Word: starkness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Later that day, the Democrats got their revenge. Prodded by subcommittee chairman Fortney (Pete) Stark of California, they pushed through a plan that expands Medicare to achieve universal coverage while cutting back substantially on the White House's proposed benefits to hold down costs. Gone are such high-price items as long-term care and limits on out-of-pocket expenses for catastrophic illness. Under this plan, Medicare patients would foot 20% of their home-health-service bills, which is double what Clinton envisioned. The resulting savings of $6 billion, coupled with a cigarette-tax hike of $1.25 a pack...
...Tennessee, whose stalled plan was upstaged at a moment when he is running hard to capture the Senate seat vacated by Vice President Gore, said dismissively that a bill that passes in committee "by a one-vote partisan majority is one that doesn't have any legs or wings." Stark rejoined sarcastically: "I just think he's exactly what Tennessee deserves, and I wish him Godspeed in the Senate." As for Cooper's plan, Stark says, "His bill is all pap and blather. Everybody's got to love it because it doesn't do anything...
Actually, what the Stark bill does is play to the same crucial audience that Cooper's plan targets: small-business owners, who are worried that mandatory health costs could force them out of business. This group is now the focus of others' attention as well. John Dingell, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has begun circulating another proposal, similar to Stark's, which Cooper complains is a narrow effort designed simply to win half a dozen Democratic swing votes...
...stark beauty of their music is offset by the uncompromisingly doomed outlook of their lyrics; like a lover who delicately cuts you and forces you to stay and watch yourself bleed, the Junkies draw you into a wonderful, desperate, lonely world. Their songs so often perfectly describe the physical pain of broken hearts, the lonesome, romantic path down the road of fated love...
Despite the unquestionable hardships and the perils of his hours on the "slime line," Herne concludes that he would, "do it all again." In a way," he reflects, in a land of stark, uncompromising beauty, in a world where you succeed by virtue of sheer hard work and persistence, "it is the quintessential triumph of the American Dream...