Blunt on Entitlements; McCaskill Pushes Broadband; Kit Meets Condi

Rep. Roy Blunt is blasting Democrats for failing to rein in "runaway entitlements" while crafting the 2008 budget. Blunt seized on a report released by the Social Security and Medicare Board of Trustees. It warns that the two giant programs are unsustainable as we move into the next span of decades. The Medicare warning was a trigger included by the Republicans in the 2003 Medicare bill. It is meant to alert the public that general revenues will soon account for more than 45% of Medicare spending.

"Unfortunately, the current stewards of Congress don't seem all that moved by the forecasts of impending insolvency," Blunt said in a release. "House Democrats passed a spendthrift budget that takes great pride in erasing Republican tax relief, but does absolutely nothing to ease - much less erase - the rising tide of Social Security and Medicare insolvency."

Sen. Claire McCaskill is working to reform a rural utilities service program that provides grants and loans to establish broadband technology to rural areas. McCaskill said that the definition of "rural" in the Ag Department program has been significantly widened to include some areas where service is already available. According to McCaskill, a 2005 audit found that the program loaned $23 million to a company to provide broadband to subdivisions outside of Houston, Texas.

"I'd appreciate the opportunity to try to take a two-by-four to that agency and fix that program so we can use that money and make that bureaucracy responsive as opposed to saying well, we wasted that money, let's start another one with no assurances that we're not going to have the same darn thing happen again," McCaskill said in a release.

Sen. Kit Bond met with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice today on public diplomacy efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Southeast Asia.

Bond said he stressed to Rice the importance of promoting economic infrastructure as part of the diplomatic effort in the War on Terror. According to a release, Bond also urged Rice to step up diplomacy efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID.) The senior Senator wants $20 million for the establishment of a U.S. college consortium to be administered by Texas A&M University. That consortium will partner with other universities, like the University of Missouri, to provide training and assistance to Afghan officials.