8- The Michigan Daily - Thursday, September 7, 1995 GOP to'watch step'on popular programs NAlrqat4/woAl.m) The Washington Post WASHINGTON -- Republican members of the House came back to work yesterday instructed by their con- stituents to "keep it up," but "watch your step" on popular programs like Medicare. The contradictory-sounding mes- sages from a month of town meetings and home-district conversations are not enough to reverse the budget-cutting agenda of the new Republican majority but may make members take a second look at major changes planned for the big health-care program for the elderly, several members said. "I think it may take longer than we have anticipated to get the Medicare reforms our leadership has talked about," said Rep. Jack Quinn (R-N.Y.) a second-termer from Buffalo. Rep. George Nethercutt (R-Wash.) the freshman who defeated Dem. Speaker Tom Foley, last November, summed up the "yes, but" reaction to the drive for a balanced budget that began with the GOP takeover in Janu- ary. "A lot of people said, 'Keep going. Don't lose yourbackbone oryour will.' But at the same time, they were saying, 'Don't just look at the bottom line. Show(some compassion in how you get there,"'Nethercutt said. He said that in areas like education and Medicare and welfare reform, "we need to be careful that we don't just cut, but that we have a program that helps the people who need help." A number of members of both par- ties said their constituents told them to focus on eliminating fraud and waste from the Medicare program before considering changes in ben- efits or structure of the senior-citizen health program. From the Philadelphia suburbs rep- resented by freshman Rep. Jon Fox (R- Pa.) to the Bay Area district of Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) Medicare was Topic A. Republicans hope to achieve $270 billion in Medicare savings over the next seven years, in part by persuading seniors they can get a better deal by shifting from fee-for-service medicine, with unlimited choice of doctors, to managed-care plans from companies that contract with doctors and hospitals those patients must use. "Managed care does not go over well," Fox said. "The great majority Senate votes to expand funds for national defeinse Plan stops short of complete missile-defense deployment AP PHOTO House Speaker Newt Gingrich (right) huddles with (from second from right) House Majority Leader Dick Armey and Whip Trent Lott, during a news conference with Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole yesterday on Capitol Hill. prefer the system they have. They'd like to see the fraud and waste and abuse reduced before we start cutting benefits." "Seniors want a guarantee ofa choice of physicians," Eshoo agreed. Rep. Matt Salmon (R-Ariz.) another freshman, said, "Whenever we brought up managed care as an op- tion, people flinched. Obviously those in managed care need to do a little more PR." Rep. Peter G. Torkildsen (R-Mass.) a second-termer, said managed-care is familiarto many in the Bay State but the town meetings "just reinforced my be- lief that this has to be a major education campaign on our part" before seniors are comfortable with getting their care that way. Gore updates go* % vernent' The Washington Post WASHINGTON - Opening a sea- son of political maneuvering over the federal budget, President Clinton and Vice President Gore yesterday put the onus on Congress to produce agree- ments to keep the government running and began making the case that the "right" way to a balanced budget is not the "extreme" way the GOP proposes. Gore, in an interview, said his third annual status report on "reinventing government," which projects $70 bil- lion in new savings, shows how gov- ernment can be trimmed without "draconian" cuts. The vice president said the projected savings "from improved efficiency and from reinvention" roughly equal "the cuts others are proposing" in the administration's education, student loan and national service volunteer pro- grams. "So you can take your pick. You can cripple America's ability to compete in the future ... or you can create a govern- ment that works better and costs less and get the savings through reinven- tion," he said. The Washington Post WASHINGTON-The Senate voted yesterday to expand and accelerate plans for anational system ofdefenses against ballistic missile attack as part of a mili- tary spending package for next year that would force the Clinton adminis- tration to buy more weapons than it wants. But the legislation, scaled back to avoid Democratic delaying tactics, stops short oforiginal Republican plans to commit the United States to deploy a missile-defense system in seven years. The administration said that would have broken the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and stalled arms-reduction Clinton efforts. Instead, the legislation requires only that a missile-defense system be de- veloped by 2003, with Congress hav- ing to vote again before it could be deployed. Even with the bipartisan compro- mise on missile defense, Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) said the legislation is still too weapons- heavy and faces a presidential veto that Congress would be hard-pressed to override. The legislation, Daschle said, is "not anywhere near enactment." The missile-defense accord - brokered by Republicans John W. Warner of Virginia, William S. Cohen of Maine, and Democrats Sam Nunn or Georgia and Carl Levin of Michigan before Congress' August recess--was approved, 85 to 13. The only opposi- tion came from Democrats opposed to the program itself. Nunn said Defense Secretary Will- iam J. Perry regarded the compromise as a "dramatic improvement" over the original version of the missile-defense plan, although the administration still has a number of problems with the legislation. Not going as far as President Reagan's ambitious "Star Wars" system of space- based defenses against a massive attack from the former Soviet Union, the bill commits the Pentagon to develop a less- extensive, multi-site anti-missile sys- tem to protect the U.S. from accidental launches or attacks by renegade coun- tries. Before the recess, the Senate voted 51 to 49 to require deployment of the system by 2003, triggering threats of both delays by Democrats and a veto by Clinton that prompted the bipartisan negotiations on a compro- mise. In addition to deferring a A " decision on deployment, the compromise calls for nego. . tiations with Russia to modify the ABM treaty. The pactrlim. its the Cold War superpow- ers to one missile-defense site each. The Senate would like to provide for limited national missile-defense systems with more than one site. If negotiations fail, the compromise urges that the administration, in consul- tation with the Senate, consider with- drawing from the ABM treaty under procedures set out in the treaty itself. The bills before the Senate were the defense-authorization bill for fiscal 1996, which sets policy and outlines programs, and a $243 billion appro- priations bill to finance them. After voting on the missile-defense compromise, the Senate approved the authorization bill, 64 to 34. The appro- priations bill was approved Tuesday night by a vote of 62 to 35. The appropriations measure adds more than $6 billion to Clinton's re- quest for military spending next year, most of it aimed at developing and procuring more weapons, including jet fighters, warships and missile defenses. It provides $770 million more than the $3 billion that Clinton requested for all kinds of missile defenses, including $300 million more than the $371 mil- lion that he had earmarked for work on a national system. But the bill includes no new funds to build more B-2 stealth bombers, as the House has provided in its version ofthe defense-spending bill, which is await- ing final action. On the other hand, the House did not provide for a third Seawolf submarine, which the Senate proposed to fund. Caclf'nTrail? ADVENTURE FOOTWEAR COMPANYTv AIRWALK19 OZ. SUEDE PROVIDES A LIGHT WEIGHT CONSTRUCTION SILHOUETTE PERFECTLY SUITED - FOR ACTION! ip bring this coupon to Track 'n Trail and SAVE $ 5UOOFF .