The other half of the S-CHIP equation.
As in, what's the best tactical response for the GOP? No, wait, think about it for a second.
By Moe Lane Posted in Congress — Comments (19) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
I haven't been paying all that much attention to S-CHIP. It's domestic policy, and even at the new, reduced financial structure here at Chez Lane's it's not really going to apply to us (we make too much money, and I don't smoke). But after reading this:
Showdown Looms as Child Health Bill Passes
Many GOP Senators Back Measure Bush Vows to VetoBy Jonathan Weisman and Christopher Lee
The Senate, with an overwhelming bipartisan vote yesterday, sent President Bush a $35 billion expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, setting up the biggest domestic policy clash of his presidency and launching a fight that will reverberate into the 2008 elections.
Bush has vowed to veto the measure, but he has faced strong criticism from many fellow Republicans reluctant to turn away from a popular measure that would renew and expand an effective program aimed at low-income children. Democratic leaders, while still as many as two dozen votes short in the House, are campaigning hard for the first veto override of Bush's presidency.
and then Captain Ed's take, I...
Let's continue this below the fold.
Anyway, Captain Ed notes:
Will the President veto the legislation? He has only issued three vetoes in almost seven years, and two of those protected embryos. He has not vetoed an entitlement expansion, especially not the prescription program for Medicare that he championed. A veto on S-CHIP will put enormous pressure on a handful of Republicans who stuck to fiscal responsibility and who face tough re-election campaigns already in the House. It may also create some pressure on Senators who gave the bill a thin veto-proofing that the House failed to achieve in its bipartisan vote.
I don't believe the President will veto the bill, although he should. He will probably want to save his political capital for Iraq and the appropriations bills that he will almost certainly veto in the next month or two. Those will require continuing legislation that will create a lot of contentiousness, and the gains from vetoing the S-CHIP expansion will be minimal among his base. His presidency has not been an exemplar of spending control as it is.
Passing to one side whether he should veto it in the first place - honestly? I don't know enough on the topic to pontificate about it* - I think that I may need to have it explained to me why vetoing it would require him to lose political capital later. The President is, after all, not running for reelection, which means that he will not directly suffer from the negative aspects from the veto; and if things are as bad for the GOP as we've had it reported to us, you would think that Congress would welcome a chance to distance themselves from the administration on domestic policy** with an override. In other words, I'm not saying that things aren't bad for us: I'm just saying that it's hard to reconcile the idea that things are that bad for us with the idea that a veto override on domestic policy would really hurt the Party in '08.
So tell me what I'm missing.
Moe
*What a lovely slowball to swing at. Fat, dumb, happy, and right over the plate. Not a care in the world...
**Foreign policy is a different matter. While it is fashionable to proclaim that the Democratic Party enjoys a commanding lead over the Republican Party in terms of voter confidence in their respective foreign policy positions, it must be noted that this opinion is apparently shared by everyone except actual members of Congress. Whether you think this is sensible or cowardly of them, it is also unlikely to change anytime soon.
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The other half of the S-CHIP equation. 19 Comments (0 topical, 19 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
No political downside unless you’re a Republican "squish" that wants to continue down the vote losing road of advancing the Democrats agenda. Frankly I’m VERY tired of the Republican apparatus supporting those RINO’s.
Veto this incarnation for what it is an incremental move by the Dem's and the "squishes" for Hillary care.
Come on, 80k and eligible, that alone makes it a safe veto!
freely and firmly admit that I'm no domestic policy wonk, especially in the financial arena--this is another based on upping the taxes on smoking to 60+ cents per pack. If things shake out on the national level as they are doing here in TN since they raised the tobacco tax, then it is indeed a precursor not only to Hillarycare, but to raising taxes based on a shrinking tax base. In Tn, I just read this morning that the Quit Smoking helpline has received and responded to more than 2600 calls from smokers who are looking to quit. The tax here was raised for, of course, "the children" and it is supposed to be used for education. (Heavy on the supposed.) Once they no longer are getting the cigarette tax money due to fewer smokers, then they will raise our taxes to cover the shortfall. Same thing in this program on a national level. If for no other reason than that, VETO, VETO, VETO.
I'm not a smoker myself, but I know people that do, and, with cigarettes reaching $5 a pack already in Michigan due to onerous levels of state taxes (and they're looking to raise them further!), this bill passage could see some reach the $6 mark.
All for tiny bits of dried plant matter wrapped in paper.
"I don't understand why the same newspaper commentators who bemoan the terrible education given to poor people are always so eager to have those poor people get out and vote." - P.J. O'Rourke
is that Tn is now charging its citizens with misdemeanors and felonies for going over the line to Mississippi or Kentucky to buy cartons of cigarettes. 2-24 cartons would be a misdemeanor, more than that would be a felony. Yet we are allowed to go over the line to buy many other items to avoid higher taxes here, like food. Somebody enlighten me here?
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!
...a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right...
