Veto II: The Sequel?

On Thursday the U.S. House of Representatives passed a revised version of the SCHIP legislation that President Bush vetoed the last time it came through Congress. The final tally was 256-142, enough to pass but shy of the two thirds majority needed to override another veto. (Ten members of the California delegation did not vote due to the wildfires in their home districts.)

While the Democrats refuse to alter the scope of the proposed plan (covering 10 million children at a cost of $35 billion over five years), there are a number of alterations when compared to the previously vetoed attempt. Matt Canham at the Salt Lake Tribune enumerates some of the changes:

The latest bill would:

• Cap income eligibility at three times the poverty level or about $60,000 a year for a family of four. The old bill would allow the president to agree to waivers to cover those making more than that.


• Phase out the adults covered by CHIP in one year instead of two.


• Require the Social Security Administration to verify that all participants are citizens, bolstering provisions barring undocumented immigrants.


• Require the Government Accountability Office to create a report detailing the best ways to avoid "crowd out," where those with private insurance drop it in favor of this government program.

The White House and House Republicans were not impressed by the concessions, calling them "cosmetic."

Depending on how long it takes for this revised bill to negotiate the Senate it could be on the President's desk as early as next week. Several media sources report administration officials as saying President Bush is solidly opposed to the stiff increases in tobacco taxes which would fund the program. Most of these sources agree that a second veto is highly likely once this reaches the executive branch. If that occurs an override vote is likely to occur near November 16, the date on which temporary funding for the program expires.

Stay tuned.


SOURCE: "CHIP Revision Passes House" 10/26/07
photo courtesy of Superturtle on Flickr, used and remixed under this Creative Commons license. Image Remix by George Williams

Attempt to Overturn SCHIP Veto Goes Up In Smoke

President Bush's veto stands. After a long and acrimonious war of words the results are now in. Williams Neikirk, a senior correspondent for The Chicago Tribune recounts the closing round of the current congressional battle:

The measure fell 13 votes short of the two-thirds requirement to override the veto. The vote was 273-156, as 54 Republicans voted with Democrats to pass the bill, compared with 53 GOP members who voted for the bill when it first passed. Only two Democrats voted to sustain the veto compared with six who voted against the bill originally....

The bill killed Thursday would have cost an additional $35 billion over the next five years and made children's health-care insurance available to more middle-class families. The expansion would have been financed with a 61-cent-a-pack increase in the federal tobacco tax, raising the levy to $1 a pack.

John Godfrey of Dow Jones Newswire gives us some specifics about the tax on CNNMoney:

Companies that would have been affected include R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., a wholly owned operating subsidiary of Reynolds American Inc. (RAI); Philip Morris USA, a subsidiary of Altria Group (MO); and Carolina Group (CG), which is a unit of Loews Corp. (LTR).

The $35 billion raised by the tobacco tax increase over five years would have offset the cost of expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program. The bill's supporters said that by 2012, the expansion would have allowed the program to cover nearly 10 million children.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., already has promised to have the same bill back on Bush's desk within two weeks. Asked whether the bill might include an alternative funding source, Pelosi said simply, "no."

Smoking and health, two subjects often found intertwined. It is interesting to note how little this aspect of the legislation has been touched upon over the last few weeks of constant media coverage. To some it is not only a very relevant concern, but also an emotionally charged issue.

Take the following excerpt from a letter to the Yale Daily News by Jose Abrego, a student in the Ezra Stiles College, as an example:

Consider the ramifications of raising the tax on tobacco by such a ridiculous rate. Nearly all of the tobacco farmers in my province in the Dominican Republic would have their contracts frozen. The same goes for other countries in Latin America.

What worries me about this whole issue is that the tax increase guaranteed that hundreds of thousands of farmers across Latin America would suddenly find themselves unemployed. For Third World nations that are already neck-deep in a sea of poverty, this bill promised to drown them outright. Why didn't any of the major news networks report on the number of jobs that Bush saved in Latin America? Or the number of children that will continue to eat because their parents are employed? Isn't the media's job to present the news to us impartially - or at least pretend to do so?

SOURCE: "House Fails to Foil Health-Care Veto: Defiant Democrats Vow Revised Bill" 10/19/07
SOURCE: "House Failure to Override Veto Good News for Tobacco" 10/18/07
SOURCE: "Letter: Media Ignores Benefits of Health Care Veto" 10/18/07
photo courtesy of SuperFantastic on Flickr, used under this Creative Commons license

Politics Over Productivity

Children's health care is a subject we cannot get away from, especially recently. The SCHIP legislation and President Bush's veto are impossible to escape when one surveys the morning news. Vitriol pours from both sides of the issue as thick and bitter as service station coffee.

As one digs through the multitude of vituperative articles, blog posts, and paid propaganda, it becomes more and more apparent that most of the discussion is politics rather than objective analysis. The Democrats are now experiencing the backlash from their recent radio campaign. In that campaign, Graeme Frost, age 12, made a radio address asking President Bush to sign off on the SCHIP legislation on the grounds that he and his siblings would not have received hospital care after their auto accident without it.

