Simba Roars
- Thread starter Vidal
- Start date
In First Debate, Democrats Train Fire on McCain
In First Debate, Democrats Train Fire on McCain
BY JODI WILGOREN || SEPTEMBER 2003
John Edwards, the North Carolina senator, also addressed the economy, discussing his plan for a national venture capital fund, with the goal of promoting new businesses and job growth. Dennis Kucinich, an Ohio congressman, called Edwards a "sellout" to Wall Street for the idea, criticism that the senator brushed off.
Generally, the sentiment expressed was that McCain wasn't going far enough. "His piecemeal approaches aren't enough. He says he's going to reform healthcare, and while the Patient Bill of Rights is a step in the right direction, we need more. Time and time again, John McCain has let the fringe of his party water down proposals that would make a real difference for everyday Americans. A President Wellstone will not be beholden to those interests," the senator argued.
The focus was on domestic issues, with candidates largely avoiding any discussion of the War in Afghanistan. Senator John Kerry, widely seen as the top Democratic contender, said he was capable of doing the job, which should be a concern of Democratic voters. He did not, however, express any differences in how he would conduct the war.
The latest national poll from Gallup shows Kerry in the lead with 22% of the vote, Dick Gephardt in second with 17%, Paul Wellstone in third with 15%, and John Edwards in fourth with 10%. No other candidate reached double digits. The candidates will debate again twice this month and then September 30th will mark the end of the third-quarter, with fundraising numbers expected to provide another barometer of the race.
(OTL version: In First Encounter, Democrats Hit Bush Over Jobs and Iraq)
Good Q, yes!
The field is the same except that Dodd is running (not Lieberman) and Wellstone is running (instead of Dean).
Excellent chapters, it's interesting to see that McCain may face Kerry(a fellow veteran) in the election if Kerry wins the nomination.
Swift Boat Veterans versus Pilots for Truth.
Round 1, FIGHT!
15. Back at it Again
Chapter 15
Vice President Bill Frist became the face of the McCain administration's push to reform Medicare.
In his third year in office, John McCain was considering the legacy he was building. Campaign finance reform. Significant tax cuts. A war to root out terrorism in the Middle East. Education reform that included a significant investment in vouchers. An historic arms agreement with Russia. A Patient Bill of Rights. Diplomatic work on HIV/AIDS. The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. He had only served two full years in office and already had many legislative successes to point to. The next year would mark a political fight over the White House and control of Congress, and the president knew he would not be able to add to his agenda. With time ticking, the White House still had one major legislative priority: Medicare reform.
The fight over the Patient Bill of Rights had been a long one, but it inspired Vice President Bill Frist to take on the issue of Medicare reform, which had long been a priority on both sides of the aisle. There was not, however, unanimity within the Republican ranks about how to accomplish this goal. McCain, who was less interested in healthcare policy, put Frist in charge of the Medicare Reform Task Force and turned his attention elsewhere, giving the vice president near total authority over reforming one of the most complex entitlement programs in history. Frist’s vision was pretty straightforward: include aid for drug prices for seniors in addition to transitioning newer retirees into private healthcare plans aided by Medicare. Senator Chuck Grassley, who would be central to any discussions about reform because of his role on the Senate Finance Committee, did not support Frist’s initial vision.
Soon other moderate voices within the Party emerged. The fault lines were similar to those from the Patient Bill of Rights debate. Leading Republicans against any investment into private health plans was Olympia Snowe, the Maine senator, who believed that Frist’s initial vision “undermines Medicare as we know it.” The Frist effort did not learn from the mistakes made by the Clintons during their 1993 push for healthcare reform. Some of the plan leaked early on, allowing opponents of the agenda to define it before the bill’s proponents had even written it (or composed a public relations strategy to guide it to popular support and eventually passage).
