Anyone who has watched President Bush for very long should not be surprised that he is threatening to veto the State Children's Health Insurance Program. After all, it was basically imposed on him as an unwilling Governor in Texas. His ideological blinders are on, and all he can see is "government-run healthcare". His almost messianic belief if the "hidden hand of the free market" means that he is unable to see what is obviously a "just go to the emergency room". He's a firm believer in Louis L'Amour's fictional heroes' belief that "You can't stop a man who thinks he's right and refuses to quit coming." Except that, as much as I love Louis L'Amour, he didn't write about the real world.
Congressional Republicans would be well served to remember that. When faced with the reality of millions of American children losing their access to preventative and ancillary healthcare, American voters are just not buying the ideological objections of the President and his Congressional apologists. The implication that America doesn't have the money to provide healthcare to children on Monday while the President asks for $150 billion to pay for continued deployment of American troops in Iraq on Tuesday simply boggles the mind. It is insulting to anyone who was able to do second-grade math.
But so is Jim Saxton's statement through his spokesman that "it's all rhetoric" and that "it should have been done earlier". With the President promising to veto anything that isn't 100% his way, the calendar has little impact on it. So if Saxton actually supports renewing the program as he says, then why isn't he voting that way?
Meanwhile, fellow NJ Republican Rodney Frelinghuysen supported the program so much that he touted the program on his website only last year. But he just got through voting against it. You'll have to figure out yourself why this paradox exists. Rod isn't saying anything.
Of course, NJ's Scott Garrett can always be counted on to vote against any measure that would help people. Apparently not satisfied with the inhumanity of voting against Katrina relief and anti-price gauging legislation, he now opposes healthy children. His past bluster that he opposes healthcare for children because Democrats haven't fixed the AMT is worse than silence. I won't even get into Mr. Garrett's lengthy history of outright deceit on the issue.
Even the faux "tax-hike" outrage is about as fake as it possibly can be. The SCHIP bill raises taxes on cigarettes - so if it has any monetary effect, then it would make people smoke less. How is this a negative? It can't be called a "tax transfer" because most of the tax collected from cigarette taxes comes from people who are in the same income range as the recipients. Yet this, too, is not exempt from criticism by the Bush Administration.
The President's Congressional Posse needs to wake up and smell the cowboy coffee. The town no longer supports this sheriff, and he's due to ride over the next hill in short order - just about the time that voters will be wondering if the people they've been sending to DC have actually been "representing" them. New Jersey is trending Democratic all over the place as the white male core of the Republican Party becomes a shrinking power base. Refusing to provide healthcare for needy children and then making up idiotic reasons for doing so can only hasten that trend.