Bush Vetoes Child Health Bill Privately
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and CARL HULSE
Published: October 4, 2007
WEST HEMPFIELD TOWNSHIP, Pa., Oct. 3 ?- President Bush on Wednesday made good on his promise to veto a bill that would have expanded government health insurance for children, but then said he was open to compromising with Congress by spending more money on the program than his budget has proposed.
"I do want Republicans and Democrats to come together to support a bill that focuses on the poor children," Mr. Bush told a group of business people at a town-hall-style meeting here in Pennsylvania Dutch Country.
He added, "And if they need a little more money to help us meet the objective of getting help for poorer children, I'm more than willing to sit down with the leaders and find a way to do so."
But Mr. Bush did not make a specific offer, and his plan, to spend $5 billion more on the program over the next five years, falls far short of the $35 billion expansion that passed with bipartisan support in Congress.
On Capitol Hill, Democrats and their Republican allies seemed in no mood to compromise; they vowed to overturn the veto before entertaining any deal.
"We've got to do what we can to try to override," said Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican on the Finance Committee, who was the bill's lead Republican sponsor and had personally appealed to the president not to veto the measure.
There are enough votes to override the veto in the Senate, but not in the House. In a somewhat unusual move, House Democrats on Wednesday forced a vote to postpone the override attempt until Oct. 18, giving themselves two weeks to round up the roughly 20 votes they need. Mr. Grassley said he intended to personally appeal to House members who could provide the necessary votes to circumvent the president, and Democrats said they had already picked up a few.
The veto, only the fourth of Mr. Bush's presidency, is a politically difficult one for the president, and he issued it in private Wednesday morning, without the fanfare and White House ceremonies he has employed when rejecting embryonic stem cell legislation and an emergency war spending bill that set a deadline for troop withdrawal from Iraq.
He then traveled here to make his case for the veto directly to the American people, via a nationally televised chat with a friendly audience made up of members of a local Chamber of Commerce group.
The topics included the war in Iraq, climate change, education, Iran's nuclear program and subsidies for farmers. In an unusual departure for a White House that likes to keep its events under tight control, a woman wearing a T-shirt that read, "George Bush, your war killed my friend's son," was allowed to remain at the event, and the first question came from a war opponent, who said he wanted to ask Mr. Bush "man to man, taxpayer to president," whether it was time to bring the troops home.
But the White House had another agenda: to explain Mr. Bush's decision to reject the expansion of the health insurance plan ?- known as Schip, for State Children's Health Insurance Program ?- which would have added four million children to the six million already covered.
Mr. Bush argues that the expansion is too costly and would push people who could afford private insurance onto the government rolls, steering the program away from its initial aim of helping poor children. He said that states like New Jersey, Michigan, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Illinois and New Mexico spend more money on adults than children, and he reiterated his contention, which the authors of the bill dispute, that the measure could benefit some families earning up to $83,000 a year.
"That doesn't sound poor to me," the president said.
Still, he sounded a bit uneasy. "My job is a decision-making job, and as a result, I make a lot of decisions," Mr. Bush said, adding that he had come to "explain the philosophy behind some of the decisions I've made."
The veto has the potential to become a hot-button political issue, especially for Republicans in tight re-election races. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has already begun radio advertisements and automatic phone calls against eight Republicans in swing districts.
"Those members who are Democrats and Republicans in the House who didn't vote for this the first go-round better take another look at this, because I think this could be devastating for them," said Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, who is the majority leader.
Already, Democrats say they have picked up two more supporters in the House. Representative Dan Boren, an Oklahoma Democrat who opposed the bill, said he would vote to override the veto, and Representative Bobby Jindal, a Louisiana Republican who missed the initial vote, has said he will support the override.
Republicans were confident they would hold their lawmakers together and uphold the president's veto. They said they believed that, given the opportunity, they could explain their opposition based on the costs of the expansion and the unwarranted inclusion in the program of adults and by portraying it as a step toward government health care.
"The funding is not going to low-income children," said Representative Jim McCrery of Louisiana, a party point man on the issue.
Still, the Republican cause was not helped by lawmakers like Mr. Grassley as well as Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, a Republican who is normally a strong supporter of the president.
"If we're truly compassionate, it seems to me, we'd want to endorse this program," Mr. Hatch said. "I don't think the president is somebody who doesn't want these kids to be covered. I think he's been given some pretty bad advice by some who, though sincere, are sincerely wrong."
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: October 5, 2007
In 1960, John F. Kennedy, who had been shocked by the hunger he saw in West Virginia, made the fight against hunger a theme of his presidential campaign. After his election he created the modern food stamp program, which today helps millions of Americans get enough to eat.
But Ronald Reagan thought the issue of hunger in the world's richest nation was nothing but a big joke. Here's what Reagan said in his famous 1964 speech "A Time for Choosing," which made him a national political figure: "We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry each night. Well, that was probably true. They were all on a diet."
Today's leading conservatives are Reagan's heirs. If you're poor, if you don't have health insurance, if you're sick ?- well, they don't think it's a serious issue. In fact, they think it's funny.
On Wednesday, President Bush vetoed legislation that would have expanded S-chip, the State Children's Health Insurance Program, providing health insurance to an estimated 3.8 million children who would otherwise lack coverage.
In anticipation of the veto, William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, had this to say: "First of all, whenever I hear anything described as a heartless assault on our children, I tend to think it's a good idea. I'm happy that the president's willing to do something bad for the kids." Heh-heh-heh.
