When the house votes and fails to override President Bush's SCHIP veto tomorrow, look for a handful of right wing idiots to explain themselves in terms of principles.
"We can't afford it... Covers too many middle class people... It'll drive people from private coverage to socialized medicine..."
Bull.
The real reason the right wing flukes and flakes in the house will derail the effort is because they're cheap bastards. Cheap bastardhood is a core value not of the old line Republican party, but of the Grover Norquist element over there on the far right.
Here in Minnesota, Saint Paul-based cheap bastardhood is under-funding transportation and infrastructure maintenance at the state level to the tune of more than $1 billion a year. It's a year-over-year thing, with the expenses compounding like interest on a credit card.
And the same bout of cheap bastardhood is forcing 99 school districts around the state to ask voters to close a funding gap or face more school closings, more program cuts, and bigger class sizes.
Anyone care to guess how the cheap bastards will vote when it comes to those school referendums?
Cheap bastardhood is not without it's amusing moments. In the highly-Republican Minneapolis suburb of Eden Prairie, for example, the Republican-majority City Council has vowed to cut spending something like five percent.
But there isn't five percent worth of fat left to cut from the budget. Not with all that Republican quality of life to maintain. Somebody make popcorn. Let's tune in the public access TV City Council broadcast and watch the Republicans eating their own.
Unfortunately, they do seem to have found is a $75,000 city job (the $75,000 includes benefits like health insurance, I guess) to cut. The job is devoted to helping Somali immigrants assimilate.
Bike path funding or Somalis? Anyone care to bet what the cheap bastards will eliminate first?
Meanwhile, back in D.C., the fate of tens of thousands of uninsured children hangs in the balance -- at least until the vote to override takes place.
If your representative says he or she won't vote to override, you might send them an email. Here's some suggested wording:
Override the veto, you cheap bastard.
Have to agree with the city council on that one. Whoever holds that job is doing a LOUSY job. After all, isn't is the Minneapolis/St Paul airport where the Muslim Somali immigrant taxi drivers are/were UNLAWFULLY refusing passengers who rely upon Service Dogs? Pretty incompetent job of "integrating" them if they feel free to blatantly violate Federal Law.
Complete waste of fundings catering to one small group at a ridiculous pay rate.
cut the federal budget, too. Less money in the
pot=less people competing over something that
isn't there to be taken, anymore.