Democrats Put G.O.P. on Spot as Medicare Plan Fails

Democrats staged the vote to press their advantage coming out of their victory on Tuesday in the contest, fought in large part over Medicare, for a House seat in upstate New York that had long been in Republican hands. Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, brought the legislation to the floor so that Senate Republicans would either have to vote for it, exposing them to attacks from Democrats and their allies, or against it, exploiting growing Republican divisions on the issue.

Five of 47 Senate Republicans voted against it — four because they said it went too far, one on the ground that the budget measure that contained it did not go far enough fast enough to address the budget deficit.

The House Republican Medicare plan would convert it into a subsidized program for the private insurance market. When they proposed it last month as the centerpiece of their budget plan, Republicans were confident that the wind of budget politics was at their backs.

But the last six weeks have left Republicans pointed into a something more like a headwind. With polls and angry town hall meetings suggesting that many voters were wary of a Medicare overhaul if not opposed, party unity and optimism have given way to a bit of a Republican-on-Republican rumpus.

House leaders have made clear they will not try to pass Medicare legislation this year. Some Republican candidates and elected officials have moved to distance themselves from the plan, even as others remain in chin-out defense of it and others still are declining to commit themselves one way or another.

With the Democratic victory in the House race, many House Republicans argued that Democrats had no credible plan of their own to ensure the long-term survival of Medicare, and reprised their criticism of the health care overhaul, including Medicare spending cuts, that Democrats passed in the last Congress.

But Democrats, hopeful that the Medicare fight is a path to a political turnabout, are clinging to the recent developments like koalas to eucalyptus trees, insisting that the New York race was, as Senator  Kirsten E. Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, said, “a bellwether for elections to come.”

It is still a long way to Election Day 2012, the underlying problem of a long-term fiscal imbalance remains as pressing as ever, and Democrats face divisions and message problems of their own. After the Senate vote on the House Republican Medicare plan, the Senate voted 97 to 0 on Wednesday to reject the budget put forward early this year by President Obama, reflecting a recognition by Democrats that they will have to do more than they initially proposed to rein in the expansion of the national debt and address the rising costs of Medicare and other entitlement programs.

But after a 2010 election that seemed to signal not only a Republican resurgence but also a rejection of big government and a need for bold, Tea Party-type steps to slash spending, the politics now look much more complicated. Both parties are being reminded anew that voters like the idea of budget cuts, but that they often recoil when those cuts threaten the programs that touch their lives.

The divisions among Republicans over the Medicare plan are in large part situational.

Three of the Republicans senators who voted against the House plan on Wednesday are moderates from Northeastern states: Scott P. Brown of Massachusetts and Susan Collins and Olympia J. Snowe of Maine. A fourth, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, won re-election in November as a write-in candidate after being defeated in the Republican primary. The fifth, Rand Paul of Kentucky, voted no on the ground that the House plan, drafted by Representative Paul D. Ryan, the chairman of the Budget Committee, took too long to pay down the national debt.

Candidates looking to shore up their conservative bona fides among Republican presidential primary voters, like Jon M. Huntsman Jr., a former governor of Utah, have praised the plan. Some Congressional incumbents, like Ms. Snowe, weighed the respective threats of Tea Party primary challengers against the wrath of moderate or elderly voters, and decided not to support it.

Some presidential candidates seeking to appeal to a broader base, like former Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, are trying to split the difference, saying that the plan is adequate but that they will offer their own that will be even more refined.

Others still, like George Allen, a Republican candidate for Senate in Virginia, appear to be trying to figure out where the political minefields are, and refuse to say if they support the plan.

Just as each candidate must take a measure of his own race, the party’s response is also driven by circumstances. Newt Gingrich, a presidential candidate who seemed to think he could walk his party back from an increasingly toxic issue, denounced the plan to great retribution from both the establishment and Tea Party wings, and had to recant. Mr. Brown, who is running for re-election in a tough state, said he would vote against the plan but was greeted largely by silence within his party.

But Democrats by no means have a smooth course, either. While Mr. Obama has tried to set parameters for budget negotiations, his party has yet to settle on a plan for Medicare or the broader budget issues. And failure to address the nation’s fiscal problems aggressively could carry its own risk for Democrats, something former President Bill Clinton warned his party about Wednesday.

