003/09/30/past_haunts_dean_on_medicare_issue/