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Bush's Unhealthy Veto
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Issue
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| Contributor | ArmyDem |
| Last Edited | ArmyDem Oct 01, 2007 10:12pm |
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| Category | Commentary |
| Media | Newspaper - Washington Post |
| News Date | Tuesday, October 2, 2007 04:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | By Sebastian Mallaby
Monday, October 1, 2007; Page A19
President Bush has spent six-plus years not using his veto. In 2005, he became the first president since John Quincy Adams to complete a term in the White House without once standing up to Congress; he has since paused to interrupt this doormat act on only three occasions. But now his patience is exhausted, and he is spoiling for a fight. Congress has had the temerity to propose expanding health care for poor children.
Politically, this is crazy. The bill that Bush is poised to veto has bipartisan backing, and two-thirds of the public say they like it. But in policy terms the veto looks a little crazy, too. The bill would extend the State Children's Health Insurance Program, a successful initiative that Bush himself supports. A veto would be based on misleading statistics and an exaggerated faith in markets.
The president laid out the case for his veto at his Sept. 20 news conference. He asserted, to begin with, that the bill involves "taking a program meant to help poor children and turning it into one that covers children in households with incomes of up to $83,000 a year." Up to is a weasel phrase; for nearly all the children covered by the bill, family incomes would be well below the $83,000 that the president cited. Fully 70 percent would come from families with incomes of less than $41,300, according to a careful study by the Urban Institute. Most of the rest would come from families earning less than $62,000.
Bush complained at his news conference that Congress's proposal "would move millions of American children who now have private health insurance into government-run health care." Actually, about two-thirds of the 10 million or so children who would be covered by the bill will have no insurance whatsoever if it is vetoed, and many in the other third will suffer gaps in coverage, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. |
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