President Bush Vetoes Children's Health Insurance Legislation

Here's how you play:  If you have a job that doesn't have insurance for your children, quit and get on welfare so you can get health insurance.  But you can only stay on welfare for 5 years. Then you're off.  Decent people work for a living, you know.  And don't go aborting any babies, either.

It's pretty easy to see the malicious game plan in the words of Rep. Eric Cantor, as all he could do in defending the president's veto of the SCHIP program was to repetitiously reiterate that we should "deal with poor kids first" - meaning of course that only they should be covered.  He showed no sympathy for parents who work and are therefore above the poverty line but cannot afford private health insurance.

He gave no definition of poor kid.  But we know that means even poorer than the ones the vetoed bill would cover, which were children of working families who could not afford enough insurance to cover their health care needs.  He gave no reason for aiming so low, but he obviously thinks families need to step down a notch if they really need health insurance.

This discussion with Rep. Rahm Emanuel on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer is worth a listen for those not familiar with the debate, or you can read the transcript.  In contrast to the above emphasis, Rep. Cantor's main point was... "41 days of the war in Iraq, 10 million kids get health care for a year."  In other words, the annual cost of this program is only a fraction of the cost of the Iraq war.  Yet it is an investment in our country's future.

It is difficult to reconcile how the president can veto a bill such as this given his stated promises.

In contrast, the president is now requesting $190 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Seems to me if the Democratic Congress is serious, then their new game plan should now be No SCHIP, No$190B