How do you explain this grown-up stuff to the kids?
Now, children . . .
Our president, Mr. Bush, said he vetoed the bipartisan children's health insurance bill yesterday in order to force Congress to "produce a good bill that puts poorer children first."
To do that, though, the president had to derail a groundbreaking piece of legislation. The measure he vetoed would have helped millions more youngsters - most of them from poor and working-class families - obtain health insurance coverage.
The legislation would have more than doubled the federal funding - that's like two times two - for the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which needs to be renewed. At a time when so many families are losing health insurance, the number of children with coverage would grow to 10 million, from 6.6 million.
And there's one other thing . . .
The president accused Congress of trying to score political points with its proposal. How is it possible, you ask, for Democrats and Republicans to score points against each other with legislation that members of both parties support?
Oh, never mind . . .
If it doesn't make sense to grown-ups, the kids aren't likely to understand, either.
There was no convincing reason for President Bush to deliver on his long-standing threat of veto for the SCHIP bill - other than that he hoped to score political points.
Bush's stated reason for opposing the congressionally approved $35 billion increase in the program was that, somehow, it was a step toward socialized, government-run medical coverage benefiting well-off families.
That doesn't square with the facts, since most of the kids helped by the program are in working-class households. And it doesn't jibe with the widespread support for SCHIP among the American public, not to mention the impressive number of Republicans who backed the vetoed measure.
As an added plus, the SCHIP reauthorization would discourage smoking among price-sensitive teens by more than doubling the federal cigarette tax.
The president, meanwhile, offers a $5 billion increase that won't even keep pace with the number of children being added to the uninsured rolls. On top of that, his administration in August issued new federal limits on state-funded expansions of SCHIP that are particularly harmful for Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
So it's difficult to see how the president's strategy on SCHIP puts any more children first.