Kids Who Need Health Care or Pathetic Little Whiners?

Maybe if the President made his little statement in an ad in the New York Times, the Congress would rise up in near-unanimity to condemn it.

“In just 10 days the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, known as S-CHIP, is set to expire. This important program helps children whose families cannot afford private health insurance, but do not qualify for Medicaid to get coverage they need.

“I have strongly supported S-CHIP as a governor, and I have done so as President. My 2008 budget proposed to increase S-CHIP funding by $5 billion over five years. It’s a 20 percent increase over current levels of funding. Unfortunately, instead of working with the administration to enact this funding increase for children’s health, Democrats in Congress have decided to pass a bill they know that will be vetoed. One of their leaders has even said such a veto would be, ‘a political victory.’ […]

“In other words, members of Congress are putting health coverage for poor children at risk so they can score political points in Washington. The legislation would raise taxes on working people, and would raise spending by between $35 billion and $50 billion. Their proposal would result in taking a program meant to help poor children and turning it into one that covers children in households with incomes of up to $83,000 a year.”

This is maybe the most dishonest statement that Bush has ever made. The entire point is that he's threatening to veto a health insurance bill for children because it provides too much health insurance, despite it having the backing of over 2/3 of Republicans in the Senate and likely the same in the House, if they know what's good for them. Yet it's apparently the Congress' fault for wanting to fund a successful plan and let states decide how to use it.

Republicans are pretty pissed off.

"I'm disappointed by the president's comments," said Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), who urged Bush, in an early-morning telephone conversation yesterday, to support the emerging bipartisan compromise. "Drawing lines in the sand at this stage isn't constructive. . . . I wish he would engage Congress in a bill that he could sign instead of threatening a veto."

"I'm very, very disappointed," said Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.). "I'm going to be voting for it."

(Sen, Orrin) Hatch, who helped negotiate the compromise, said it is flatly untrue that the bill would cover children in households with incomes of as much as $83,000. A recent Urban Institute analysis found that 70 percent of the children who would gain or retain coverage under the Senate bill, which resembles the compromise, are in households with incomes below twice the poverty level, or $41,300 for a family of four.

“We’re talking about kids who basically don’t have coverage,” Hatch said. “I think the president’s had some pretty bad advice on this.”

Asked whether he would vote to override a veto, Orrin Hatch, a staunch conservative, said, “You bet your sweet bippy I will.”

The President is turning this into an ideological battle against health care, basically, instead of pragmatically looking to expand a popular and successful program. It fits with Ezra Klein's formulation of how the two parties look at health care:

The Republican vision is for a world in which the sick and dying get to deduct some of the cost of health insurance that they don't have -- and can't get -- on their taxes. The Democratic vision is for every American to have health insurance. We clear?

In a country where almost 90 million people lacked health insurance at one point or entirely in the past two years, that's a formulation we should all commit to memory. I think I know what side the American people are on.