... computer consulting and training specialists
... computer consulting and training specialists
DENVER -- Richard Lamm has climbed most of Colorado's highest mountains. He hikes. He skis. He goes whitewater canoeing.
And as an expected contender for the Reform Party's presidential nomination, the 60-year-old former Colorado governor is equally tough in his attacks on the Republican and Democratic parties.
Both, he argues, have shunned the hard choices needed to make changes in government health-care policies and costly entitlement programs -- Social Security, for example, which he believes the government will be unable to sustain once baby boomers retire.
"Somebody's got to tell the American people that the New Deal and the Great Society are unsustainable," the white-haired Mr. Lamm said in a recent interview.
Mr. Lamm -- known for his blunt talk over the years -- is happy to be the one to bring the message.
"I really do believe in the role of the Old Testament prophet, and the heretic," he once said. "I may not have all the right answers but, I've got to tell you, I'm asking some of the right questions."
Mr. Lamm, who announced his candidacy earlier this month, is well aware of the challenge he faces. He has little money to mount a national campaign; he could find himself vying against billionaire Ross Perot for the Reform nomination, and any independent party campaign is given little chance of success.
Like his odds, his agenda is not for the politically squeamish.
Mr. Lamm supports reductions in entitlements for those with incomes of more than $40,000. He wants restraints on Medicare spending 10 times as severe as those proposed by his old friend, President Clinton, and five times those supported by Republicans.
He faults both parties for pandering to the elderly.
If the "gray wave" of spending on the elderly can be reversed, "it will have as heavy an impact on the next 40 years as the civil rights movement did on the last 40," he says.
Jim Monaghan, a political consultant and former Lamm adviser, said Mr. Lamm's quest is no "frivolous thing. ... He's had a rap for raising imponderable problems without solutions. Now, he's talking about solutions."
But some question whether Mr. Lamm can move beyond his "Governor Gloom" reputation.
Diane Rees, a GOP political consultant who helped promote Mr. Perot's 1992 campaign, predicts Mr. Lamm "would bring a measure of unreserved gloom about the country. On any given issue, Dick Lamm is always able to view with alarm, but I'm not sure he's about to point with pride -- to anything."
Controversy has been a career-long friend of Mr. Lamm, who has persistently criticized Social Security, Medicare and the idea of keeping terminally ill patients alive indefinitely.
In the early 1980s, he shocked many with his offhand remark that, "We've got a duty to die and get out of the way with all our machines and artificial hearts and everything else like that and let the other society, our kids, build a reasonable life."
Many elderly citizens agreed. But others were appalled.
Another statement, on care and education of the developmentally disabled, also got him in trouble. He said, "We must ask ourselves -- in a world of limited resources -- does it make sense to spend $10,000 a year to educate a child to roll over?"
Dozens of handicapped citizens, many in wheelchairs, came to the lobby of Mr. Lamm's gubernatorial office to roll and tumble on the carpet in protest.
Early on, as a young state legislator, Mr. Lamm succeeded in pushing through a controversial law liberalizing abortion restrictions years before the Roe vs. Wade decision legalized the procedure.
He also spearheaded a successful effort to keep the 1976 Winter Olympics from Colorado, fearing the strain on state resources and the environment.
He also persuaded the Legislature to enact a severance tax to repair environmental and social damage created by mining.
A close colleague of President Clinton when both were young governors anxious for change, Mr. Lamm now accuses the president of using scare tactics to frighten elderly voters about Medicare cuts.
He believes the United States should adopt policies patterned on those in Japan: spend less on health care, particularly on the terminally ill, and more on increasing educational and employment opportunities.
A lawyer, Mr. Lamm is critical of the massive number of attorneys emerging from law schools in a country he believes already is too litigious.
An author, Mr. Lamm remains critical of industrial damage to the environment.
A politician, he is critical of the expensive political system and says it will take "an economic Pearl Harbor" to gather forces for change.
| -Top- | -Home- | -Digest- | -Index- | -Staff- |  |