Healthy Recess

...It will begin in mid-September with what Tony Blankley, Gingrich's flack, calls "a two-week rollout campaign" that includes a speech to the nation, TV ads, town meetings, and congressional hearings...

...This fits perfectly with the Republican strategy of framing their plans for Medicare reform as bold action needed to avert bankruptcy rather than spending restraint required to balance the budget and cut taxes...

...But others remain anxious, especially Pete Domenici of New Mexico, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee...

...Before the recess, even conservative senators like Trent Lott of Mississippi, the GOP whip, and Spencer Abraham of Michigan, the most influential of the Republican freshmen, were privately proposing to trim the $270 billion target, make a deal with President Clinton, and take Medicare off the table as a hot political issue...

...So for Republicans, winning is practically everything...

...Chris Dodd, chairman of the Democratic National Committee...

...They don't want it nitpicked to death like Clinton's health care plan was last year...

...The second reason for Republicans' preliminary success is they took some of the sting out of their plan by presenting it as bipartisan or even nonpartisan...

...Dodd pulled the ad...

...The Democratic National Committee launched attack ads on TV, and the American Association of Retired Persons, a reliable ally of Democrats, conducted town meetings...

...In the Senate, Republicans aren't so sure...

...On the PR front, Wilensky gave presentations in senior-heavy districts, and some House Republicans, such as Jim Kolbe of Arizona and Jon Fox of Pennsylvania, established Medicare task forces...

...John Lewis led over 100 union members in a demonstration...

...On the public opinion front, Republicans have already achieved a level of success that amazes even them...

...Medicare Fiction" and ran radio ads in 11 Democratic congressional districts charging that the targeted member was "ignoring Medicare's looming bankruptcy...

...Also aiding the Republicans was Ross Perot...

...Who'd have thought six months ago," asks Rep...

...Fifty-six percent disagreed...

...Members were told to emphasize the $270 billion figure is not a "cut," but a "reduction in the rate of growth," and that much of the savings can be made up through controls on fraud and abuse...

...Some foes are ready...

...The key to success will be getting out of the gates quickly, says Tom Scully of the Federation of American Health Systems...

...Sounds like pre-emptive surrender, said Rep...

...Declared House Speaker Newt Gingrich: "By the end of August, it is fair to say that on the core questions-does Medicare need to be saved and do you want to see somebody do something about Medicare?-we had won...

...The Medicare strategy, as devised by Gingrich, is to win three simultaneous battles: for public opinion, the activist groups, and substance...

...At the least, the onslaught will exceed anything Republicans experienced at home during the August recess...

...Another poll showed 76 percent back "fundamental" change in how Medicare works...

...When a TV spot charged that "Republicans are wrong to want to cut Medicare benefits," Democratic Rep...

...So far, they've done a good job of this...

...To prevent a sustained attack, Republicans have delayed, until the last minute, releasing the contents of the Medicare bill...

...The worst case is that Democrats, the AARP, and other liberal groups will click with their attacks on the substance of the Medicare proposal...

...Bill Paxon of New York, that the public would come to believe Medicare must be reformed...

...This prompted grumblings from the right, and op-eds started appearing in the Washington Times and Human Events, warning of a return to "ClintonCare...

...A few days later, a House Ways and Means committee draft Medicare proposal, outlining dramatic increases in monthly Medicare premiums and the exclusion of medical savings accounts, was leaked to the Washington Post...

...Gingrich told the Washington Times: "If we win the Medicare debate...

...But neither of these August offensives frightened Republicans or aroused the public...

...To put it mildly, Republicans have a lot riding on the Medicare fight...

...And Majority Leader Bob Dole is ambivalent...

...In his September 5 speech to the Economic Club of Chicago, Dole promised "this will not be an autumn of compromise," then contradicted himself by asking Clinton "for the good of the country [to] agree to take Medicare out of the realm of politics...

...Other opponents are expected to weigh in heavily...

...The authors of the Medicare trustees report, which predicted last April that the trust fund would go broke in 2002, were three Clinton administration Cabinet secretaries: Robert Reich, Donna Shalala, and Robert Rubin...

...Indeed, Republicans will be in hot water unless they immediately define what they're doing on their own terms...

...Dole insisted it wasn't...

