Save SCHIP for Children's Sakes

Nearly everyone professes a desire to renew the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), set to expire in September. Disagreement persists on funding levels & sources, qualification thresholds, and state discretion for variances. Is this a healthy policy debate, or a platform for ideological grandstanding? For the sake of children's health, let's hope SCHIP is funded at levels to protect the truly vulnerable.

There is a policy debate here worth having, but hold on there and look at the scope and the big picture before allowing the ideologues to drag us into minutiae. SCHIP (pronounced ess-chip) is a program which America's governors agree across party lines has benefited the hard working families most deserving of health insurance for their children that they otherwise simply couldn't afford. Everyone agrees that renewing the program for five years at the current level of $25 billion for five years is not enough. The White House wants to limit the expansion to an additional $5 billion, the Senate's bipartisan version expands the program by $35 billion and the House version (HR 3162) by $50 billion. Co-author and conservative Republican Senator Orrin Hatch's made this statement on the floor in favor of the Senate version (S 1893).

The White House is attempting to don the garments of fiscal restraint in threatening a veto of excessive Congressional expansion of SCHIP. Ahem...

In 2003, Bush famously signed into law the most expensive health bill in our nation's history. That bill with a stated price tag of $400 billion over 10 years, almost didn't pass, as Tom DeLay had to coerce one fiscal conservative with a political threat against his son to get the necessary vote. Later we learned that the administration already knew that the price tag was being understated by over $100 billion, but the actuary with that information was being muzzled by his boss, so Congress might pass it. Never mind that the biggest beneficiaries of this bill were the pharmaceuticals and HMOs, much more than the seniors it was supposed to benefit, who in spite of all that government spending were actually going to have their out of pocket costs increase. Multiple sources now tell us that the actual cost to taxpayers of this gargantuan largesse to big pharma and HMO will exceed $1 trillion dollars, though the White House denies them. Note, however, the quiet admission that the cost is over $500 billion.

Yes some perspective is in order.



So this administration wants to trim $30-45 billion off of a program which directly benefits the underinsured in the name of fiscal responsibility, when four years ago it was willing to lie about the cost of a program it supported to the tune of $135 billion, when many of those dollars are an indirect benefit, which simultaneously lined the pockets of the executives who really have Bush's ear.

Yes I understand that the 2003 program is showing a 10 year cost, whereas the 2007 SCHIP graph is showing a 5 year cost - but still look at the difference between columns 5 and 6, which the Administration is declaring a willingness to veto over, compared to the difference betwee columns 2 and 3 which the Administration was willing to LIE over. When it comes to cost control this administration has no credibility whatsoever. It simply says whatever it wants for political reasons, with no apparent regard for the public good.

When all is said and done, this war the President started will likely cost us over $2 trillion dollars, dwarfing further the bars on the graph above - and that doesn't even attempt to assign a value to the lost lives of soldiers and civilians, or the damage to our national image across the globe.

Yes there is a policy debate worth having about SCHIP. From Kaiser to the AARP to pundits to policy journals, folks are weighing in with the specifics. Maybe the House version needs to be scaled back or includes earmarks which don't belong there. I'll take Orrin Hatch's word for it that in the Senate version, "my Democrat colleagues made sacrifices in endorsing this bill and in sacrificing program expansions they so dearly advocated". I personally might prefer the House version, but this President ought to be convinced to sign some compromise - perhaps close to that bipartisan effort in the Senate. I would urge my Congressman to work to present a bill that can be quickly approved, but one which accounts for the realities that the working poor and the working lower middle class must face in health care. Some states have already run out of funds, and in instances children may be literally dying because their parents can't afford the procedures they require.

The Stench at Justice Expands

We can now add Western Michigan's Margaret Chiara to the list of U.S. Attorneys who have been forced out by the White House and Alberto Gonzales. Watchblog's American Pundit put two and two together last month when San Diego's Carol Lam, who helped put Republican crook Duke Cunningham behind bars, was forced out. Gonzales may insist that no ongoing investigations are being jeopardized, but why then are we seeing the wholesale replacement of their own appointments by Bush loyalists? I smell something rotten.

And then there's the lies, and of couse the innuendo. Sure these positions are by nature political appointments, whose holders serve "at the pleasure of the President". They were appointed originally by this administration and have stepped down gracefully. But Bud Cummins of Eastern Arkansas, the first to go last year to make room for a Karl Rove aide, broke his silence after testimony in January by Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, who told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the six U.S. attorneys in the West and Southwest had been dismissed for "performance-related" reasons:

They're entitled to make these changes for any reason or no reason or even for an idiotic reason. But if they are trying to suggest that people have inferior performance to hide whatever their true agenda is, that is wrong. They should retract those statements.

Six of the seven earlier fired attorneys had positive performance reviews. Cummins is scarcely alone in his reaction to McNulty's insulting testimony.

You can visit ePluribusMedia for more fine articles detailing the recent firings and their implications: The Gonzales Seven; Gaming the System; and links to separate articles about each one.

Speculation about Chiara's departure include that it had something to do with previous clashes with the administration on the death penalty which she opposes. From the Grand Rapids Press article:

Federal prosecutors serve at the discretion of the president and may be dismissed for any reason, or no reason at all. Most serve for the duration of the president's term and expect to be replaced when a new party sweeps into office.

"The timing is suspicious for anyone to leave on their own will and in the middle of a term when they were appointed by the sitting president. That alone makes it unusual," [Grand Rapids lawyer, Jon] Muth said. "I can't imagine it being performance-related."

James Brady, a former U.S. attorney for the Western District, is concerned by the possibility Chiara could be connected to the recent dismissals.

"There's no question we're concerned that politics may be involved in these types of decisions," he said. "In the (other forced resignations) there was nothing but praise until some political trouble started."

Chiara opposes capital punishment, although she has vowed to uphold such laws.

The PATRIOT Act has a provision which gives the current Attorney General authority to appoint any provisional replacement U.S. Attorney for the remainder of the Presidential term without Congressional approval. Alberto Gonzales was confirmed in a controversial Senate vote back in January of 2005. He came in with the odor of being a primary architect of the policies that weakened our government's previous strong stance against torture, calling the Geneva Conventions quaint prior to the exposure of the abuses at Abu Ghraib. Even Republican Lindsey Graham of the Senate Judiciary Committe hearings during that confirmation expressed his dismay at a published Gonzales memo, stating:

when you start looking at torture statutes, and you look at ways around the spirit of the law, you're losing the moral high ground

Graham lacked the cojones to stand behind his principles and deny Gonzales' nomination, as he or Arlen Specter or any single Republican had the power to do, in what ended up being a 10-8 committee vote along party lines to forward the nomination to the full Senate.

And now that same morally crippled chief law enforcement officer of the land defends his capricious firings of 8 U.S. Attorneys in recent months, on shaky grounds. Gonzales is the one who should be fired. The stench smells from coast to coast.