Republicans: "Screw 'em, they're too young to vote, and too poor to donate"
posted by
Wally
7:27 AM
That's what the GOP essentially said about poor and lower middle class kids yesterday when they sided with Bush's veto of the SCHIP (State Children's Health Insurance Program) expansion. As health care and health insurance rates skyrocket, Bush and the Republicans refuse to increase payments into the program to even keep up.
With the economy spiralling into recession, more people unemployed or underemployed (losing your job as an electrical engineer and out of desperation taking a new one flipping burgers means you are officially "employed" - but it's hardly the same thing), with gas prices and food prices rising with no end in sight, with health care costs going through the roof, what do the Republicans think we should do about health care for those 9 million uninsured kids? Not a damn thing, apparently.House Democrats failed for the second time in three months Wednesday to override President Bush's veto of a proposed $35 billion expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program.
The 260-152 tally left backers of the legislation about 15 votes short of the two-thirds majority of lawmakers voting necessary to override the president's Dec. 12 veto. Forty-two Republicans supported the override attempt, two fewer than in the previous effort to reject Bush's Oct. 3 veto of an earlier version of the bill.
"With the economy taking a sour turn, now is not the time to deny the most innocent and helpless Americans - children whose parents can't afford health insurance - what they so desperately need," said Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.
The vetoed bills would have expanded the $5 -billion-a-year program by an average of $7 billion a year over the next five years, for total funding of $60 billion over the period. That would have boosted enrollment to 10 million children, up from 6.6 million, and substantially reduced the ranks of the nation's 9 million uninsured children, supporters said. Seven billion a year. That's about a week's worth of war in Iraq. Republicans are climbing over each other to throw money into that quagmire of violence, chaos and slaughter, but refuse to provide basic health care to poor children here at home.
That's all you need to know about what is really important to the GOP.
Republican Priorities
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