Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said Friday that if midterm elections were held today Democrats would win the five seats they need to draw even in the Senate, due largely to the Bush administration's "general incompetence" at home and abroad. "This is an administration that is going to be noted for its incompetence not its accomplishments," Reid, D-Nev., said after a forum on Medicare reforms at the University of Nevada's School of Medicine. Reid said polls show Democrats winning Republican-held seats in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Montana, Missouri and Rhode Island.
"And we have good shots in Arizona and Tennessee," he said. "If elections were held today, we'd pick up five seats. The Senate would be 50-50. " Reid told about 100 faculty members, students and community leaders that the administration's prescription drug program for Medicare is intended to do away with Medicare altogether. "It's aim is to give HMOs and other health care plans out there the advantage," he said.
The administration has caused the number of uninsured Americans to increase by more than 1 million a year under its watch, Reid said. "The poor are getting poorer, the rich getting richer, the middle class is being squeezed. And this deals not only with health care, but with everything," Reid told The Associated Press. It includes "the dismal state of what is going on with the incompetence of this administration as it relates to the war, as it relates to (hurricane) Katrina, as it relates to the Medicare fiasco, as it relates to the port security problem evident today."
"The American people are now not looking at these issues one by one. They are just looking at generally an incompetent administration," he said. Reid said President Bush's budget priorities are "scary." "We're spending in Iraq $2 billion a week yet we're cutting these programs that mean so much to so many people," he said. "President Bush's budget calls for more than $35 billion in cuts in Medicare over five years and more than $17 billion in cuts in Medicaid. This is the poorest of the poor," he said. "The president's answer is health savings accounts. But you have to have money to have savings. It only helps those who have money and don't need the help as much as others."
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