Clinton Is a Wolf in GOP Clothing

If Bill Clinton wins reelection, his administration will propose a $100-billion cut in Medicare programs. No, scratch that. The Clinton administration has already proposed a $100-billion cut in Medicare programs.

Why isn’t this headline news? After all, the Democratic presidential campaign and its union allies are currently spending millions of dollars on negative ads to scare voters about Republican designs on Medicare. Some union-sponsored ads even show parents worried that the alleged Republican cuts will jeopardize their children’s college education because the family will have to bear the cost of Grandma’s medical care. Some election analysts say that voter fears of Medicare cuts, skillfully inflamed by Democratic attack ads, are chiefly responsible for the decline in the popularity of Newt Gingrich and the Republican Congress.

So can it be true that these same Democrats are planning to cut Medicare the day after they are elected? Can Democrats be wooing voters by presenting themselves as the defenders of Medicare against Republican budget-slashers, while proposing behind the scenes a $100-billion cut in Medicare benefits? Well, yes. According to a Los Angeles Times report appearing the morning after the Gore-Kemp debate, Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala has approached Republican congressional leaders with a proposal to cut $100 billion from Medicare. Shalala wants bipartisan support for the effort. Without such a cut, she says, Medicare will go bankrupt in four years.

Isn’t that exactly what Republicans have been saying about why they wanted to reduce the growth in Medicare spending by 3%? That GOP-sponsored bill was vetoed by Clinton as “irresponsible” and attacked by congressional Democrats as “mean-spirited,” another selfish shot in the Republicans’ perennial “war against the poor.”

Well actually, it is exactly the same budget-cutting, Medicare-saving argument that Republicans have raised. According to the Times report, House Ways and Means Chairman Bill Archer was not amused when Shalala approached him seeking bipartisan support for the cut. After all, Democrats had almost two years to offer the same bipartisan support to Republican efforts to save Medicare by agreeing to the cuts they were proposing. Instead, Democrats not only said no, but launched a barrage of savage character attacks on Newt Gingrich and other Republican legislators.

Archer told Shalala that it might be a good idea to begin any bipartisan effort by pulling the Democrat attack ads, particularly the ones that scare the elderly and their children.

Don’t hold your breath. Democrats are not going to call off their misleading attacks until the votes are counted on Nov. 5. And why should they? Democrats are running a slick, cynical, dishonest--but winning--campaign. They launched the campaign two years ago when they began demonizing Gingrich and the Republican-controlled House for proposing necessary and fiscally responsible solutions to a federal bankruptcy that 30 years of Democratic welfare spending had produced. The Republican cuts were actually pretty mild, a reduction of Medicare growth from 10% annually to 7%.

When the strategy proved successful and Democrats had thoroughly demonized the House budget-balancers, the Clinton team, guided by the redoubtable Dick Morris, turned around and adopted the very Republican policies that they had previously attacked.

Clinton is not running as a “new Democrat”; he’s running as a warmhearted Republican. Why trust him to do the job? Why not elect Republicans to do it right?

Who can count on Clinton, assuming he wins, to keep his word on anything? This uncertainty is what makes the prospect of another Clinton presidency truly dangerous. Medicare is going bankrupt if present trends are not reversed. On the day after the election, the new president will face all those Democratic legislators who are not “new” Democrats and who don’t believe in balancing budgets or reforming the welfare system. If Clinton could not do the right and responsible thing two years ago, joining hands with Newt Gingrich in a bipartisan effort to save Medicare, why does anyone think he will be able to do the right thing four months from now?