Conservative Trent Lott, the Senate Majority Leader, was supportive of Frist’s efforts to invite private insurance plans into Medicare. [1] Senate Majority Whip Don Nickles would also be a crucial ally to Frist. He believed that it was time to bring private efforts into Medicare. They were quickly met with opposition from Senator Ted Kennedy, the go-to Democrat on healthcare issues, and the Senate Democratic Leader, Tom Daschle. Both men believed that the Republicans were acting in bad faith. In a press conference early on in the debate over Medicare, Daschle said that America’s seniors were entitled to support with the cost of their prescription drugs without having to bargain away the rest of their healthcare. Such was the opinion of the majority of the Democratic caucus. The Frist effort also had another potential opponent – Secretary of Health and Human Services Jim Jeffords, who was convinced that Frist would need to come to the center on the issue before finding the votes to pass meaningful reform. Jeffords’ sense of the political scene was prescient.
Senator Olympia Snowe was a leading voice of caution among Republicans pushing for Medicare reform.
Within weeks, Frist’s political capital had been hampered and instead of being the bold leader of a conservative redefinition of Medicare, he transitioned into a dealmaker who was desperate to salvage a botched attempt at “privatizing Medicare” (as opponents called it) into something that would not do further political damage to the president and would instead turn into a bipartisan victory. Interestingly enough, this is when Lott and Nickles backed off their support of Frist while the vice president gained Olympia Snowe and others as crucial allies in the fight for creating a prescription drug benefit for Medicare.
Unlike previous fights, the biggest Congressional thorn in Frist’s side came from Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert. The House was traditionally seen as more ideological than the Senate and Hastert reported that the House Caucus wanted direct competition between private health plans and traditional Medicare. And he refused to bring the bill up for a vote if the majority of his caucus was opposed. Any political capital he would need to pass the measure with on-the-fence Republicans had been used during the fight over the Patient Bill of Rights. “I can’t do it again,” he told the vice president. “You’re going to have to deliver for me this time.”
At the outset, it seemed impossible to bridge the tempered demands of the Senate with the impassioned desire to see competition between government-run Medicare and private plans of House Republicans. Frist was determined to succeed, though, holding numerous meetings with senators and congressmen on both sides of the aisle, negotiating with committee chairs, and calling their ranking members. Liberal Democrats, however, maintained a public fight to get a “clean prescription drug benefit” for seniors. On Face the Nation, Ted Kennedy said that Democrats were prepared to withhold enough votes for passage unless they believed the “sum of the proposal” was fair to America’s seniors. Frist said he wasn’t going to engage with such “partisan vitriol.”
Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert said he had to listen to the conservative voices in his caucus and pushed the Frist plan to the right.
The bill began taking shape, and there was something for everyone to like – and dislike – about the proposal. It included $500 billion for drug benefits in the next decade – more money than the president had been comfortable with, but Frist had been forced to concede more money to the Democrats in order to get their votes. It also included programs to help low-income Americans with drug costs. Additionally, Frist’s bill included tens of billions of dollars to employers to encourage them to continue providing health benefits, including drug coverage, to retirees. There was also $50 billion in new assistance for hospitals, doctors, and healthcare providers in rural areas. Further, the bill reduced a 4.5-percent cut to doctors’ fees from Medicare. It was scheduled to take place in 2004 but now doctors would only see a 1.5-percent cut.
In order to try and control the costs for seniors, Grassley and Senator Bob Graham included a provision to cap out-of-pocket expenses and require drug companies to pay rebates to Medicare if they raised prices faster than inflation.
The administration was dealt a significant blow when the legislation failed to pass the House of Representatives, failing by 33 votes. It was a terrible setback to the effort and a furious McCain berated his vice president. Frist would later write in his memoirs, “The president was prone to losing his temper, but in the entirety of his presidency there was never a more tense moment between us than the day the House failed to pass Medicare Part D.” Hastert was unmoved by the president’s anger or the vice president’s pleas for help. He told reporters later, “I was clear with the White House: House Republicans need assurances that this will not balloon into some unhinged government effort. We need to balance Medicare with private health options for our seniors.”
