Josh Marshall: The Medicare bill is a Washington-style mafia bustout

[Martin Eden]

The Medicare bill is a Washington-style mafia bustout
by Josh Marshall

<<snip>>
Like the decision to game the Medicare bill around the 2004 election, just about everything the administration has done in the last 30 months has been done with little thought to the medium-term, let alone the long-term, consequences.

Where to start? There’s the rapid run-up in the deficit we’ve noted, repeated instances of breaking political precedents for short-term political gain — like the unprecedented decision to re-redistrict congressional maps in Texas and Colorado — and then of course there’s foreign policy, where decades-old alliances have been wrecked and our military capacities have been vastly diminished all to make way for the invasion of Iraq, which — in case you haven’t noticed — isn’t going so well.

Taken together, almost everything we’ve seen since early 2001 points to a decision to rush through as many political goodies as possible and secure as much political power as possible as soon as possible, with little regard for picking up the pieces.

And that suggests an analogy.

What we’re seeing in Washington today has an uncomfortable resemblance to what, in mafia lingo, is called a bust-out.

for the full commentary:
http://www.hillnews.com/marshall/120303.aspx

Josh Marshall is editor of talkingpointsmemo.com. His column appears in The Hill each Wednesday. Email: [e-mail]