Washington spending our money like water

Whatever comes of all its bright ideas, Washington sits astride the nation, if not the world, like never before. Its powers to regulate and direct the quality of life and determine the winners and losers of commerce have never been higher. They expand no matter which party or which ideology is in charge.

The conservative Bush administration is presiding over one of the biggest and most costly government build-outs in history -- much of it coming in the final weeks of a legislative session notable for its ruthlessness and partisanship. Massive legislation for energy production and Medicare prescription drug subsidies shower hundreds of billions of dollars in benefits on selected industries -- corn, soybeans, coal, oil, gas, drugs, hospitals -- like some five-year plan out of the old Soviet Union.

These measures follow the creation of the Department of Homeland Security -- a ballooning of the scope and cost of the federal government without precedent -- and a huge farm subsidy bill that Congress passed and Bush signed.

No matter how much Republicans say they want the marketplace to rule, the federal establishment under GOP control is determining winners and losers more than ever -- from telecommunications companies to pharmaceutical manufacturers to phone solicitors.

People want some of it. Restrictions on telemarketing and unsolicited e-mail "spam" are directly the result of public outrage over the abuses, just as the new and largely ineffective restrictions on campaign contributions were the result of political excesses.

Other new programs, however, show signs of the sort of intrusion into personal lives and businesses that Republicans used to roundly criticize during the Clinton years.

The GOP-dominated Federal Communications Commission decreed that local phone companies must switch numbers to consumers' cell phones on request.

That is an enormous cost for local phone companies that will be passed on to all users. But it's popular with some people and looks "free." So the happy-go-lucky band of federalists on the Potomac leads the national celebration of "cell phone independence day." Bottoms up.

The new Medicare bill, as described by its sponsors, sounds nearly as complicated as the one Hillary Clinton and Ira Magaziner formulated as a national health insurance plan in the 1990s. And, in places, it is nearly as paternalistic.

Requiring seniors to get a physical exam, sponsors say, will detect hidden diseases for thousands of people, but it could also put a major new strain on already overtaxed health services. It might also increase sales for certain drug companies, at the expense of taxpayers and consumers.

The sticker shock from Washington keeps on shocking and sticking.

There's the $87 billion for the occupation of Iraq, and $400 billion just for the prescription drug portion of the Medicare bill. Budget deficits are adding up to trillions of dollars, something the Concord Coalition's Warren Rudman calls nothing short of "Titanic."

Rudman, an old fashioned Republican, is drawing a grim future of tax increases, currency devaluations and collapsing pension funds as the bills arrive for our children and grandchildren.

The Republican Party, once associated with balanced budgets and fiscal prudence, now seems to have taken a head-snapping turn in the other direction. That has resulted in a backwards slide down a slippery slope for Democrats.

The Democratic presidential candidates, almost in unison for the first time, joined in condemning the most powerful lobby of retired people -- American Association of Retired Persons -- for backing the Medicare/prescription drug bill. The party of Roosevelt, Kennedy and Johnson opposed the most important expansion of Medicare since its inception. That will take some getting used to. Some moderate Democrats complained that liberals were just flailing about to protest the loss of their best social issue -- angry busloads of senior citizens going to Canada for cheaper drugs.

Years ago, when an expansion of federal health care to cover catastrophic illness was nearing approval in Congress, senior citizens beat on the hood of an automobile driven by Rep. Dan Rostenkowski of Illinois.

Now the Democratic candidates seem like they are beating on the hood of AARP in frustration while the profligate Republican leadership steals its best material and spends its way into the 2004 campaign.

John Hall is the senior Washington correspondent of Media General News Service. E-mail jhall@mediageneral.com.

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