Issue link: http://www.epageflip.net/i/270994
By Andrew Taylor The Associated Press WASHINGTON » The budget gurus in Congress have failed for years to find a grand bar- gain to reduce the govern- ment's long-term debt, so this year they decided to go small. Just 1 percentage point would be shaved from the an - nual cost-of-living increase in military pensions for veter- ans under age 62. That strategy failed, too. Congress promptly caved in to pressure from the power - ful veterans lobby and voted last month to restore the big- ger pension increases it had cut just two months earlier. It didn't matter that the Pen- tagon itself called the reduc- tion fair and necessary. Advocates of deficit reduc- tion are discouraged. They say they fear Congress' re- versal on military pensions will lead to unraveling other recent spending cuts. "It's tough to overstate how devastating that was," said Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., one of just three senators who voted to keep the pen - sion reduction in place. "It's back to the drawing board, because that was a big blow." Discipline difficult Vague bromides and prom- ises about deficits and spend- ing are easy for politicians. Real spending cuts aren't. Despite all the national talk of needing to tackle deficit spending, the military pen - sions debacle illustrates how Americans and their elected officials continue to resist — often fiercely — cuts to al - most any specific program, big or small. "They picked one thing, and it stuck out like a sore thumb," said Bob Bixby of the bipartisan Concord Co - alition, which advocates lower deficits. The military pension vote signals the end of spending discipline efforts for a time, said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, and may make it easier to reverse other cuts. Indeed, little-noticed but telling events over the past few weeks show lawmak - ers and the White House are backsliding on spend- ing cuts. President Barack Obama, who's scheduled to release his own federal bud- get Tuesday, reversed course on a deeply contentious pro- posal that would curb cost-of- living increases in Social Se- curity. Republicans criticized Obama for backing down but then blasted the administra - tion as it announced it was implementing a new round of Medicare cuts that Con- gress included in the health care overhaul four years ago. Defense at fore Congress also is in the process of signif icantly weakening changes aimed at reforming the much-criti - cized federal flood insurance program made less than two years ago. And defense hawks are squealing over cuts in Pentagon spending required under a 2011 bud - get deal that has hit the mil- itary hard. "I fear we'll spend the next month unraveling every itty- bitty bit of progress we've made," MacGuineas said. Congress agreed in De - cember to make a 1 percent- age point reduction in an- nual cost-of-living adjust- ments for military retirees under age 62. Many retire with full benefits after 20 years, and some take new civilian jobs while in their 40s and 50s, or even late 30s. "This modest and reason - able reform would reduce life- time retirement pay by about 6 percent_from $1.7 million to $1.6 million_for an Army ser- geant first class retiring at age 38," retired Marine Gen. James L. Jones and three other high-ranking retirees wrote in The Hill newspaper. But veterans groups said military retirees were un - fairly singled out, and the organizations lobbied Con- gress to overturn the deci- sion. Some Republican and Demo cratic l aw m a ker s agreed, and the retreat soon became a rout. "A sizable political constit - uency opposed an action by Congress and exercised its political muscle to reverse it," said Rep. Adam Smith, D- Wash. "There's nothing ter - ribly complicated about it." Medicare savings The savings from the mil- itary pensions cut — just $7 billion over a decade — is dwarfed by the savings wrung out of Medicare to help pay for the new health care law. Last month, the White House announced cuts to Medicare Advantage, which lets seniors enroll in Medicare through private in - surance plans. The cuts will translate to about 2 percent next year. "The hard truth is now ap - parent — millions of seniors who rely on the Medicare Advantage program will lose the plans, benefits, doctors and financial protection they currently have," said Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., chair - man of the House Ways and Means Committee. What Camp didn't say is that he had voted to keep the cuts as part of the GOP's plan to balance the budget. Not surprisingly, an ef - fort to reverse the cuts has won the support of 40 sena- tors from both parties who, in a Feb. 14 letter, called on the administration essen- tially to hold Medicare Ad- vantage rates steady. T h e a d m i n i s t r at i o n , though, is standing behind changes to the troubled fed - eral f lood insurance pro- gram passed two years ago. Lawmakers in both parties are working overtime to re- peal most of the changes, which could raise insurance costs for hundreds of thou- sands of homeowners. Then there's the Pentagon budget. It was cut in the 2011 bud - get pact and slashed further last year by automatic cuts known as sequestration. Many Senate Republicans voted against a measure in December to undo some of the cuts — only to complain when Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced re - ductions last Monday. "We are deeply concerned that the policy of auster- ity will be limited to our national security at a time when what we need most is a commander in chief will - ing to lead in a dangerous world," Sens. Lindsey Gra- ham, R-S.C., and John Mc- Cain, R-Ariz., said in a joint statement. Spending-cut efforts run in to r oa db lo ck s in C on gr es s BudGeT j. Scott Applewhite — the ASSociAted preSS in this Feb. 5, 2014 file photo, house Budget committee chairman rep. paul ryan, r-wis. listens on capitol hill in washington. president Barack obama unveils an election-year budget on tuesday that strives for unity among democrats rather than compromise with republicans. By Lindsey Tanner The Associated Press CHICAGO » Most people who abuse addictive prescription painkillers get them for free from friends or relatives, while drug dealers are a rel - atively uncommon source for those at highest risk for deadly overdoses, a govern- ment study found. People who abuse the most frequently often doc- tor-shop; more than 1 in 4 who used these drugs almost daily said they had been pre- scribed by one or more phy- sicians. Almost as many said they got them for free from friends or