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Tue Aug 21, 2007 at 01:14 PM CDT
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Cross-posted from Texas Kaos, Blue Texas, and Diatribune
The New York Times is reporting in its editions a Bush White House attempt to "make it much more difficult for New York, California and others to extend coverage to children in middle-income families."
This is the same program that Sen. John Cornyn has fought tooth and nail both as Texas Attorney General and now in the U.S. Seante.
More below. |
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The New York Times piece elaborated further...
Administration officials outlined the new standards in a letter sent to state health officials on Friday evening, in the middle of a month-long Congressional recess. In interviews, they said the changes were aimed at returning the Children’s Health Insurance Program to its original focus on low-income children and to make sure the program did not become a substitute for private health coverage.
How dare these Bush White House officials undertake this extraordinarily cruel action against the most needy of us-- financially challenged parents and their children. And how dare public officials like Cornyn help the heartless Bush White House folks in this task.
How dare they tell these people to, in effect, "eat cake," and subject them to seek private insurance coverage that could force them still to pay even higher costs for health care because of what the private insurance didn't cover. Michael Moore goes even further in discussing this problem in his well-researched and well-done documentary, "SiCKO."
Cornyn has been front and center in his efforts to severely limit, if not eliminate, the CHIP program.
Here's part of what the San Antonio Express-News reported:
Just before the congressional summer recess, Cornyn voted against the Senate's approval of a bill to increase federal funding for CHIP by $35 billion over the next five years. U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison voted for it.
Cornyn voted for an $11 billion increase, which failed, and his aides said that measure would have provided a greater potential benefit to Texas because it would have saved the state several hundred million dollars in already approved, but unspent, federal funds.
Not only did Cornyn try to strip more than two-thirds of the funding for the program, his fight against CHIP goes even further.
Cornyn has an additional vulnerability on children's health care, Democrats believe, because, as state attorney general, he tried to undo an agreement to improve Medicaid health services for thousands of Texas' poorest children.
That agreement, signed by Cornyn's Democratic predecessor, Dan Morales, in 1996, was finally funded with $700 million this year after the U.S. Supreme Court, for the final time, refused to let Texas back out of it.
Is this really the type of representation Texas should have in the U.S. Senate? Do Texans really want a senator so willing to cut health care programs for kids while fighting for tax cuts for the richest 1 percent?
Are these the "Texas Values" Cornyn and other Republicans have claimed to represent?
If this is what Republicans consider "Texas Values," they need to go back to school and find out what real values are, and Cornyn and his ilk must be sent to defeat next year. |
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