Unchanging Nelson Faces Same Concerns

By TOM JACKSON The Tampa Tribune

Published: Apr 22, 2008

DADE CITY - Almost precisely two years later, Bill Nelson returned to the cradle of Pasco County government looking no worse for wear.

In blue Oxford-cloth shirt framing the shoulders of a small college halfback and khaki pants showing off a middle-schooler's waistline, the two-term U.S. senator from Miami, Tallahassee and, once upon a time, Earth's thermosphere resembled any mission commander who ever marched the Cape Canaveral catwalk from gantry to space shuttle.

Which is to say, Nelson came back to us as Sen. Dorian Gray, looking, under those trademark arched eyebrows suggesting perpetual surprise or opportunities for mischief, not so much as a single moment older. This would be appropriate, however, because the lineup of concerns his constituents pitched also were trapped in a time warp.

Health care. Big Pharma. Energy policy. Illegal immigration. Iraq. Witnesses from Nelson's previous town hall visit couldn't help tapping their wristwatches - is this thing running? If it weren't for the ongoing duel to the death over his party's presidential nomination - about which Nelson seethes with pointed thoughts - we'd swear it was still 2006.

For his part, Nelson provided evidence that the Senate's new Democratic majority had moved the ball on at least a bare majority of those issues having nothing to do with the next occupant of the White House, although whether in the most helpful direction is among the arguments that will define the campaign season.

Is This The Way Out?

Nelson touted the Healthy Americans Act, a bipartisan proposal with precisely seven senators from each side of the aisle as co-sponsors, as a way out of our national medical insurance quagmire. The bill's central feature, getting employers out of the policy-procurement business, would fix what Nelson calls (but mangles) "an accident of history."

What prompted business owners to start offering medical benefits was not the massive restoration of World War II veterans to the domestic work force - Nelson's notion. Instead, while our boys were overseas, onerous federal wartime wage and price controls allowed noncash perks as a noninflationary way to retain employees in a tight labor market. Employers also benefited from favorable treatment in the tax code of insurance costs, an enduring arrangement.

Healthy Americans provides a series of changes, mandates and inducements designed to put adults - "no exemptions" - in charge of buying medical insurance for themselves and their dependents through an incentivized, modified free market system of government-approved providers that supporters say would, through the widest possible spreading of underwriting risk, guarantee affordability.

Well, maybe. Property owners and vehicle drivers, who also represent a fair galaxy of available adults and are required to maintain insurance coverage, might dispute universality's claims on affordability. Promises of federal subsidies for poorer Americans may effectively prop up rates; so would requirements that everyone purchase "comprehensive" (chiropractors?) coverage.

How about, instead, a universal tax credit/stipend sufficient for fundamental, portable, private health insurance that individuals could tweak as they needed or were able? Moving on.

Landing The Eagle, Again

Regarding energy, Nelson advocated a 21st century Apollo-style program that, instead of sending Americans to the moon and back, would deliver the nation to self-sufficiency through sheer Yankee technological ingenuity and innovation.

Let's go nuclear, Nelson said, adding, "Three-Mile Island and Chernobyl are things of the past." Let's look at building codes. Europeans mandate solar collectors on the roofs of new construction. Let's see about tapping predictable natural occurrences, such as dropping turbines in the Gulf Stream. Let's see where sugar-based crops could take us on the ethanol front.

"Think of the things we could do!" Nelson said, eyebrows practically dancing off his forehead.

Anyone waiting to hear the senator suggest that, until those technologies are economically feasible and widely available it might be wise, prudent, helpful to the middle class and less taxing on the national defense to fully (and with the utmost environmental care) exploit domestic reserves of oil and natural gas (off the coasts, in the Gulf, in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, in North Dakota and Montana) - that person would have been sorely disappointed.

As for Iraq and immigration, Nelson relied on the Good Book: "Come, and let us reason together." But not for another nine months, when the impetus for revised thinking will be ushered in with a new administration. About that, Nelson conceded a bad feeling, stemming from Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean's stubborn refusal to compromise on seating delegates from primary-date jumpers Florida and Michigan.

"This could have been fixed 10 months ago" before anyone voted, Nelson complained. Now, "There's going to be blood on the floor of the convention" if those delegations are barred, making both states, rich in Electoral College votes, impossible for any Democrat to carry.

Two years ago, Nelson and national Democrats were on the verge of an electoral surge. That's one aspect of 2006 the unchanging Sen. Gray would like to see repeated again and again and again.

Columnist Tom Jackson can be reached at (813) 948-4219.