Word: coopered
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Congressman Jim Cooper is under attack by the White House -- and he's $ relishing every minute of it. "That's a special place of honor," he says. "It's the highest compliment you can be paid in politics." Actually, it's not the soft-spoken Tennessee Democrat himself who has rankled the Administration. It's Cooper's health-care plan, a centrist proposal that has become the clear favorite of the Democratic Leadership Council, the very forum that served as the launching pad for Clinton's assault on the Oval Office. "Who am I? I'm a nobody," Cooper demurs...
...Clintons, the problem with Cooper's plan is that it threatens to usurp the political turf the Administration needs to claim: the middle ground. The plan appeals to conservatives by shunning the Clinton requirement that all employers pay 80% of workers' health premiums. It appeases moderates by trimming employers' tax deductions on premiums. And it mollifies free marketeers by doing away with Clinton's proposed caps on insurance premiums. "We're the only bipartisan approach," Cooper maintains. "We're true to managed competition...
...conundrum. How do you silence someone who is presumably a star tenor in your own choir? The trick, apparently, is to publicly praise the renegade for his perfect pitch -- then start a whisper campaign that he sings off-key. Last Wednesday, White House health guru Ira Magaziner praised Cooper's plan repeatedly during a speech before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The next day, Clinton told TIME that his Administration's much-ballyhooed dispute with Cooper "has been thrown out of proportion. I think there can be a deal there...
...Cooper's article on page 12, "Fat Isn't Funny," concludes, "...starvation, suffering, discrimination and social rejection are no laughing mater." Actually, Amy, add "beer" to that list, and you've got yourself some really funny hazing. Goooo, final clubs! Yeah...
...Administration is hoping that the Democratic Leadership Council, the moderate group that helped PRESIDENT CLINTON'S election but has been ignored, will back away from the Cooper-Breaux health-care plan, the chief rival to the Clinton plan in Congress. With this in mind, Clinton will speak at the DLC's annual conference on Friday. It may be a tough sell: DLC president Al From has privately criticized the Clinton plan and said Ira Magaziner, the White Houses health guru, has a "Rasputin-like hold" on the President and Mrs. Clinton...