Shame on our senators. This year they went to Washington and delivered a platinum bankruptcy bill for MBNA (a mere $235,000 investment in our senators, and $3.5 million mostly to the Republican party, will net $65 million in the first year), and a diamond-encrusted tax cut for the rich (the 92 million tax rebate checks totaling $38 billion that started going out this week represent a minuscule 0.028 percent of the $1.35 trillion tax cut – contrast that to the 43 percent or $690 billion going to the top 1 percent), but for our seniors all they came home with are corporate pity cards.

That the Bush corporate pity cards, or to use the euphemism the Republicans prefer, discount drug cards (the participant receives a plastic discount card like Rite Aid or Shaw’s which would cost no more than $25 annually) would bring a real savings to seniors has been called a “fallacy” by none other than Craig Fuller who was chief of staff for ex-president George Bush when he served as vice president and is now president of the National Association of Chain Drug Stores.

Fuller stated, “Independent studies have proven the fallacy of state-based prescription discount card programs for seniors. They don’t work. The same fallacies are likely to occur with a national discount card program.” In a lawsuit to stop the hoax filed by drugstore owners last week, the group says that the Bush plan is “clandestine and unlawful.” Commenting on the suit Fuller said, “This plan provides false hopes to our seniors when they walk into their neighborhood pharmacy.”

The reason our senators are touting these corporate pity cards is that they know that the return to deficit spending, resulting from the recently enacted tax cut that they so enthusiastically supported, precludes the possibility of a decent Medicare prescription drug benefit for our seniors and they need political cover.

Sen. Susan Collins recently criticized her fellow Republicans on their version of a plan to later add a supplemental Medicare benefit to the corporate pity cards stating, “There may be some Republicans who believe that we cannot afford to have a full-scale benefit to all seniors and who only want it for very low-income seniors. Benefits under Medicare have traditionally been universal, a position which I support. However we may be able to adjust the amount of premiums, based on income.”

First it should be noted that at least those Republicans are being honest about the effect that the tax cut has had on the government’s ability to provide our seniors with a decent Medicare prescription drug plan. Next it should be noted that this statement by the senator is misleading because the phrase “traditionally universal” has always implied equal benefits for all – no one is prorated. And last it should be noted that adjusting premiums based on incomes appears to violate the spirit of our senators’ and Mr. Bush’s widely used aphorism in the tax cut debate relating to the “picking of winners and losers.”

Under the Bush plan the meager supplemental Medicare Rx benefit that our senators support will be paid for by weakening other Medicare benefits and doubling the number of seniors in Medicare HMO’s from 15 to 30 million.

Our seniors are the foundation upon which our lives have been built. They deserve nothing less than a top notch uncapped universal Medicare drug benefit after a low deductible is met. Now if our senators truly wants to do the righteous thing for our seniors, they will go back to Washington and introduce the legislation necessary to roll back the tax cut for the rich and give our seniors the Medicare prescription drug benefit that they deserve.

Peter P. Misluk Jr. lives in Belfast.