Spinning the CHIP Cuts
September 20th, 2007 at 6:53 pm
The Bush administration apparently decided it was tired of looking like the bad guys trying to cut health care for poor kids. As even probably they know, that’s bad politics.
So today the White House amped up its rhetoric on the Children’s Health Insurance Program. President Bush and Michael Leavitt, the Health and Human Services secretary, held separate news conferences. (here’s the transcript of Bush’s presser, and here’s Leavitt’s). You can read some background on the CHIP debate here.
This morning Bush cast himself as a committed supporter of CHIP–even though he’s trying to cut it. He argued paradoxically that Congressional Democrats, who want to expand CHIP, are actually endangering the program by insisting on a funding increase that the president has threatened to veto. In other words, Bush, who’s trying to cut the program, is actually on the side of the poor kids; and those wicked Democrats, by pushing to grow the CHIP program, will harm children.
We’ll say this, the man has gall.
The rhetoric doesn’t match reality. We spotted two blatant misrepresentations in just the second paragraph of Bush’s opening remarks:
“I have strongly supported S-CHIP as a governor, and I have done so as President,” Bush said. “My 2008 budget proposed to increase S-CHIP funding by $5 billion over five years. It’s a 20 percent increase over current levels of funding. Unfortunately, instead of working with the administration to enact this funding increase for children’s health, Democrats in Congress have decided to pass a bill they know that will be vetoed.”
Let’s parse that statement, shall we, beginning with the very first sentence. Bush wasn’t exactly CHIP’s biggest supporter as governor of Texas. In fact, when the Legislature designed the program during the 1999 session, Bush worked hard behind the scenes to limit CHIP as much as possible. After he lost that fight, Bush famously told then-Austin Democratic state Rep. Glen Maxey that they had shoved CHIP “down our throat.”
As for Bush’s support of CHIP as president, his $5 billion (or 20 percent) boost over five years for CHIP sure sounds good. But it’s actually such a meager increase that it would likely cut the number of kids off health insurance.
Here’s why: Due to rising medical costs, the government will have to increase spending just to cover the kids currently on CHIP. It will require a five-year increase of about $14 billion — three times Bush’s proposal — to maintain current CHIP enrollment, according to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office. Anything less amounts to a cut.
As state Rep. Garnet Coleman (D-Houston) put it this afternoon, “Everything [Bush] has done on CHIP the last two or three months, is designed to cut and to permanently limit that program. It’s as simple as that.”
September 22nd, 2007 at 4:07 am
I doubt that I will ever see such a despicable and irresponsible man as George W. Bush in public office for the rest of my life.
Why he has not been impeached or simply run out of town on a rail continues to puzzle me.
September 26th, 2007 at 11:44 am
[…] Bush’s opposition is purely ideological. This Washington Post story debunks the White House’s reasons for opposing CHIP. After all, the program is fiscally conservative. It aids working families and helps keep them off welfare. And, by providing kids insurance and preventive care, CHIP saves money in the long run. No matter. For Bush, CHIP has always represented government health care. So he’s never been a big fan. […]