...They were given a slogan-"preserve, protect and strengthen"-to describe their goal for Medicare ("improve" was dropped from the slogan after polling found senior citizens didn't believe the idea of improving Medicare was credible...

...More striking still was a poll for the RNC showing the public trusts Congress more than Clinton (57 percent to 30 percent) to rescue Medicare...

...He testified before the Senate Finance Committee on August 29, and his new book, Intensive Care: We Must Save Medicare and Medicaid Now, lays out ideas in rough agreement with those being talked about by the GOP The third element was that Republicans persuaded themselves that something must be done about the financing of Medicare and that the public agreed...

...While there were no major explosions over the recess, a few brush fires needed tending...

...On their side, roughly $10 million worth of advertising will support the GOP Medicare effort, much of it funded by the Coalition for Change, an amalgam of conservative and business groups...

...To the extent this message has gotten across to the public, it's been for three reasons...

...Dan Miller, whose southwestern Florida district has a higher ratio of senior citizens (35 percent) than any congressional district in the country...

...I simply cannot support this type of partisan activity," he said in an August 18 letter to Sen...

...When House Republicans left Washington for the August recess, they received a blue briefing book that detailed the lessons learned from the hearings...

...And on September 6, a number of conservative and free-market groups met with Sheila Burke, Bob Dole's chief of staff, to discuss Medicare...

...While this is a stretch, the GOP had a couple of valuable allies...

...Republicans aren't home free yet on Medicare, however...

...Now, they are less squeamish...

...The mud thrown by Democrats in their 13-state advertising campaign either didn't stick or, in South Dakota, backfired...

...Case in point: Rep...

...Just this year, the House has held 29 hearings, and the Senate nine hearings, on Medicare...

...John Linder of Georgia, a Gingrich confidant...

...House members had not been brutalized at town meetings during the August recess, as some had feared, over GOP plans to save $270 billion in Medicare spending (and thus balance the budget in seven years...

...The book was composed of 20 overhead slides, answers to likely questions, and a Medicare primer prepared by Gail Wilensky, a former administrator of the Health Care Financing Administration...

...we have established a framework for a conservative majority for a generation...

...Polling substantiates exactly that...

...What he didn't say is that if they lose, the rest of the Republican agenda, plus the party's prospects in 1996, is in jeopardy...

...For now at least, activist groups have been neutralized...

...Abraham was scarcely asked about Medicare at all while in Michigan...

...On August 7, Gingrich had to delay an appearance at a Congressional Institute Medicare forum in Atlanta after Democratic Rep...

...Peter Ferrara, a free-market health guru at the Washington-based National Center for Policy Analysis, conferred with key House Republican aides...

...When Medicare was raised at his trailer park town meetings in June and July, the anger was not so much with the GOP but with "the system" for letting the financing get out of control...

...Many Republicans distributed summaries of this report at their town meetings...

...A national survey in August by Frank Luntz found only 36 percent agreed that "if balancing the budget requires cuts in Medicare or slowing Medicare spending, I'd rather not balance the budget...

...AFSCME, the state and local government employee union, scheduled its $2 million print, television, and radio campaign to begin just before the GOP unveiled its Medicare proposal...

...In a Times Mirror poll in August, 87 percent said they'd heard about Medicare's serious financial problems...

...The town meetings held by most House Republicans had gone swimmingly, with few protests over Medicare...

...First, in true Gingrich style, Republicans were prepared for a fight...

...The Republican National Committee issued daily press releases in August on "Medicare Fact vs...

...Tim Johnson of South Dakota urged the ad be withdrawn there...

...Conservative grumbling quieted some...

...The GOP plan is to accelerate consideration of Medicare reform (a vote is expected in early October), leaving opponents with only two weeks to mount criticism...

...Republicans appeased the major concerns of conservative and free-market groups, particularly that the reform plan would force old folks into HMOs, not simply encourage them to give up traditional fee-for-service care...

...Gingrich isn't worried, but other Republicans fret over what will happen when the specifics are presented publicly...

...Nineteen conservative activists-Gary Bauer, Phyllis Schlafly, Paul Weyrich, etc.-complained to Gingrich in a letter...

...Also, 52 percent disagreed that Republicans "want to cut Medicare spending to find money to pay for their tax cut for the rich...