As the SCHIP bill comes up for debate Thursday, and that will be tomorrow folks, expect plenty of righteous indignation to emanate from the Republican side of the aisle. They will snort and stamp and say that the Democrats are trying to insure rich kids at the expense of poor kids.  And the Do-Right Republicans, of course, definitely want to do right by the poor. 

This argument has its base in the hypothetical figure of 83,000 dollars. This figure is the amount of income that a SCHIP recipient’s family might earn if New York’s proposal for funding for families earning 400% of poverty level were to be honored.  It will not be honored. The White House has rejected the request stating that it may pull children out of private insurance plans to put them in SCHIP programs.  Right now, New York’ s program is capped at 250% of poverty level.  Currently the only state with an income cap of over 300% of poverty level is New Jersey, at 350%, but children from higher earnings families are often charged premiums and co-pays via sliding scale. 

Although the Republicans will try to punch through the impression that the bill will allow families earning up to 83,000 dollars per year into the program, it is, in fact, a baseless argument. That would only happen if a State wanted to insure kids at 400% of poverty level.  But states must receive approval from the Secretary of Health and Human Services before they can expand income eligibility.  A recent survey by the Congressional Research Service found that 32 states had capped at 200% or less of poverty level and that 17 states had caps of 200% to 300%.  Missouri has been a 300 per center in the past. 

According to Krugman in a BuzzFlash interview.

“The reason that Bush is so opposed to SCHIP is the same reason he was so determined to privatize Social Security, which is that they’re both programs that work.  You have to understand, that is the point of view of somebody who really wants to undo the New Deal — and if possible … get things back to the way they were before Teddy Roosevelt and the ‘Socialists’ came in.

“The worst thing is a government program that actually does help people, so the SCHIP is a really bad thing, from Bush’s point of view, because it works so well. It might lead people to say, well, if we can do this for lower-income children, why can’t we do it for lots of other people who need guaranteed health care? So it’s the determination, on his part, to do this veto, even though there’s a short-term political cost, because they’re deathly afraid that people will look at SCHIP and say, gee, actually the government can do some good.”

So everything boils down to the role of government.  The Decider and his cohorts are radically and shamelessly anti-government.  Recall if you will the Decider on taking the office of president stating “this would be easier if this was a dictatorship and I was the dictator.”  Neither Freudian slip nor joke, the Decider uses manipulation and exploitation with skill to further his ambition to dismantle our government.  He was stopped dead on the privatization of Social Security, but managed to cut funds enormously for Medicaid and slide through a shady Medicare Part D program that gives more to Big Pharma that it does to older adults. 

Support for the bill and now for veto override has been quite unprecedented. We still  need to keep up the furor going into the vote.  In addition to calling your reps, I will add a listing of web sites to access to suppport the bill asap.  It’s never too late!
Here are the contacts:

[ http://capwiz.com/am… ] for the AMA veto override campaign.

[ http://www.catholics… ] for Catholics United  ad campaign pressuring Republican holdouts.

[ http://pol.moveon.or… ]  for a MoveOn.org SCHIP vigil in your town.

[ https://secure.truem… ] for Ben and Jerry’s True Majority campaign.

[ http://www.americans… ] for SEIU, AFSCME and Americans United for Change campaigns.

Somewhat overshadowed this past week by the FISA discussion, the vetoed SCHIP bill will be subjected to an override vote by Congress on Thursday, the 18th. Whether or not the Presidential Veto will be sustained remains unclear.

But what is very clear is that there are a lot of twitchy Republicans in the press and on national TV valiantly arguing their talking point in the earnest hope that they can bamboozle their constituents one more time.  They don’t mind getting down and dirty either. You may recall the case of 12-year-old Graeme Frost, the brain injured child who delivered the Democratic response to one of the Decider’s weekly radio addresses.  Frost and his sister, who were injured in a car accident, still need physical therapy.  Both are covered by SCHIP in Maryland.  The right wing thought they had glimpsed Nirvana, both kids in private schools (scholarships) and a home in a newly gentrified neighborhood. Led by principled stalwarts, Malkin and Limbaugh, Mitch McConnell’s office took up the cry, only to have to back off as the case fell apart. Turned out that the parents have combined incomes of $45,000 per annum.  Prior to the accident they might have purchased insurance for $14,500 a year, after the accident no insurance would cover them.  And then in Maryland, SCHIP covers kids from families with incomes under 200% of poverty, $55,220, so the Frosts definitely qualify. 

Republicans are also cheesed off at the Decider’s lack of interest in consultation when the compromise bill was being written.  It was perceived that he had already made up his mind and had no interest in further exploration. Now he offers to compromise without offering anything concrete to describe a compromise position that he would endorse.  In the words of Nancy Pelosi this AM on ABC, “Mr. Bush sincerely believes that the meaning of the word compromise means do it his way”. 

According to a NYT editorial piece, the Republican response to the bill is being driven by The Decider’s Assertion that to expand SCHIP is a step toward “government run health insurance”.  Speaking of double standards and utter hypocrisy, do they not know that they are covered by government run health insurance”, that their children are covered by “government run health insurance”?  And adding insult to injury, their premiums are paid for by tax dollars from the very families for whom they would deny SCHIP benefits.  Deliver me!

Even more distasteful, if that is possible, the Christus Medicus Foundation, a catholic right wing organization focusing on “sanctity of life issues” is worried that SCHIP dollars are going into family planning, contraception and sterilization programs.  They conclude:

Teenage females can be signed up for a CHIP program by schools family planning organizations and social services organizations and be give contraception, abortions and in some cases even be sterilized without parent’s knowledge or consent. State and federal tax dollars are violating  Health Care Right Of Conscience by forcing Americans to subsidize the undermining of the parent/child relationship.

Well! Health care for near poor children has suddenly become a reproductive issue.  I am curious as to just how many people worship in their tent of disinformation. 

The AFL-CIO, Move-On.org and Americans United for Change are but a few of the organizations stepping up to champion SCHIP.  The DNCC has targeted eight vulnerable Republican veto supporters in their home districts with radio ads  opposing their positions.  Our Sam Graves is one of them.  Democrats are adamant regarding a compromise with the Decider.  They say that they have already compromised, having chosen the less expansive Senate version of the bill as a model for the compromise bill vetoed by the Decider. 
Nancy Pelosi is reported as “cautiously optimistic” that she will peel off an additional 15-20 votes to support a veto.

Our mission in MO, should we choose to accept it, is to discourage the following MO members of the US House from voting to sustain the Presidential Veto.  They are Sam Graves, Roy Blunt, Todd Akin, and Kenny Hulsof.  Tell them that the Democrats will gain politically if the veto is blocked.  Tell them that you’ll “remember in November” (08) when we liberals don’t have poor George to kick around anymore.  Tell them to just do the right thing!