Cato Daily Dispatch for October 29, 2003
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Bush Pushes Congress to Pass Medicare BillSenate Considering Global Warming Proposal
Bush Tries a Conciliatory Approach Toward Iran
Bush Pushes Congress to Pass Medicare Bill
"Prodded by President Bush, Republican lawmakers are making progress on a prescription drug benefit for Medicare recipients amid growing concern that the bill they are writing could exceed the $400 billion limit set by the president," The Associated Press reports.
"Bush scheduled a White House appearance today to underscore his support for a drug benefit under Medicare, the government-run program that provides health care for 40 million disabled and older Americans. The bill also would overhaul the 38-year-old program."
After the president earlier today called on Congress to quickly agree on a drug-prescription measure, Cato's Director of Health and Welfare Studies, Michael Tanner, issued the following statement: "President Bush appears to care more about Congress passing any Medicare prescription drug measure than whether the bill is a good one or not. The current legislation under consideration has steadily gone from bad to worse. It would create a costly new entitlement, balloon the deficit, and leave massively higher taxes for our children and grandchildren to pay. ... Congress should scrap this expensive boondoggle and start over with true Medicare reform."
In "War between the Generations: Federal Spending on the Elderly Set to Explode," Chris Edwards, director of fiscal policy studies, and Research Assistant Tad DeHaven write: "Increasing the already high transfers from the young to the old is neither economically sound nor fair. ... Major entitlement reforms are needed to reduce taxpayer costs and head off a generational war between the old and the young."
Senate Considering Global Warming Proposal
"This week, the Senate is scheduled to vote on a proposal to create a national regulatory structure for carbon dioxide. This would be the The New York Times reports.
"The proposal's primary sponsors, Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, see it mainly as a way to force senators to take a position on the issue, given the measure's slim prospects."
In comments released today, Senior Fellow in Environmental Studies Patrick Michaels writes that the McCain-Lieberman bill is "Kyoto Lite," a kind of "backdoor implementation of the infamous Kyoto Protocol on global warming."
"The original Kyoto Protocol, if enacted by all of its signatories, would reduce global temperature by only seven-hundreths of a degree Celsius in 50 years, as indicated in policy analyses overseen by Vice President Gore in 1997," Michaels says.
Bush Tries a Conciliatory Approach Toward Iran
"The Bush administration assured Iran on Tuesday that the United States did not favor 'regime change' in Tehran and signaled a new willingness to engage in a dialogue with Iran over its nuclear program, its alleged support of terrorism and other issues," The New York Times reports.
"The administration's newly conciliatory approach toward Iran, enunciated by Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, resolved at least part of a contentious internal debate among aides to President Bush, administration officials said."
In "Iran: Déjà Vu All Over Again, Cato Director of Defense Policy Studies Charles Peña writes: "Clearly, the administration is concerned about a fundamentalist Islamic country acquiring nuclear weapons. But what better way to create more incentive to obtain such weapons than threatening to topple the regime in Tehran? And if the administration tries to undermine the ruling Islamic clerics, they are likely to suppress the fledgling democratic reform movement.
"The rest of the world was skeptical about the administration's rationale for invading Iraq. It is likely to be more skeptical about Iran. But the real question is whether -- having yet to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or any real linkages to al Qaeda -- the American public is willing to suspend disbelief a second time."
Jonathan Block, editor, jblock@cato.org
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