RUST COMMENTARY: LEGISLATORS SHOULD HAVE VOTED THEIR CONSCIENCES

Whether you want to praise them or condemn them, you at least need to know the names of the EIGHT Missouri state senators, (seven Democrats and one Republican) who SWITCHED their votes from opposing PARTIAL-BIRTH ABORTIONS to support Gov. MEL CARNAHAN'S veto of the bill. Passed by over two-thirds of the Missouri House and Senate just a few months ago, the veto override failed by just ONE vote last week.

I suspect the majority of them did NOT switch because of a change in their personal opposition ... but for creative reasons of justification which had more to do with the governor's enlightenment.

The eight senators (including two from Southeast Missouri):

JERRY HOWARD, D-Dexter

DANNY STAPLES, D-Eminence

ED QUICK, D-Kansas City

JIM MATHEWSON, D-Sedalia

HAROLD CASKEY, D-Butler

JOE MAXWELL, D-Mexico

MIKE LYBYER, D-Huggins

BETTY SIMS, R-St. Louis

No question, the above eight would rather have NOT voted on this issue and would now prefer not to have to address the issue publicly.

This was not a DEMOCRAT or REPUBLICAN issue, but rather an issue of moral conscience in which the facts were known for both sides of the issue.

Our elected officials should have voted their own consciences and not have yielded to partisan or leverage politics.

One of the biggest arguments used to switch votes is the public's apathy and short memories. We'll see.

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When anyone gets something for nothing, someone else gets nothing for something. -- Anonymous

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OUTRAGEOUS: The 1,200-page, ballyhooed budget bill has a nasty, largely unpublicized proviso -- Section 4507 -- that enormously advances socialized medicine in the U.S. After the Hillary-care disaster of 1993-94, the Clinton White House is astonished that it has pulled this off. Advocates of national health care are breaking out the champagne.

Starting Jan. 1, American doctors will effectively be prohibited from treating elderly patients on a private basis, which, in turn, will virtually deny seniors the choice of seeking treatment outside of the Medicare program. This provision, notes Dr. Robert Moffit of the Heritage Foundation, "is the boldest and most direct assault on the doctor-patient relationship ever launched by official Washington." And a Republican Congress went along with it.

Even Britain, mother of socialized medicine, allows patients to contract privately with physicians. But in a few months that will not be possible for most Americans 65 and older.

Who says the Soviet Union is dead?

Here's how this basic attack on our personal freedom will work: A doctor who provides medical services to a Medicare-eligible patient without billing Medicare must sign an affidavit to the secretary of Health and Human Services that he or she will not treat a single Medicare patient for the next two years. Any doctor found treating both Medicare patients and Medicare-eligible private patients will be subject to fines -- and perhaps prison. As Moffit points out, Section 4507 is "deliberately designed to make private contracting and medicine all but impossible-except for physicians who reside in very wealthy communities."

Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) correctly observes that this prohibition is the equivalent of Social Security's barring retirees from dealing with stockbrokers: "Surely, a law that made it illegal to supplement with private funds the amount received from Social Security would be met with disbelief and derision." Yet that is the equivalent of what this Medicare regulation does.

Can you believe this has happened without notice and without public debate? -- Steve Forbes

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Updating Lincoln: Abraham Lincoln said of politicians: "It is true that you may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you can't fool all of the people all the time."

Now I read that the latest USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll shows that 53 percent of Americans think President Clinton is honest and trustworthy, and 64 percent think Vice President Gore is honest and trustworthy.

Clearly, it's time to add a Clinton-Gore corollary to Lincoln's oft-quoted statement: "You can fool enough of the people enough of the time." -- Phil Hunt in USA Today

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God gets Gary Busey's attention: On screen, Gary Busey is known as the Oscar-nominated star of "The Buddy Holly Story" and as Gen. Wheeler in TNT's "Rough Riders." Offscreen, Busey was known for a life filled with wildness and misfortune. He received a serious head injury in a motorcycle accident in 1988. In 1995, he was hospitalized for a cocaine overdose, sent to drug rehabilitation and charged with a felony. This year, doctors found a cancerous tumor in his sinus cavity that required seven hours of surgery and weeks of radiation therapy.

"I have had several things in my life that God used to get my attention, and now I am working for him, said Busey, who spoke before a Promise Keepers rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Busey credits his faith with getting him through his cancer treatment.

"When I was praying in the medical center before my cancer surgery, I said, 'Dear Lord, I am afraid at this time.' A voice came into my mind and said, 'Replace the word fear with the word faith.'

Busey, who grew up in Tulsa, wanted to testify to his newfound faith. "It's hard to commit to spirituality for people, because it's not concrete, it's not tangible," he explained. "But I'm telling you, it will turn your life around. The power of prayer is more powerful than nuclear energy." -- Dispatches

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New Drug Survey: A new drug survey from Columbia University and former Health and Human Services secretary Joe Califano needs little comment. It shows that drugs are common in our nation's schools, that 41 percent of high school students have personally seen drugs sold in their schools, and that 51 percent of high school teachers believe that marijuana use away from school does not harm students' academic performance. Given these facts, the emphasis on a new federal testing bureaucracy, rather than real reforms that empower parents, is nothing short of ludicrous. -- Washington Update

~Gary Rust is president of Rust Communications, which owns the Southeast Missourian and other newspapers.