Suffer the Little Children No More

Late next week, or soon afterward, four million American children, whose health care has been held hostage by George W. Bush's deep sympathy for the profits of private insurers, will finally get the coverage Congress has been trying to give them for almost a year and a half.

Today, the House passed an expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which now goes to the Senate for quick approval by the new president, who greeted the news thus:

"In this moment of crisis, ensuring that every child in America has access to affordable health care is not just good economic policy, but a moral obligation we hold as parents and citizens. That is why I’m so pleased that Democrats and Republicans in the House of Representatives came together to provide health insurance to over ten million children whose families have been hurt most by this downturn. This coverage is critical, it is fully paid for, and I hope that the Senate acts with the same sense of urgency so that it can be one of the first measures I sign into law when I am President."

In his exit interviews this week, Bush is not bragging about his "philosophical" veto-wielding victory for free enterprise at the expense of children's health and lives. But today's legislation is a quick payoff to voters for getting rid of him and his ilk in the White House.

Congressional Tap Dancing

Oil drilling, yes. Children's health insurance, no. Economic stimulus, by all means. The priorities of the pre-election Congress this week reflect the political verdict on what will turn on voters in November but promise little of substance.

Democrats will bring to the floor an energy plan that would blunt Republican campaign attacks by opening some areas to coastal drilling while providing incentives for alternative energy and reducing subsidies for oil companies.

Meanwhile, they are letting Republicans off the hook on expanding the Children's Health Insurance Program by not forcing the issue and making them vote up or down on overriding another Bush veto.

Instead, Democrats will focus on another economic stimulus bill to follow the earlier one, which seems to have had no effect whatsoever on the lagging economy.

“This situation is yet another stark reminder that we live in difficult economic times and we must do more to help struggling families reach the American dream,” says Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. “That is why I urge President Bush, Senator McCain and other Republicans to work with Democrats in the immediate days ahead to enact an economic recovery package.”

All this will translate into campaign rhetoric, but will voters believe that these posturing politicians are doing anything substantive?

The Prudent President

The compassionate conservative who ran in 2000 lost his empathy on the way to the White House but, after years of spending for wars and tax cuts for the wealthy, is belatedly rediscovering his fiscal prudence--about health insurance for children, school aid and public housing.

Bush's latest act of compassionate conservatism is to deny funding for the Social Security Administration that would cut delay of financial aid to the disabled, many of whom now have to wait years to have their claims adjudicated.

As a New York Times editorial points out today, "the backlog of applicants who are awaiting a decision after appealing an initial rejection has soared to 755,000 from 311,000 in 2000. The average wait for an appeals hearing now exceeds 500 days, twice as long as applicants had to wait in 2000.

"Typically two-thirds of those who appeal eventually win their cases. But during the long wait, their conditions may worsen and their lives often fall apart. More and more people have lost their homes, declared bankruptcy or even died while awaiting an appeals hearing."

After Congress last month passed a bill to give Social Security $275 million more than he requested, enough to hire judges to speed up the process, the President vetoed as profligate an amount that wouldn't pay for a day of the war in Iraq.

What would America be like if we had elected an unfeeling liberal (as many disaffected Democrats believe we actually did) in 2000 rather than the compassionate conservative who is setting our priorities now?

The Unhealthy Body Politic

While Rudy Giuliani peddles fake survival statistics about his prostate cancer to lambaste "socialized medicine," George Bush and his Congressional loyalists are still blocking health insurance for children.

For those who care about Giuliani's glitch, Paul Krugman explains it in his New York Times column today, but that's only a minor symptom of the GOP war on health care compared to the ongoing epidemic of SCHIP-bashing by the Bush Administration.

Senate Democrats and Republican allies were working on a House-passed compromise yesterday of the bill Bush vetoed when faithful Mitch McConnell, whose office savaged 12-year-old Graeme Frost for advocating coverage for other kids, stepped in to stop it by forcing a vote on the bill.

