Category: Christine Moyer
The Year 2007 Looks to be a Promising One for New Britain
WASHINGTON – The expected completion in 2007 of a bus route stretching about nine miles from Hartford to New Britain will reduce traffic congestion on Interstate 84 and stimulate economic development in New Britain, according to Michael Sanders, transit administrator for the Connecticut Department of Transportation (CDOT).
The U.S. Senate has approved a transportation appropriations bill for next year that includes more than $40 million to help reduce traffic congestion and improve air quality in Connecticut. Of that, $10 million would be spent on the Hartford-New Britain Busway. But the version approved earlier by the House includes no funds for the busway.
“This measure can literally help transport Connecticut to a brighter future,” said U.S. Senator Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.). “It is a tremendous step in the right direction to help create new jobs, improve air quality, ease commute times and provide a better quality of life for families all across our state. I hope the House will agree with these important Connecticut priorities.”
House and Senate negotiators now must try to reconcile the two versions of the bill. Dodd’s office said the full $10 million still might be approved.
Connecticut, like other states, is suffering from increased automobile use, with traffic congestion turning what should be short commutes into long, frustrating ones.
The state’s solution is a two-lane exclusive bus roadway, with about 12 stations, including one in New Britain and one in Newington. The project will cost $175 million or more, depending on the final design, Sanders said.
“We’re still in the preliminary design,” he said. “So it’s reasonable that the cost could increase.”
James Boice, chief of planning for CDOT, is optimistic that some part of the $10 million the Senate has approved will also be approved by the House. He said the roadway would be built with or without the $10 million. Congress has appropriated more than $17 million for the project in the last three fiscal years.
“These funds will encourage more commuters to use transit, get more cars off our clogged interstates and ensure our continued ability to attract new businesses to the state,” said U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.).
According to Dodd’s office, the busway project has a dual purpose: to decrease congestion on I-84 and to create jobs. “It kills two birds with one stone,” an aide said.
Peter Agostini, president of the New Britain Transportation Co., said the busway would be a “huge benefit” and boost the economy of New Britain as Hartford residents come to work in the city.
But, Agostini said, generating a sufficient passenger load to justify it may be difficult.
“Connecticut’s a tough sell,” he said. “It’s one of the wealthiest states in the country, and they think, ‘God forbid you take away our automobile.’ ”
Agostini added that he is certain people will take the bus if it is marketed properly. The state has been marketing public transportation in general, Boice said. But little has been done for the future busway.
“There is no heavy-duty marketing yet because we will not start service for four years,” Sanders said. “That would be kind of premature.”
Sanders was optimistic the new roadway would be a boon for New Britain.
“Clearly, people from Hartford will come to New Britain. It certainly will increase transportation infrastructure in New Britain,” he said. He added that “there will be a lot of economic development along the whole route.”
The exclusive busway would follow rail lines, some of them abandoned, from Hartford through Newington and into New Britain center, eliminating some of the environmental problems that building a busway from scratch would have entailed, according to Ned Hurle, director of environmental planning for CDOT.
According to a CDOT report, the exclusive busway would cut bus travel time between Hartford and New Britain by 11 minutes and bring it close to automobile drive times.
Fear That The Medicare Bill Will Not Be Passed This Year Increases
WASHINGTON - The Oct. 17 target date set by congressional leaders to present President Bush with a Medicare prescription drug bill has passed and so, many fear, will the chance to reform the massive health-care system before lawmakers go home for the year in November.
"Some modest progress is being made but there is no broad agreement," said Dan Mendelson, president of the Health Strategies Consultancy. "They want people to think that they're making progress because there is very little time left."
The House and Senate have passed separate plans to overhaul Medicare and provide a prescription drug benefit to senior citizens, but negotiators have been struggling to iron out the differences in the two bills.
Supporters of prescription drug benefits consider it critical for Congress to reach a compromise this year to avoid dragging the issue into an election year, when controversial bills often die.
U.S. Rep. Nancy L. Johnson (R-5) is one of a handful of Congress members on the conference committee that is negotiating the legislation. In an interview Wednesday, she discounted speculation that the issue would extend into next year.
"The bill will pass this year," Johnson said. "If it goes into next year, it may not make it, and it would be very serious if the bill didn't pass."
Johnson said House and Senate negotiators met Wednesday afternoon and had meetings scheduled for the rest of the week to discuss such major issues as what kind of drug benefit to provide and how it would be delivered.
