from The Progressive:
Bush Shows His Callousness With Veto of Children’s Health InsuranceOctober 3, 2007 By Matthew Rothschild
He used only the fourth veto of his Presidency to deny four million children health care coverage.
He did so because he opposes what he calls “government-run health care.” So, with that rationale, he should be against Medicare and Medicaid, too.
But he can’t take away benefits that the elderly and the disabled and the poorest of the poor already rely on.
So instead, he’s denying benefits to millions of kids who don’t have coverage today but who desperately need it.
All in service to the cob-webbed old philosophy that says the private sector can take care of everybody and that the government has no role to promote the general welfare, even though that duty is written right there in the preamble of the Constitution.
Even Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah, criticized Bush for clearly being on “the wrong side” of this issue.
Bush says he also opposes expanding children’s health care because it would cost too much—between $35 billion and $50 billion, according to the White House.
That’s just three or four months of Bush’s Iraq war!
Ah, but there’s always money for war.
Yet when it comes to the children of America, and their health, why, the cupboard is suddenly bare.
The only thing bare is Bush’s callousness.
http://www.progressive.org/mag_wx100307