Invitation To

There are few more abject sights than that of Congress surrendering to interest-group pressure. But even by the craven standards of Capitol Hill, it was striking when the House voted 360 to 66 last week to rescind the Medicare catastrophic health-insurance program that it had lopsidedly approved amid a self-congratulatory frenzy just last year. The Senate showed enough moxie to save fragments of the plan, but it too voted to kill a special income-tax surcharge (up to $800) that would have been levied solely on the affluent elderly to help fund the program.

Is selfishness to blame? In truth, the 1988 legislation was badly flawed, albeit well-intentioned. Reflecting the read-my-lips era, Congress mistakenly insisted that catastrophic insurance had to be self-financing, with none of the subsidy coming from general tax revenues. Small wonder that the most prosperous Medicare recipients, largely protected by private health insurance, rebelled against being singled out to aid the less fortunate. That responsibility should rest with all taxpayers. Despite the phony fixation on fiscal gimmicks, broad-based taxation remains the fairest way to fund federal programs. It is a principle that Congress and the White House ignore at their peril.