WASHINGTON (REUTERS) — Former President Bill Clinton blasted President Bush’s proposed tax cuts Thursday, saying some of the money should be funneled into a renewed effort to finally fix the U.S. health-care system, this time in a bipartisan fashion.
Clinton’s speech, a rare public appearance in Washington and his first major address on his signature issue of health care since leaving office, comes as pollsters detect growing public anxiety about health insurance and a return of double-digit health-care inflation.
Clinton did not offer solutions as sweeping as his failed 1993-94 drive for universal health care, an initiative for which he acknowledged Democrats paid a steep political price.
But he outlined steps to try to halt the growth of the uninsured, such as pruning Bush’s proposed $674 billion tax cut and sending money instead to help states shore up health programs for poor people and uninsured children, programs that are being pared by the states’ worsening budget crises.
Clinton noted his own post-presidential affluence as he echoed the Democratic attack on Bush’s tax cuts as a boon for millionaires. Instead of spending the money on Medicare and Social Security, Clinton said, Bush wants “to give it to me!”
‘Take my money and make America well’
“It’s bad ethics and terrible economics,” Clinton told an enthusiastic audience at the Families USA health-advocacy conference. “Take my money and make America well.”
He also said he couldn’t figure out why the Republicans wanted tax cuts that would deepen the deficit.
“The first thing you ought to do when you find yourself in a hole is quit digging,” he said. “Instead, they are looking for a bigger shovel.”
Speaking days before Bush’s State of the Union address, Clinton called for freezing some 2001 tax breaks for the rich and reshaping Bush’s new proposal to emphasize short-term job creation and aid to families and small businesses.
Clinton acknowledged that any attempt to fix health care had to be bipartisan and called on the players in the health-care debate to declare a political truce.
He scolded those who say the nation can’t worry about its health system while it is dealing with terrorism, Iraq and North Korea. “That’s why you develop a brain, so you can think about more than one thing at a time.”
In addition to more aid to the states, Clinton called for a Medicare drug benefit for the elderly and expansion of the Children’s Health Insurance Program created under his watch to cover parents and possibly young adults.
He disagreed with the Republican plan to cap malpractice lawsuit awards, but he did say that some reform to the medical liability system was worth trying. He also called for a national program to help turn scientific discoveries into cures and treatments more quickly.
Also Thursday, Louisiana Democratic Sen. John Breaux proposed a new universal health-care initiative, which he called a new “social contract” blending public- and private-sector health programs.
Everybody would be required to have insurance, but lower- and middle-income people would be subsidized through tax credits, and everybody would be guaranteed health care at group rates, which are much lower than individual policies.
A centrist, Breaux is often a key player in forging health-care policy compromises.