And so Frist returned to the table, with a plan to test competition between private health plans and traditional Medicare. Starting in 2009, four major cities and one region would participate in the competitive marketplace. The Department of Health and Human Services would be responsible for tracking the results and reporting back to Congress. Then, the new Congress would have the ability to scrap the idea or expand the program. They also eliminated the cut to doctors’ fees entirely. Hastert told Frist it wasn’t enough, but the American Medical Association, AARP, and other lobbyists fought hard for its passage, wining and dining lawmakers until they were confident they had the votes. The bill passed the House by two votes and the Senate version passed three days later.
The conference committee met and hammered out the details and returned the new bills to each chamber. Hastert told Frist he would whip the votes but wasn’t sure that it’d be enough for passage. The vote was called on Wednesday, January 7, 2004 at 1:33 am. After forty minutes of voting, there were 216 votes against, 210 in favor, and nine members had yet to vote. If the president’s team lost two more votes, the bill would fail. The president, the vice president, the Speaker, and others within the whip operation sought out the remaining Republicans. Two Democrats who had previously pledged their support voted against the bill at the time of the vote, throwing the operation into a frenzy. Twenty minutes later, the vote stood at 218-217, and the vice president needed to switch one congressman in order to pass the bill. And that was how Mark Foley, a Republican congressman from Florida who was about to announce a Senate campaign, ended up with the White House’s backing. The legislation passed 218-217, with Foley’s support.
The bill went on to a 60-vote passage in the Senate and was signed into law by President McCain. While the path to victory had been bruising, the fight ultimately drew McCain closer to Frist, who viewed him as an expert dealmaker who had salvaged an initially bad hand. When some on McCain’s team, including Mark Salter, wanted to replace Frist on the ticket, the president balked at the idea. “We need Bill. He’s our link to Congress,” McCain told the staff. Frist stayed on the ticket without any serious consideration of replacing him.
Meanwhile, the race to take on the president was heating up.
__________
[1] Lott never makes the comments about Thurmond ITTL and is therefore spared from losing his Senate leadership post.
Back at it Again
Vice President Bill Frist became the face of the McCain administration's push to reform Medicare.
In his third year in office, John McCain was considering the legacy he was building. Campaign finance reform. Significant tax cuts. A war to root out terrorism in the Middle East. Education reform that included a significant investment in vouchers. An historic arms agreement with Russia. A Patient Bill of Rights. Diplomatic work on HIV/AIDS. The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. He had only served two full years in office and already had many legislative successes to point to. The next year would mark a political fight over the White House and control of Congress, and the president knew he would not be able to add to his agenda. With time ticking, the White House still had one major legislative priority: Medicare reform.
The fight over the Patient Bill of Rights had been a long one, but it inspired Vice President Bill Frist to take on the issue of Medicare reform, which had long been a priority on both sides of the aisle. There was not, however, unanimity within the Republican ranks about how to accomplish this goal. McCain, who was less interested in healthcare policy, put Frist in charge of the Medicare Reform Task Force and turned his attention elsewhere, giving the vice president near total authority over reforming one of the most complex entitlement programs in history. Frist’s vision was pretty straightforward: include aid for drug prices for seniors in addition to transitioning newer retirees into private healthcare plans aided by Medicare. Senator Chuck Grassley, who would be central to any discussions about reform because of his role on the Senate Finance Committee, did not support Frist’s initial vision.
Soon other moderate voices within the Party emerged. The fault lines were similar to those from the Patient Bill of Rights debate. Leading Republicans against any investment into private health plans was Olympia Snowe, the Maine senator, who believed that Frist’s initial vision “undermines Medicare as we know it.” The Frist effort did not learn from the mistakes made by the Clintons during their 1993 push for healthcare reform. Some of the plan leaked early on, allowing opponents of the agenda to define it before the bill’s proponents had even written it (or composed a public relations strategy to guide it to popular support and eventually passage).
