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  1. #1
    Senior Member cvangel's Avatar
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    Bush says he'll veto SCHIP again

    Bush says he'll veto health bill again
    By DAVID ESPO
    10/26/07 09:40:53

    AP Video Link Bush says he'll veto health bill againAP Video Link Conflict deepens over kids' health bill Audio President Bush says Democrats are wasting time by again passing legislation to expand children's health coverage. AP correspondent Sagar Meghani (SAH'-gur meh-GAH'-nee) reports from the White House. Audio Congressman Kevin Brady says there are still too many problems with the bill. Audio AP correspondent Jerry Bodlander reports the modifications Democrats made to the bill don't appear to have had the intended impact.
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    President Bush accused Democratic lawmakers on Friday of wasting time by passing legislation to expand children's health coverage, knowing that he would veto it again. At the same time, he criticized Congress for failing to approve spending bills to keep the government running.

    Bush said Congress had "set a record they should not be proud of: October 26 is the latest date in 20 years that Congress has failed to get a single annual appropriations bill to the president's desk."

    He also complained that Congress had failed to pass a permanent extension of a moratorium on state and local taxes on Internet access, and that the Senate had not yet confirmed Michael Mukasey as attorney general. Further, he chided Congress for failing to approve more money for Iraq and Afghanistan.

    The Senate on Thursday night approved a seven-year extension of the Internet tax moratorium; differences with a House-passed version still have to be worked out.

    Bush made his comments to reporters in the Roosevelt Room a day after the House passed new legislation to expand children's health coverage. Bush vetoed an earlier version, and Republicans argued the latest bill was little changed from the earlier measure. The bill - approved with less than the two-thirds majority needed to overturn another veto - now goes to the Senate. The House vote was 265-142.

    Bush said that Congress needs to "stop wasting time and get essential work done on behalf of the American people."

    Democrats said Republicans were making a mistake in opposing the children's health bill.

    "They won't take yes for an answer," Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., said of Republicans.

    He said that in the week since they failed to override Bush's first veto, Democrats had systematically addressed earlier complaints that the bill failed to place a priority on low-income children, did not effectively bar illegal immigrants from qualifying for benefits and was overly generous to adults.

    A White House spokesman, Tony Fratto, mocked the suggestion that Democrats - and Emanuel in particular - were acting on principle. "I think the last principal Rahm Emanuel knew was in high school." Told of the remark, Emanuel chuckled.

    House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland raised the possibility that additional changes were possible before the bill would be sent to the White House.

    At the same time, he added, "I don't want to be strung along" by Republicans merely feigning an interest in bipartisan compromise.

    Senate passage is highly likely, particularly with senior Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Orrin Hatch of Utah among the bill's most persistent supporters.

    The legislation is designed chiefly to provide coverage for children whose families make too much money to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to purchase private insurance.

    In general, supporters said it would extend coverage to children of families making up to 300 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $62,000 for a family of four.

    At that level, congressional officials said, it would cover about 4 million children who now go without, raising the total for the program overall to 10 million kids. The $35 billion cost over five years would be covered by an increase in the tobacco tax of 61 cents a pack.

    The vote unfolded one week after the House failed to override Bush's earlier veto, and indicated that the changes Democrats had made failed to attract much, if any, additional support.

    The 265 votes cast for the measure came up seven shy of the two-thirds majority needed to override a veto. In addition, 14 Republicans who voted to sustain Bush's original veto were absent.

    Public opinion polls show widespread support for the issue, and the political subtext was never far from the surface on a day of acrimony.

    http://www.fresnobee.com/649/story/174347.html

  2. #2
    Senior Member ourcountrynottheirs's Avatar
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    If I were in Congress (haha), I would tell Bush no SCHIP, no funding for Iraq. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
    avatar:*912 March in DC

  3. #3
    MW
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    Senior Member MW's Avatar
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    Public opinion polls show widespread support for the issue
    Darn, another one of those public opinion polls that failed to seek my opinion.

    ourcountrynottheirs wrote:

    If I were in Congress (haha), I would tell Bush no SCHIP, no funding for Iraq. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
    You actually support SCHIP in its current form?