But the issue is far from dead, as evidenced by an editorial in Maine's Bangor Daily News:

"The president’s arguments against SCHIP have put him in a corner. He opposes the program, he says, because he doesn’t want the government making decisions for doctors and customers. Patients don't have their medical decisions made by government under SCHIP; they use private insurers and private doctors, who presumably make their decisions based on their medical expertise. He has also painted the program as a Democratic scheme.

"To get out of that corner, he should consult with 'Democrats' like Sens. Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Orrin Hatch and Chuck Grassley to understand why they are such strong supporters of the program.

"Maybe if they explain the program allows 'customers'-— children, in this case--who now have no relationship with a doctor because they have no insurance, to start one, he'll better understand and support the program."

Meanwhile, advocates are running up to $2.5 million worth of ads against House members supporting the White House to help them understand the threat to their political well-being if they persist in such unhealthy behavior.

No Tyranny of the Majority in the Bush Era

John Stuart Mill and Alexis de Tocqueville can rest easy about “the tyranny of the majority.”

After being elected by less than a plurality of voters in 2000, George W. Bush has kept America safe from majority rule. After yesterday’s vote, 341 members of Congress had voted to expand children’s health insurance, 187 against, but the President’s veto stands to safeguard us against the folly of mob rule.

If the polls are accurate, seven out of ten Americans want us to get out of Iraq, as do a majority of their representatives, but the President is having none of that panic to do what’s popular.

"A man with God is always in the majority," John Knox declared in the sixteenth century, and Thoreau proclaimed the American counterpart, "Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one."

You don’t see them much any more, but five years ago, there were bumper stickers everywhere that said “Thank God for President Bush.”

As he approaches his final year of protecting us from ourselves, Bush should find comfort in de Tocqueville’s judgement: “America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”

S-CHIP's Other Little Victims

In the fight to override Bush’s veto, Democrats may have put the spotlight on the wrong victims. Instead of pushing forward 12-year-old brain injured Graeme Frost and two-year-old Bethany Wilkerson with her heart problem, they might have converted more Republicans by emphasizing the other sufferers from unaffordable health care--America’s small business owners.

“The future of SCHIP,” according to a recent article in Forbes, no bleeding-heart liberal journal, “is particularly significant to small business. Of the 6.6 million children up to age 19 that receive health insurance through SCHIP, 37 percent belong to parents who work for businesses with fewer than 100 employees, estimates the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan tax research organization.”

In July, the President made one of his photo-op I-talk-you-listen visits to a group of small business owners. His host, Clifton Broumand, according to the Washington Post, “could barely get a word in as Bush opined on children's health insurance and other health topics.”

Private insurers, Gourmand would have told him if he could, "are like the Godfather--they make you an offer you can't refuse. When my insurance goes up 73 percent in four years, that's a tax...All these things are hidden taxes.

"When you don't cover children, what ends up happening is that when kids are sick, which happens in my office, parents aren't productive. They have to go home."

Small businesses, USA Today reports, “are driven crazy by soaring employee health costs, an expense that surveys show has become the biggest headache and obstacle to growth.”

In the next round, Democrats should try pushing forward restaurateurs, realtors and owners of small construction firms instead the tots of people who work for them.

High Noon for S-CHIP

In the President’s favorite movie, the righteous hero stands alone and guns down the bad guys. Bush has played Gary Cooper in the showdowns over Iraq, and now he is facing down the villains in the S-CHIP fight.

But Bush has modeled himself on the wrong 1950s western. True to Washington and Hollywood, “High Noon” is more about pride and calculation than humanity. Those who care about people rather than power have always preferred “Shane.”

At the end of “High Noon,” the hero, after gunning down the bad guys, converting his Quaker wife to killing and showing his contempt for everyone else, rides off with Grace Kelly to some Olympus denied other mortals, all as a reward for his concept of manhood.

In “Shane,” a retired gunfighter reluctantly takes up arms again to protect a family he loves and their hard-working community against ruthless power. His reward is to ride off to die, alone.

That’s a concept that the man who the former President of Mexico calls a “windshield cowboy” fails to understand. (In his memoirs, Vincente Fox recounts Bush’s skittishness about getting on a horse, preferring to drive a pickup truck instead.)