Conservative Trent Lott, the Senate Majority Leader, was supportive of Frist’s efforts to invite private insurance plans into Medicare. [1] Senate Majority Whip Don Nickles would also be a crucial ally to Frist. He believed that it was time to bring private efforts into Medicare. They were quickly met with opposition from Senator Ted Kennedy, the go-to Democrat on healthcare issues, and the Senate Democratic Leader, Tom Daschle. Both men believed that the Republicans were acting in bad faith. In a press conference early on in the debate over Medicare, Daschle said that America’s seniors were entitled to support with the cost of their prescription drugs without having to bargain away the rest of their healthcare. Such was the opinion of the majority of the Democratic caucus. The Frist effort also had another potential opponent – Secretary of Health and Human Services Jim Jeffords, who was convinced that Frist would need to come to the center on the issue before finding the votes to pass meaningful reform. Jeffords’ sense of the political scene was prescient.
Senator Olympia Snowe was a leading voice of caution among Republicans pushing for Medicare reform.
Within weeks, Frist’s political capital had been hampered and instead of being the bold leader of a conservative redefinition of Medicare, he transitioned into a dealmaker who was desperate to salvage a botched attempt at “privatizing Medicare” (as opponents called it) into something that would not do further political damage to the president and would instead turn into a bipartisan victory. Interestingly enough, this is when Lott and Nickles backed off their support of Frist while the vice president gained Olympia Snowe and others as crucial allies in the fight for creating a prescription drug benefit for Medicare.
Unlike previous fights, the biggest Congressional thorn in Frist’s side came from Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert. The House was traditionally seen as more ideological than the Senate and Hastert reported that the House Caucus wanted direct competition between private health plans and traditional Medicare. And he refused to bring the bill up for a vote if the majority of his caucus was opposed. Any political capital he would need to pass the measure with on-the-fence Republicans had been used during the fight over the Patient Bill of Rights. “I can’t do it again,” he told the vice president. “You’re going to have to deliver for me this time.”
At the outset, it seemed impossible to bridge the tempered demands of the Senate with the impassioned desire to see competition between government-run Medicare and private plans of House Republicans. Frist was determined to succeed, though, holding numerous meetings with senators and congressmen on both sides of the aisle, negotiating with committee chairs, and calling their ranking members. Liberal Democrats, however, maintained a public fight to get a “clean prescription drug benefit” for seniors. On Face the Nation, Ted Kennedy said that Democrats were prepared to withhold enough votes for passage unless they believed the “sum of the proposal” was fair to America’s seniors. Frist said he wasn’t going to engage with such “partisan vitriol.”
Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert said he had to listen to the conservative voices in his caucus and pushed the Frist plan to the right.
The bill began taking shape, and there was something for everyone to like – and dislike – about the proposal. It included $500 billion for drug benefits in the next decade – more money than the president had been comfortable with, but Frist had been forced to concede more money to the Democrats in order to get their votes. It also included programs to help low-income Americans with drug costs. Additionally, Frist’s bill included tens of billions of dollars to employers to encourage them to continue providing health benefits, including drug coverage, to retirees. There was also $50 billion in new assistance for hospitals, doctors, and healthcare providers in rural areas. Further, the bill reduced a 4.5-percent cut to doctors’ fees from Medicare. It was scheduled to take place in 2004 but now doctors would only see a 1.5-percent cut.
In order to try and control the costs for seniors, Grassley and Senator Bob Graham included a provision to cap out-of-pocket expenses and require drug companies to pay rebates to Medicare if they raised prices faster than inflation.
The administration was dealt a significant blow when the legislation failed to pass the House of Representatives, failing by 33 votes. It was a terrible setback to the effort and a furious McCain berated his vice president. Frist would later write in his memoirs, “The president was prone to losing his temper, but in the entirety of his presidency there was never a more tense moment between us than the day the House failed to pass Medicare Part D.” Hastert was unmoved by the president’s anger or the vice president’s pleas for help. He told reporters later, “I was clear with the White House: House Republicans need assurances that this will not balloon into some unhinged government effort. We need to balance Medicare with private health options for our seniors.”