    "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing" ** Edmund Burke**

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    Senior Member dragonfire's Avatar
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    They had no problems passing their own pay raise did they.
    Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!

  5. #5
    Senior Member ourcountrynottheirs's Avatar
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    I have no opinions about SCHIP. However, I do have a lot about Bush.
    avatar:*912 March in DC

  6. #6
    Senior Member sippy's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by MW
    Public opinion polls show widespread support for the issue
    Darn, another one of those public opinion polls that failed to seek my opinion.


    I wouldn't worry too much about this one MW. We all know the dems only use polls which reflect their views.
    Personally, I don't see any of their so called "think tanks" can take a random sample of 1000 people and say their sample "represents the majority of American opinion."
    Even if they took 100,000 polls, this still doesn't even represent 1% of the population.
    I'm very surprised that BOOSH even vetoed this at all.
    "Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the same results is the definition of insanity. " Albert Einstein.

  7. #7
    Administrator Jean's Avatar
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    Bush says time wasted on SCHIP

    October 27, 2007


    By Joseph Curl - President Bush said yesterday that congressional Democrats are "wasting time"passing legislation to expand children's health coverage that they know he will veto, and he also said lawmakers are dragging their feet on a slew of other bills and one key nomination.

    "This is not what congressional leaders promised when they took control of Congress earlier this year," the president said. "In January, one congressional leader declared, and I quote: 'No longer can we waste time here in the Capitol, while families in America struggle to get ahead.' "

    "He was right. Only a few weeks left on the legislative calendar — Congress needs to keep their promise, to stop wasting time and get essential work done on behalf of the American people," he said.

    Congress has not yet passed any of the dozen spending bills that fund the federal government, but has taken time to mull a nonbinding resolution defining as genocide the mass killings of Armenians in the closing days of the Ottoman Empire.

    "Today Congress set a record they should not be proud of: October the 26th is the latest date in 20 years that Congress has failed to get a single annual appropriations bill to the president's desk," he said in a terse statement to reporters in the White House's Roosevelt Room.

    The president's comments came a day after the House passed new legislation to expand the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Senate passage is likely because senior Republican Sens. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa and Orrin G. Hatch of Utah support the bill. But the White House vowed another veto yesterday, and lawmakers were unable to override the president's last veto of the legislation.

    The Bush administration says the bill does not provide suitable assurances that the poorest children eligible will be covered first and has no safeguards to assure that money will not be spent on people who are ineligible, including illegal aliens.

    Democrats complained about the president's pledge to again use his veto.

    "President Bush — the biggest-spending president in 40 years — threatens to veto our requests based on the laughable claim that he is fiscally responsible," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said.

    House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said: "The president would rather spend another $200 billion in Iraq and leave our children to pick up the tab."

    But Mr. Bush said Democrats are wasting time.

    "After I vetoed their last SCHIP bill, I designated members of my administration to work with Congress to find common ground. Congressional leaders never met with them. Instead, the House once again passed a bill that they knew would not become law. And incredibly enough, the Senate will take up the same bill next week, which wastes valuable time," he said.

    The new version still calls for an additional $35 billion for SCHIP over the next five years — $30 billion more than Mr. Bush requested — and a 61-cent federal tax increase on a pack of cigarettes to help fund the program's expansion.

    Mr. Bush had proposed a $5 billion increase for five years but recently has said he is willing to spend more.

    As he did in his most recent White House press conferences, Mr. Bush used his bully pulpit to pressure lawmakers to move quickly on several pressing matters. He complained that Congress had failed to pass a permanent extension of a moratorium on state and local taxes on Internet access, although the Senate on Thursday night approved a seven-year extension of the Internet tax moratorium and differences with a House-passed version will now have to be worked out.

    Mr. Bush also urged the Senate to confirm Michael Mukasey as attorney general. Lawmakers have not yet moved the nomination out of the Senate Judiciary Committee, "even as members complain about the lack of leadership at the Department of Justice," Mr. Bush said.

    The president also scolded Congress for failing to approve more money for Iraq and Afghanistan.

    "They have yet to act on our emergency war funding supplemental — even though our troops on the front lines depend on these vital funds to fight our enemies and to keep us safe at home," he said.

    www.washingtontimes.com
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