Johnson insisted that the conference committee has been making progress. But Mendelson said the conferees are "still at the drawing board." He said that while House and Senate negotiators have reached agreement on many small issues, they have not settled on a number of overarching issues, including details of the prescription drug benefit and rules for the importation of drugs.
"They don't have anything yet," said Norman Ornstein, a congressional expert at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based think tank. He said that the conferees have done little to resolve the stark differences between the House and Senate bills.
Ornstein added that dragging the issue into next year would hurt Congress members as they seek re-election. "This will cause many more problems for Republicans than Democrats because they're in charge," he said. Senior citizens are particularly frustrated that the final bill hasn't passed, said Arnold Schwartz, a member of AARP's state leadership council.
"They have the feeling that nothing's going to happen this year," he said. "And the feeling is getting to be that nothing is ever going to happen."
Brenda Kelley, the state director of AARP Connecticut, said the senior citizens' lobby is focused on getting a bill out of the conference committee that it can support. "The bill will remain a top priority whether they pass it or not" this year, Kelley said.
Schwartz said the battle has turned into a "partisan fight."
The Senate bill received bipartisan support, while the Republican-crafted House bill passed by a single vote.
Senator Christopher Dodd Introduces a New Bill to Prevent Premature Births
WASHINGTON - The number of babies born prematurely in Connecticut has risen by roughly 5 percent since 1991 and by about 10 percent and nationwide, according to the March of Dimes.
Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) wants to find out why. He has introduced the Prematurity Research Expansion and Education for Mothers Who Deliver Infants Early Act (PREEMIE), which aims to reduce the mortality rate for premature babies by increasing research on early births.
Nationwide, nearly 500,000 babies are born prematurely each year, and more than one-fifth of them develop health problems, the March of Dimes reported. Many of them suffer from devastating disabilities and have to fight for their lives. Premature births account for 23 percent of the deaths that occur in the first month of life, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
"Premature infants are 14 times more likely to die in their first year than infants who are carried to term," Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), the bill's co-sponsor, said at a press conference Thursday.
Dodd, the senior Democrat on a subcommittee on children and families, said the bill "is an important step in the right direction towards preventing premature birth and providing better care for infants born prematurely."
According to Dr. Daniel Langford, a neonatologist at New Britain General Hospital, roughly 9 percent of the babies born at the hospital every year are premature --born after less than 36 weeks gestation. A normal pregnancy takes 40 weeks.
Respiratory distress, infections and low glucose levels are among the problems common in premature babies, Langford said.
The March of Dimes web site lists four potential causes of early labor: maternal or fetal stress, infection, bleeding of the uterus and stretching of the uterus. But a spokesperson for the organization said the reasons for half of all premature births are unknown.
"We need a focused, targeted research to understand the reasons for premature birth," said Dr. Jennifer Howse, president of the March of Dimes, which works to combat premature births and genetic defects. She added that the number of early births seemed to be rising-from 10.8 percent of all live births in 1991 to 11.9 percent in 2001.In Connecticut, premature births rose from 9.3 percent to 9.8 percent during the same decade.
Dodd and Alexander were joined at the press conference by parents and advocates from Bolton, Fairfield, Kensington and Stamford.
Dodd said the bill would provide $15 million a year for five years to step up research.
Johnson Maintains Support of Pharmaceutical Companies
WASHINGTON - Pharmaceutical companies and health-care professionals are two of U.S. Rep. Nancy L. Johnson's most devoted financial supporters, and she often champions their causes in Congress. Nevertheless, Johnson (R-5) has broken ranks with the two groups by supporting a bill that would permit pharmacies to import drugs from abroad.
To the dismay of two of her three largest campaign contributors, Johnson voted in July in favor of the Pharmaceutical Market Access Act, which passed the House 243-186. Johnson was one of only 87 Republicans to vote for the bill, which would allow pharmacies, consumers and wholesalers to import FDA-approved drugs from U.S.-approved plants in 25 industrialized nations.
If it becomes law, the bill could cost American pharmaceutical companies billions of dollars by making available to consumers less expensive prescription drugs. The proposal is part of a negotiation by House and Senate conferees working on a Medicare reform bill. The White House has said it opposes importing drugs.
Though she bucked major contributors, Johnson might have improved her standing among many constituents, particularly senior citizens, who have pressured Congress to reduce the cost of prescription drugs. Connecticut's senior population is slightly higher than that of the nation as a whole, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Brenda Kelley, director of Connecticut's branch of the AARP, said the powerful seniors' lobby supports the importation of drugs as a way to reduce the cost of medication.
