SeniorCare and other bills

should be judged on merit

Tuesday, April 24, 2007 4:56 PM CDT

It's enough to make us fidget.

We have argued long and hard trying to convince the Bush administration to grant an extension for the state's popular SeniorCare prescription drug program that serves 104,000 Wisconsin seniors.

Gov. Jim Doyle and U.S. Sen. Herb Kohl have both been pressing the issue - so far unsuccessfully - with the administration which has rejected a three-year extension, but might consider a six-month extension that would allow the state some breathing room to come up with something new.

The arguments for the program are compelling - it is popular with seniors, it is simple to administer and to apply for and it would save the federal government money - some $26 million over five years. That strikes us as compelling, anyhow, but the administration still seems determined to squeeze Wisconsin into its one-size-fits-all-states Medicare D plan.

It's been a frustrating fight.

So we were tempted - at least briefly - to cheer Tuesday when we heard Kohl had inserted a two-year extension of SeniorCare into the Iraq war spending bill.

Until we got a sudden vision of our congressional delegation working both sides of the street.

On Monday U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold and U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan were in Oak Creek touting their plan for bipartisan legislation that would give the president the power to strike earmarks from broader bills and have Congress consider them separately - even as Kohl was busy back in Washington inserting the SeniorCare extension into the war funding bill.

It was like watching them pound on the front door and slip out the back door at the same time.

Sure, we'd like to see SeniorCare extended. We think the whole notion of encouraging states to come up with innovative program that help their citizens and cut costs is an excellent idea and one that Washington should be encouraging, not impeding.

But we'd also feel a bit greasy if an extension came about by being tucked into a piece of legislation that is wholly unrelated � an action that usually drives up the cost of legislation and has, for instance, boosted the cost of the war funding bill by more than 20 percent because it is so laden with home-state pork-barrel spending projects.

The Kohl-authored extension is probably a moot point since President Bush has said he will veto the war funding bill because it contains deadlines for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq.

We'll thank Sen. Kohl for his efforts and wish him luck in the SeniorCare fight, but we would savor it more if an extension came on the program's merits � and that would be a good standard for all of Congress' actions on spending and other legislation as well.

Special Offer: Get 5 Weeks of the Journal Times for $7!