October 18, 2007
SCHIP: Democrats Lose The Battle, Stand To Win The War
UPDATED.
The House Democratic leadership failed to wrangle the 12 to 15 additional votes it needed to push an expansion of a health care program for poor children past a presidential veto.
Lawmakers voted to override President Bush's veto 265 to 159, just under the two-thirds majority required. Squabbling over the bill, popular in spirit but contentious in practice, culminated in lawmakers using and attacking real live children volunteered by their parents as props in the debate.
Today's vote was originally scheduled for around noon, but had to be delayed because of still more ugliness. During floor debate preceding the vote, California Democrat Pete Stark accused Republican fiscal conservatives of "telling lies" about the breadth of the expansion. He continued: "You don't have money to fund the war or children. But you're going to spend it to blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the president's amusement."
The National Republican Congressional Committee fired off video of Stark's remarks so fast that it misidentified the loose-cannon lawmaker as a fellow Republican. Protesting GOP lawmakers called for a reprimand vote on the remarks, which failed.
It seems that the hard-charging Democrats of nine months ago have hit a wall when it comes to Bush's vetoes. Today's vote means they will be forced to make concessions, despite a vow from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid yesterday (subscription) that they would not give in on the $35 billion figure for SCHIP expansion. Lawmakers are under the gun to push reauthorization through, as a number of states have already suspended their programs in the face of no new federal contributions.
In remarks yesterday warning House lawmakers against an override, Bush said, "Now it's time to put politics aside and seek common ground to reauthorize this important program." The president, backed by a bloc of fiscal conservatives in Congress, has criticized the package as overly expansive, because in some states middle-class families qualify for coverage. The program's intent was to cover families too poor to afford private insurance but ineligible for Medicare.
Bush signaled yesterday that his veto should stand because there is plenty of room for compromise. "If it requires more than the 20 percent increase in funding that I proposed, then we'll work with Congress to find the funding that we need," he said in a press conference.
Despite today's setback, the SCHIP fight is one that stands to cut deepest in the Republican Party. The main argument against the House and Senate bills is that the ticket price is too big and that taxes, even one on cigarettes, should not be raised to help pay for the program.
But as with most fights in the Capitol these days, all roads lead to Iraq. The bill's supporters are on board with the gist of what Stark said today, if not crazy about the way he said it. If the federal government has to scrounge for spare change to pay for the program, it's because of the billions being wasted on the war, they say. As long as the nation's purse is being overspent in Iraq, they reason, why not also throw some money at uninsured children.
A new CBS News poll shows the public is willing to pay for expanding the program by an overwhelming majority. Almost immediately following the vote, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee pulled the trigger on individualized press releases targeting GOP lawmakers who voted with the president. Anti-war group MoveOn.org went up with a new TV ad campaign starring two-year-old Bethany Wilkerson, a SCHIP enrollee. In the cross hairs are Tom Feeney (Fla.-24), Sam Graves (Mo.-06), Ric Keller (Fla.-08), Randy Kuhl (N.Y.-29), Marilyn Musgrave (Colo.-04) and Tim Walberg (Mich.-07). MoveOn and other groups have been running ads attacking individual GOP lawmakers on SCHIP since the summer.
The number of uninsured Americans has mushroomed during Bush's presidency, ensuring that health care is right up there with the war in the 2008 campaigns. The U.S. military strategy in Iraq is in a kind of stasis until March -- plenty of time for Democrats to continue bundling voters' concerns about health care with hopelessness about the war.
The House leadership appears to be standing down on another contentious, partisan issue. Pelosi signaled yesterday that lawmakers would back off on a nonbinding resolution condemning the Ottoman Empire's genocide of the Armenians nearly a century ago. Even critics of Turkey, which denies the genocide occurred despite overwhelming historical evidence, have come to acknowledge that the issue is one of timing. The Turkish government reacted angrily after the resolution passed committee, and is retaliating by threatening cross-border military strikes in northern Iraq and warning of a severing of ties with Washington. The Bush administration and all of the living former secretaries of state have urged the House to drop the matter.
"We don't have the number of allies we used to have. We've lost so much credibility worldwide," said Pennsylvania Democrat John Murtha, predicting the measure would not pass.
The prospect of losing Turkey as an ally is proving too much even for lawmakers who feel strongly about the Armenian genocide issue. According to a National Journal poll of congressional insiders that will be released tomorrow, the most frequently cited reason for backing off the resolution is timing.
"Even as a co-sponsor, I do not believe this is the right time," said one Republican lawmaker.
Cast against the SCHIP fight, it's now hard to see how this gets perceived as hurting Democrats, either. Expect them to argue that the reason Washington needs to hold its nose and deal with a genocide-denying nation is -- once again -- the war in Iraq.
Posted at 1:45 PM
Posted to:
Bush Administration, Campaigns, Congress, Europe, Health, House, President Bush, Turkey
Share via
