presidents

WASHINGTON — Buried in the fine print of the massive deficit-reduction bill is–of all things–a brand new social program.

The new program will cost $1 billion over the next five years–somewhat less than the Clinton Adminstration had requested, but still a substantial sum in this era of tight budgets.

Supporters, including Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, insisted that some provisions in the new program actually would save the government money in the long run. Even many of the program’s supporters questioned that assertion, however, although they insisted that the money is worth spending in any case.

The family preservation and support program–along with expanded spending for childhood immunization, tuberculosis prevention, food stamps, “empowerment zones” intended to help inner cities and the earned income tax credit for low-income workers–represents the flip side of the massive budget cutting and tax-raising efforts of the bill. All told, those social programs–aimed in large part at helping families with children–will receive an additional $29 billion from the bill.

“The President’s long-term investments for kids and families have been very well supported by this bill,” said Shalala.

The social-program funds not only were key to keeping some of President Clinton’s policy initiatives alive, they were crucial to winning support for the budget in the heavily Democratic House, where liberal Democrats and members of the Congressional Black Caucus had threatened to vote against the budget bill unless it contained money to back up at least part of Clinton’s promise to “invest” in programs for the poor.

“There are a number of important features in this bill that represented the basis for many liberal and progressive Democrats to feel they could support the overall budget,” said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles).

The survival of the family preservation program, which at several points during the long budget negotiations seemed likely to die, would mark the end of a long legislative road. The program would give money to the states for early intervention and support programs for troubled families. It has passed the House three times and was approved by both chambers last year as part of another piece of legislation ultimately vetoed by then-President George Bush.

Supporters of the program argued that, by intervening early, social workers can help troubled families before their situations deteriorate so much that the state has to place children in costly foster care programs.

Skeptics, including Senate Finance Committee Chairman Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.), argued that the ability of social workers to accomplish those goals has never been proven. At one point during budget talks, Moynihan derided the program as “welfare for social workers,” several participants said.

But other legislators argued that, even if the program does not save money by avoiding foster-care placements, it will provide badly needed help for children. “This creates early intervention to keep children from being abused,” said Rep. Robert T. Matsui (D-Sacramento), who was the program’s chief sponsor in the House.

The program “has been pared down a good deal, but at least we got it,” Matsui said.

The birth of this new program is an object lesson in how legislators and Administration officials can use the arcane rules of the budget-cutting process to advance other items on the legislative agenda.

Over the years, Waxman has become a master at that art. This time around, he engineered a new $200-million program to expand the number of tuberculosis patients who can receive federal Medicaid benefits over the next five years. He also played a key role in winning money for the Administration’s proposed child immunization program, which would receive $585 million under the budget bill.

Although immunization has been a high priority for Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, Waxman and other supporters of the program had to overcome opposition not only from congressional conservatives but from some White House officials who were willing to accept much lower dollar amounts for the program as they sought to hit their deficit-cutting goals, according to Administration and congressional sources.

Under the tuberculosis program, people who are poor but not otherwise eligible for Medicaid–primarily single men without children–and who have active tuberculosis can receive government-supplied out-patient services if the state they live in decides to participate. Public health officials said they hope that the additional money will reduce the rapid spread of the disease by targeting a group of people who often do not receive care.

The immunization program has two major components. The first part will provide $500 million over the next five years to pay for vaccinations for 2.6 million children whose families lack insurance. The money also will cover the 6.5 million children now covered under Medicaid, relieving the states of a financial burden.

The second part of the bill, which has drawn howls of outrage from drug manufacturers, would allow all states to buy vaccines in bulk at the price manufacturers provide to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention–something 11 states now do. The CDC has negotiated steep discounts from the prices that drug companies charge private pediatricians.

WASHINGTON — The Senate Government Affairs Committee voted Tuesday to curtail the privileges of former presidents.

The bill was approved by voice vote and sent to the full Senate. The measure would limit the round-the-clock Secret Service protection for former presidents to five years instead of life and cut protection for their spouses to two years. Protection for children of former presidents, now extended until they are 16, would be limited to two years after their parent leaves office.

The legislation would prohibit former presidents from using their taxpayer-funded offices and staff for any money-making or political endeavors such as preparing speeches and memoirs.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog was forced to take cover as a missile struck nearby shortly after he gave a press conference in the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona. During the speech, Herzog aid Israel cannot return to last year’s ceasefire and must secure “strategic depth inside Lebanon.”

SACRAMENTO — President Trump claims Gov. Gavin Newsom is unfit to be president because he has a “learning disability.” It’s a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black.

The centuries-old pot-kettle idiom points out hypocrisy — as when one person accuses another of a flaw that afflicts himself.

California’s governor has battled dyslexia all his life — very successfully, by any measure. Dyslexia is a learning disability that makes reading and writing difficult. But it doesn’t mean a stricken person is unable to learn. He just needs to learn differently, as Newsom has done since he was a teen.