relatives; only 15 percent of the most frequent abusers said they bought the drugs from dealers or other strangers. Those abusers "are prob - ably using at much greater volumes and simply asking a friend for a pill now and then is not going to be sufficient," said Dr. Leonard Paulozzi, a researcher at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. According to the study, two-thirds of abusers said they used the drugs infre - quently and well over half of these users said they got them free from friends or relatives. Paulozzi and CDC col - leagues analyzed four years of nationwide health surveys on nonmedical use of pain re- lievers including oxycodone and hydrocodone. These in- clude the brand-name pills OxyContin and Vicodin, in a family of drugs called opi- oids — chemically similar to opium. The study was published online Monday in JAMA In- ternal Medicine. Paulozzi said overall prev- alence of nonmedical use of prescription opioid painkill- ers has held steady in re- cent years, at about 12 mil- lion, or 1 in 20 people aged 12 and older. Overdose deaths But previous CDC data show overdose deaths in- volving these drugs more than tripled from 1999 to 2010, with more than 16,000 deaths that year. By con - trast, overdose deaths that involved heroin and cocaine totaled less than 8,000, and deaths that involved often- abused prescription drugs that include anti-anxiety medication totaled about 6,500. A separate study in the same journal presents Ten - nessee — among states hardest hit by prescription drug abuse — as a snapshot of the problem. From 2007 through 2011, one-third of Tennessee's population filled an opioid prescription each year, the study found. Nearly 8 percent had used more than four prescribers and these abusers were more than six times more likely to have fatal overdoses than the least frequent users. The larger nationwide study included data from annual government health surveys for 2008-2011 that included questions about use of these powerful pain - killers. "Nonmedical use was de- fined as use without a pre- scription or use with a pre- scription for the feeling or experience caused by the drug," the researchers said. Paulozzi said the data don't indicate whether friends and relatives who offered free drugs shared their own prescriptions or had obtained the medication in some other way. Public health messages have urged patients with le - gitimate prescriptions for addictive painkillers not to share the drugs and to turn in any leftovers to desig - nated drop-off sites. The new data suggest a need to strengthen mes- sages to doctors to be on the watch for signs of prescrip- tion misuse, Paulozzi said. druGS Friends a common source of abused meds juAn KAritA — the ASSociAted preSS Farmer and traditional meteorologist Francisco condori measures rain water with a flow meter in cutusuma, on lake titicaca's southern shore in Bolivia on Feb. 14. By Carlos Valdez The Associated Press CuTuSuMA, BOLIVIA » For centuries, farmers in the fragile ecosystems of the high Andes have looked to the behavior of plants and animals to figure out what crops to grow and when. If reeds dried up in the late summer, rainless weather lay ahead, they be - lieved. If the Andean fox made a howling appear- ance, abundant rains were thought sure to come. But increasingly erratic weather that scientists at - tribute to global warming is rendering their age-old methods less reliable, en- dangering harvests in a re- gion where life is hard in the best of times. Experts may scoff at such folk science, but the men and women who till the high mountain soil con - tinue to swear by the tradi- tional indicators, and Boliv- ia's government has even incorporated them into climate reports provided to farmers when it lacked modern data from meteo - rological stations. "They work for me," as- sures Francisco Condori, 45, after checking the pre- vious night's precipitation on a homemade rain gauge on Lake Titicaca's southern shore, the hills around him shining purple with flower - ing potato plants. Condori is a well-heeded font of ancestral knowledge for fellow farmers in these treeless climes frequently punished by frosts, hail - storms and drought. In the reeds on Titica- ca's shore, he points out the height of the nests built by birds known as quilli quilli, a diminutive species similar to hummingbirds. Farmers have long used the locations of those nests as measures of how much the lake will rise and the amount of rain - fall to come. "This year they initially built their nests about 1.3 feet above the water level. Then they disma ntled them," Condori says. Twice, in fact, did the birds dis - mantle nests before finally reweaving them at nearly twice their original height. And so it did, so much so that rivers in the Ama - zon basin have flooded their banks, submerging thou- sands of homes. That rain augured well, by contrast, for this Aymara communi- ty's potato crop. Landlocked and poor, Bo- livia relies on a weak meteo- rological reporting system — with just 50 weather sta- tions nationwide. Farming is also low tech in the moun- tains. Ox-driven plows out- number tractors, a far cry from the eastern lowlands, where mechanized rice and soy farming yields the bulk of Bolivian agricultural ex - ports. Condori says the "bio-in- dicators" he follows most closely have helped reduce agricultural losses 40 per- cent in Cutusuma and sur- rounding communities. Scientists, however, stress there are no empirical data to support the beliefs. The indicators are cata - logued in what are known as Pachagrama, registries whose name derives from "Pachamama," the native Andean word for "Mother Earth." Communities com - pile and share the registry information, which is espe- cially crucial from Septem- ber to November when the dry season ends and farm- ers need to know how soon to plant, when the rains will begin and how long they will last. Age-old indicators under stress in Bolivia mountains CLIMATe "I fear we'll spend the next month unraveling every itty-bitty bit of progress we've made." — Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Reponsible Federal Budget 13540 Trinity Ave, Red Bluff (530) 527-8262 • (530) 528-8261 IF NO ANSWER CALL 529-7400 www.garysautobodyandtowing.com AUTO BODY REPAIR WE BILL ALL MAJOR INSURANCE COMPANIES • ECO-FRIENDLY & DRUG FREE • COLLISION REPAIR APPROVED BY ALL MAJOR INSURANCE COMPANIES • LIFETIME WARRANTY • STATE-OF-THE-ART DOWN DRAFT SPRAY BOOTH • NATIONAL AWARD WINNING RESTORATION • AUTO & RV REPAIRS • ECO-FRIENDLY & DRUG FREE • FAST! 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