Bush’s Poodle: Why Gallegly Won’t Fund Children’s Health Care

Apparently funding the health care of poor children is not as important to Congressman Elton Gallegly (R-Thousand Oaks) as funding the war.

After all, poor children are certainly not going to vote Republican when they grow up. If they survive without health care, that is.

There’s no doubt about it, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, which would cost taxpayers $60 billion over 5 years, would be expensive. But isn’t it the legitimate business of government to protect those who are most vulnerable?

Only if it is not too expensive, apparently.

“I understand where the president is, and I agree with him on this issue,” Gallegly told the Ventura County Star.

The president vetoed a bill to renew SCHIP on Wednesday, despite overwhelming support in the House and Senate.

The bill is popular with Republicans, Democrats, and most Americans. But not with Gallegly or Bush.

Both say the bill is too expensive. And, says the president, “government coverage would displace private health insurance for many children.”

This is certainly not true, but even if it were children with health insurance, even government-sponsored health insurance, are better off than children with none.

Senate Republicans have bent over backwards to meet the president’s demands.

“Frankly, I think the president has had pretty poor advice on this,” said Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah).

“I can answer every objection that they’ve made, and I’m very favorable to the president. I know he’s compassionate. I know he’s concerned about these kids, but he’s been sold a bill of goods.”

Gallegly told the Star that “this is a classic case of the ugliest part of our government process, which is taking something as critical as the healthcare of children and turning it into political spin. Today is a day that I think is an embarrassment to this institution.”

Wednesday certainly was an embarrassment. It was embarrassing for Gallegly, for Bush, for the Republican Party, and for the nation. It shows the world that we value a wasteful war in Iraq—a war that has nothing to do with terrorism—more than we do the health of our own children.

The proposed $35 billion increase in funding for the SCHIP program, an increase that will cover a five-year period, mind you, is about as much as it costs to finance the war in Iraq for a mere three months.

The president just asked Congress for an additional $200 billion in war funding. The war in Iraq has cost about $457 billion to date, and increasing at a rate of about $300 million a day, according to economist Scott Wallsten.

The Congressional Budget Office predicts the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the ineptly named war on terror will cost about $1.2 trillion between now and 2017.

Less than half of this amount, writes David Leonhardt in the New York Times, “would pay for an unprecedented public health campaign — a doubling of cancer research funding, treatment for every American whose diabetes or heart disease is now going unmanaged and a global immunization campaign to save millions of children’s lives.”

And yet the president and his obedient congressman can’t scrape up enough money, or moral courage, to help out 10 million poor kids.

Bush and his sycophants, like Gallegly, have been calling recently for more fiscal discipline. This is a laughable attempt to salvage some respectability at the last minute after six years of deficit spending.

The public debt is now up to more than $9 trillion, according to the Treasury Department. When Bill Clinton left office, there was a budget surplus of $127 billion.

And yet the president and his party continually tout themselves as being deficit hawks and Democrats as tax-and-spend liberals.

Nobody’s buying it, least of all now, and Republicans will pay a hefty fine at the ballot box in the 2008 elections.

The presidential veto is meant to be a check on congressional power. But in some cases, the president, be he (or soon, she) a Republican or Democrat, is just plain wrong.

This is one of those cases.

The Constitution provides Congress with the ability to override a presidential veto. The House needs 25 more votes to do this, and even Republicans are lining up to oppose the president.

These, ladies and gentlemen, are the last days of a failing presidency.

Will Gallegly go down with the ship?

That’s up to Ventura County voters. Let’s all turn out for the elections in November 2008 and show Gallegly the door.

Key Links:

Gallegly’s Voting Record, as reported by the Washington Post

“Bush Vetoes Child Healthcare Bill,” by Michael Collins, Ventura County Star, October 4, 2007

“Families Brace for SCHIP Demise,” by Carla Williams, ABC News, October 4, 2007

“Bush Vetoes Health Measure,” by Michael Abramowitz and Jonathan Weisman, Washington Post, October 4, 2007

 

“The Debt to the Penny and Who Holds It,” U.S. Department of the Treasury, Bureau of Public Debt, retrieved October 4, 2007

 

“Estimated Costs of U.S. Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and of Other Activities Related to the War on Terrorism,” Congressional Budget Office, testimony before the Committee on the Budget
U.S. House of Representatives, July 31, 2007.

 

“What $1.2 Trillion Can Buy,” by David Leonhardt, New York Times, January 17, 2007.

 

“President Clinton announces another record budget surplus,” by Kelly Wallace, CNN.com, September 27, 2000

 

“Snow, Praising Bush on Budget, Calls Clinton’s Surplus `Mirage,’” by Alison Fitzgerald, Bloomberg.com, December 21, 2005.

 

 

 

Gallegly Refuses to Discuss Earmark Plans

Congressman Elton Gallegly (R-Thousand Oaks) refused a newspaper’s request to reveal his plans to add earmarks to the federal budget, but recently criticized others who keep their earmarks secret.

 

Gallegly, Reps. Jerry Lewis of Redlands, Howard “Buck” McKeon of Santa Clarita, and Gary Miller of Brea recently signed a petition calling for Democrats to do more to reveal the names of lawmakers adding earmarks to legislation.

 

However, each of these representatives declined to reveal their own pet projects.

 

According to the article in the L.A. Daily News, an aide from Gallegly’s office “noted the petition called for public disclosure of projects approved for funding, not those still under consideration.”

 

This is splitting hairs. What does Gallegly have to hide?

 

It is just another example of Republican hypocrisy at work.

 

But lest we get too smug, even some Democrats are guilty of the same sort of obfuscation. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Pasadena), for example, has been on record criticizing a Republican bill to match lawmakers with earmarks as not going far enough, but refuses to release his own list of earmarks.

 

“I strongly believe that all projects funded by Congress should be disclosed,” he told the Daily News.

 

The key here is the word “funded.” Many lawmakers feel that they need not disclose their earmarks until they receive funding.

 

The advantages of this strategy for lawmakers are that they do not offend constituents when their efforts to fund earmarks fail and that they do not appear to be favoring one earmark over another.

 

However, this lack of transparency indicates a shortage of courage on the part of these members of Congress. And courage is exactly the quality we need in our representatives, who make the vital decisions daily that we have to live with.

 

Earmarks, it should be noted, are not uniformly bad. Some, like efforts to fund improvements in the Los Angeles River, for example, help support noble efforts.

 

Others, like the infamous Alaskan “bridge to nowhere,” waste taxpayers’ money. These projects are rightly called pork. Even that is being generous.

 

“If they [members of Congress] are endorsing a project as a good expenditure for federal money, they have an obligation to tell their constituents, ‘This is what I’m supporting. This is what I think we should be spending our tax dollars on,’ ” said Steve Ellis, spokesman for Taxpayers for Common Sense.

 

Refusing to disclose earmarks in advance “shows at least some level of contempt for their constituents,” he said.

 

Amen to that.

 

Congressman Gallegly, we have a right to know what you’re up to. Release your plans for earmarks without delay.