Trump apparently isn’t dyslexic. But he clearly has some learning disabilities — including stubbornness, narrow-mindedness and intolerance.

The president still hasn’t learned, for example, that he lost the 2020 election. He persists in the belief — or maybe it’s merely another boldface lie — that the election was stolen in a Joe Biden conspiracy. That’s a bizarre fantasy.

He also didn’t learn from past administrations that a commander in chief should not wage war against Iran without a concrete plan to keep open the Strait of Hormuz so Middle Eastern oil can keep flowing to the world.

And he never has learned what most of us were taught by our parents: that you don’t berate your friends if you expect to keep them friendly — lashing out, for instance, at allies before and after their balking at sending warships to help protect the vital strait.

Moreover, he didn’t learn that the nation’s founders embedded a checks-and-balances governing system in the Constitution and that Congress has a role in imposing tariffs.

When the normally Trump-friendly Supreme Court ruled against his unilateral tariff agenda, the spoiled president did what he usually does: attack, insulting the justices who struck down his edicts.

“Fools,” “lapdogs” and a “disgrace to our nation,” he whined. “It’s an embarrassment to their families.”

Trump still hasn’t learned to shut up and try to be civilized.

Not even after shocking everyone by saying of the late Republican Sen. John McCain, a Navy Pilot who spent more than five years as a tortured POW in the Hanoi Hilton: “He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.”

Any respect I might have had for the guy vanished in 2015 when the then-candidate for president publicly mocked a New York Times reporter’s disability. At a campaign rally, Trump jerked his arms and flailed his hands while making fun of the reporter’s palsy-like ailment.

So it wasn’t a surprise recently when Trump tore into Newsom for his dyslexia four times in one week.

Yes, Newsom has his eye on the 2028 presidential election and has been scoring points nationally with Democratic activists by using Trump as a punching bag. But Trump keeps offering himself up as an irresistible target.

Regardless, there’s no excuse — even in hard knocks politics — for attacking someone because of his disability.

“Gavin Newscum” — Trump’s synonym for the governor — ”has admitted he has learning disabilities, dyslexia,” he told reporters in the Oval Office. “Honestly, I’m all for people with learning disabilities but not for my president.”

“Everything about him is dumb,” Trump added.

In a Fox News Radio interview, Trump said that “presidents can’t have a learning disability.” And on Facebook, Trump wrote: “I don’t want the president of the United States to have a cognitive deficiency.”

A quick Google search could have shown Trump that several presidents have had learning disabilities, including dyslexia.

Start with George Washington, who struggled with grammar and spelling. And Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, who had trouble with reading and spelling.

Other presidents with learning disabilities: Andrew Jackson, Woodrow Wilson, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. “It’s a poor mind that can think of only one way to spell a word,” Jackson asserted.

Scientist Albert Einstein was dyslexic. So were Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and Thomas Edison.

Dyslexia affects roughly one in five Americans to some degree — more than 40 million people, although relatively few are aware of it, according to researchers.

Newsom has spoken openly for years about his struggles with dyslexia. It’s difficult for him to read, especially prepared speeches. So he reads and re-reads, underlines and highlights and meticulously takes notes. When a speech must be read off a teleprompter, he practices for hours.

In January, the governor began his State of the State address to the Legislature with this ad-lib:

“I’m not shy or, you know, embarrassed about my 960 SAT score. But I am a little bit about my inability to read the written [speech] text. And so it’s always been something that I have to work through and I’m confronting.”

In his recently released autobiography, “Young Man in a Hurry,” Newsom writes: “My high school grades were all over the place and I scored lousy on the SAT, three hours of dyslexic torture.”

Early in his political career as a San Francisco supervisor, he writes, “speaking to a crowd was not unlike the fear I felt in third grade reading to my classmates …. So I learned to memorize my talking points and best lines … and wing it from there.

“This is how I discovered one of the secret powers of dyslexia. I could read a room with the best of them. I’d walk in and immediately size up the faces, mood and manners. … I learned that an audience didn’t mind occasional hiccups of speech as long as you looked them in the eye.”

Newsom was twice elected mayor and twice governor.

None of this means he should necessarily be elected president.

There may be policy and political reasons to consider him unfit — but not because of any learning disability.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Newsom leads Harris for president among California Democrats, poll finds
The TK: Democrats excluded from USC gubernatorial debate urge rivals to boycott in solidarity
The L.A. Times Special: Rep. Eric Swalwell’s private AI company raises money, questions

Until next week,
George Skelton

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Latin American leaders met at the 10th Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) Summit in Bogota on Saturday where Colombian President Gustavo Petro called for an immediate Middle East ceasefire to prevent a global economic crisis and ‘potential world war’.