Word: gop
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Have pity on the Republicans in Congress. While their leaders were holding a press event under a large 'Stop Robbing Social Security' banner, their own accountants were wistfully admitting that the GOP budget would in fact be "robbing Social Security" to the tune of $7.6 billion next year. The Congressional Budget Office, using more respectable accounting, calculated an even higher number of about $18 billion. Faced with that kind of shortfall, the Congressional Republicans chose a desperate and despicable strategy: fix the numbers, and let any attendant suffering fall on the poor...
...GOP had pledged so often to balance the non-Social Security budget and stay within preset spending caps that something had to be done. With defense and highway spending on the rise, the brunt of the cuts fell on health, education, and social service programs, but billions of dollars still remained to be accounted...
...hours, on a monthly basis rather than at the start of the year. This means that the payments for October, November, and December of the year 2000 would go on the fiscal year 2001 budget, turning about $9 billion in costs into the next Congress' problem. That means that GOP leaders can claim to have a $400 million surplus without touching Social Security, as long as no one looks at next year's books...
...Hill with a fury Wednesday as three separate bills - each allowing patients to sue their HMOs for uncovered medical costs, but in varying degrees - added to the general legislative tangle that has been the story of Capitol Hill this summer and fall. Things got complicated Tuesday when House GOP leaders did an about-face, gun-control-style, and sought to undercut a popular right-to-sue bill with a watered-down version of their own. That bill had Democratic backing and enough Republicans aboard to pass the House; now it?s mired in what the Dems say is GOP trickery...
...HMOs as the most lucrative enemy since Big Tobacco, and, most important, the angry patients on whose behalf the suits would be filed. Both sides have a point, even if they?re not above using "gamesmanship" to make it. But as it usually goes when Clinton and the House GOP brain trust square off, it ain?t hard to pick a winner...