OUR VIEWS

What's a few hundred billion?

New Bush administration estimates show that the aggregate cost of the new Medicare prescription drug benefit for the 10 years from 2006, the first full year of the program, to 2015 will be $1.2 trillion.

That came as a bombshell on Capitol Hill. When the program was approved in late 2003, many Republicans were uneasy about enacting the largest government entitlement since the openhanded days of the Great Society but were mollified by administration assurances that the benefit would cost only $400 billion over 10 years.

The Bush administration protests, with some justification, that the comparison is unfair. The $400 billion cost was calculated over the 10 years that included 2004 and 2005 before the drug benefit actually begins when the cost would naturally be lower.

Medicare chief Mark McClellan says that when scheduled higher premiums and deductibles and reimbursements from the states are factored in, the net 10-year cost, 2006 to 2015, will be more like $720 billion. That's still much higher than anyone in Congress was led to believe.

And the White House is still suffering from the duplicity it used to sell the drug benefit to skeptical Republicans. As it was, GOP House leaders had to hold the vote open until late into the night until they could twist enough arms to secure passage by a five-vote margin. Then, almost as soon as the benefit had passed, the administration disclosed that the real 10-year cost would be more like $534 billion and, it turned out, the administration had known this all along. To keep it quiet, Medicare's chief actuary was threatened with dismissal if he spoke up. The bill would not have passed had the higher cost been known.

Now Republicans are demanding that somehow those costs be held down. Senate Budget Committee Chairman Judd Gregg, R-N.H., said, "Since it was sold as a $400 billion program, that's what we should keep it at." And Democrats are clamoring for the drug law to be reopened to include two new provisions — allowing the government to negotiate discounts and legalizing reimportation of cheaper drugs from Canada.

Congress is already skeptical of the cost estimates in Bush's new 2006 budget and the assumptions he's using to justify Social Security reform, and this latest little slipup hasn't helped the administration's credibility on numbers.

New realities for defense

Iraq and Afghanistan have changed all that. How much is evident in President Bush's proposed $419.3 billion 2006 defense budget.

The Air Force and the Navy, the glamour services of the Cold War, take a couple of hits. The new budget smiles on the ground troops — Army and Marine forces who have done the bulk of the heavy lifting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Navy loses a number of planned ships — two destroyers, two submarines and two amphibious warfare ships— and one of its 12 aircraft carriers will be retired. Bush would close production of the F-22 in 2008 after 179 aircraft, 96 fewer than the Air Force had hoped for, and shut down production of the C-130 transport in 2007. Even missile defense, long a Bush priority, took a $1 billion hit. All of these programs, however, have powerful congressional patrons, so the last word hasn't been spoken.

The main defense budget would cut Army spending a fraction to $100 billion in 2006. But the main budget doesn't include two supplemental appropriations — $81 billion the administration will introduce shortly and $25 billion approved last year — to support operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The bulk of that money goes to the Army.

The number of uniformed personnel will remain steady at 2.2 million, but the Navy will lose 20,000 slots, and the Army will gain 30,000, to 1.1 million. More of those will be in the combat arms as non-combat duties are passed to civilians or the reserves. The Army will scale back on artillery and air-defense units in favor of civil air and military police units, two specialties that have proved vital in Iraq.

The number of Army mobile combat brigades, intended for rapid deployment, will increase from 33 to 43. And $3.4 billion, an increase of $600 million from last year, will be spent on the Army's Future Combat System, a futuristic network linking commanders with every aspect of the battlefield.

The Marines, meanwhile, will be restructured to add two more infantry battalions and their associated reconnaissance and intelligence units, again as part of a quick-response strategy in the war on terror.

The Pentagon has looked at the foreseeable future of war, and it is Fallujah.

YOUR VIEWS

Follow money trail on immigration

Well, it gets less confusing but more embarrassing as the citizenry begins to understand there are already strict, detailed federal laws on the books, which our leaders have taken an oath to enforce, that mandate in unquestionable terms that no public or private employer shall hire illegal folks and that illegal folks shall be reported to authorities for deportation.

Our citizenry is also becoming more familiar with the term "follow the money." And, as they curiously elect to follow the money trail, are led from the illegal folk to their employers to the employers' PAC to the PAC's Congressfolks' campaign to national media that is used to convince the citizenry that these Congressfolks should remain firmly ensconced in their seats of royalty.

Well, what else is our citizenry left to believe except that it's obviously much more important that our elected leaders hold on to their term-unlimited jobs than risk losing them because of some silly border dispute.

The citizenry sadly opines, "We have found the enemy, and he is us."

Armond "Si" Simmons
Pell City 35128

Gullible

But why are people upset at the latest neocon propaganda scheme? For years, journalists like Cal Thomas and Thomas Sowell have been paid by neocon think tanks to use their pens like pitchforks to spread neocon propaganda.

