Senator Chuck Hagel, one of a handful of “moderate” Senate Republicans who doesn’t reflexively accept everything Karl Rove and Paul Wolfowitz trots out, wrote a recent editorial explaining why he voted against the Medicare reform bill. Hagel restates several typical objections to the bill: it favors special interests, lack of cost controls, confusing provisions, it isn’t tailored to fix today’s problems.
But the thing about this piece that caught my attention as much as anything was the title: “This Measure Will Not Strengthen Medicare.”
Nearly every time there’s a movement to change some program, politicians start talking about strengthening it. What does that mean? Does it mean anything?
The dictionary defines strengthen simply as “to make stronger” and more broadly as increasing the “capacity for exertion or endurance.” I think one might reasonably infer from this that when politicians talk about strengthening Medicare, they’re generally talking about extending the life or usefulness of Medicare.
So what does that mean? Given the direction of health care costs, the only way to prolong the life of government programs is to pour a bunch more money into them, which is one thing this Medicare bill does.
So why don’t politicians simply say the bill pours a lot more money into Medicare?
Clearly Republicans don’t want to run around bragging to their base how much they increased Medicare spending, because some voters don’t like that. Furthermore, this bill isn’t all about more spending; it also includes some provisions to privatize Medicare.
So why don’t the politicians talk about how the bill attempts to privatize Medicare? Because many voters are basically happy with Medicare and don’t want Congress to radically change it.
Since none of the things this bill does makes everyone happy, politicians don’t want to describe what the bill actually does because that will alienate voters. So instead they use a nebulous term like strengthen in the hope that voters will individually project whatever meaning he or she wants upon this term. That way, everyone is happy.
Anyone in favor of strengthening our military?