This time Bush is playing cowboy with the health and lives of millions of children. Senate Democrats are trying to round up enough Republicans to override his veto in tomorrow’s vote, but the First Moviegoer is sticking to his guns.

It may be too late to stop Bush’s acting out of old oaters, but those who have to belly up to the ballot box next year should think hard about the consequences of the shootout.

Dumbed-Down Democracy

Watching Rep. Eric Cantor, the House Republican Chief Deputy Whip, on PBS’ News Hour last week was a depressing experience. He was debating Rahm Emanuel on the S-CHIP legislation and, with an infuriatingly smug smile, making Bush’s “philosophical” case for denying needy children health care.

Now here we are this week without enough votes to override the President’s heartless, brainless veto. Why? A USA Today/Gallup poll today shows how, in this age where You are Time’s Person of the Year, too many you’s are not motivated to get past slogans and charades on an issue that affects millions of children’s lives.

Although 49 percent have been following news about the bill “not too closely or at all,” 55 percent are concerned that “expanding this program would create an incentive for middle-class Americans to drop private health insurance for a public program.”

The Gallup people, by framing the question this way, are contributing to the confusion and their USA Today partners are still doing what mass media have been doing throughout the Bush years, letting the Administration set the specious terms for public debate.

Through the obfuscation, a solid majority of voters still manage to get the point and “have more confidence” in Democrats than Bush to handle the issue, by 52 to 32 percent, but with a President who listens only to himself, that won’t be enough.

Nancy Pelosi talks about fighting on, but the lack of enough public outrage will force Democrats to accept a defeat masked as a compromise.

If sanity in both parties can’t prevail on an issue this clear, we are in deeper trouble than any of the ’08 candidates is willing to admit.

Bush's Uniting Work Is Almost Done

During the 2000 campaign, the future President called himself “a uniter, not a divider.” Seven years later, not only the nation but the entire world is so united that it may be time to relax his efforts.

More than 70 percent of Americans agree about the war in Iraq, Democrats and Republicans in Congress are getting together to pass a veto-proof children’s health insurance bill this month, and just last week, traditionally antagonistic groups from North and South met in harmony to consider secession from the Union.

Around the world, there is near-unanimity about the United States’ international stature, and even in Iraq, where unity has been a bit slow in coming, there is a growing consensus of all factions that national reconciliation is not their style.

In the waning days of his Era of Comity, the President may want to focus on extending it beyond his tenure by discouraging Republican candidates from impugning Hillary Clinton as a polarizing figure. By nature, she may very well be a divider, but can any future President fail to learn from the example George W. Bush has set?

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.

Et Tu, Denis?

Denis Kucinich, of all people, turns out to be one of the members of Congress who will have to change their votes if President Bush’s veto of the expanded children’s health insurance bill is to be overridden by the House of Representatives.

Kucinich voted for the original House-passed version of the bill because it included health coverage for legal immigrant children. When this language was omitted in the final bill, he voted no.

“I cannot support legislation which extends health coverage to some children while openly denying it to other children,” Kucinich said.

Rationalization is the prevailing mode for all politicians, but if you chop that sentence in half, Kucinich is saying the bill has to be perfect or else. Meanwhile, the most liberal or progressive or whatever of Democratic presidential candidates is achieving the same result as his presumably polar opposite, George Bush.

If you tell Kucinich that politics is the art of the possible, he will undoubtedly give you one of his idealistic speeches. Meanwhile he has voted to deprive several million children of health insurance.

Bush Makes Republicans French Toast

He did it this morning, without comment or news coverage, an act that proves George Bush to be, depending on your politics, either the most steadfast or stubborn, the most principled or heartless of American Presidents in memory.

But there is common agreement in Congress that, by vetoing the bipartisan bill that would have dramatically expanded children's health insurance, a lame duck Head of State has committed the most politically selfish act since Louis XV proclaimed, “Apres moi, le deluge” before the French Revolution.

