Medicare drug plan attacked in Democrats' broadcast (NM AG for Congress)

[ProSense]

Democrats Slam New Medicare Drug Plan

1 hour, 10 minutes ago

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - Republicans in Congress put the pharmaceutical industry in charge when they passed the Medicare prescription drug plan, New Mexico's attorney general said Saturday.

"Big corporations ... routinely use their purchasing power to drive down prices for consumers. But the Republican Congress banned our government from doing the same" by specifically prohibiting it under the Medicare plan from negotiating with drug companies for lower prices, Patricia Madrid said in the Democrats' weekly radio address.

"And rather than allowing Medicare to provide prescription drugs directly to seniors, the Republican Congress invited the health insurance industry into the process and wrote a needlessly complicated law that has confused millions of seniors and their caregivers," she said.

Snip...


Madrid is seeking to unseat four-term Republican Heather Wilson in New Mexico's 1st Congressional District, which has been in GOP hands for decades. The contest is forecast as one of the top races nationally as Democrats try to erode the Republican majority in Congress.

more...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060218/ap_on_go_co/democrats_medicare_1

Looks like a battle shaping up, and why Wilson is trying to distance herself from Bush (on this issue anyway):

Monday, Feb. 13, 2006

Breaking Ranks

By MASSIMO CALABRESI

President Bush may wave away Democratic critics of domestic eavesdropping, but one challenger is proving harder to dismiss: Heather Wilson, a plainspoken Air Force veteran from New Mexico and four-term G.O.P. Congresswoman little known outside of national-security circles. As chair of the House subcommittee that authorizes technical intelligence, she has waged a behind-the-scenes battle for access to information about the controversial surveillance program since word of it leaked in December. She won a significant victory last week. After she called for a full investigation of the spying, the White House ended 54 days of stonewalling and briefed the full House Intelligence Committee.

Two days later, at the House G.O.P. retreat on Maryland's Eastern Shore, after Bush told lawmakers that he had resisted briefing them to keep more program details from getting leaked, Wilson retorted that the original leak appeared to have come from his Administration and that Congress has a right and a duty to exercise oversight. "The men who wrote the Constitution feared most a strong Executive with control of a standing army," Wilson tells TIME. "Our Constitution is set up to protect all of us from tyranny."

Wilson served with Condoleezza Rice on George H.W. Bush's National Security Council and plans to rewrite the cold war-era law controlling domestic eavesdropping in collaboration with House Judiciary Committee chairman James Sensenbrenner, who showed his willingness to oversee the Executive Branch last week by sending 51 questions about the program to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. "The law was written in 1978, pre-cell phone, pre-Internet," Wilson says. "We need to do some updating."


more...

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1158945,00.html?promoid=rss_nation

Wilson criticizes wiretap strategy

By James W. Brosnan
Scripps Howard News Service
February 17, 2006

WASHINGTON - Rep. Heather Wilson, in another departure from the White House, is objecting to a Republican's proposal for a quick fix to the Bush administration's warrantless eavesdropping program.

more...

http://www.abqtrib.com/albq/nw_national/article/0,2564,ALBQ_19860_4475117,00.html

Edited to change first story and link (original wasn't working)

[Greeby]

1. Worth remembering, New Mexico went all-paper ballots

I don't have time to trawl his archives, but bradblog had it on his site :bounce: