Bush Vetoes Children's Health

Behind closed doors and with the TV cameras off, Bush just vetoed the S-CHIP bill. With one stroke of his pen, he said tax cuts for the rich, loopholes for big oil, and the war on Iraq based on lies are matter more than children who need shots, their teeth fixed, expensive medicines for chronic illnesses like asthma, diabetes, or allergies.

Bush, in the name of his discredited and despicable conservative ideology, told America what his values are: lucrative private contracts for Blackwater without oversight to kill Iraqis, torture at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and spying on your phone calls rank higher in importance than making sure that working families whose children need to have tubes inserted in their ears to prevent recurring infections or operations to fix their eyesight can afford to do so.

With a stroke of his pen, he said to the children of working families, you don't count in my book, and I don't care about your future.

Bush also lied – surprise, surprise. He explained that he opposed the $5 billion dollar a year S-CHIP bill because he believes in fiscal responsibility. Lie. Over his presidency he has signed spending bill after spending bill paid for with debt mounted on the backs of the very children he scorned today with his veto. The amount he (abetted by the previous Republican-controlled Congress) personally has added to the national debt is in the trillions.

He also called the S-CHIP bill, supported by right-wing members of Congress, private insurance lobbyist, medical associations, and liberal children's advocates alike, was a kind of creeping socialism.

His gesture, by vetoing children's health, is one of the most spiteful, small and despicable acts I can imagine. But then again he led us into a war with lies and now as many as 1 million Iraqis have lost their lives.

Republicans (and any Democrats) who vote to support the president's veto should lose their jobs in 2008. They do not represent America or any version of "family values" and cannot be relied on to care for our future: our children.