Now Congressional Republicans, facing a guillotine at the ballot box in 2008, are scrambling to limit the damage. Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott talks bravely about a “compromise” with an Administration that takes no prisoners.

The Senate has enough votes to override, but House Minority Whip Roy Blunt is "absolutely confident" that the House will be able to sustain Bush's veto as Democrats keep trying to convince more than a dozen members on the other side of the aisle to switch their position.

If not, Nancy Pelosi can start practicing her knitting for the role of Madame DeFarge, as Republican incumbents go by on their way to the tumbrel in the George Bush revival of “A Tale of Two Cities” next fall.

Bush-Hunting Season Opens

Next week the President officially becomes a lame duck. One of his staunchest Senate supporters, Iowa’s Chuck Grassley, has turned on the issue of children’s health insurance and is actively fighting to defeat him.

“We’re going to try [to] convince people in the House to change their vote,” he said yesterday. “All I can do is make phone calls.”

Not quite “Here I stand, I can do no other,” but 18 Senate Republicans defected from Bush dogma yesterday by voting for the State Children’s Health Insurance Bill the President has promised to veto.

The 67-29 margin would override it, and two Democratic Presidential candidates, Obama and Biden, were not even there. The question now is whether another dozen House Republicans will join the 45 who broke ranks the other day.

The President who lost the popular vote by more than half a million in November 2000 but won the Supreme Court by 5-4 in December has translated that mandate into almost seven years of domination in Washington, but now servile Republicans in Congress are facing extinction next year if they persist in their fealty.

Under cover of Gen. Petraeus, they may hold out over Iraq, but denying children health coverage is quite another matter. The White House may compromise, but they have no experience at it.

Childrens do learn. Do Presidents?

Suffer the Little Children...

As the cost of the war in Iraq approaches $200 billion a year, President Bush is threatening to veto a bipartisan bill to provide health insurance for children of low-income families because it will cost $12 billion a year rather than the $6 billion he approves.

The added funding would increase the number covered to 10 million from 6.6 and, unlike war costs, would come not from all taxpayers but those who add to health risks with a 61-cent increase in the federal excise tax on a pack of cigarettes.

According to the President, it isn’t the money, it’s the principle of the thing. At his press conference this week, he explained the “philosophical divide.”

“Democratic leaders in Congress,” he said, “want to put more power in the hands of government...I have a different view. I believe the best approach is to put more power in the hands of individuals by empowering people and their doctors to make health care decisions that are right for them.”

The decisions the President is talking about have nothing to do with actual health care--treatments, medications, etc.--only money: Do private insurers keep collecting one out of every three dollars spent for their overhead and profit? Or does Congress bypass them to make health care available for more of the poor?

Next week will provide a reality test for this kind of posturing with the lives of American children. If Bush vetoes the increase, will enough Republicans join in overriding it?

Republicans' Pity Party

The Bush Administration keeps recalling the cliché about the kid who kills his parents and pleads for mercy because he’s an orphan.

Now Republicans are retiring in droves and bewailing the vicissitudes that have made their legislative lives unbearable.

Today’s Washington Post reports “moderate Republicans in Congress are facing a tough choice: Stand by President Bush or run for their political lives. Votes are due soon on Iraq, an expansion of a children's health insurance program and an array of spending bills. GOP leaders hope to use them to regain credibility with their base voters as a party for strong defense and fiscal discipline. But moderates, many of them facing the possibility of difficult reelection bids next year, are dreading the expected showdowns.”

It would be easier to sympathize with those Republican moderates if they hadn’t handed over the keys to their home to Newt Gingrich in 1994 and stood by while George W. Bush has been burning it down for the past six years.

Emblematic of their experience is the recent decision of Lincoln Chafee, a second-generation product of what used to be respectable Republicanism, to leave the party that sent him to the Senate but then turned its back on him over his positions on abortion and gay rights.

The Democrats who stand to gain by the Republican debacle might want to keep in mind that, despite the horror show of the Bush years, there is no ultimate profit for a party that abandons its core principles.