And so Frist returned to the table, with a plan to test competition between private health plans and traditional Medicare. Starting in 2009, four major cities and one region would participate in the competitive marketplace. The Department of Health and Human Services would be responsible for tracking the results and reporting back to Congress. Then, the new Congress would have the ability to scrap the idea or expand the program. They also eliminated the cut to doctors’ fees entirely. Hastert told Frist it wasn’t enough, but the American Medical Association, AARP, and other lobbyists fought hard for its passage, wining and dining lawmakers until they were confident they had the votes. The bill passed the House by two votes and the Senate version passed three days later.
The conference committee met and hammered out the details and returned the new bills to each chamber. Hastert told Frist he would whip the votes but wasn’t sure that it’d be enough for passage. The vote was called on Wednesday, January 7, 2004 at 1:33 am. After forty minutes of voting, there were 216 votes against, 210 in favor, and nine members had yet to vote. If the president’s team lost two more votes, the bill would fail. The president, the vice president, the Speaker, and others within the whip operation sought out the remaining Republicans. Two Democrats who had previously pledged their support voted against the bill at the time of the vote, throwing the operation into a frenzy. Twenty minutes later, the vote stood at 218-217, and the vice president needed to switch one congressman in order to pass the bill. And that was how Mark Foley, a Republican congressman from Florida who was about to announce a Senate campaign, ended up with the White House’s backing. The legislation passed 218-217, with Foley’s support.
The bill went on to a 60-vote passage in the Senate and was signed into law by President McCain. While the path to victory had been bruising, the fight ultimately drew McCain closer to Frist, who viewed him as an expert dealmaker who had salvaged an initially bad hand. When some on McCain’s team, including Mark Salter, wanted to replace Frist on the ticket, the president balked at the idea. “We need Bill. He’s our link to Congress,” McCain told the staff. Frist stayed on the ticket without any serious consideration of replacing him.
Meanwhile, the race to take on the president was heating up.
__________
[1] Lott never makes the comments about Thurmond ITTL and is therefore spared from losing his Senate leadership post.
My God, It's Happening Again
My God, It's Happening Again
BY DAVID FOSTER WALLACE || NOVEMBER 2003
A lot has changed since 2000. The Shrub is out of politics, wearing a Stetson and galloping around his Crawford ranch. We don’t talk about Bill Clinton anymore and the 18 to 35-year-olds reading this magazine would likely be unable to distinguish between Al Gore and Bill Frist in a line-up even though one of those men is actively working on changing their access to healthcare when they age into Medicare. If they know what Medicare is. (My editor told me to cut that line – I refused. Wake up!)
So, because “Up, Simba!” seemed to forecast the movement towards the anti-candidate in American politics, Rolling Stone came knocking and asked me to profile the president in his reelection bid. I didn’t want to. We know who John McCain is. Then, they asked me to profile John Kerry. I also told them no. The thing is – John Kerry will never be president. I said if they wanted my thoughts on the 2004 race they would have to stick me on a bus with Paul Wellstone who is the John McCain of 2004 even though we have the actual John McCain. You see, there’s a real chance that in November of next year voters are going to choose between the original anti-candidate and the one who takes that a step further – from an attitude of rejecting big donors and fostering bipartisanship to doing that and going beyond restoring political power to the people toward providing economic power to the people. It’s big money out of politics but it’s also good ole’ fashioned populism. That’s Paul Wellstone.
When Paul Wellstone ran for Senate in 1990 and then again in 1996 (and then again in 2002), his reelections were attributed to the same galvanization of new voters that brought McCain to victory in the 2000 Republican primary. Wellstone attracted kids – young voters – to vote for him in Minnesota in a fashion that was uncharacteristic of those types of voters. In 1999, he was thinking about doing this at the national stage, but he decided not to because of an old wrestling injury. Turns out that was actually multiple sclerosis. Now, Wellstone seems to be saying “Screw it,” and even though his physical campaigning is limited compared to some of the others, he’s bringing in a lot of money – mostly in $30 donations from people online. Which is a totally new way to run a national campaign and one that has Kerry’s camp very worried.
