Brooks notes that the Medicare prescription drug plan, which will cost far more than the administration estimated as it was strong-arming Congress to pass it, is now so sacrosanct that the President is threatening to wield his veto pen in order to preserve it at the highest price possible.
In his most recent syndicated column, Brooks refers to conservative Representatives Mike Pence and Jeff Flake and Senators Judd Gregg and Lindsey Graham as among those who are ready to "readjust the program" to reflect fiscal realities.
Brooks writes:
These fiscal conservatives want to make the program sustainable. Perhaps the benefits should be limited to those earning up to 200 percent of the level at the poverty line. Perhaps the costs should be capped at $400 billion through other benefit adjustments. These ideas are akin to what the candidate George W. Bush proposed in 2000.
But the White House is threatening to veto anything they do! Bush, who hasn't vetoed a single thing during his presidency, now threatens to veto something -- and it's something that might actually restrain the growth of government. He threatens to use his first veto against an idea he originally proposed!
Have we entered another world, where up is down and rationality is irrational?
Someone should tell the President (and Karl Rove) that, if they want to make sense out of the nonsense they're creating, their most realistic course of action -- short of delivering on the Bush 2000 campaign promises of fiscal restraint and prudence -- may be to follow the White Rabbit down a hole. There they may find a land that better fits their psychedelia-colored fiscal non-restraint. My advice?
Go ask Alice, Mr. President.
I think she'll know
When logic and proportion
Have fallen so I'll be dead
And the white knight's talking backwards
And the Red Queen Says off with her head
Remember what the dormouse said
Feed your head
Feed your head
(Lyrics from "White Rabbit," by Grace Slick, as performed by Jefferson Airplane)
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