Johnson's press secretary, Brian Schubert, said she voted for the Pharmaceutical Market Access Act "so that Americans have better access to prescription drugs."
Johnson, who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee's Health Subcommittee, has supported pharmaceutical companies on another sensitive issue: the creation of a prescription drug benefit for Medicare recipients.
As a result, the companies have maintained their support for Johnson. "We respectfully disagree" on the issue of drug imports, said Jeff Trewhitt, spokesman for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA). "But she has mapped out many constructive positions in the Medicare prescription drug bill."
Some doctors and other health-care professionals oppose importing drugs because they say it poses a risk to consumers.
Dr. Donald J. Palmisano, president of the American Medical Association, said the AMA "remains concerned for patients struggling to pay for medications and supports a prescription drug benefit in Medicare. However, re-importation is not the answer.
"A frightening and unintended result of this legislation could easily be expired, sub-potent, contaminated or counterfeit reimported drugs," Palmisano said. "The ramifications of patients' taking these medications could be dire, including dangerous drug interactions and other serious health consequences."
Their disagreement is unlikely to cost Johnson the support of her large campaign contributors.
During the first half of this year, Johnson's three largest donors were health professionals, who gave her $95,399; insurers, which contributed $67,500; and pharmaceutical and health products companies, which gave her $60,250, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, an independent group that monitors campaign contributions. Candidates filed new financial reports with the Federal Election Commission Wednesday, but breakdowns of contributors were not immediately available.
Chris Loder, spokesman for the pharmaceutical company Merck & Co., said that while the industry opposes the importation of drugs, it supports Johnson on other issues. "We look at her entire record," Loder said.
"The vote by the House reflects frustration that seniors can't afford the medicine that they need," Loder added. "We share this frustration."
Doug Mendelson, president of Health Strategies Consultancy, a Washington-based consulting firm, said he is concerned that importing drugs could lead to lower-quality medications and fraud.
"I personally think that it's wrong," Mendelson said of the bill.
In 1987, Congress passed the Prescription Drug Marketing Act, which allowed medications to be imported only in limited circumstances.
The new bill, sponsored by Reps. Gil Gutknecht, R.-Minn., Rahm Emanuel, D.-Ill., and Jo Ann Emerson, R.-Mo., would apply to drugs manufactured in the European Union and 10 other countries, including Australia and New Zealand.
Connecticut Voters Are Still Concerned About The Economy
WASHINGTON - Connecticut may be the nation's wealthiest state, but its residents seem to share something with the rest of the country: a concern about the state of the national economy.
"Connecticut really mirrors the nation," said Ken Dautrich, a political science professor at the University of Connecticut. As for other issues, such as terrorism, the quality of education and the environment, he said, "all of this pales in comparison to the economy."
If the Nutmeg State truly mirrors the nation, then the economy is the major issue there. A recent national poll by Quinnipiac University reported that 34 percent of 1,228 registered voters considered the economy "the most important problem facing the country today." That was more than double the percentage of respondents who picked any other issue in the poll, conducted Sept. 11-15.
Not surprisingly, the issue has a political edge.
To Leslie O'Brien, the executive director of Connecticut's Democratic Party, concern about the economy transcends partisan politics. "People are generally concerned about their wallets," she said. "The average Connecticut citizen is not seeing [President] Bush's tax cuts."
Despite the wealth of Fairfield County, "a majority of Connecticut is middle class" and has been suffering from state spending cuts, the highest unemployment rate in years and inflated prices for prescription drugs, O'Brien said.
John Healey, the political director for Connecticut Republicans, disagreed. "The fact is that these [spending] cuts were across the board," he said. "The Democrats forget that the people of Fairfield County carry 90 percent of the tax burden. There's no doubt that they are the economic engine of this state."
He's also optimistic about the state of the national economy. "I think we're seeing the beginnings of a turning economy," he said. "We're feeling the impact of the [Bush] tax cuts."
UConn's Dautrich said the state's economic problems over the past two years have resulted in more jobs lost than gained, something, he added, that Connecticut shared with most other states.
Arnauld Schwartz, a longtime New Britain resident, doesn't agree with the 1992 Clinton campaign adage that "it's the economy, stupid." His most pressing concern is Connecticut's vulnerability to terrorism, noting that the state is home to three nuclear plants and a submarine base. "I put that concern over the economy," he said.
