"It's very sad that the President has
chosen to veto a bill that would provide health care for 10 million
American children for the next five years...I don't think the
President wants to say to the American people that he as the decider,
the self-proclaimed decider, wants to decide what children get health
care and which children do not." -House Speaker Nancy Pelosi,
D-California
"Never has it been clearer how detached
President Bush is from the priorities of the American people. By
vetoing a bipartisan bill to renew the successful Children's Health
Insurance Program (CHIP), President Bush is denying health care to
millions of low-income kids in America." -Senate Majority
Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada
"I'm going to be making some of those
phone calls to the House of Representatives to find the votes to
override," -Senator Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, one of 18
Senate Republicans supporting the bill Bush vetoed. "It's
disappointing to me that the president vetoed this bipartisan
bill."
“This veto starkly exposes the Bush
Administration’s muddled priorities. For President Bush to veto this
children’s health bill for cost reasons would be laughable if it were
not so appalling. This is the same President who would commit the
United States to borrow almost a trillion dollars to pay for a
catastrophic war. To him, anything goes if it’s spent in Iraq, but
health insurance here at home for kids in families that are struggling
is too much. Insurance coverage for 10 million children costs what we
spend in Iraq in just 41 days.” -Senator Patrick Leahy,
D-Vermont
This is the only time I can ever remember
agreeing with President Bush, albeit for completely different
reasons. Bush shot down a bill that would
expand a popular children's health insurance program, which would have
cost $35 billion over the next five years and would have doubled the
number of children eligible for state health care.
Bush disagrees with the bill because, "I
believe in private medicine, not the federal government running the
health care system." He said he believes, though, that Republicans
and Democrats should come together create a government policy for
helping people find private insurance.
I disagree with the bill because I believe
in the need for a nationwide health care system. We need to revise
the entire thing, and it should not come out of the taxes of smokers,
which is the strange way this bill was set up. Do smokers deserve
to be pinned for funding children's healthcare? Does that make any
sense? It's just ridiculous. The massive revamping
of our health care system, if and when successful, will not happen while
Bush is in office, and it will not succeed on the backs of tobacco
users. Passing this bill as a temporary solution would be just
that: a temporary solution, which is not what we need.
We need a real health care system, where
money comes out of everyone's paycheck without a hitch, and
where health care is free for all citizens, not just children. And
it needs to be well-planned-out. The current vetoed bill that the
House plans to attempt to override on October 13th contains loopholes
that make it easier for children of illegal immigrants to obtain health
care coverage - while the middle class still suffers.
