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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/08/politics/08CND_REPU.html?tntemail0

New Senate Leader Sketches Out Priorities

By DAVID FIRESTONE

ASHINGTON, Jan. 8 — Bill Frist, the new Senate majority leader, vowed today to reduce racial disparities in health care as a means of repairing the Republican Party's reputation with minorities, publicly sketching out his priorities for the first time since being elected by the Republican caucus last month.

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Dr. Frist did not mention the racial remark that led to the downfall of his predecessor as majority leader, Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, but said it was time to forthrightly address issues of racial reconciliation that many in and out of his party have tried to avoid in the past. Toward that end, he said, the Republican-controlled Senate will try to increase spending on historically black colleges and medical centers, and will support the administration's plan to make federal funding available to religious institutions, many of which are prominent in the black community.

But given his background as a physician, Dr. Frist also brought up the need to intensify the fight against the spread of HIV and AIDS in Africa, and to improve the health care of blacks and other minorities.

"For reasons we don't fully understand, but we've got to face and we've got to elevate, we know that African Americans today do not live as long," he said, surrounded by six other members of the Senate Republican leadership. "They don't have the same access, and the doctor-patient relationship in some way is colored by the medical training. And that's something I began to address a long time ago and will continue to address."

But the leaders, taking a break in the midst of an all-day Republican caucus at the Library of Congress, did not list these racial issues in their top five legislative priorities. That agenda, as described by Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, is led with the passage of President Bush's economic plan of tax cuts, followed by improvement in domestic and national security, adding a prescription drug plan for seniors, implementing the president's education plan, and approving an energy plan that features new oil exploration in the Alaskan wilderness.

Dr. Frist, asked about his plans to restructure the Medicare system, said he wants to find a way to bring health care to the uninsured, although he did not say how he hoped to do that.

"Health care disparities, minority versus non-minority populations, is something I feel strongly about," he said. "So you'll see that elevated. So when we say Medicare, prescription drugs, which is what everybody thinks about, let's not forget that there are many health care challenges, which I would call crises, out there today."

Republican leaders said they were not particularly worried about the deficits that may result from the tax cuts and new spending they planned to pursue, convinced that once the economy begins to grow, the red ink would disappear.

"I think the president's been very, very clear that in a time when you're in a recession and a time when you're at war, you have to focus on, number one, winning the war, and number two, trying to get this economy up and going," said Mr. Santorum, the number-three Republican leader in the Senate. "And I think if you look at the history, that if the economy is strong, deficits go away. We saw that in the 1990's. Spending was historically very, very high, yet the deficits went away and we went into surplus.

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