He Said He Would, and He Did.
By Well you can say one thing about President Bush: he’s a politicker til the end. Today, as he promised, he vetoed S-CHIP, the State Child Health Insurance Program. S-CHIP is a popular venture that would extend health insurance to millions of kids whose families make too much money to qualify for medicaid, but not enough to be able to afford private insurance.
The Democrats (predictably) had angry responses at the ready:
“Today we learned that the same president who is willing to throw away a half trillion dollars in Iraq is unwilling to spend a small fraction of that amount to bring health care to American children,” said Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
Mr. Kennedy’s fellow Democrat from Massachusetts and Mr. Bush’s 2004 opponent, Senator John Kerry, said, “Today with a single stroke of his veto pen, President Bush single-handedly jeopardized health care for millions of poor children.”
Seems like there’s something of a pattern emerging in Bush’s vetoes: his first veto was of a stem cell bill, and this (his fourth) is of a health insurance plan for kids. Seems to me that though Bush talks a big game on supporting a culture of life, his vetoes speak otherwise: they portend sickness and suffering for millions more Americans. He talks the talk, but in this (and so many other areas) he just doesn’t walk the walk.