08.12.07
Children’s Health Care Will Cause Problems For Cornyn
Children’s health care could be an issue that the GOP hangs themselves with. As this article by Clay Robison shows, CHIP could affect well-being of Cornyn’s re-election campaign, that even Bush back in the days when he was still trying to run as a “uniter”, and fooled many people into believing he was a compassionate conservative, knew that he couldn’t mess with children’s health care if he wanted to be president. It’s a simple issue that everyone except the far-right wing-nuts can agree, we should make sure ALL children have health care.
In the words of Democratic political consultant Kelly Fero, the 1.4 million Texas children without health insurance are “the gift that keeps on giving.”
He wasn’t talking, of course, about the personal suffering that many of the kids endure or the huge economic and social losses they pose, both now and for the future.
He was talking about the politics of health care, and how Texas Democrats have increasingly been putting Texas Republicans on the defensive since state GOP leaders orchestrated deep cuts in the Children’s Health Insurance Program to avoid raising state taxes four years ago.
The cuts were believed to be a factor in the unseating of several incumbent legislators — mostly Republicans but also a couple of conservative Democrats — during the 2004 and 2006 elections.
The bleeding was enough to prompt Speaker Tom Craddick and other Republican lawmakers to support legislation last spring restoring some of the reductions in the CHIP program, which insures children of working parents who earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but can’t afford to buy their own health coverage.
But, with Texas’ rate of uninsured children still the highest in the country, Democrats promise to hammer away at more Republican state legislators next year. They also will use the health care issue — most likely in a double-barreled assault — to try to unseat U.S. Sen. John Cornyn.
It’s the right thing to do, even Kay Bailey is for it. But now that Bush will never stand for reelection again, he’s changed his tune, and his rubber stamp John Cornyn is right by his side. Whether is brings about his demise, we’ll just have to wait and see, but Cornyn has definitely ceded a lot of ground for his vote against insuring more children.