RIGHT OF CENTER: MEDICARE WOES: START SOMEWHERE

Imagine your boss offering you a quarter-an-hour raise this year. Times are tight, he says, but you deserve a raise. Unfortunately, a quarter per hour is all the company can afford.

Then imagine your supervisor telling you that, yes, times are tight, but we've come up with a way to cut some fat from the company budget so that you can get the $1-an-hour raise that you deserve.

But the boss comes back and says $1 an hour is too paltry to even consider. It's an insult to your hard work and dedication. He sacks the raise and offers you nothing. He also dumps the budget cuts and company goes broke. You're out of a job.

To make matters worse, all your coworkers can seem to do is complain about losing their jobs. "Everything was fine," they say, "until that supervisor started trying to balance the books."

Sound ludicrous? It is. But place Medicare in the role of the valued employee, House Republicans as the conscientious supervisor, and President Clinton as the boss. Put the media in place of the coworkers and you get a pretty good representation of this year's Medicare debate.

In his budget, Clinton proposed keeping Medicare essentially on the same track it's on now. That means that by the year 2004, we will spend $231 billion for a program that will have a $126 billion deficit.

The Republicans, conceding that Medicare was fast going broke, decided there were other ways to save the system. So they came up with a plan that would increase benefits, keep out-of-pocket costs the same and give seniors health-care options that aren't now available.

Clinton's response was to pledge to veto the GOP plan because it was too harsh, and that it would "destroy Medicare."

The mainstream media, ignoring the condition of the program, points out everything wrong with the Republican fix, fails to report Clinton's earlier proposal, and won't demand he come up with a better plan.

The bottom line: Medicare will be broke in five years or less. While congressional Republicans want to save the program, President Clinton and congressional Democrats seem bent on merely preserving the status quo. They've offered no reasonable, affordable alternative. How tiring the endless mantra: "The Republicans are using (insert your pet taxpayer-funded welfare program here) to fund tax cuts for the rich."

Rising health-care costs and Medicare's impending bankruptcy are only half the problem. Medicare is and always will be just another welfare program. It confiscates working Americans' money to subsidize senior citizens' health-care expenses. Stacked against the myriad other collectivist schemes to secure favor and votes at the expense of weary workers, Medicare might be the least of a host of evils. But it nevertheless remains an unconstitutional redistribution of earnings.

One could argue that GOP Medicare reform should be rejected on the grounds that the program must be dumped entirely.

Skyrocketing costs in Medicare -- along with its ugly little sister, Medicaid -- and Social Security are most to blame for our nation's unfathomable debt. Yet President Clinton resists plans to keep the programs solvent not because the budget-devouring beasts ought instead to be slain, but because the necessary whittling would be "cruel" and would hurt the needy while benefiting the rich.

But inventing ways the federal government can help the needy has only hurt this nation's economy while fostering resentment among working, productive Americans. And still the needy throngs grow and grow.

Is helping the poor wrong? Of course not. We ought to be ashamed if we ignore the plight of our family, friends or neighbors who are poor or sick. But is it the government's job to hold a gun to taxpayers and demand they stand and deliver their hard-earned cash for failed social programs?

But that's what the most vociferous foes of reform want. If our president knows a way to eliminate Medicare, slash Medicaid to the bone and phase out Social Security, then veto away. If not, he should shut up and get out of the way of the revolution.

~Jay Eastlick is the news editor of the Southeast Missourian.