CASA GRANDE - Steny Hoyer, minority whip of the U.S. House of Representatives, was in Casa Grande last Wednesday campaigning for Paul Babbitt, the Democratic candidate in the 1st Congressional District.
Hoyer, who has been in Congress since 1981, represents Maryland, but he was campaigning in Arizona because in Congress: "You can't do it alone."

"We need 12 more Democrats in the House of Representatives to change the direction we're going in this country," he said.

He wants Babbitt, a longtime Arizona resident, city councilman, mayor and 18 years a Coconino County supervisor, to be one of those Democrats in the House.

The labels "conservative and liberal" are not as important as the way someone acts on specific issues, he said.

The United States has a $445 billion deficit this year, he said as an example.

"The entire debt accumulated by all of our forebears from 1789 to 1980 was $985 billion total," Hoyer said.

"Last year, with Republicans in control of both the House and the Senate, we increased the debt of the United States over $975 billion - in one year - to about $7 trillion."

The first Bush administration - which was before the war on terrorism, before the recession and before corporate scandals - created $1.2 trillion in additional debt.

This Bush administration has created another $1.6 trillion in debt.

In between the two Bush administrations, Bill Clinton was president for eight years, Hoyer said. The Democrats set economic policy, and the country took on no additional debt.

"Over those eight years we had a net surplus of $61 billion, Hoyer said.

He said he votes for balanced budget amendments, and he knows Babbitt will be fiscally conservative.

"When the budget is out of whack, that much and that long, it soon undermines everything that we can do as a nation."

It undermines the economy in the private sector, he said, and it undermines the government's ability to pay down the debt.

and protect programs like Social Security and Medicare.

"Some people don't believe Social Security ought to exist," Hoyer said. "I believe it is one of the best programs America has ever had, because it has saved billions of seniors from poverty."

Hoyer said he tells young people, "You care about Social Security and you care about Medicare, because your parents, your mom, your dad, do not have to call upon you to support them."

The cost of prescription drugs is a crisis in America, Hoyer said.

When Medicare was created in 1965, prescription drugs were an insignificant part of medical practice. Today they are most significant. Many lives depend on them.

Democrats wanted to add a guaranteed prescription drug benefit to Medicare that would be voluntary, guaranteed, fully accessible and affordable with a $25 premium. It would have cost $980 billion.

In February 2001, Bush came to Congress and said there was a $5.6 trillion surplus, Hoyer said.

"If you took 18 percent of it you could have funded the entire prescription drug program," Hoyer said.

Bush gave tax cuts to some of the wealthiest people in the country instead.

The Republicans then wrote a Medicare prescription drug bill that will be indexed, so premiums will increase as the cost of drugs increase, Hoyer said. And the cost of drugs has been increasing at a rate three times the cost of living.

It took three hours for the House to pass the Republican Medicare prescription drug bill, Hoyer said. It was the longest vote he could remember.

"For two hours and 45 minutes, the majority of members of the House of Representatives were voting against that bill," he said. "And they spent three hours bludgeoning members to vote for the bill."

Sixty-five to 70 percent of seniors think it is a bad deal. And it is, he said.

There is no guarantee premiums will stay at $35, he said. A Medicare-approved HMO will pay roughly one-half the cost up to $2,250. Then the patient will pick up all the costs until he spends $3,600. During that time he will continue to pay the monthly premiums with no benefits.

"That's called 'the doughnut hole,'" Hoyer said.

The law also forbids Medicare's representatives from negotiating to lower prescription drug prices, the way Veterans Affairs does.

The law also forbids reimportation of prescription drugs from countries that do negotiate prices.

"So even though the same drug is 50 percent cheaper in Canada or Mexico, you cannot reimport it. It is against the law."

Until the benefits start in 2006, beneficiaries can change discount cards once a year. The pharmaceutical companies can change their formularies every week.

"And they can tell you, 'Oh, by the way, that drug you're taking, it's not covered. We changed our formulary.'"

Rep. W.J. "Billy" Tauzen, R-La., was the chairman of the committee that reported this bill out, Hoyer said.

"He called it a great bill," Hoyer said. "They said it would cost $395 billion. Sixty days later, they came back and said, 'Oh, we made a mistake. It's going to cost $534 billion.'"

That is a mistake of more than 35 percent, Hoyer said.

The Washington Post reported Feb. 4 that Tauzin, who retires in December, turned down a job as president of the Motion Picture Association of America for more than $1 million a year. He had received a larger offer to head the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the trade group that represents the giant drug companies.

"How objective was his statement that this was "good for seniors"? Hoyer asked.

Some people don't believe Medicare should exist, Hoyer said. Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, was quoted as saying: "Medicare ought not to exist in a free society."

"They're not hiding their objective," Hoyer said.

The new law also will force Medicare to compete with the private sector, which will syphon off the healthier patients, leaving a higher risk pool in Medicare.

The higher the risk pool, the higher the premiums, until the only people left in Medicare will be the least healthy and most at risk, and Medicare will be priced out of the market.

This is a very important election, Hoyer said. There are deep gulfs of differences between the two parties. He urged voters to sent Babbitt to Congress to help make changes.

©Casa Grande Valley Newspapers Inc. 2004