USANext CEO Chuck Jarvis says he’s about to launch a campaign branding the AARP “the planet’s largest liberal lobbying organization.” If they’re just a liberal lobbying group, why was President Bush using their endorsement as the only justification for his Medicare bill less than six months ago?

On health care, my opponent has a history of opposing needed reforms. He voted against the Medicare bill, even though it was supported by the AARP and other seniors groups. He has voted 10 times against medical liability reform, and now his health care proposal calls for bigger, more intrusive government. Eight out of 10 people who get health care under his plan would be placed on a government program.

There was a remarkable exchange during President Bush’s meticulously choreographed townhall meeting in Alabama yesterday. One of the people selected to speak with Bush was a woman named Sarah Garrison Webster. It’s clear that she was chosen because she is a federal employee who is eligible for the federal Thrift Savings Plan, a program that gives federal employees the option of putting some of their retirement money into stocks. Ms. Webster was supposed to be Exhibit A on how much people love to invest their retirement money in stock funds. It didn’t go exactly according to plan:

THE PRESIDENT: Let me ask you something about the Thrift Savings Plan. This is a Thrift Savings Plan that has a mix of stocks and bonds?

MS. WEBSTER: Yes, sir.

THE PRESIDENT: Now, how hard was that to learn how to do that?

MS. WEBSTER: And I chose the safe plan, government bonds. (Laughter.)

In other words, Ms. Webster has no interest in risking her retirement money in the stock market. Bush’s privatization plan is so unpopular now, he can’t even find ringers who are interested.

The Bush administration has waged a campaign to try to convince doctors that trial lawyers are to blame for their skyrocketing malpractice insurance rates. That assertion, of course, has no basis in reality.

Now, in Washington State, doctors are getting smart. As the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports, “After years of their lobbyists calling for caps on plaintiff’s damage awards, squeezing lawyers’ contingency fees and trying to throw litigation roadblocks in the way of injured patients and their families, the state’s doctors may have found a legitimate way to cut medical malpractice premiums: Get their malpractice insurance company to quit gouging them.”

Specifically, State Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler announced Wednesday that he had ordered the state’s largest medical malpractice insurer to refund more than $1.3 million plus interest in excess premiums charged in 2003. The action came one day after Kreidler’s office released a report that “appears to give lie to allegations of a ‘crisis’ in medical malpractice.”

Don’t expect President Bush to have a change of heart on his push for malpractice “reform” (a.k.a. limiting victims’ rights) – he and his fellow conservatives have taken millions from the insurance industry.

Speaking in Alabama yesterday, President Bush repeated a familiar claim: “We’re fixing the deficit.” It doesn’t matter how many times he says it — it’s still not true. In fact, the President’s most recent proposed budget would make the federal deficit much worse. A March 4 analysis by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reveals the President’s budget would increase the deficit by $1.6 trillion over the next ten years. Most of the additional shortfall is a result of Bush’s proposal to extend his 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for the rich. According to the CBO, new tax cuts proposed by Bush “would increase the deficit by more than $1.5 trillion in 2006 through 2015.” Even these bleak numbers understate the scope of the fiscal crisis. The President’s budget excludes all costs for continued operations in Iraq and Afghanistan — expected to cost at least $300 billion over the next 10 years — so do the CBO estimates. The fact is, President Bush’s policies are leaving an enormous tab that future generations will have to pick up. And he’s not being honest about it.