LA Times before SCHIP vote: voters should remember their failure to act while at the polls next year

[ProSense]

Opinion : Editorials

California Republicans don't have to side with the president's disingenuous arguments.

October 18, 2007

This bears repeating: President Bush's bullheaded insistence on sabotaging reauthorization of the popular State Children's Health Insurance Program, better known as SCHIP, will hurt the very people -- poor and middle-class Americans -- he claims he wants to protect.

The president complains that Congress' relatively modest plans to increase funding for the state-administered program, which provides health coverage for 6.6 million children who don't qualify for Medicaid but can't afford private insurance, amount to an insidious Democratic effort to create "government-run healthcare" for the middle class. He grumbles that expanding SCHIP will encourage many families to give up private insurance for freebie government coverage, even though SCHIP subscribers don't get free welfare -- many pay premiums and co-payments, simply at lower rates than most. He complains that $56 billion over five years is profligate government spending, even though his own prescription drug benefit is estimated to cost more than $40 billion next year alone and benefits not only middle-class but wealthy senior citizens.

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Rep. Mary Bono (Palm Springs) was the only California Republican to join the House majority in attempting to reauthorize SCHIP. We call on her colleagues -- Brian P. Bilbray (Solana Beach), Ken Calvert (Corona), John Campbell (Irvine), John T. Doolittle (Roseville), David Dreier (San Dimas), Elton Gallegly (Simi Valley), Wally Herger (Chico), Duncan Hunter (Alpine), Darrell Issa (Vista), Jerry Lewis (Redlands), Dan Lungren (Gold River), Kevin McCarthy (Bakersfield), Howard P. "Buck" McKeon (Santa Clarita), Gary G. Miller (Diamond Bar), Devin Nunes (Visalia), George Radanovich (Mariposa), Dana Rohrabacher (Huntington Beach) and Ed Royce (Fullerton) -- to follow suit today. If they don't, voters should remember their failure to act while at the polls next year.

Roll Call

[Mass]

1. Roll call shows clearly where the problem lies.

All Democrats but 4 voted YES.

Only 44 Republicans voted YES.

So, there is certainly a lot to say about these 4 Democrats (assuming that the 2 NV were not in the hospital), but the blame should clearly lie with the GOP.

[ProSense]

2. Musgrave votes to uphold Bush's veto of children's health care bill

Musgrave votes to uphold Bush's veto of children's health care bill

By FAITH BREMNER
Gannett News Service

WASHINGTON -- Colorado's Fourth District Rep. Marilyn Musgrave joined most of her Republican colleagues Thursday to uphold President Bush's veto of legislation expanding the state-federal Children's Health Insurance Program.

The House voted 273-156 in favor of overriding Bush's veto, 13 votes shy of the two-thirds majority needed.

The legislation would have allowed 3.8 million more children, including 60,000 Colorado kids, to join the program. SCHIP now serves some 6 million children nationwide whose families earn too much money to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to afford private health insurance. As of June 2006, Colorado had 53,894 children enrolled in the program.

In her speech on the House floor before the vote, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., urged Republicans to support the bill.

"There is no industrialized country in this world that anyone respects that does not provide health insurance for its children," Pelosi said. "We are the exception. That's not a designation to be proud of."

Mustgrave votes against Colorado's kids.

[ProSense]

3. WH: We won this round on SCHIP

From Think Progress:

UPDATE: The Gavel has video from the debate HERE. After the vote, Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) promised, “In the coming days, Democrats will not back down and we will insist on providing health care coverage to these 10 million children.”

UPDATE II: “We won this round on SCHIP,” White House press secretary Dana Perino said after the vote.

UPDATE III: Full roll call vote HERE. Forty-four Republicans joined the Democrats in voting for the override, and two Democrats — Reps. Gene Taylor (MS) and Jim Marshall (GA) — voted “nay.”