Rural health care group honors, hears Murray

The debate over the federal budget should not be reduced to numbers, Sen. Patty Murray told health care professionals. It needs to be a debate about people.

“Put a human face on Medicare and Medicaid,” Murray told the Washington Rural Health Association at a meeting Thursday in Spokane. “Step up and speak out when politicians take the people out of policies.”

Murray, a Democrat who is the state’s senior senator, criticized the Bush administration for its initial budget, which came with cuts to health, education and labor programs. Last week, the Senate added some $7 billion for those programs, and that proposal must be reconciled with the House.

“It’s much easier to look at a $1 billion cut than to look at the fact that a community block grant goes to a neighborhood that is struggling,” she said in an interview after receiving an award from the health association. “It’s much easier to cut a number, than a person.”

On a separate topic, Murray said she will wait until after Senate committee hearings before deciding whether to support a proposal to censure President Bush. She isn’t co-sponsoring the bill by Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., but said the Senate needs to look into reports the president misled the public about domestic wiretapping after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.

“I share (Feingold’s) frustration at the Senate’s lack of oversight,” she said. “How can we know what happened without the hearings?”