Bush Explains the Veto

The President is not against the government helping poor children get health care insurance. He just wants to be sure that there isn’t too much for too many and especially not for kids whose parents could cut back on a few of the necessities and buy it from private insurers.

As he explains in his veto letter, the misguided bipartisan bill “moves our health care system in the wrong direction” and turns it into “a program that would cover children from some families of four earning almost $83,000 a year.”

White House statisticians must be working overtime these days because last week the program was covering families with up to $73,000 a year.

But no matter. The heart of the President’s argument is that “Our goal should be to move children who have no health insurance to private coverage, not to move children who already have private health insurance to government coverage.”

Why can’t radicals like Chuck Grassley and Orrin Hatch understand that? If they keep going in this direction, every kid in the country would have health insurance and Congress would have devastated a major American industry.