The Texas Observer

President Bush vetoed the bill to renew — and expand — the Children’s Health Insurance Program this morning. Here’s the Washington Post story on the veto. Though the bill has broad support from Democrats and Republicans, it appears the U.S. House lacks the votes to override Bush’s veto.

Congress can continue extending CHIP — which would have expired on September 30 — on a temporary basis. Congressional Democrats have threatened to keep sending Bush the same bill until he relents and signs it. But there’s only so long Democrats can play that game. State governments need to know how much money they will receive for CHIP to budget for the coming year. Unless they scrounge up enough votes to override, Congressional Democrats will eventually have to negotiate a smaller CHIP bill with the White House. That could cause hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of kids to remain uninsured.

Bush seems to think the CHIP expansion — $35 billion over five years — is too pricey. After signing the veto papers, he flew off to Lancaster, Pa., for an event to promote restraint in federal spending. (Keep in mind that CHIP helps kids lead healthier lives, which saves money in the long run.)

Just for comparison, the proposed CHIP expansion of $35 billion (over five years) is about three months’ worth of spending in Iraq. The total allocated funds for the war in Iraq is surging past $600 billion, which would have paid for CHIP expansion 20 times over.

Sure, he’s about to veto an expansion of health care for poor kids, but that didn’t prevent President George W. (how low can you go?) Bush from celebrating Child Health Day on Monday.

The White House did note in its release that, “On this day it is also appropriate to recognize the important role the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) has played in helping poor children stay healthy . To preserve that role and ensure that poor children can get the coverage they need, SCHIP should be reauthorized.”

Sure they want it reauthorized and preserved, but in a smaller, much smaller important role. And if Congress doesn’t make it smaller, the president’s going to stomp his feet and hold his breath until he turns blue and passes out. And then he’ll veto it.

President George W. Bush has declared September 11, “Patriot Day” and asked governors to fly their flags at half-staff. Texas Governor Rick Perry has complied and put out a statement that reads in part:

“September 11th will forever be regarded as a day that changed America,” said Perry. “We were reminded that the evil in the hearts of men can manifest itself in harm to those people and institutions we most deeply cherish, even in places we long regarded as safe.”

When I look at those flags, I feel incredible sadness, not just for the innocents who died in 2001 or the tens of thousands of Iraqis and Americans who have perished needlessly from the folly of a war of choice. I feel incredible sadness for our country — that we let this collection of scoundrels in the Bush-Cheney administration use the cover of patriotism to piss all over the Constitution and sully the rights that once separated us from so many other nations.

The most explosive quotation to come out of this administration that I’ve read can be found in the extraordinary new book The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration by Jack L. Goldsmith, the former head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. (An excerpt from the book can be found here.)

The quote comes from David Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff. Addington has bullied his way through the executive branch on a mission for his master to create a unitary executive, a modern-day American dictatorship. In order to do so, the administration has had to wipe away decades of precedent including judicial review of government wiretapping by a special court, first established in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978.

Goldsmith reports Addington saying, “We are one bomb away from getting rid of that obnoxious court.”

Here you have one of the most powerful officials in the government today wishing for a terrorist attack so the executive will have license to impose its will. This is beyond unconscionable, it’s truly shocking, even from a crew that I thought could no longer surprise. These people are not just incompetent and foolhardy, they are a threat to America.

And as long as they maintain power, Patriot Day must share equal billing with Scoundrel Day.

Rove made the rounds of the Sunday talk shows today, a few days after he announced he’s leaving the White House at the end of the month. He told Face the Nation’s Bob Schieffer that he had been ordered to appear on the shows. Wonder why?

Was it the President: “Turd Blossom, every minute they are talking bad about you, they’re not talking bad about me.”

Or was it Chief of Staff Josh Bolton: “If they blame you for all our mistakes going out, it might give us a clean slate going forward.”

But the best line of the morning may have come from Matthew Cooper formally of Time Magazine in the reporter round-table after the interview. Cooper had just busted Rove for misleading guest host David Gregory in the previous segment by insisting he would never have revealed Valerie Plame’s identity as a CIA covert agent. A slightly exasperated Gregory wanted to know why Rove refused to apologize to Plame.

“Karl Rove never apologizes,” Cooper said. “That’s not what he does.”

As the economy and the infrastructure of our nation teeter, corruption and incompetence rein supreme in the government, and Iraq experiences ever-more horrifying atrocities of which the death and maiming of young Americans is but one part, what do you suppose it would take to make Karl Rove apologize?

