Bush Is Prepared to Veto Bill to Expand Child Insurance
Bush: No Deal On Children’s Health Plan. President Says He Objects On Philosophical Grounds.
President Bush yesterday rejected entreaties by his Republican allies that he compromise with Democrats on legislation to renew a popular program that provides health coverage to poor children, saying that expanding the program would enlarge the role of the federal government at the expense of private insurance. The president said he objects on philosophical grounds to a bipartisan Senate proposal to boost the State Children’s Health Insurance Program by $35 billion over five years. Bush has proposed $5 billion in increased funding and has threatened to veto the Senate compromise and a more costly expansion being contemplated in the House…. “I support the initial intent of the program,” Bush said in an interview with The Washington Post after a factory tour and a discussion on health care with small-business owners in Landover. “My concern is that when you expand eligibility…you’re really beginning to open up an avenue for people to switch from private insurance to the government.”
This feels an awful lot like beating the same old dead horse, but what does it say about a President’s prioriites when he demands that Congress gives him a blank check for his illegal and immoral war in Iraq, but he refuses to adequately fund a program designed to ensure that children are provided health insurance coverage? Even if this issue was evaluated purely from a cynical PR standpoint, you’d think Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader © would recognize that taking care of the health care needs of children should take precedence over protecting the interests of his friends and benefactors in the insurance industry. Then again, doing the right thing for the right reasons has never been a hallmark of the reign of King George the Worst © .
This issue is, like most political controversies, not nearly as simple as the sound bites make it out to be…except when you factor in the need to ensure that all children are afforded the right (yes, THE RIGHT) to basic, affordable health care. There’s no argument that could possibly be made that could even begin to justify denying poor and lower middle class children access to basic, affordable health care. (And let’s not ignore the fact that an up-front investment in the health of a child may actually SAVE money in the long term.) If we can be expected to fund a war of aggression in Iraq, should we not be able to expect that the health care needs of American children will be treated as priorities? The Worst President EVER © and his neoConservative masters so wed to their ideology that they simply cannot see their way clear to doing the right thing by the children of this country?
About 3.3 million additional children would be covered under the proposal developed by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Republican Sens. Charles E. Grassley (Iowa) and Orrin G. Hatch (Utah), among others. It would provide the program $60 billion over five years, compared with $30 billion under Bush’s proposal. And it would rely on a 61-cent increase in the federal excise tax on cigarettes, to $1 a pack, which Bush opposes.
When you look at it, there really isn’t a down side to supporting this legislation. Children get taken care of, smokers are further disincentivized, and The Worst President EVER © could legitimately claim this as one of the cornerstones of his legacy. True to his neoConservative convictions, though, SCHIP is a nonstarter because it represents a perceived incentive for poor people to rely on government handouts rather than private insurers.
Uh…what???
Besides, it’s not like poor children vote Republican, anyway….
Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), the House Democratic Caucus chairman, said he is “bewildered” that Bush is fighting the expanded funding for a program supported by Republicans and Democrats alike. “This is the chance for him to finally be a uniter and not a divider,” Emanuel said. “You have consensus across party and ideology, and a unity on the most important domestic issue, health care — except for one person.”
And that one person is The Decider ©, who’s apparently decided that ideological fealty and purity is a more acceptable and laudable commodity than the health of American children.
A recent analysis by the Congressional Budget Office concluded that the program would require about $14 billion in new money over five years — on top of the current $5 billion in annual funding — merely to keep covering the same number of children, in part because of rising health-care costs. Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt, accompanying Bush yesterday, said: “We disagree with that number.”
Given that The Decider © has generally displayed the political instincts of an axe-murderer, I suppose it’s understandable that he’s sticking to his guns, regardless of the political costs involved. Meanwhile, he’s handing Democrats a gold-plated issue that can be spun into something that makes Commander Codpiece © look nothing like the “Compassionate Conservative” he claims to be.
Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader © can and should be portrayed as a leader who prefers to fund killing to ensuring that children grow up healthy. It may be an overly simplistic argument, but smart Democrats will use it to their advantage- and they should. It’s not like this Administration’s propaganda machine would be passing up a similar opportunity if one came way.
