For just the fourth time during the Bush administration, the president put to use his veto powers, rejecting a bipartisan bill to provide government health coverage to millions of low-income children.
In a statement sent to the House of Representatives, Bush said he vetoed the bill "because this legislation would move health care in this country in the wrong direction." He said it would have expanded the program too much to cover children from wealthier families and would have displaced private insurance for many.
In vetoing the bill to reauthorize and expand the State Children's Health Insurance Program, the president turned an otherwise routine exercise _ the renewal of a popular and effective program _ into a heated political struggle over the direction of American health programs.
In doing so, the president isolated himself politically from many members of his own party, 43 Democratic and Republican governors and more than 300 child advocacy, health industry, religious and civic groups that support the measure. He also provoked what could become one of the nastiest domestic policy fights of his presidency.
The SCHIP program was established in 1997 to help cover children whose families earned up to twice the federal poverty level. Medicaid and SCHIP have helped cut the uninsured rate for low-income children by about a third, but some 9 million youngsters remain without health coverage. The bill Bush vetoed would cover an additional 3.8 million uninsured youths by 2012 and increase overall program enrollment from 6.6 million youngsters to more than 10 million.
The vetoed legislation would have boosted SCHIP funding by $35 billion over five years, to $60 billion. The money would have come from steep tax increases on tobacco products, including a 61-cent hike to $1-per-pack for cigarettes.
Bush proposes increasing SCHIP funding by $1 billion a year over five years, to $30 billion. That's about 36 percent of what the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says is needed to preserve current program levels.A temporary funding agreement keeps the program afloat through Nov. 16, but Democrats plan to keep pushing their version of the legislation until the president changes his mind or until they can persuade a two-thirds majority in the House of Representatives to override his veto. A two-thirds majority already favors the full-funding measure in the Senate.
The House isn't expected to attempt to override Bush's veto for at least two weeks.The House approved the bill 265-159 last week, with 45 Republicans voting for the measure. To override Bush's veto, about two dozen Republicans must switch their votes and join the 265 lawmakers who favored the measure.On Tuesday, House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said, "We feel very comfortable that we have the votes to sustain" the veto.But mounting political pressure could change all that by mid-October, when the Democrats are expected to try an override vote.
This is exactly what went wrong over the last eight years, there were so many times in which our president could have done something right but instead made the completely wrong decision. On October 9th, I did everything I could to try and analyze the problems with the American health care system and the privatization that is going on within it. After the bill was passed by congress, Bush sent his veto citing "the direction of the American Health Care System." I believe the issue here is our president's state of mind, and the fact that he can not think socially in the least. With all this being said, here's to you Mr. President, for all those memorable little things you did for this fair nation, Thank you and God Bless.....