It looks like President Bush, currently enjoying a “working vacation” on the wild preserves of Crawford Ranch, has caught a bit of the hunting bug. Pray this goes better than Dick Cheney’s last expedition. Rather than recklessly brandishing a shotgun, though, Bush seems to be indiscriminately wielding his executive-order pen. Today he released one titled “Facilitation of Hunting Heritage and Wildlife Conservation,” and it’s confusing because it’s so vague:

The purpose of this order is to direct Federal agencies that have programs and activities that have a measurable effect on public land management, outdoor recreation, and wildlife management, including the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture, to facilitate the expansion and enhancement of hunting opportunities and the management of game species and their habitat.

The order then provides a list of equally non-specific actions federal agencies should take, such as, “Consider the economic and recreational values of hunting in agency actions, as appropriate.” The only concrete enactment is a conference sometime in the next year to guage whether the goals of the order are being met. That should be scintillating.

So what in the world prompted this bit of Bush craziness? It looks like it was pre-emptive political CYA.

Bob Ricker, executive director of the D.C.-based American Hunters & Shooters Association, said he hadn’t even heard of the order until the Observer’s call tipped him off. But after checking things out, he’s hearing that “it’s basically political cover for Bush when he vetoes the Farm Bill.”

The bill, Ricker says, is “the key piece of legislation for hunting conservation,” and Bush is hoping this paltry order can prevent a backlash from hunters and other sportsmen, who have become major advocates for habitat preservation. Bush, for his part, has said the Farm Bill is too expensive. And even though hunting conservation is only a small part of the mammoth legislation, sportsmen are a constituency that Republicans are already trying to make amends with — before they get even angrier.

Ricker doesn’t think today’s offering will do the trick. “I think most hunters and most people who are pro-conservation will see right through it,” he said.

So Karl Rove is returning to Texas. Do we have to take him back?

The campaign guru and presidential political adviser — with the flowering poo nickname — announced this morning that he will leave the White House at the end of August. You can watch Bush and Rove’s press statement — filled with the expected bromides — at the CNN site.

We’ll forego the Rove legacy talk that many national political reporters are already spewing forth. (Our short, short version: he has a unique political mind; we suspect he’s a lousy dinner party guest.) We have no idea if Rove’s skinned-shin style of politics will endure. Or if he actually will remain out of the game for good.

Rove told the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page editor this morning that he had considered resigning for about a year, and he wants to spend more time with his family. For a political reporter, anytime an official steps down to “spend time with my family,” it’s code for something else. After all, if you actually wanted to spend time with your family, you wouldn’t have gotten into national politics. It’s also worth noting that right after he leaves the White House, Rove reportedly plans to go dove hunting in West Texas, sans family.

What’s the real reason? There’s talk “behind the scenes” in DC that Rove’s planned book and trip ’round the lecture circuit will pay off lingering legal bills, though Rove and the White House deny this. Either way, we suspect the man has a first-degree case of burnout after nearly 15 years of convincing voters to support George W. Bush. He’s human after all — despite reports to the contrary.

And of course, the scandal over the fired U.S. attorneys is still out there, and Rove is very much at the center of it. Democrats in Congress have subpoenaed Rove to testify, and the White House has refused.

Once Rove leaves the White House, the president can still use executive privilege to shield Rove from testifying. It seems doubtful that Democrats will find it any easier to drag Rove the private citizen before a committee.

To localize the previous post, a timely report came out today measuring the state of children’s health care. How’d Texas fair? Down at the bottom, as always.

Via the CPPP, the KIDS COUNT Data Book, a national state-by-state report released today by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, found:

– Texas continues to have the highest rate of uninsured children in the nation. For 9 of the last 10 years, Texas has led this category

– Texas has the highest teen birth rate in the nation, 63 births per 1,000 females ages 15-19.

– Texas has the 7th worst child poverty rate in the nation. One in four Texas children lived in poverty in 2005 (a 14 percent increase since 2000), ranking Texas 44th in the nation. The national child poverty rate also worsened, increasing from 17 percent in 2000 to 19 percent in 2005.

– Texas’ infant mortality rate increased by 11%, although it is still just slightly better than the national average.

More details in the full CPPP report.

Of course, CHIP expansion wouldn’t solve all of those problems, although it could go a long way toward that first one. But it’s hard to see how nothing is better than something, which is what Bush is pushing.