Most conservatives are more careful than Mr. Kristol. They try to preserve the appearance that they really do care about those less fortunate than themselves. But the truth is that they aren't bothered by the fact that almost nine million children in America lack health insurance. They don't think it's a problem.
"I mean, people have access to health care in America," said Mr. Bush in July. "After all, you just go to an emergency room."
And on the day of the veto, Mr. Bush dismissed the whole issue of uninsured children as a media myth. Referring to Medicaid spending ?- which fails to reach many children ?- he declared that "when they say, well, poor children aren't being covered in America, if that's what you're hearing on your TV screens, I'm telling you there's $35.5 billion worth of reasons not to believe that."
It's not just the poor who find their travails belittled and mocked. The sick receive the same treatment.
Before the last election, the actor Michael J. Fox, who suffers from Parkinson's and has become an advocate for stem cell research that might lead to a cure, made an ad in support of Claire McCaskill, the Democratic candidate for Senator in Missouri. It was an effective ad, in part because Mr. Fox's affliction was obvious.
And Rush Limbaugh ?- displaying the same style he exhibited in his recent claim that members of the military who oppose the Iraq war are "phony soldiers" and his later comparison of a wounded vet who criticized him for that remark to a suicide bomber ?- immediately accused Mr. Fox of faking it. "In this commercial, he is exaggerating the effects of the disease. He is moving all around and shaking. And it's purely an act." Heh-heh-heh.
Of course, minimizing and mocking the suffering of others is a natural strategy for political figures who advocate lower taxes on the rich and less help for the poor and unlucky. But I believe that the lack of empathy shown by Mr. Limbaugh, Mr. Kristol, and, yes, Mr. Bush is genuine, not feigned.
Mark Crispin Miller, the author of "The Bush Dyslexicon," once made a striking observation: all of the famous Bush malapropisms ?- "I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family," and so on ?- have involved occasions when Mr. Bush was trying to sound caring and compassionate.
By contrast, Mr. Bush is articulate and even grammatical when he talks about punishing people; that's when he's speaking from the heart. The only animation Mr. Bush showed during the flooding of New Orleans was when he declared "zero tolerance of people breaking the law," even those breaking into abandoned stores in search of the food and water they weren't getting from his administration.
What's happening, presumably, is that modern movement conservatism attracts a certain personality type. If you identify with the downtrodden, even a little, you don't belong. If you think ridicule is an appropriate response to other peoples' woes, you fit right in.
And Republican disillusionment with Mr. Bush does not appear to signal any change in that regard. On the contrary, the leading candidates for the Republican nomination have gone out of their way to condemn "socialism," which is G.O.P.-speak for any attempt to help the less fortunate.
So once again, if you're poor or you're sick or you don't have health insurance, remember this: these people think your problems are funny.
Denying health care to America's children
Quote:Published: October 26, 2007
The U.S. House of Representatives approved a revised bill to finance the children's health insurance program on Thursday by 265-142 - a strong mandate, but still not enough to overcome another promised veto by President George W. Bush.
If the president carries out this threat, we hope congressional tacticians can find a way to enact this important measure over the adamant, ideologically driven opposition of Bush and House Republican leaders. The health of millions of children who lack insurance cannot be held hostage to the president's visceral distaste for government and its essential role to protect the weak, or his desire to protect the tobacco industry.
House Democrats tried hard to address the issues raised and relentlessly hyped by Republican critics. The bill would speed up the removal of childless adults who have been enrolled in the program in a handful of states, and would reduce the enrollment of parents, even though including parents is often the best way to reach their children.
Most important in the battle for public opinion, critics can no longer charge that the bill would cover children in families earning up to $83,000. That was always hype since the only state where that might have happened was New York - where health costs are especially high. The new bill would provide federal matching money to cover only children in families with incomes below 300 percent of the federal poverty level, or almost $62,000 for a family of four. The only exception is that New Jersey could continue to provide coverage to families who earn up to $72,000 - if the state ranks high in covering the poorest children.
Our own feeling is that states where the cost of living is high should be able to cover middle-class families. But if limiting the program to 300 percent of the poverty level is necessary to get this important legislation enacted, that would be a price worth paying.
The administration says it does not want to add $35 billion more to enlarge the program, known as SCHIP, over the next five years. The House bill would pay for that largely by raising tobacco taxes, but that does not satisfy the White House. The president is also opposed to enlarging a government-financed insurance program that he says might compete with private insurance. To allay those fears , the new bill would encourage premium assistance to help families buy private policies and require all states to come up with policies to lessen the incentive to switch to SCHIP.
House Republicans still wanted more. They sought to eliminate all adults from the program, except pregnant women, and to base eligibility on gross income - with no ability to discount spending on child care or other vital needs. The Republicans also wanted to impose arduous documentation requirements to ensure that no illegal immigrants are enrolled, even though there is little or no evidence that any ever have been.
The House bill also had the backing of many Senate Republicans, who strongly support expanding SCHIP. But not a single House Republican who had supported the president's previous veto was willing to shift sides on Thursday. Clearly these Republicans care more about protecting their party's ideology - they call it "principles" - than protecting America's children.
Bush say's $35 Billion in five years is too much to spend on America's children. But a OK to piss away for a few months in Iraq. One must wonder where his loyalties lie.