“You shouldn’t draw the conclusion that the New York race means that nobody can do anything to slow the rate of Medicare costs,” Mr. Clinton said at a budget forum sponsored by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. “I just don’t agree with that.”

Instead, he said: “You should draw the conclusion that the people made a judgment that the proposal in the Republican budget is not the right one. I agree with that.”

Representative Steny H. Hoyer, the minority whip, has said Medicare is “on the table” for any agreement with Republicans in the debt limit negotiations, a seeming nod to the notion that many Democrats, especially those in moderate districts, are loath to go back to their districts and brag about doing nothing to rein in the costly entitlement program.

View the original article here

Survivors Cower as New Storm Brews but Passes

Patrick Fallon for The New York TimesBrie Watson, a nurse, directed people to the stairwells as they moved to the basement of the Red Cross shelter at the Missouri Southern State University gymnasium on Tuesday night as another storm passed nearby.

JOPLIN, Mo. — As rescue workers continue to sift through the wreckage of this city piece by piece, hoping to unearth survivors and victims of a lethal tornado, local leaders have been wrestling with the difficult question of when to start cleaning up the destroyed area.

TimesCast | Search Continues in Joplin

They know that ultimately they must sweep away what the storm did not.

But so far the word bulldoze is one that they have been hesitant to use in news conferences, as rescue and recovery efforts continue. But they acknowledge that it is only a matter of time before the battered and blown-down houses, which cover an area stretching more than a half-mile wide and six miles long, have to be stripped to their foundations and hauled away.

Standing in a wreckage-strewn park across from a hospital that is now only a concrete shell, the mayor pro tem, Melodee Colbert-Kean, said that officials understood the need to be careful about how fast they moved forward. In addition to the considerable logistical challenges, there are the emotional considerations imbued in the splintered lumber, crushed brick and strewn personal possessions — as well as the remains of the missing.

“To a lot of people, it’s just rubble,” she said. “But to a whole bunch more, it’s lives.”

That rubble was once assembled neatly into more than 5,000 buildings stretching through nearly a third of the city. Now it is where at least 125 people died, the most in a single tornado since modern record-keeping began in the United States in 1950. It is a rolling junkyard presided over by the jagged forms of denuded trees. The mess revealed a prosthetic leg, a college thesis, a live guinea pig, an empty wheelchair, a pocket watch, and a child’s doll.

Still, even residents of the hardest-hit area seemed to carry a gloomy resignation about what was surely ahead. “What else can you do but bulldoze it?” said Anna Kent, 54, as she wandered through rubble that once was a friend’s home in search of missing items. “They ought to draw a perimeter around all of it and take it all. What else can you do?”

After days exposed to the constant rain, these piles already smelled of mold. Nails and other sharp objects tore through tires and shoes alike. Even so, residents continued to stay in the damaged area, along with looters seeking both precious and scrap metal, and gawkers who have slowed emergency vehicles by creating traffic jams.

No new bodies or survivors were found Wednesday after the debris was searched a third time, said Mark Rohr, the city manager. City officials said that local leaders were already talking to the Army Corps of Engineers coming into the area to clear it of the wreckage, though it remained unclear where such a massive amount of material would go. Gov. Jay Nixon of Missouri said he waived certain restrictions to speed the clean-up effort.

As they talk of tearing down they are also discussing efforts to rebuild the area, with City Council members even discussing whether to change the zoning in certain areas to better reflect the development of this mostly blue-collar city of 49,000 in southwest Missouri. “We’re getting ready to have some lengthy City Council meetings,” said Gary Shaw, a city councilor and former mayor.

For many residents, imagining a rebuilt Joplin was too much, too fast. Yes, they said, Joplin will surely remake itself and people will build new homes and businesses. But, at the moment, the thought of a reshaped city felt faraway, said Kenny McGoyne, who was trying to find what was left of the bunk beds and chairs beneath his crumbled business, Kenny’s Used Furniture Emporium. “In a way, the place is already bulldozed,” he said. “I don’t know where we’ll go.”

Meanwhile, city officials were trying to find ways to manage access to the destroyed area. Law enforcement officials were posted at major intersections to keep people from entering, an effort that leaders said was aimed at preventing looting and gawking. A curfew was also put into effect restricting access after dark.

Monica Davey contributed reporting.

View the original article here