On Oct. 3, Bush vetoed legislation passed by both houses of Congress to provide $35 billion over five years to the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.
The Bush administration has spent $35 billion in three months in 2007 on the Iraq war.
Currently, SCHIP is a targeted program that provides health insurance for children of low-income families. Bush claimed that the expansion of the program would provide insurance to children in middle-class families.
SCHIP was created in 1997 and is a state and federal fund designed to provide health insurance coverage to uninsured children. Many of these children come from working families with incomes too high to qualify for Medicaid but too low to afford private health insurance.
The SCHIP law originally authorized $40 billion in federal funds over 10 years starting in 1997. It needed to be reauthorized because its funding has run out.
So far, this administration has spent about $600 billion on the Iraq war and an additional $200 billion will surely be approved by Congress shortly. The monthly spending on SCHIP that Bush vetoed comes to $583 million.
In 2007, U.S. monthly spending in Iraq has been $12 billion. This is 20 times bigger than the cost of funding the SCHIP program.
Meanwhile, over nine million U.S. children have no healthcare, and millions more may lose SCHIP coverage due to Bush’s veto of reauthorizing the bill.
The Democrat-controlled Congress is mounting a weak campaign to override the veto.
So, when it comes to war budgets, no amount is too high. But when it comes to funding people’s needs, even healthcare, the government doesn’t want to spend any money.
