SCHIP: DEMOCRATS LOSE THE BATTLE, STAND TO WIN THE WAR
-Jane Roh
The Gate – National Journal, DC
Oct 17 2007
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 thrown 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.
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