---Thomas Paine---
are 4th class citizens at this point, but what I want to know is what law(s) is TN using to enforce this particular decision? Something under ATF or otherwise, or are they just making it up as they go? Because if that's the case, then, as Haystack pointed out in his REDHOT comment, they are penalizing citizens for just shopping for cheaper prices. If they can do it arbitrarily on tobacco, then how long will it be before they decide to do it on other items?
including mine, have had such laws on the books for ages covering both alcohol and tobacco. Not so long ago, crossing a state line could be more demanding than crossing a national border has become in recent times. The interstates and mass air travel changed the enforcement priorities. Even today, getting past a CA agricultural inspection station is a Helluva lot more demanding than crossing the border at Tijuana. One of the scarier moments I've had in my adult life was when the CA Ag Cops decided to search a U-Haul I was driving home from Georgia and I realized that just for s**ts and grins, I'd brought a milk jug of "family recipe" moonshine with me. Fortunately, I had an Alaska d/l and mumbled something about it being gas line antifreeze since I was driving the truck up the Alcan and they bought it, but I'd have been a lot better off legally if that moonshine had been cocaine, plus I probably could have just given it to the cop and gone on about my business.
Really only the scale and "purpose" of the taxation has changed. NC has always been the tax haven on tobacco products and people have long tried to "bootleg" low tax tobacco into the other higher tax states around it. Forty or fifty years ago when the only major north-south highways were US 1, 301, and 41, all two lane roads, an effective level of enforcment was possible for the surrounding states. The interstates changed that.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending it, just explaining it, and you ought to try to buy smokes here; if you don't look positively aged, you're going to get carded. The ABC routinely uses teenaged narcs to run stings on convenience stores and the like, and the cheapest smokes around are $5.50-$6 a pack, $7-$8 in bars and airports, and there are no machines at all anymore. You guys in the East are just now getting it; the anti-smoking nazis conquered the West Coast years ago.
In Vino Veritas
about that family recipe stuff! That's how my husband's family supplemented their income for years here in the hills and "hollers" of east Tn. When we first moved here 20 years ago, I was bemused on our hikes around the farm to find mounds of charcoaled wood and glass jars in various places. Shows how acclimated I have become that I am happy to have a jar of the stuff around when head cold season arrives. The stuff makes GREAT cough medicine--after you get your breath back from that first fiery swallow.
As to Alaska having this law on the book for years, I guess that's what I'm asking about TN. Is the law there or are they just making stuff up to accomodate the new tax thing?
but GA and FL sure did forty years or so ago. I don't know that either would stop you just to check, but if you got stopped for something else and they found untaxed smokes, they'd throw the book at you.
In Vino Veritas
I believe there's a Federal law against running cigarettes as well, but the limits are a lot higher than 2 cartons. I heard people run with 999 cartons to stay under the 1000 carton boundary where it becomes a much more serious offense. Not sure if that's accurate.
In this state, the state patrol would camp out in neighboring states, collect the license plate numbers of people buying fireworks near the border, then pull them over when they cross back into the state for bringing fireworks into the state illegally. That was back when we were only allowed to buy those black carbon snakes and not much else. The Republicans loosened up the restrictions a bit, so I'm not sure if the state patrol still does this every year.
---
Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman
I'm wondering how that's even legal. It would be interesting to see this challenged in court.
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yet the spending as percentage of GDP is right on the average so that the government is spending the same percentage as it was in 1996.
At IBD editorials, type in SCHIP and you will get about three articles on it.
The main sins of this bill which the House Republicans will be right to support the veto, is that it is a massive entitlement to middle class families, in that people will dump private insurance at a 6 to 1 rate in favor of this universal coverage.
Schip as currently written is intended for the poor, the Democrats want it to cover those who earn up to $83000 per year.
If the Republicans were dumped in 2006 for lack of spending restraint then they will be in the majority if the informed perform their duties as citizens by dumping the Democrats out of power. Don't whine about Republicans if you can't notice the difference!!!!
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=275698791178464&kw=schi...
This barrel of pork absolutely needs a veto! My understanding is that it also adds MORE illegal immigrants to the program. The bill would also take a lot of kids that currently have private insurance and bring them in the socialist system that is being rammed down our throats by our party. If the Republicans don't stop acting like Dems, this party is doomed.
Be part of the solution!
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Is it worth $35,000,000,000 of taxpayer funds (and sure to rise perpetually thereafter) to try to help squeeze in a couple more GOP Reps and Sens in 2008 elections?
Isn't what his decision boils down to?
that a family of four with a household income of $80,000 is both rich (AMT) and poor (SCHIP).
Idiot congresscritters.
He needs to explain to the American people WHY it's important to veto this enormous dish of pork Congress is serving up. Nancy Pelosi and the others are pushing this hard because, after all, it's "for the children".
S-CHIP does not need to be expanded. If the program was simply left as is, the president would surely sign it. There is no reason why we need to expand it to cover young adults with household incomes up to $80k. It's just a sneaky precursor to HillaryCare. It's pure political pandering on the part of the Dems (and some Republicans) and President Bush needs to call them on it. Rub their face in it.
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