To Schwartz, local issues are the most important ones. "I'm really concerned," he said, "about what could happen here in New Britain at my house."
But Dautrich said not many Connecticut residents agree with Schwartz. Pointing to the recall this week of California Gov. Gray Davis, Dautrich suggested that Bush may be the biggest victim of a poor economy because he is the incumbent.
But Dautrich added that none of the candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination has a particular edge on handling the economy. When asked whom Connecticut voters favor on economic issues, he said, "I don't think that people know enough about the candidates."
Johnson May Not Make a 12th Term in Congress
WASHINGTON - Connecticut Democrats are looking for a candidate to challenge Rep. Nancy L. Johnson (R-Conn.), who will be running for reelection in 2004 after 22 years in office.
Although she would not name names, Leslie O'Brien, executive director of the Connecticut Democratic Party, said several Democrats have met with party leaders and that she expects to have a few potential candidates lined up in the coming weeks.
"Several Democrats have discussed the possibility of running in the 2004 House election, but they have not currently filed the necessary paperwork," O'Brien said Tuesday. "The district, number-wise, is a Democratic district. Any solid Democrat who runs a tough campaign will offer Nancy Johnson competition."
One Democrat who is strongly considering entering the race is Bob Marconi, a city council member in Brookfield, according to a Democratic source who asked not to be identified.
As of last year, Johnson's district contained 368, 825 registered voters, including 112,545 Democrats and 95,907 Republicans, according to O'Brien.
Greg Speed, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), said Johnson has a financial edge.
A member of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, Johnson has amassed contributions of $505,360 for her 2004 campaign. The largest chunk, $93,399, came from health-care professionals, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, an independent watchdog group that monitors campaign money.
Brian Schubert, Johnson's press secretary, said he wouldn't comment on "an election that's 13 months away."
In 2002, Johnson defeated a fellow incumbent, Democrat Jim Maloney, after their two districts were combined.
"Jim had the misfortune of being paired with Johnson in a good Republican year," Speed said. Johnson won 54 percent of the vote to Maloney's 43 percent.
Connecticut's political terrain could change more dramatically if Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman wins the presidential election. Lieberman, one of nine candidates seeking the Democratic nomination, ran for reelection in 2000 even as he was his party's vice presidential nominee.
If Lieberman were elected president, Gov. Rowland, a Republican, would appoint someone to fill his Senate seat.
Asked if Johnson would be interested in the Senate seat, Schubert demurred. Talk of a Senate vacancy, he said, is "pure speculation at this point. Nancy's focused on her agenda in the House."
Lieberman Co-Sponsors Legislation Aiming to Reduce Carbon Dioxide
WASHINGTON - Connecticut has some of the worst air pollution in the country even though it has the most stringent regulations on pollutants.
Sen. Joseph Lieberman is looking to other states to help clean Connecticut's air. The Connecticut Democrat and presidential candidate is cosponsoring legislation that would fight global warming - and air pollution - by reducing greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide emissions, that travel from state to state.
"It's an unfair circumstance of being downwind," said Christopher James, director of air planning for the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection.
But Lieberman and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) announced this week they would ease restrictions in their bill, which has been stuck in the Senate. The bill initially aimed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to the levels of the year 2000, starting in 2010, and to 1990 levels started in 2016. The senators have dropped the second phase of reductions in order to gain Senate support and bring the issue to a vote this fall.
"To truly combat the threat of global warming over the long term, our goal must be to slash greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels," Lieberman said in a statement Wednesday. "But in the interest of reaching consensus now for immediate action, Sen. McCain and I have agreed to focus on first-phase reductions and press for second-phase reductions at a later date."
Neither the initial nor the modified bill was as strict as the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty the Clinton administration negotiated but President Bush rejected.
Opponents of the Lieberman-McCain bill call it an energy tax that would raise the price of coal and oil, the two leading air pollutants.
Environmentalists, on the other hand, support swift action.
James said the legislation was "short-sighted."
"It's a problem that will take decades, if not generations, to address," he said. "It's short-sighted to not look at it beyond four or five years."
But Lieberman defended the decision saying, "With this compromise, we seek to eliminate another excuse for inaction on global warming, inaction that costs our environment, our economy and our public health dearly."
A member of Lieberman's staff said the compromise was prompted in part by a fear among some senators that decreasing carbon dioxide to 1990 levels in 13 years would hurt the coal industry as more people switch to natural gas.
