Bread & Circuses

Yuppie Care

DURING a radio debate last week, Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D., Calif.) told me that she enthusiastically supports Bill and Hillary Clinton’s $22-billion federal day-care initiative because she had a premature baby a few years ago and had some trouble finding a babysitter. Mrs. Tauscher was elected to Congress in 1996, spending $1.7 million of her own money to defeat an incumbent Republican. With a fraction of her personal war chest, she could have hired a neo-natal team from San Francisco General to care for her child. But she believes that her tale bolsters her case. In the brief time she has spent in Washington so far, Rep. Tauscher has learned how policy is really made. Despite stacks of studies and discs of data, legislation typically amounts to government by anecdote.

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Kate O'Beirne

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Yuppie Care

DURING a radio debate last week, Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D., Calif.) told me that she enthusiastically supports Bill and Hillary Clinton’s $22-billion federal day-care initiative because she had a premature baby a few years ago and had some trouble finding a babysitter. Mrs. Tauscher was elected to Congress in 1996, spending $1.7 million of her own money to defeat an incumbent Republican. With a fraction of her personal war chest, she could have hired a neo-natal team from San Francisco General to care for her child. But she believes that her tale bolsters her case. In the brief time she has spent in Washington so far, Rep. Tauscher has learned how policy is really made. Despite stacks of studies and discs of data, legislation typically amounts to government by anecdote.