Projo Politics Blog

WASHINGTON -- After years of partisan battles between the Bush White House and the Democratic Congress, it's easy to forget that President Bush began his administration with a friendly gesture toward one of the leading Democrats of modern times -- and that the two men have collaborated on some major policy initiatives.

Today, Mr. Bush has a chance to close the circle as he welcomes Sen. Edward M. Kennedy to the White House with three congressional colleagues who who helped to make a landmark mental health bill become law.

The senator's son, Rhode Island Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy, was among several members of the celebrated clan invited to the White House just a few days after Mr. Bush was sworn in almost eight years ago. They ate hamburgers and watched a movie about President John F. Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis.

Soon after that, Senator Kennedy and Mr. Bush began a partnership that led to the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act -- a public school testing law that some experts link to significant improvements in the skills of children from racial minority groups. Later, Mr. Bush and the elder Kennedy were chief among the strange political bedfellows responsible for a historic expansion of Medicare drug benefits.

This fall came the passage of legislation to require that mental health patients and addicts get health care insurance comparable to the coverage enjoyed by those afflicted with physical illness and injury. Along with the two Kennedys, the leaders in the campaign for mental health parity were Sen. Pete V. Domenici, R.-N.M., and Rep. Jim Ramstad, R-Minn.

All four legislators have been invited to cellebrate their accomplishment this afternoon at the White House with Mr. Bush.

The mental health parity bill passed both houses of Congress as an attachment to the $700-billion Wall Street rescue package that the president signed into law on Oct. 3.

Enactment of the mental health bill -- the result of years of negotiations among medical, business and mental health lobbies -- was thus overshadowed by the drama surrounding the bailout bill.

Today's gathering, perhaps one of Mr. Bush's last as president with members of Congress, may have a poignant element. Domenici, a longtime mental health champion who has a grown daughter with schizophrenia, is retiring at the end of this Congress. Mr. Bush first publicly endorsed mental health parity while campaigning for Domenici's re-election to his final term six years ago.

Senator Kennedy, one of the nation's leaders on health-care policy, has only recently returned to work after months of treatment for brain cancer.

Ramstad and Patrick Kennedy have both been supporters of mental health parity for years, but their advocacy for the cause has intensified since Ramstad, a recovering alcoholic, reached out to help the younger Kennedy battle his own addiction to alcohol and prescription drugs more than two years ago.

Ramstad is also retiring from Congress in several weeks.

 Tags  Bush Domenici Kennedy mental health Ramstad

Comments

d said:

This bill doesn't change anything. Health plans simply raise OUR premiums for all everything the elected do-gooders force them to cover.

Hillary Clinton said she'd fix the healthcare system back in 1992. . . but here we are in the same mess. Just give me her benefit plan and we'll call it even.

Link | November 20, 2008 6:21 PM
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