The coal industry is a potent political force in some states. During the 2000 presidential campaign, Bush tried to pit the Clinton administration - and the campaign of then Vice President Al Gore and vice-presidential nominee Lieberman - against coal mining. West Virginia, a leading coal-producing state, voted Republican for the first time in a presidential election since 1928.
Although New Britain has more than 100 manufacturers, the Chamber of Commerce contends that greenhouse gas emissions are not a problem in the city because of Connecticut's strict regulations.
Frank J. Johnson, the executive director of the Manufacturing Alliance of Connecticut, supported the move by McCain and Lieberman to scale back their legislation. "This shows a balanced approach on their part," Johnson said. "They don't want to try to push too unreal standards on the country at the cost of our economy."
There is currently no federal restriction on carbon dioxide emissions. But Connecticut joined other New England states and Eastern Canada two years ago to create a plan to combat greenhouse gases. The state of New York has adopted similar regulations, according to James, Connecticut's director of air planning.
James said the plan aims to reduce greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by 2010 and to 10 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.
New Britain Area Schools Look to Prevent Violence Among Students
WASHINGTON - A camera surveillance system monitors the 400,000 square feet of New Britain High School. The doors at Rocky Hill High School lock after the students arrive. But despite widespread public concern about school violence across the country, New Britain has had to reduce security at its public schools.
"We don't have the money," said school Superintendent Doris Kurtz. "We want to prevent violence, but we've had to cut back on security."
With a $4.2 million budget cut this year, the New Britain school district is suffering from a money crunch. That it is affecting the protection of students "is a dilemma," Kurtz said
Kurtz said the district eliminated 69 jobs this year and is unable to bolster its security force.
"We don't perceive violence as a problem in our schools," Kurtz said, "but we would like to have more security because the high school and the middle school are overcrowded."
Thomas Reale, principal of New Britain High School, said he has just seven guards to protect the 3,000 students at the state's largest public school. Reale said he would like to hire more guards -- the school has about 200 more students than it had last year - but he has no money to do so.
Rocky Hill High School principal Robert Pitocco said he does not have problems with weapons or gangs, just the occasional fight.
Rocky Hill has fewer than 700 students and is touched by fewer big-city problems than New Britain High School, Pitocco said.
He said his school employs no guards and depends solely on two paid hall monitors to prevent violence. "They're not officers," Pitocco said. "But they act as the eyes and the ears of the administration."
At a hearing earlier this week in Denver, a subcommittee of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce took up the issue of "persistently dangerous" schools. Members were concerned that states were not satisfactorily monitoring violence.
Under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, a massive overhaul of public education, states are required to report schools that are "persistently dangerous" so that parents can opt to move their children to safer schools.
But each state writes its own definition of "persistently dangerous," and only six have labeled schools as such, according to Ronald Stephens, executive director of the National School Safety Center, a nonprofit group established to monitor and work to prevent school violence. Connecticut was not one of them.
Stephens said the "water mark" has been raised so high that most schools aren't labeled "persistently dangerous" even if they have suffered from repeat bouts of violence.
"Each state is given the opportunity to decide what a persistently dangerous school is," Stephens said. "But nobody wants to report, 'Look how badly I'm doing right now.' "
As a result, he said, some school districts are reducing their use of extreme disciplinary measures, such as expulsions, to avoid labeling schools as dangerous. Rather than expel students, some districts now give them in-school suspensions, Stephens said.
Kurtz defended Connecticut's avoidance of the "dangerous" label. "It's a small state and there area a lot of districts. So you can control things better in this area."
New Britain High School's principal, Reale, added: "New Britain is a city school. We're the largest school in the state. If we're not labeled, then it doesn't surprise me that other schools in the state aren't."
Dodd Urges For More Money to be Spent on Preventing Underage Drinking
WASHINGTON - Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) says the federal government needs to spend more on a nationwide effort to prevent underage drinking. But New Britain's youth services director says the money could be better spent trying to find out why young people turn to alcohol and drugs.
Dodd made his pitch at a hearing Tuesday by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Subcommittee on Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services.
The hearing, sparked by a study published in September by the federal Institute of Medicine (IOM) titled, "Reducing underage drinking: a collective responsibility," concentrated on ways to reduce underage drinking, including a possible increase in state and federal taxes on alcohol.
"The consumption of alcohol by our children can literally rob them of their future," Dodd said.
