Catching up, Part 1.
Pneumonia is not fun.
By Moe Lane Posted in 200*9*? | Congress | Did You Save Your Receipt? | Great Netroot Betrayal | SCHIP — Comments (5) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Especially when you're traveling. Thankfully, I have drugs now.
Anyway, our own Jeff Emanuel has a little article up on SCHIP:
SCHIP Expansion: Congressional Majority Surrenders Completely
by Jeff EmanuelCongressional Democrats’ cave-in on the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) last week was of a Utah mine disaster magnitude. Instead of creating a middle-class entitlement program -- and using it as a vehicle for Sen. Durbin’s illegal alien amnesty “DREAM Act” -- Democrats settled for extending the current SCHIP program until March 31, 2009.
March 31, 2009. March 31, 2009.
(pause)
Well, I suppose that the country could ratify and pass a repeal to the 20th Amendment in the next year, but it'd take some doing, and why we would bother is beyond me completely. I mean, I can understand why Congressional Democrats would be so eager to make sure that they've comprehensively passed the buck, but this is a bit much, no*?
Read on.
Jeff goes on, elsewhere:
The proposed $35 billion expansion of the SCHIP was crafted and pushed extremely hard by Congressional Democrats seeking to expand federally funded health care and to score political points against Republicans, whom Democrat leaders thought to be vulnerable on health care issues. However, when House Democratic leaders responded to President Bush’s second veto of the SCHIP expansion plan by scheduling the vote to override or sustain Bush’s action for January 23 – six weeks from the December 12 veto – rather than calling for immediate action (their only other choice according to House rules), failure on the proposed expansion became all but a foregone conclusion. “Republicans will stick together and…will sustain President's veto,” a highly-placed House staffer told me shortly after the President Bush sent the SCHIP legislation back to Congress. “We'll have enough votes for that.”
Realizing that they again would not be able to raise enough votes to override Bush’s veto – even given six weeks to lobby Republicans perceived to be vulnerable on the issue to switch sides – Congressional Democrats ended their vigorous attempt to expand SCHIP. In the end, instead of expanding the program by $35 billion, Congress simply voted to extend SCHIP in its current form once again. However, unlike previous extensions, which were purposely brief so as to keep the issue on the front burner in Congress and in the media, this time the program was extended for sixteen months – a move which clearly demonstrated the majority’s unwillingness to further address the issue within the current Congress or with the current administration.
Meanwhile, NPR has a different take:
Democrats had little choice in the matter. With Christmas fast approaching, they were in a fix. They had two health funding emergencies. First, temporary funding for SCHIP — whose authorization technically expired Oct. 1 — was about to run out once again. Second, on Jan. 1, a 10 percent cut in pay to doctors under Medicare was set to take effect — something Democrats, Republicans and the Bush administration agree shouldn't be allowed to happen.
But President Bush and Republicans had nixed most of the ways Democrats wanted to pay for either the Medicare changes or the SCHIP expansion. That basically gave Republicans the upper hand, and left the majority Democrats with little more to do than fume.
[blather about class warfare by Pete Stark snipped]
And, adding insult to injury, Republicans insisted on continuing SCHIP at its current funding levels not just until September — as Democrats had wanted — but until March 2009, four months after the November 2008 elections.
Expect that last bit to become the Official Rationale for all of this: the Establishment Democrats no doubt hope that everyone who might be upset about the extension will be so busy thinking evil thoughts about how the GOP forced the poor, innocent Democrats to lock in the program at current funding past 2008 that they'll completely forget to ask why the Democrats let the GOP get away with so extensively defining the extent of the latter's victory. The answer is, of course, that this really was all politics all along: and the politics no longer support pushing this issue too strongly. So... the Democrats retreated. Why not? They had no real emotional involvement in the dispute anyway.
Oh. Did I just write that out? My bad.
Moe
*Yes, I know that it's probably just a end-of-fiscal quarter thing, that's all.
Catching up, Part 1. 5 Comments (0 topical, 5 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
I hope you get well soon. It's amazing how fast a few doses of a nice strong antibiotic can get you back on your feet.
I've had pnuemonia too many times in my life to count. It's no fun at all, even if you are watching the dems fold like a house of cards once again.
Looks like the children weren't all that important after all.
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Ah, I remember when this was supposed to be a great stick with which to beat Republicans for the next election. It was a loser, we were told, to stand on principle instead of offering an alternative form of socialism.
Sweet is the taste of having beaten back government growth.
....the "Old Man's Friend, because it kills them quickly and painlessly."
Let's see, you're on the road so you probably saw someone at a walk in clinic or a hospital ER. Hopefully, whoever you saw gave you a long enough course of a broad enough spectrum antibiotic to do the job. Some of these fellows think that just throwing any antibiotic in there is enough to do the job as well as cover them against a failure to treat lawsuit. That might be true enough if you are a twenty something; an old pathology instructor once stood at the bottom of the ampitheater pit and shouted "with a young animal, as long as ends of the bones are in the same room, they'll heal," but if you're forty plus, things get dicier.
Good luck. Rest. Get Better. The next time they offer you the Pneumonia shot, take advantage of it.
Democraps would rather give up than compromise - they could have helped instead of trying to jam UHC down our throats.
Why any democrap would vote for these losers is beyond me.