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Club For Growth
Commentary on Medicare Prescription Drug Bill
No doubt you share
our dismay at the passage of the Medicare prescription drug bill. Defeating
this incredibly expensive bill that does nothing to avoid Medicare's coming
bankruptcy and would cause millions of seniors to lose their private
prescription drug coverage was one of our top priorities of the year at Club for
Growth Advocacy.
Many Club members have wondered, rightly, why a number of congressmen elected
with Club for Growth backing voted for this trillion-dollar entitlement. We
share that frustration. On the other hand, we're also very proud that the real
heroes and leaders of the fight opposing the bill were congressmen elected with
Club for Growth backing. They led a courageous and principled fight that came
within an eyelash of winning a miraculous victory. Indeed, it appeared they had
won, but the GOP House leadership kept the vote open for nearly three hours as
they twisted arms to pass the bill. The efforts by Republican opponents were
all the more impressive because they did so against their own party leadership
and their own President. And by doing so, many put their own political careers
in peril.
Without the congressmen elected with Club backing leading the charge, this
wouldn't have even been a close vote at all.
In fact, it is precisely for legislative battles like this -- where every single
vote counts and where members of Congress are under intense pressure from the
party establishment to "go along to get along" -- that the Club for Growth
exists. If the passage of this abominable bill teaches us anything, it is that
just electing more Republicans to the House and Senate accomplishes very
little. We have a Republican House, a Republican Senate and a Republican
President. Yet over 200 House Republicans voted for the biggest expansion of
the Great Society welfare state in nearly four decades. Only 25 voted no. In
the Senate, only nine Republicans voted no out of 51. President Bush will sign
this bill and trumpet it as a great accomplishment. We have plenty of
Republicans in Congress, but few who actually believe in smaller government.
The story of how this bill actually passed the House is worth recounting in some
sordid detail, because there were so many House conservatives who acted
heroically.
In the end, the bill passed with just two votes to spare in the House in a roll
call that started at 3:00 a.m. on Saturday morning and ended just before 6:00
a.m. This was the longest time ever taken for a House vote.
During the days before the vote Club for Growth Advocacy alerted every House
Republican that we opposed the bill because of its enormous cost and because we
believe it is a giant leap toward Hillary-health care. We released a poll
showing that most seniors are satisfied with their existing prescription drug
insurance coverage and that seniors oppose the bill when they learn of the
details. We called all the Club members in the House, in some cases repeatedly,
to remind them of our opposition and to urge them to hold firm and vote no.
Two lieutenants quickly emerged to lead the conservative revolt against the
bill: Pat Toomey and Mike Pence. Both of them were elected with Club support,
of course. Mike was all over the news eloquently dismantling this bill, arguing
that he could never in good conscience look his children in the eyes and tell
them that he had voted for a $1 trillion entitlement program that they would
have to pay for some day. Sitting in the Oval Office of the White House, he
told George Bush: "With all due respect, Mr. President, I didn't come to this
town to create new entitlements, but to rein in the ones we already have."
The day of the vote it became clear to Toomey and Pence that there were 30
Republicans who were solid no votes, or leaning toward a no vote. One member
who was a hard no vote from the very beginning was Tom Feeney of Florida, also
elected with Club backing last year. Tom is the freshman class representative
to the House leadership, a position that goes to the newcomer who the Speaker
wants to groom for a leadership position. Feeney was told that his stubborn no
vote would set him back three years in his bid to climb the House ladder. He
would be relegated to a position of a back bencher. They put their arms around
him and shook their heads and told him how disappointed they were in him. "Why
jeopardize your career, Tom, over this one little vote?" Feeney never wavered.
He too told the President that he could not in good conscience vote for an
expansion in the welfare state. Of all the no votes, Tom probably had the most
to lose.
The night of the vote Pat Toomey hosted a dinner at the Hunan Restaurant on
Capitol Hill for the 30 Republicans who were against the bill. The message was
"stick together." Toomey and Pence had devised a fallback plan to vote down the
Medicare bill then come back to the President with a much scaled back plan that
would 1) cover only those seniors who don't have existing prescription drug
insurance and 2) retain the health savings accounts (the one redeeming feature
of the bill). This was exactly what we at the Club and the Wall Street Journal
urged as a sensible alternative that would cost only one-third of what the
conference report cost. The plan of action was for these conservatives to go to
the floor and record their "no" votes immediately, which would signal to the
Democrats that there were not enough Republican votes to pass the bill. It
almost worked.
In the first 10 minutes of the vote there were 17 Republican no votes recorded.
The Democrats, who did not want to hand Bush a "victory" on this issue, voted no
en masse, with the exception of about a dozen who waited on the sidelines to see
what would happen on the Republican side of the aisle. When the normal 15
minutes passed, the bill was losing by 15 votes. After an hour it appeared that
the House rejected the bill as 218 representatives, a majority, had voted
"nay."
Now the intense lobbying pressure began. Members were promised pork barrel
projects. They were threatened with primary challengers. The President, who had
just returned from Britain, called lawmakers at 5:00 in the morning to round up
a few more votes.
Todd Aiken of Missouri got a call from a state legislator earlier in the day, no
doubt at the urging of the White House, threatening to run a primary challenge
against him if he voted no. I talked to Todd several times during the day,
urging him not to buckle. Aiken withstood intense pressure from his colleagues
all night long and by 5:00 a.m. looked like he had come out of a torture
chamber. But he held firm and voted no.
