SCHIP: More Hypocrisy from the Right

Less than one week after asking congress for an additional $190 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, President George W. Bush has vetoed a bill expanding SCHIP (State Children's Health Insurance Program) by $35 billion. The program, which would be funded entirely by an increase in cigarette taxes, would extend health coverage to over 4 million more children.

Now this veto alone is not really cause for alarm or cries of hypocrisy. Conservatives have long sought limited government and lower taxes, and expanding SCHIP does not jive with this vision of small government. Where the disingenuous underbelly of the conservative leadership comes to light is in the PR spin in support of the veto. Now I am not particularly fond of politicians using children to support their political agendas. No Child Left Behind and Bush's Stem Cell Veto quickly come to mind as largely Republican agendas bolstered by the use of children as visual aids. The supporters of the SCHIP bill certainly were guilty of this as well, parading out 12 year-old SCHIP recipient Graeme Frost to speak of the benefits of the program. If a program or a bill has merit, then I don't see the need to have children endorsing it. Call me crazy, but I actually trust most politicians to be better at making and interpreting legislation than children.

So say what you will about using children as political props, but if you are going to criticize Democrats for their employment of this tactic, you had better damn well have never employed it yourself. Yet, in a twist of irony that would make O. Henry jealous, Republicans quickly went on the attack following young Frost's address. A spokesman for congressman John Boehner (R-OH) said on Sept. 28:

“To use an innocent young child as a human shield and misrepresent the position of the president of the United States is, frankly, beyond the pale."

For those that are unaware, this guy with the impeccable tan is John Boehner:

This is also John Boehner (circled in red) at the signing of the No Child Left Behind Act:




This is also John Boehner, handing out school computers for Visa:


No one is saying that giving kids laptops on behalf of a major financial institution is necessarily evil, nor is posing with kids for the signing of a controversial educational program, essentially a thinly-veiled effort to dismantle the public school system in the United States. But similarly, having a child speak on behalf of a very beneficial social program like SCHIP (however you may feel about this political tactic) is not in any way devious in and of itself. What is devious is the fact that Republicans would attack Democrats for employing a tactic that has become a staple of conservative policy making in recent years.

As if it weren't enough for the GOP to call the kettle black, they have now launched an all-out attack in an effort to discredit the 12-year Frost as a child of privilege and luxury. Conservative bloggers have led the way. Freerepublic.com's icwhatudo posted the discovery that Graeme and his sister both attend private schools. Freerublic.com is the self-touted "premier online gathering place for independent, grass-roots conservatism on the web." What was left out of that scathing report was the fact that Graeme attends the school almost entirely on scholarship. His sister, permanently disabled from a car accident, attends a special-needs school, the entire cost of which is paid by the state.

In addition, the Frosts's Baltimore home has been the subject of much scrutiny, as estimates of it's value have ranged from $400,000 to $500,000. Now, as a resident of Los Angeles, the first thing I say is, "yes...and?" $400,000 here gets you a two-bedroom, 1-bath, hardly enough to house the 6-member Frost household. In Baltimore, $400,000 buys you a pretty decent home. But the bloggers fail to mention that the Frosts actually paid about $55,000 for the home in 1990, and inflated real estate markets, an improved neighborhood, and improvements made to the home have increased the home's value. The value of the Frost's home is really insignificant as it relates to a family's ability to pay for private health care. It's not as if the house is some liquid asset, that can be converted into cash whenever the family needs it. For a family of six taking home a reported $45,000 per year, it's not really a mystery that a major car accident involving multiple children could cause financial hardship.

The right-wing's attack on the Frost family is wrong in several ways:

1. Graeme Frost is 12 years old.
2. Most of the claims made against the Frost family have been found to be completely false or conveniently incomplete
3. Attacking a single child in no way refutes the value of SCHIP.

So, clearly, the Frosts are not what we would think of as "dirt poor." The point of all this is that in the United States, the nation with the most expensive healthcare in the world, you don't have to be dirt poor to be unable to afford to insure the health of your family.

What the Right doesn't want you to know is their real concerns behind SCHIP, and why the have embarked on such a fervent attack to stop it's expansion. The American Right sees the expansion of SCHIP as the first phase in an effort to bring about a national socialized healthcare system. What the Right fails to mention (or come to grips with) is that 72% of Americans favor the expansion of SCHIP.

But, come on, that's just health care for kids, right? Everyone wants healthcare for kids, don't they? Well, no they don't. The big-business neo-conservatives don't want healthcare for kids. Big Pharma and Big Healthcare don't want healthcare for kids. And, sadly blind followers of President Bush, even when it would be to their benefit, don't want healthcare for kids. Also it's not only that most Americans want healthcare for kids, but a majority of Americans favor a universal healthcare system for all Americans, even if it means higher taxes.

The SCHIP debate is just the latest in a vast right-wing effort to shrink government to the point where it serves essentially no function. The preamble of the U.S. Constitution reads:

"We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

While the preamble is not a binding document, it should be noted that the founding fathers saw fit to include "promot[ing] the general Welfare" in the introduction to laying out the foundation of law in the new nation. In recent years, conservative ideology has sought to promote the welfare of only an elite few. Conservatives would have you believe that those unable to afford health insurance have no one to blame but themselves. Yet, as estimates of the uninsured in America approach 50 million, one has to believe that in reality, it is the nation's leadership that has failed these people.