Gephardt's 'Medi-scare' campaign

[sfecap]

Gephardt's 'Medi-scare' campaign

9/21/03


Rep. Dick Gephardt, whose foundering presidential campaign will likely disintegrate on Jan. 19 if he fails to repeat his 1988 victory in the Iowa caucuses, is no stranger to demagoguery. He mastered the tactic during the 1995 battle to reform Medicare. Indeed, Mr. Gephardt and his Democratic colleagues were so unrelentingly demagogic in their "Medi-scare" campaign that even The Washington Post editorial page found it necessary — not once, but twice — to describe the Democratic Party as a collection of "Medagogues."

Serving as House majority leader when his party was overwhelmed in 1994 by the Newt Gingrich-led congressional Republican revolution, Mr. Gephardt spent the next eight years presiding as his party withered in the minority wilderness. Now, Mr. Gephardt, who self-servingly dispatched his pro-life credentials like dirty laundry before he launched his first presidential bid, is engaged in a desperate attempt to gain momentum as a Democratic presidential candidate. So, it should surprise nobody that the former House Democratic leader has returned to his demagogic past to scar Howard Dean the way he assaulted congressional Republicans on Medicare eight years ago.

As a physician who actually spent years delivering services to Medicare patients, Mr. Dean has an informed insider's view of the program. Recently, Mr. Gephardt dredged up some clips from 1995 and asserted that Mr. Dean, who at the time was Vermont governor and chairman of the National Governors Association, supported Republican efforts to reform Medicare and restrain its growth.

The Republican reform plan, as this page noted at the time, would have increased Medicare spending by 54 percent between 1995 ($158 billion) and 2002 ($244 billion). Then-Gov. Dean apparently expressed support for the GOP reform plan; but Democrats, led in part by Mr. Gephardt, relentlessly demagogued the fact that the reformed Medicare program would have spent less over the same period than an unreformed program.

"Howard Dean actually agreed with the Gingrich Republicans," bellowed Mr. Gephardt on Sept. 12, before an audience of unionized workers, 40 percent of whose household members voted for "Gingrich Republicans" in 1994, according to exit polls. Accusing Mr. Dean of "turning into a wholly managed-care program," Mr. Gephardt evidently is unaware of the fact that the vast majority of elderly now entering Medicare are moving from "wholly managed-care programs" into Medicare's notoriously wasteful and widely abused "fee-for-service" program.

(more)

http://washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20030920-111411-1792r.htm

[Lydia Leftcoast]

1. It's the Washington Times

Their Moonie bosses forbid them to say anything nice about Democratic candidates.