Children’s health measure highlights Bush hypocrisy

by J Scott Christianson, Columbia Daily Tribune Columnist

President George W. Bush has promised to veto a funding increase for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, known as SCHIP, one of the federal government’s most successful programs. It provides preventive health care to millions of children and reduces expensive emergency health-care costs. Bush cited the funding increase as fiscally irresponsible and berated Congress for “an irresponsible plan that would dramatically expand this program beyond its original intent.”

Hmmm. Yes, I’m sure Bush hasn’t proposed any programs that have expanded beyond their original intent and cost more than originally estimated. Surely this could not happen to the War President. Of course, yesterday was the start of the federal government’s fiscal year, and his secretary of defense is already requesting an emergency funding measure to add another $42 billion in spending for the Iraq war in 2008, on top of the $142 billion requested for this new fiscal year. Couldn’t even stick to the budget for one day.

Even when one looks only at heath-care issues, Bush seems to have changed his tune about spending. When Bush was pushing a prescription drug program in 2004, he promised it would “only” cost $400 billion, when most people in his administration knew the true costs would be in the $500 billion to $600 billion range. The one man who had hard data on the real costs of the program — Rick Foster, the chief actuary for Medicare — was silenced until after the bill passed. The costs were not as important as the politics, because passage of the prescription drug program was a key part of Bush’s re-election campaign.

But this is like comparing apples to oranges. After all, the Iraq war was started back in 2003, when the Republican Congress had abandoned the so-called “paygo” — a requirement that Congress must figure out how to pay for the expenditures it approves — and when the vice president was telling the Cabinet “deficits don’t matter.” After all, running large deficits while cutting taxes for the rich was the Republicans’ reward for winning the midterm elections.

So “deficits don’t matter” only applies when you are prosecuting discretionary wars, funding programs that are central to your re-election campaign or pushing for elimination of the estate tax. When children’s health is on the line, that’s when “deficits matter.” Now is the time to be fiscally conservative!