By Thomas Oliphant, 9/30/2003
HAD DICK Gephardt been more politically correct last week, he would have rebuked Howard Dean for standing with Senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico on proposed Medicare cutbacks in the 1990s or with then-Representative John Kasich of Ohio. To those bosses of the newly Republican budget committee in Congress, he could have added the GOP revolutionaries running the House Ways and Means Committee -- Bill Archer of Texas and Bill Thomas of California.
Newt Gingrich, however, was a lightning rod for disbelief -- a distraction, really. Dean expressed wounded shock and horror that anyone would link him to the former speaker, who in turn tried to link slashes in eligibility and other restrictions on Medicare beneficiaries with a whopping tax cut for high-income Americans.
The truth, however, is that as a conservative Democratic governor, Dean really did do what Gephardt says he did, and his shifting attempts to wiggle off that hook have made his conduct an issue in a Democratic race that grows more serious by the week.
I have been watching this subplot to the Dean phenomenon for two months, ever since Dennis Kucinich nicked him for having supported an increase in Social Security's eligibility age -- a criticism that Dean also initially denied and then flipped on. It has happened on Social Security, on trade, on middle-class taxes, on budget-balancing policies...
Medicare is an especially big enchilada. For Gephardt to raise it is of special significance in Iowa, where he and Dean are in a dogfight in a place that has the fourth-highest concentration of retired people in the country. Dean will plead guilty to having supported a slowdown in Medicare's rate of spending growth (from 10 to 7 percent annually) -- an innocuous-sounding, almost accountant-like budget position. In fact, the proposal he supported would have restricted eligibility, called on some retired people to pay more, and used force more than incentives to require participation in managed care...
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/politics/president/dean/articles/2003/09/30/past_haunts_dean_on_medicare_issue/
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