When Jim DeMint, Mike Pence And Rand Paul Joined The Democrats To Try To Stop Irresponsible Corporate Giveaways By The Republican Party

On June 27, 2003, in the closest of votes (216-215), the Republican-dominated House passed what was called the Medicare Prescription Drug and Modernization Act and has been forever known as Medicare Part D. Although 19 very conservative Republicans, warning about the budget-busting catastrophe that this bill would be, crossed the aisle and voted with the Democrats (serious right-wing movement congressmen like Jim DeMint, Mike Pence, Ron Paul, Jeff Flake, Tom Tancredo, John Shadegg, Jim Sensenbrenner...) 207 Republicans and 7 Blue Dog lap dogs, delivered for Bush-- and, more to the point, for Big Pharma. Yesterday when Haley Barbour (R-MS) was pontificating on Meet The Press he was either delusional or just plain lying about the Republicans cutting back on deficit spending: "The Federal Government is gonna have to learn that you can spend less money and provide the services that the country needs. So the first thing I think Republicans are gonna do is to make sure that we cut spending. And that’s gonna be a very serious thing." It would also be very out of character for his party.

The program that was created is estimated to cost between $395 and $534 billion over 10 years, none of it paid for with revenue hikes or spending cuts... all of it thrown onto the backs of future generations, exactly what Boehner (who voted for it), Cantor (who voted for it), and Ryan (who voted for it) have been running around accusing the Democrats of doing. That's especially interesting since this one horrible piece of special interest legislation for the pharmaceutical industry-- which dumped $8,705,484 into GOP campaigns that cycle, double what they gave Democrats, and spent another $143,434,740 on lobbying during the same time period-- cost taxpayers more than TARP, the Stimulus and the auto bailout combined.

David Walker, the former U.S. Comptroller General, has said the prescription drug benefit "was probably the most fiscally irresponsible piece of legislation since the 1960s."

More recently, Bruce Bartlett-- former advisor to Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas)-- said Part D was "a pure giveaway" to drug companies devised by fiscally irresponsible lawmakers.

"It astonishes me that a party enacting anything like the drug benefit would have the chutzpah to view itself as fiscally responsible in any sense of the term," Bartlett wrote in Forbes last December.

"As far as I am concerned, any Republican who voted for the Medicare drug benefit has no right to criticize anything the Democrats have done in terms of adding to the national debt."

Barlett recounts the drama around a bill that Bush and the House GOP leaders were determined to deliver for their Big Pharma benefactors, a bill that was losing in the first vote, as a handful of principled conservatives and all the Democrats stood pat. And then along came Tom DeLay, the Enforcer:

[W]hen the legislation came up for its final vote on Nov. 22, 2003, it was failing by 216 to 218 when the standard 15-minute time allowed for voting came to an end.

What followed was one of the most extraordinary events in congressional history. The vote was kept open for almost three hours while the House Republican leadership brought massive pressure to bear on the handful of principled Republicans who had the nerve to put country ahead of party. The leadership even froze the C-SPAN cameras so that no one outside the House chamber could see what was going on.

Among those congressmen strenuously pressed to change their vote was Nick Smith, R-Mich., who later charged that several members of Congress attempted to virtually bribe him, by promising to ensure that his son got his seat when he retired if he voted for the drug bill. One of those members, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, was later admonished by the House Ethics Committee for going over the line in his efforts regarding Smith.

Eventually, the arm-twisting got three Republicans to switch their votes from nay to yea: Ernest Istook of Oklahoma, Butch Otter of Idaho and Trent Franks of Arizona.

...Otter and Istook are no longer in Congress, but Franks still is, so I checked to see what he has been saying about the health legislation now being debated. Like all Republicans, he has vowed to fight it with every ounce of strength he has, citing the increase in debt as his principal concern. "I would remind my Democratic colleagues that their children, and every generation thereafter, will bear the burden caused by this bill. They will be the ones asked to pay off the incredible debt," Franks declared on Nov. 7.

