Politicians Look for the Stamp of Approval

Sen. Dianne Feinstein rushed to the Senate chamber last Thursday for damage control. “We’ll lose anyway,” her dispirited legislative aide said, just before the California Democrat dashed out.

What set her in motion were the impassioned remarks of Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, who was trying to torpedo Feinstein’s plan for an optional 33-cent, first-class postage stamp that would devote a penny to breast cancer research. Americans willing to contribute could use it in place of the 32-cent stamp.

It’s an idea altogether new--using the U.S. mail as a fund-raiser--and the diminutive Republican would have none of it. A survivor of prostate cancer, Stevens evoked the memory of parents, a brother and a grandfather all dead from cancer. Then he slashed through the feel-good aura of Feinstein’s proposal with tough and obvious questions: If the U.S. Postal Service was used for raising cash for breast cancer research, what about prostate cancer? What about AIDS? What about the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts? Where would it end?

“This is plainly wrong,” Stevens thundered. “What we are seeing is a public relations campaign by people who want credit for being for cancer research.”

He produced a letter of opposition from Postmaster General Marvin T. Runyon Jr., who declared that if the idea passed it would alter the basic function of the Postal Service for the first time in 200 years, opening “the floodgates for all worthy social causes. . . . That is not our role.”

Stevens’ logic was inescapable. In the days that followed, representatives of other major disease research groups weighed in with the view that if this fund-raising stamp paid off, they might like one of their own. At the National Press Club, reporters asked Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt if it could be used to raise money for national parks and erupted in laughter when he responded without missing a beat: “I hadn’t heard of a stamp idea, but I hereby adopt it as an Interior Department proposal.”

Equally inescapable was the response to these latecomers from Sacramento surgeon Balazs Imre “Ernie” Bodie, a frustrated veteran of 1,500 breast cancer operations who first came up with the idea a year and half ago.

“What I tell (other interest groups) is if you want to champion a cause, go for it. We have paved the way. We have provided the mechanism to do it. We have picked up the gauntlet,” Bodie says.

In her argument on the Senate floor, Feinstein predicted that women across America would respond overwhelmingly to the idea.

Her damage control worked--for now, anyway. The proposal passed overwhelmingly 83-17. And this week in the House of Representatives, a similarly worded bill sponsored by Rep. Susan Molinari of New York seemed headed for approval. It was designed to be the Republican congresswoman’s swan-song legislation before leaving Congress to become a CBS news anchor next month.

The irony is that key proponents like Feinstein and Rep. Vic Fazio (D-West Sacramento), co-sponsor of the Molinari bill, concede that they are not sure the idea will actually work. Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, a Colorado Republican who raised doubts during floor debate (he later voted in favor), noted that the most popular specialty stamp ever offered by the post office--the one devoted to Elvis Presley--sold 500 million copies. If the breast cancer stamp did as well, he said, it would produce only $5 million in research money.

“I didn’t buy an Elvis Presley stamp,” Feinstein responded on the Senate floor. But she said the breast cancer stamp was worthy of experiment.

Bodie says he was sifting through notes on Christmas Eve, 1995, for a speech he was preparing for the American Cancer Society, when “out of the blue, this idea for a stamp popped into my head.”

He had long since become frustrated with the lack of advancement in breast cancer treatment. Experts estimate that 1 million women worldwide will die of the disease this year and fatality rates are only going up. Breast cancer is the leading cause of death for women between the ages of 15 and 45. In California, the American Cancer Society estimates there will be 20,230 new cases diagnosed this year and more than 5,000 deaths.

The federal government is spending $400 million on breast cancer research this year. Bodie calculates that if Americans devoted 10% of their first-class postage to the breast cancer stamp, it would generate an additional $60 million for research. He sees the purity of the one penny add-on as its most attractive selling point.

Bodie, who is chief of surgery at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Sacramento, began a letter-writing campaign to senators and representatives. That tactic sputtered. So Bodie flew to Washington. “I put on a suit and started knocking on doors,” he says.

Persistence was--and remains--the key. Bodie was back in Washington this week fighting to keep his dream out of a legislative quagmire. While the Feinstein and Molinari initiatives are working their way through Congress, the two proposals differ enough to keep the issue in play.

Feinstein’s version was in the form of an amendment attached to a funding bill for the Postal Service. Molinari’s version is a bill. And the New York Republican’s proposal differs in substance: The stamp would cost 40 cents (the additional pennies ensuring that administrative costs are covered), and the research money goes in slightly different directions. “What I’m concerned about here,” says Fazio, “is that we’re on dual tracks here and we may never meet.”

The differences mean that more votes may be in order and perhaps a conference committee to hammer out differences between the two versions. Should it reach a conference committee, Stevens, powerful as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, has made it known that he would personally kill it there.

“It he has a chance and if it’s conference-able, he’ll take it out. If it isn’t conference-able, it’s a done deal,” Feinstein says. “It’s still a long way from the cup and the lip.”