From the Baltimore Sun

But while the Frosts were helping a bipartisan majority in Congress sell a plan to expand the program, they were not prepared for comments such as this one, posted over the weekend on the conservative Web site Redstate:

"If federal funds were required [they] could die for all I care. Let the parents get second jobs, let their state foot the bill or let them seek help from private charities. ... I would hire a team of PIs and find out exactly how much there parents made and where they spent every nickel. Then I'd do everything possible to destroy their lives with that info."

The arguments continue, as chronicled in the Baltimore Sun, over the state of the Frost family's finances and their reliance on SCHIP. Rush Limbaugh discussed the family's assets and financial status on his show last Monday, while conservative blogger Michelle Malkin posted about visiting the family's business and driving by their home.

Quotes such as this one (again from Redstate) seem par for the course:

"Hang 'em. Publicly," the contributor wrote. "Let 'em twist in the wind and be eaten by ravens. Then maybe the bunch of socialist patsies will think twice."

You do not have to be an advocate of public hangings or destroying lives to make your point. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is a fine example:

Are the Democrats grandstanding? Are they playing politics with a critical issue? Of course, they are. When don't politicians play politics? But at least they're blanketing the airwaves and blitzing the phone lines with an issue that matters — health care for children of working families.

It's a little vexing to listen to ultraconservative Republicans berate Democrats for trying to score political points. For the past several years, the GOP has made a fine art of scoring points over issues both petty and private: for example, the overblown travel office "scandal" during the Clinton years; for another, the intrusion into the difficult decisions faced by the family of Terri Schiavo. They've exploited flag-burning, same-sex marriage and religious faith, all to gain political advantage. It seems a bit churlish for them to complain when the tables are turned.

And so the debate rages on.

SOURCE: "Frost Family Draws Ire of Conservatives" 10/10/07
SOURCE: "Democrats Politicking for Good Reason: Peach Care" 10/10/07
photo courtesy of Graniers on Flickr, used under this Creative Commons license

The Veto Heard Round The World

President George W. Bush on Wednesday issued his expected veto of $35 Billion in children's health care funding. In short order the commentary and criticism of this move have rippled through not only our own national news, but across the the global media as well. Here is a quick World Tour of reactions to this fourth veto of President Bush's career:

The first stop on our world tour is Korea, where we pick up a copy of The Korea Times and read about the SCHIP legislation:

The bill has problems. It is expensive, $35 billion over five years; the use of a cigarette tax to finance it is questionable; and it may indeed cover some families who could afford private insurance.

But it is not, as some overheated opponents charge, socialized medicine or anything like it. Some Republicans charge that SCHIP is the first step toward "HillaryCare," but even if that were in the back of the Democratic candidate's mind, it would be beside the point.

Then we head over to nearby China to see what The Xinhua News Agency has to say:

The veto of Bush was seen by analysts as a high-risk gamble that might impair his party's efforts to compete with democrats for the next presidency and the dominance in Congress.

Lets shift perspective to Western Europe, how are they viewing this? A quick glance at The Economist (UK Edition) unearths the following:

Up with children, down with smokers: it was, in other words, an easy sell. But Mr Bush balked for several reasons. He said that expansion would mean shifting the programme's focus away from poor children. Better off parents might be tempted to drop their private coverage in lieu of the government option, nudging the country down the dangerous road to nationalised care. Mr Bush objected to the tax increase. And although this White House is not known for fiscal restraint, it thought the expansion would cost too much. Mr Bush had previously said that a $5 billion spending increase would be about right.

Getting a bit closer to home we find the Dominican Republic rejoicing at the veto. Why? As Dominican Today reports, it has saved their industry:

Tobacco farmers of the country's north region (Cibao) yesterday heard with joy the news that U.S. president George Bush's vetoed a bill passed by Congress, which threatened to decimate the Dominican and Central American tobacco industries.

The president of the Cibao Tobacco Harvesters Federation, Jorge Mercado, said the U.S. president's decision would reactivate the north zone's tobacco industry, mainly in Santiago province. "The veto of the law represents hope and relief for more than 300 harvesters in this region who have lived off the production of tobacco for centuries."

Agriculture minister Salvador Jiménez, quoted by the newspaper Diario Libre, said if the bill had been signed into law the country would've lost some 54,000 jobs.

Stay tuned.

SOURCE: "Veto of Child Health Bill" 10/04/07
SOURCE: "Bipartisan Tension Tightens as Bush Vetoes Program" 10/04/07
SOURCE: "Why Did George Bush Veto a Popular Health Care Bill?" 10/04/07
SOURCE: "Bush Veto Saves The Dominican Tobacco Industry" 10/04/07
photo courtesy of Bluedharma used under this Creative Commons license