Just to be clear, the Medicare drug benefit was a pure giveaway with a gross cost greater than either the House or Senate health reform bills how being considered. Together the new bills would cost roughly $900 billion over the next 10 years, while Medicare Part D will cost $1 trillion.

Moreover, there is a critical distinction--the drug benefit had no dedicated financing, no offsets and no revenue-raisers; 100% of the cost simply added to the federal budget deficit, whereas the health reform measures now being debated will be paid for with a combination of spending cuts and tax increases, adding nothing to the deficit over the next 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Maybe Franks isn't the worst hypocrite I've ever come across in Washington, but he's got to be in the top 10 because he apparently thinks the unfunded drug benefit, which added $15.5 trillion (in present value terms) to our nation's indebtedness, according to Medicare's trustees, was worth sacrificing his integrity to enact into law. But legislation expanding health coverage to the uninsured--which is deficit-neutral-- somehow or other adds an unacceptable debt burden to future generations. We truly live in a world only George Orwell could comprehend when our elected representatives so easily conflate one with the other.

Yes, there are other Republicans in Congress who are just as hypocritical as Franks, a closet case whose entire life is based on lies and deception. Obviously the entire GOP House leadership-- minus Pence-- is as guilty as Barlett says Franks is. But, in light of the election tomorrow, let's look at some of the Republicans who voted for Medicare Part D, took legalistic bribes from Big Pharma, are currently deceiving voters by claiming to be "fiscally responsible," and are running for higher office. Up for Senate seats we have Roy Blunt (MO), John Boozman (AR), Mark Kirk (IL), Rob Portman (OH), Pat Toomey (PA) and 2 senators up for re-election who were in the House in 2003, David Vitter and Johnny Isakson (GA), each of whom fits the description to a "t." But let's not stop there. New Hampshire corporate shill Charlie Bass, Ohio corporate shill Steve Chabot and New Mexico corporate shill Steve Pearce were all rejected by the voters in the past two cycles-- and each wants back in and each is running a deceptive campaign this year. Chabot and Pearce are favored to win. Nathan Deal is running for governor of Georgia. Adam "Howdy Doody nimrod" Putnam is running for a Florida cabinet position that he hopes will lead him to the governor's mansion. and then there are Republicans just plain running scared and running away from their records, hoping the voters are too ill-informed-- and their opponents too under-funded-- to bring their shameful records into play, from Mary Bono Mack, David Dreier, and Ken Calvert in California to the ones who use racism and extremism as bright, shiny objects to distract the voters-- Steve King, Darrell Issa, Scott Garrett, and Pete Sessions, for example.

It amazes me that Ohio media is so amateur or so in the tank as to never even once question the man who would be Speaker about his role in any of this-- or to just let him off with his explanation that "mistakes were made and we're better now."

Over on the Senate side, the key vote was a procedural one that needed 60 AYEs to proceed. Corporate ConservaDems Blanche Lincoln (AR), Max Baucus (MT), Ben Nelson (NE), Zell Miller (GA) and Mary Landrieu (LA) crossed the aisle to vote with the Republicans, as usual. So did Dianne Feinstein (CA). Interestingly, McCain was in his Maverick phase then and he voted with the Democrats against the bill, the only Republican other than actual Maverick Chuck Hagel, who did. Among the Democrats who are up for reelection this year are 4 who fought hard against this irresponsible bill: Barbara Boxer, Harry Reid, Russ Feingold and Patty Murray, all currently under multimillion dollar attack from Rove and the Chamber of Commerce for being "fiscally irresponsible." Mark Dayton who is running for governor of Minnesota now, was a senator then and also fought the bill. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) voted for it and is, once again, pulling the wool over Iowa voters' eyes about his shenanigans in Washington. He's taken in close to a million dollars in veiled bribes from Big Pharma while voting for this boondoggle... and still struts around from the Quad Cities to Council Bluffs impersonating a fiscally responsible conservative warrior.