1115.org

(1)
Sen. Charles E. Grassley had a really interesting revelation yesterday about President Bush’s staunch opposition to the bipartisan proposal for expanding the popular State Children’s Health Insurance Program:

With a five-year, $35 billion expansion of the children’s health insurance program due for a final vote in the House today, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and White House aides agreed that Bush’s opposition to the legislation stems not from its price tag but from far larger health policy issues. The White House wants to use the issue of uninsured children to resurrect the president’s long-dormant proposals to change the federal tax code to help the uninsured, adults and children alike, Grassley said, calling that a laudable goal but unrealistic politically.
[…]
White House lobbying has targeted the bill’s price tag and the mechanism that the bill uses to pay for itself, a 61-cent increase in the federal tax on a pack of cigarettes. Grassley said he was surprised to hear Bush bring up his broader health policy goals.
[…]
Asked if Bush was holding the children’s health bill hostage, Grassley said, “Yes.”

So White House aides are freely conceding that all this time, when the White House was attacking the S-CHIP expansion because of its price tag, that was just a subterfuge, to camouflage the real basis of their opposition — Bush’s not-a-hope-in-hell ideological agenda for reforming health care.

This is a good time to recall that the President last Thursday accused Democrats of “putting health coverage for poor children at risk so they can score political points in Washington.”

Bush isn’t even sacrificing the S-CHIP program to score political points. He’s doing it in the deluded hope of resurrecting his never-going-to-fly health care reform proposals.

(2)
The White House spin on the S-CHIP extension has been that the modest funding increase proposed by the Bush administration is perfectly adequate. The spendthrift Democrats are proposing a huge increase that will just expand coverage to middle-class families who don’t really need the help, who will just use S-CHIP to replace the existing coverage they have for their children.

The NYT provided some succinct fact-checking (in an editorial!):
• Bush’s “budget for fiscal year 2008 proposes an additional $5 billion in federal funds spread over the next five years, a 20 percent increase over current levels. (This) paltry sum is not even enough to provide continued coverage for all of the children who are currently enrolled, let alone enroll millions more of the uninsured.”
• “A recent analysis of census data by Urban Institute researchers found that the number of uninsured children jumped by a startling 710,000 last year. Almost half of the increase was in families with incomes between 200 percent and 399 percent of poverty — the very group the administration seems to believe is adequately insured and has no need of S-chip.”

WaPo adds this little tidbit, impeaching one of Bush’s favorite falsehoods on the subject:

America’s Health Insurance Plans, the largest insurance lobbying group, endorsed the measure yesterday, undercutting Bush’s contention that the bill is a step away from private insurance and toward government-run health care.

(There was also the $83,000 lie, which has already received its 15 minutes of fame.)

It really doesn’t look like this man, George Bush, has an honest bone in his body, does it?