Consider the current debate over Medicare. Both houses have passed “reform” bills. President Bush is urging lawmakers to compromise and pass a unified bill. After meeting with the president, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., told The New York Times “there was one clear message, the importance of us working together, both parties, on a bipartisan basis.”
But if they do pass a “bipartisan” bill, it will probably resemble the current bills. Each would create a new entitlement, without actually reforming the broken Medicare system. Lawmakers estimate the cost of either bill at $400 billion, but past experience proves it would surely be much higher.
Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., has already said he supports this bill as a starting point toward ever more Medicare spending. He’s assured his colleagues that once it passes, they’ll come back “again and again and again.”
President Bush should have learned by now that he can’t win a spending battle with Kennedy. Last year, the liberal lion threw his support behind the “No Child Left Behind” act, an unprecedented $6.7 billion federal intrusion in the education system.
Bush seemed to think he’d reached a bipartisan compromise. But just a month later, Kennedy lashed out. “It is Democrats who must carry forward the fight for adequate education funding,” he announced. “[The president’s] education budget contains the lowest growth in education funding since Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America -- barely enough to keep pace with inflation.”
So much for bipartisanship.
It is important for lawmakers to get along, and for them to work together for the good of the country. They have done so as recently as last October, when both houses passed a measure giving President Bush the authority to attack Iraq. Many Democrats, including presidential candidates John Kerry, Dick Gephardt, Joe Lieberman and John Edwards voted for that resolution.
But when “bipartisanship” becomes journalistic code for one-party rule, or an excuse for endless spending increases, it’s time to oppose it. Even if that means Washington remains a battleground for years to come.