Tom DeLay and the Living Will

Listen, this is early on a Sunday, and the strident tone clashes with the soft mist outside and the rich smell of earth.

I am embarrassed to be writing this. But it seems necessary, though it is really none of your collective business. But here it is, big as life, my only defense against Tom DeLay: I wish no heroic measures to prolong my life, should I pass into a persistent vegetative state.

There. Done with it. I hope that is enough to protect me from what passes for leadership in the United States House of Representatives, and from the President, who is apparently flying back to the capital from his ranch in Crawford, Texas, so he can be on hand to sign a bill about a feeding tube.

I thought they could fax it, but maybe I don’t understand how these things work.

Tom DeLay, who apparently needs a sideshow from his ethics problems, has made this session a clarion call for liberty. The House is supposed to be on two weeks ”District Work,” and are scattered all over the country and the globe.

We all know far more than we need to about poor Terry Schiavo. I feel for her folks, for her long suffering husband. She suffered massive brain damage in 1990 when her heart stopped beating due to a potassium deficiency. Potassium apparently plays a key role in cellular functioning, regulating fluid, electrolyte and the acid base balance in the body. I never thought about it much; they say bananas, oranges and leafy green vegetables are good natural sources of it.

Terry was a vibrant young woman in her mid-twenties at the time, married and just ready to start experiencing the trials and joys of life.

I feel terrible for her. The video footage of her is disquieting. She seems on the verge of awakening sometimes, which must be what wrenches her parents so badly. No parent should outlive their child, not while there is hope. That is the curse of modern medicine, I suppose. Anything can be accomplished, with a sufficient allocation of resources.

And of course, there are not enough to go around. According to the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, the average rate for a private room in a nursing home is $181 a day, or about $66,000 a year. Forecasting out to 2021, when I will be pushing seventy, the average rate will have risen to about $480 a day, or $175,200 annually. I don’t know who is paying that for Terry. I hope her husband has a good medical plan, and he doesn’t plan on changing jobs, or his company doesn’t go bust.

David Brooks noted in the Times yesterday that the Congressional Budget Office has issued a report saying that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid will consume 14 percent of national output in 2030, nearly double what it does today. That is an extra $50 trillion just to pay for existing entitlements.

Like many people, I pay a monthly fee for something that is called long-term care. It isn’t much, forty or fifty bucks a month, and it correspondingly doesn’t give you much, either. I would have to dig the policy out of my files, but if memory serves, it is sufficient to have nursing home care for a couple years. After that, the disposition of my hulk is up to what is left of my estate, and then the estates of my children.

I don’t know if Mr. DeLay would like to chip in; but based on his concern for human life, I assume an emergency session of Congress would not be required.

Terry left no written instructions on what to do if the worst happened. Her husband says she told him that she would not have wanted this sort of life, if that is what it came to. I don’t know if that is true or not, or just what she would have said, had she thought about it in the days of her boundless youth.

Now she is a football, punted first between state judges and a Governor, and now the Congress of the United States.

The members all left town, comfortable with the trade deficit, and comfortable with the mess of Medicare and Medicaid, and the prescription drug provision that will cost…whatever. They were serene about Social Security, unwilling to make a fix now and prevent that entitlement from going bust.

It was convenient that the President confused the issue with his proposal to establish the private accounts within the system; that has nothing to do with long-term solvency and everything to do with short-term debt, kept conveniently off the budget proposal.

Everyone seems to be OK with the disintegration of the National Guard and Reserves, being ground to bits in the deployments to Iraq, and no one is willing to face up to the fundamental changes in the military structure that must occur if we are to maintain a long-term commitment to the region. There are rays of hope in what has occurred in the Middle East, amidst the tragedy.

There are some costs that should be paid, with a little public discourse.

But the President was comfortable with going on vacation after cutting the Veterans Affairs budget in the face of hundreds of returning young people, horribly maimed. Modern medicine saved their lives on the battlefield to which the President dispatched them. Now he has an obligation to help them back to some semblance of a normal life.

The Congress was OK with going on recess while the kids are coming back from Iraq to Walter Reed Army Medical Center and to the Bethesda Naval Hospital.

I must have missed the debate about devaluing our money, risking the solvency of our Treasury bonds held overseas, and replacing the dollar as the de facto world currency. Perhaps I got up to use the bathroom. How did you vote on that?

But the Congress is going to meet in emergency session today, to pass legislation that will enable a Federal Judge to make a decision about a husband’s decision on his wife’s life. And the President is going to fly that big airplane across the country to sign it, burning 3,200 gallons of fuel an hour in the process.

Press Secretary Mark McClellan says there is a life at stake.

I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to get so strident on Sunday. But I think it is time to put our collective wishes down on paper, just in case.

And I think it might just be time to start thinking about throwing the bums out, all of them, Republicans and Democrats alike. But I think we should start with Tom DeLay.

Copyright 2005 Vic Socotra

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