I rather like Chris Dodd's view on the President's threat to veto S-CHIP funding:
"While he reportedly plans to call for up to $200 billion to continue a war that his top general can't even say is making the country safer, George Bush is rejecting the idea that we would spend less than one third of that amount for the health of America's children.
"That says all that needs to be said about this President's priorities."
Of course, that's a bit unfair: Bush is vetoing this bill not because it's too costly, but because giving uninsured children health coverage will make them dependent on the teat of the state, and we don't want the little parasites nursing at the Department of Health and Human Services forever.
But a point of clarification: Though Bush is constantly complaining that "Congress has made a decision to expand [SCHIP] eligibility up to $80,000," and that children whose parents make that much shouldn't get health insurance, or should have to pay for it out of their allowance, or something. But as the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities found, "at least 85 percent of the otherwise-uninsured children who would gain coverage under the bill have incomes below states' current SCHIP eligibility limits." In other words, the new funding isn't going to expand the program's cutoffs so much as allow it to fulfill it's current obligations, which, for now, it lacks the money to actually do. If the compromise S-CHIP bill passes, the states will be able to reorient the program to covering all children beneath the cut-off, rather than keeping quiet to effectively ration -- yes, ration -- the coverage.
But that's the reality of Bush's position. It's not so much his funding preferences that are at work. Rather, his ideology called for the government to pursue a hopeless war that's killed thousands and triggered a sectarian civil war, but is outraged by the idea of the government helping children attain health coverage.
Ah, compassionate conservatism.