He noted that in 2000, the federal government spent $1.8 billion to discourage illegal drug use and compared to $71 million to discourage underage drinking.
But Christopher Montes, the director of New Britain's youth services, said he wants the government to focus more attention on why children and teens start using drugs, rather than merely on how to get them to quit. "They are treating the symptoms, they're not treating the problem," Montes said in a telephone interview. "The problem is, what's going on that children want to do this? I would rather look at prevention."
According to Montes, New Britain is a small city with a big-city drug problem.
"Obviously, there is underage drinking, but I see more young people using marijuana. They think that pot is cooler than alcohol. It's more 'phat,'" he said. "It's the subculture of the youth."
He said many New Britain children and teens use marijuana to combat a sense of hopelessness and a lack of drive. In the more-affluent surrounding areas, he said, young people use alcohol and drugs in part because they are available, he said.
Dodd said he hoped that the subcommittee hearing would be the starting point for a national strategy to decrease underage drinking.
According to the IOM report, the social costs of underage drinking are close to $53 billion annually. Of that,$19 billion is attributed to automobile accidents and $29 billion to alcohol-related violent crime.
"The word 'staggering' doesn't really do it justice," Dodd said of the costs. "And while no one can argue with the tragic loss of life and significant financial costs associated with underage drinking, too few of us think of the equally devastating loss of potential that occurs when our children begin to drink."
He said he would welcome any money the city received to combat underage alcohol consumption, but added that he hoped he could use the money to help solve the underlying problem-the causes of all kinds of substance abuse.
"So what if I spend money on underage drinking in New Britain?" Montes said. "Then the kids will just smoke pot."
Passing the Medicare Drug Prescription Bill by Oct. 17 Does Not Look Hopeful
WASHINGTON - Congressional negotiators working to find compromise on legislation that would offer prescription drug benefits to Medicare recipients hope to send a bill to President Bush by Oct. 17. Many of the legislation's supporters, critics and neutral observers are skeptical.
"Right now it's not looking good for the bill," said Dan Mendelson, who heads Health Strategies Consultancy, a Washington-based consulting firm.
Mendelson said that the fate of the bill depends on whether or not Bush wants to enact this legislation as he heads into a presidential election year. As of now, he said he does not think the President is using his muscle to push Congress members to complete their work.
It will be "excruciatingly difficult" to enact a Medicare bill this year, said Norman Ornstein, a political scientist at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank here. Senate and House negotiators, he said, "are increasing the pressure and turning up the heat on their own members. But that doesn't mean that it will happen by the 17th."
Socked by the high cost of prescription drugs, some elderly Connecticut residents have been forced to cut their pills in half or to take their daily medication every other day, according to Arnold Schwartz, an advocate for senior citizens in New Britain.
"Seniors aren't even optimistic about this bill passing, because they've been hearing about it for God knows how long," Schwartz said.
U.S. Rep. Nancy L. Johnson (R-5), one of a handful of Congress members on the conference committee that is negotiating the legislation, said the process of reconciling vastly different bills passed by the House and Senate in June is complicated. But "it is untrue that the conference is faltering," she said. "We passed the two bills one week before [summer] recess."
Mendelson is less optimistic. Negotiators, he said, "are just going through the motions. There are a good group of legislators, but they haven't decided if they want to compromise."
The AARP, the influential senior citizen lobbying group with 35 million members nationwide, is pushing negotiators to send a bill to Bush this fall, said Brenda Kelley, director of organization for the Connecticut branch of the AARP. "Our motto is fix it and pass it," she said.
Supporters of prescription drug benefits consider it critical for Congress to reach a compromise this year and avoid dragging the issue into an election year, when controversial bills often die.
But merging the House and Senate bills will be tough. The Senate version received bipartisan support, while the Republican-crafted House bill passed by a single vote. Now, conservative Republicans are threatening to kill any final bill carrying a price tag of more than $400 billion over 10 years.
Disparities in the bills include differing requirements for eligibility, two types of tax-exempt personal savings accounts for medical expenses in the House bill and a back-up mechanism in the Senate bill that would enable the government to provide drug benefits in parts of the country that offer fewer than two private drug plans.
When asked about the committee's push for an Oct. 17 deadline, Ornstein said, "They realize that if nothing is done in the next couple of weeks and people become consumed by appropriations, it won't get done."
Mendelson is not impressed that the conference committee set a goal for the bill's completion. "It's great, but it's not as significant as if the President says, 'I want a bill on my desk by Oct. 17.' "
