FOR THE RECORD

While union officials were pleased that Mayor Bloomberg's budget proposal sets aside $2 billion toward the payment of retiree health benefits, a couple of them also suggested the long-term solution lies in the provision of national health insurance.

The obvious counter to that hope is that it's highly unlikely that President Bush would push for such a program, especially considering that it was Republicans in Congress a dozen years ago who torpedoed a proposal on that issue that was drafted for the Clinton Administration by then-First Lady Hillary Clinton.

Union officials say, however, that the soaring cost of health care is a problem that is unlikely to recede in the near future unless something dramatic is done. District Council 37 Retirees' Association President Stu Leibowitz, even as he applauded Mayor Bloomberg's "prudence in putting away the money," pointed out that the $2 billion "rainy-day fund" is merely enough to cover the anticipated city costs for retirees over the next two years.

Municipal Labor Committee chair Randi Weingarten also used the "prudent" word, though she added that the amount in the fund should be negotiated with the unions and the City Council. She noted that other budget needs, including salaries for public workers, had to be addressed.

"The nationwide health crisis must be dealt with responsibly," said Ms. Weingarten, who is also the president of the United Federation of Teachers, in a statement. "The strategy endorsed by many large private-sector companies of eliminating health plans is not part of America's value system of taking care of each other."

Bill Henning, a vice president of Communications Workers of America Local 1180, said the Mayor was not crying wolf when he talked about the strain that rising health-care costs have placed on the city's budget.

"We understand that there is a cost to the chaotic way that we do health care in this country," he said. "It's gotta be solved on a national basis. We need national health-care coverage as a right, not a perk of employment."

When it was suggested his desired solution was unlikely to come unless and until Democrats recaptured the White House in the 2008 election, Mr. Henning responded, "We've gotta begin the campaign now. This might be the perfect storm: the right time to do this because it's such a crisis. We're also inviting the city to join us in pursuing national health legislation." Told of the invitation, mayoral spokesman Jordan Barowitz said that if the unions were sincere, they ought to ask the Mayor directly.

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The perception of Mayor Bloomberg as among the most prominent of the breed known as RINOs - Republicans in Name Only - came into sharper focus last week on two unrelated fronts.

His companion, Diana Taylor, had what appeared to be a certain nomination to head the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation derailed under mysterious circumstances, with speculation running strong that the reason was fury on the part of the National Rifle Association over Mr. Bloomberg's uncharacteristically harsh criticism of the gun industry in the wake of a couple of police officers' deaths.

Mr. Bloomberg himself refrained from commenting, saying Ms. Taylor could speak for herself, but he clearly saw no point in exacerbating tensions with national Republicans by suggesting that they were NRA lapdogs. Ms. Taylor was quoted in the New York Times telling the State Banking Board that she had no idea whether her torpedoed nomination was the doing of "the NRA or the tobacco lobby or some cabal."

It was also learned Feb. 2 that Mr. Bloomberg had donated $100 million to his alma mater, Johns Hopkins University, for stem-cell research. Two days earlier, President Bush in his State of the Union address had inveighed against such research, asking Congress to pass legislation "to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research, human cloning in all its forms, creating or implanting embryos for experiments ... and buying, selling or patenting human embryos."

A Bloomberg spokesman, asked whether the timing of the Mayor's stem-cell donation was related to the President's remarks, declined comment.