But nothing compares to the disgusting behavior of the Republican leadership
toward Michigan's Nick Smith. Smith is retiring from the House and his son is
running in a crowded field to succeed him. The leadership first offered
unbelievable enticements to change his vote to a yes. First, they said that the
leadership would take the unusual step of endorsing his son Brad in the tight
primary race. Smith said no deal. Then they promised to raise $100,000 for
Brad Smith if he voted yes. He still said no. Then several Republican leaders
threatened that if he didn't change his vote they would raise money for his
son's opponents. At this point, Nick's wife called her son to tell him of the
situation. Brad Smith phoned his dad and heroically told him to vote his
conscience and to not worry about the House race. Smith stuck with his no
vote. Several infuriated Republicans in the House were still fuming after the
vote and taunted Nick Smith with threats that "we will make sure your son never
wins this seat." Ugly stuff.
Another hero was Rep. Scott Garrett, who of course replaced the RINO Marge
Roukema with Club member backing. Garrett was lambasted by the leadership for
the political suicide that they said he was committing by voting no. But when I
asked him a few hours before the vote what he was going to do, he said "I am for
freedom." And he was the only House Republican in the entire northeast to vote
no.
By 5:00 a.m. many members were starting to suffer from sleep deprivation (was
this done intentionally to break down their will to resist?). The drug bill was
still stuck at a vote of 216-218. The vote count on the board had not moved in
nearly an hour. Incredibly, the bill was going down to defeat. According to
the Washington Post, on several occasions House Majority Leader Tom Delay was
ready to throw in the towel and end the vote. Each time he was urged by the
White House to hold off a little longer.
Then the White House and the Whip team tried one more desperation tactic. They
went to two western state members, Trent Franks and Butch Otter, and told them
that if they didn't change their votes, the President would immediately instruct
the House leadership to pass the Democratic version of the bill. These two were
told that they were the only ones standing between passage of an even worse
Medicare drug bill. I'm convinced the White House was bluffing and this was
simply another scheme to peel off votes. We'll never know, because Franks and
Otter changed to yes votes after getting calls from the President and the bill
passed 220-215 as two other lawmakers voted to be on the prevailing side.
Poor Trent Franks looked like he was white as a ghost when he walked off the
House floor. Trent is a terrific guy and I truly believe that he simply allowed
himself to get snookered. I have talked to him several times since the vote (he
called me at 8:00 that Saturday morning to tell me what had happened). He
seemed whipped and I have no doubt his conscience is gnawing away at him -- and
will do so for a long time. Actually, I feel sorrier for Trent Franks than
anyone else in this whole unseemly escapade.
"I went to college at the Citadel and so I have lived through the hazing
process," said Rep. Gresham Barrett, another no vote. "But the barrage of
attacks we absorbed from our own colleagues during those three hours was much
worse."
I really believe that if we could have won this vote against the most powerful
whip operation in the history of House and a popular Republican President, it
would have proven to the Republican establishment that conservatives are sick of
the spending splurge that is going on in Washington. The budget has grown by
27% in two years, a faster rate of growth in the budget than at anytime since
LBJ's presidency. Republican leaders in the White House and the Congress seem
entirely unconcerned about the orgy of spending and debt. They are in denial.
A deserved defeat of this bill would have dropped an ice cold bucket of water on
their heads and helped them snap out of it. So close!
I'm convinced this is a hollow victory for the Republican Party bosses. The
bill could blow up in the Republicans' laps when seniors see the details of the
carved up turkey they've just been served. Worse, the bill threatens to further
demoralize fiscal conservative voters who are infuriated by the GOP's massive
expansion of government. I know I'm demoralized. As Mike Pence told me last
week, "We Republicans seem to have forgotten who we are and why voters sent us
here."
We now have two big government parties in Washington. And we only have about
two dozen Republicans in the House and a handful in the Senate who are trying to
pull the Republicans in an anti-big government direction. We must add to these
numbers. Probably the best way to shock the GOP establishment and start the
process is to get Pat Toomey elected to the Senate in 2004 by defeating Sen.
Arlen Specter. The day after the vote Specter blasted Toomey for his principled
stand against this misguided legislation.
One final note: we intend to make it a top priority of the Club to protect the
heroes who voted against this bill from the retribution of the Republican Party
brass. If the party leaders do run primary challengers against these principled
congressmen, we will do everything we can to crush the challenge and protect
those true fiscal conservatives who voted for principle over politics during the
wee hours of Saturday morning.
Here is a list of the Republicans in the House and Senate who voted against the
bill:
House
Akin (Missouri)
Barrett (South Carolina)
Burton (Indiana)
Chabot (Ohio)
Culberson (Texas)
DeMint (South Carolina)
Emerson (Missouri)
Feeney (Florida)
Flake (Arizona)
Garrett (New Jersey)
Gutknecht (Minnesota)
Hostettler (Indiana)
Jones (North Carolina)
Miller (Florida)
Moran (Kansas)
Musgrave (Colorado)
Norwood (Georgia)
Paul (Texas)
Pence (Indiana)
Ryun (Kansas)
Shadegg (Arizona)
Smith (Michigan)
Tancredo (Colorado)
Toomey (Pennsylvania)
Wamp (Tennessee)
Senate
Chafee (Rhode Island)
Ensign (Nevada)
Graham (South Carolina)
Gregg (New Hampshire)
Hagel (Nebraska)
Lott (Mississippi)
McCain (Arizona)
Nickles (Oklahoma)
Sununu (New Hampshire)
Have a great Thanksgiving.
Steve
__________________
Steve Moore
President, Club for Growth
1776 K St NW Suite 300
Washington, DC 20006
www.ClubforGrowth.org
202-955-5500
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