What disturbs me is that a gullible public believes neocon propaganda and ignores economic reality of our decaying nation. Bush has pushed our national debt above $7 trillion with trillions more to come. China is the biggest lender to the United States, and it could force the United States into bankruptcy anytime it chooses. China just signed oil agreements with Venezuela, and the United States must accept the actions of its biggest lender, effectively destroying the Monroe Doctrine.

The United States is the world's only military superpower but the dynamic duo of China and India could be the world's only economic superpower in the 22nd century. Why don't neocon propagandists tell the public how Bush is losing the war on our economy?

Joe Boyett
Montgomery 36111

May be better off

Some dog owners in Shelby County are selfish, cruel and unfeeling. Maybe the animals they give up are better off without them. Hopefully, they will find good homes and loving owners.

Carolyn B. Biddinger
Trussville 35173

OTHER VIEWS

Schwarzenegger on verge of transforming California

By GEORGE WILL
THE WASHINGTON POST WRITERS GROUP

Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican populist, practices what Leon Trotsky preached — permanent revolution. He is in perpetual campaign mode, wielding his celebrity and theatricality to keep the Legislature nervous about being bypassed by lawmaking-by-referendum, a constitutional weapon that is a Hiram Johnson legacy.

If Schwarzenegger successfully employs the plebiscitary mechanism this year, he will approach re-election next year ranked among the state's most transformative governors. And ripples raised by the boulders he is throwing into this nation-state's political pool will roll eastward across the country.

Placed in office by plebiscite — the recall of Gov. Gray Davis — just 16 months ago, Schwarzenegger has started the clock on a countdown to what could be a November to remember. He has submitted to the Democratic-controlled Legislature four proposals aimed at unlocking some interlocking political and economic irrationalities produced by a political class that has treated public office as private property. Because the Legislature probably will not act soon and affirmatively, ballot language has been drafted and fund-raising for four ratification campaigns has begun.

One initiative would empower school districts to award teachers merit pay based on performance as the districts decide to measure that. Merit pay pits Schwarzenegger against the 335,000-member California Teachers Association and other teachers unions.

A second initiative would change the retirement system for state and local employees, now 2 million strong. The state, facing a deficit of at least $8 billion, will pay a $2.6 billion share of those employees' retirement this year, up from only $160 million just four years ago. Under Schwarzenegger's proposal, government workers hired after June 2007 would be enrolled in privately managed accounts akin to 401(k)s, with the state matching up to 6 percent of their salaries, 9 percent for public safety officers. Sixteen states have adopted or are considering private accounts as voluntary options. Opposition by government employees unions, who nationwide wield the investment power of many hundreds of billions of dollars in retirement funds, killed a similar proposal in California seven years ago.

In most Schwarzenegger movies things blow up, and a third initiative is part of his promise to "blow up the boxes" of government. It would impose across-the-board spending cuts when the Legislature cannot achieve a balanced budget. This would counter the effect of many previous referendums that mandate spending, such as the one that guarantees 40 percent of general revenues for elementary and secondary education. They have placed roughly 70 percent of the general fund budget beyond the Legislature's control.

Regarding spending-by-referendum, Schwarzenegger, too, is a sinner. His worst decision as governor was supporting a referendum committing $6 billion in state funds (counting interest on the bonds) for stem cell research to stimulate biotech industries. That is "industrial policy," aka socialism.

Schwarzenegger's fourth and most important initiative would end the racket of redistricting devoted to incumbent-protection. In November, not one of 153 state legislative or congressional districts changed party control. Schwarzenegger proposes taking redistricting away from the political class' computers and empowering a panel of retired judges to draw district lines. Schwarzenegger delightedly recalls that when he was in Washington for the Inauguration, some members of Congress, not just Californians or Democrats, begged him to abandon his — to them — appalling assault on the right of legislators to pick their voters.

Democrats now hold 33 of California's 53 congressional seats. Last November, just three of the 53 races were won with less than 60 percent. Increasing competitiveness statewide probably would disproportionately increase Republican turnout in a state Bush lost by 10 percent in 2004, without seriously campaigning in it. If California again becomes competitive in presidential elections, Democratic candidates, deprived of 55 sure electoral votes, will be disadvantaged.

If all four measures go to the ballot — "the train," Schwarzenegger says, "has already left the station"; the process "is on automatic pilot" — he expects opponents to spend a combined $200 million. He plans to raise $50 million and believes that if he is outspent by only four to one, he will win. His confidence approaches mysticism. Extending an arm, his palm toward his face and his fingers curved as though holding an invisible orb, he says ingenuously, "If I can see it" — any goal — "I can achieve it. And I have the ability to see it."

He sees California's political system reopened, like concrete cracked by a jackhammer, and sees the state's social system reinvigorated by an economy liberated. "The world," says this man who is used to being looked at, "is looking at us." Come November, the nation certainly will be.

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