If you listen to the Establishment in the Democratic party and their mouthpieces – Kerry, Gephardt, etc. – then you must be convinced that Paul Wellstone cannot possibly beat John McCain. He’s too far left, they say. After all, the guy chaired Jesse Jackson’s primary campaign. The Establishment misses two key points. First: Nobody is going to beat John McCain. He’s an immensely popular president, he led the nation through its most trying time in modern history, and he’s calmed the left and pacified the right. Second: IF someone is going to pull it off and take Simba down, it isn’t going to be the same kind of candidate that lost to him four years ago. It’s going to be a new kind of candidate who takes McCain’s appeal even further – it’s going to be Wellstone.
I stopped by one Kerry event in Iowa and a Gephardt event here, too, before spending four days with Wellstone campaigning. The truth of the matter is, when John McCain stumps and people cheer, they are cheering as much for themselves as they are for McCain. The half-hearted whoops and muted applause that permeate Kerry and Gephardt events are the kind that greeted Shrub and Gore four years ago. When people hold signs for Wellstone, or donate five bucks, or cheer for him at the end of his speeches, it comes from the same place of genuine belief that greeted McCain four years ago.
I interviewed about 30 voters over the course of my four days with the Wellstone campaign. Few of them had heard much about Wellstone before coming to one of his events. All of them came away convinced he was the man for the moment. What does it say about our millennial politics that we might have a general election between an anti-President and an anti-Challenger? Both of whom view the two-party system as an obstacle to progress because of contrived differences. But while one of them believes that’s proof that we should shed labels and work together, the other sees it as proof that we have to reject both of them and instead work on a more radical politics that includes people? What happens to a nation’s politics when the conservative party becomes less conservative while the liberal party becomes more radical?
A general election between Wellstone and McCain is as much about them as it is about us – and the kind of politics that will define this new century. But before we get there we must first answer two questions: Can lightning strike twice? And will we let it?
Haiti's President Forced from Office, U.S. Provides Cover
Haiti's President Forced from Office, U.S. Provides Cover
BY LYDIA POLGREEN || FEBRUARY 2004
Elections will be held next year. Until then, Boniface Alexandre, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, will lead the transitional government - pursuant to the Haitian constitution.
The White House has not provided specifics on how many Americans will be sent to the island nation to maintain order. The president briefly addressed reporters in briefing room after news of the invasion broke. He said simply, "Every human around the globe deserves a chance at freedom - that means more than voting. It also means a responsive and representative government. We will send Americans to Haiti to keep the peace and ensure that a tense situation does not escalate." The president refused to comment on whether or not he was preparing to oust Astriside himself.
The incident in Haiti raises questions about the McCain Doctrine as a whole, specifically as it relates to Iraq. The administration has been engaged in a sort of will-they/won't-they question about the Middle Eastern nation led by Saddam Hussein. While sources within the Pentagon and the White House confirm that McCain wants to remove Hussein from office, they say the president has so far been unconvinced that any operation could happen with the "efficiency needed" to ensure a timely conclusion to America's ongoing involvement in Afghanistan, which McCain and others, specifically Defense Secretary Colin Powell, see as the priority. Efforts by Secretary of State Joe Lieberman to garner international support for the idea of an Iraqi invasion have so far fallen flat, except with Prime Minister Tony Blair of the United Kingdom, but some now speculate the president has "missed his moment" with 9/11 more than two years in the rearview mirror.
The healthcare reform seems to strike a good balance between left and right, and hopefully it makes life better for senior citizens. As for Hussein, well maybe his people will overthrow him without the US intervening...
Seems like one more big win for McCain before the campaign season begins in earnest. Still good to see that they're keeping out of Iraq and hopefully stay that way. As said, the window of opportunity is probably gone and the lack of trying to link Iraq to the attacks keeps things from spilling over more.