Bush Opens Mouth, Black Hole of Irony Now So Dense That No Logic Can Escape

The President vetoed a bill yesterday to expand health insurance for children.

Because it was too expensive. He says he doesn't want to have to raise our taxes.

Holy Moly--are you kidding me? Now I go on and on about how everything in government is a choice, they just try to conceal the fact from us: we can either go to Mars or we can vaccinate babies. We can either give tax breaks to McDonalds to create minimum wage jobs or we can improve infrastructure in low-income neighborhoods.

Usually the fact that it's a choice is hidden. But not this time--here the choice is clear: we'd rather spend the money killing Iraqi civilians. For this President to play the fiscal conservative role while he's spending $175-200 million a day in Iraq is not only profoundly self-deluding, it is reprehensible.

After balking at the price tag, the President does offer an ideological objection to the plan: that it would "federalize healthcare." While I think that federalizing health care is a splendid idea, I'll grant that the President has some coherent free-market belief that runs counter to single-payer health care. I disagree, but I'll grant it. (Although as a side note, I think that he should have to give up HIS federalized health care before he argues that, but that's just me.)

But the bill didn't try to create a single-payer system. It would have enrolled uninsured children in private health care. If someone has always had health insurance, either through their parents or their university or their job, they don't know what it's like to live without it. Lots of people are working two part time jobs (because places like Walmart will keep them at 31 hours a week so that they're not eligible for benefits) and can't get health care through their employer and can't afford it out of pocket.

The President objects that too many higher income people will become eligible in the new program. But a federally set "poverty line" simply doesn't make any sense. The city I live in has a cost of living that is about 210% of the national average. People here routinely spend 75% of their income on housing. So poverty here is experienced at an income level that would put someone outside of poverty in another area of the country.

New York recently did a study that showed that a person in Brooklyn with two kids needs $44,000 a year for the bare necessities. $44,000 a year would be an extremely comfortable living in most parts of the country. Having federal cut-offs for poverty fails to take into account the huge variance in cost of living.

The President says that the bill is just another entitlement program. But aren't people entitled to health care? Of course, this is the same President who tried to slash veterans benefits, including eliminating 5000 beds in VA nursing homes while maintaining that people who oppose the war don't (say it with me now) "support the troops."