{"id":13141,"date":"2007-10-06T13:30:04","date_gmt":"2007-10-06T17:30:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/13141.html"},"modified":"2007-10-06T13:30:04","modified_gmt":"2007-10-06T17:30:04","slug":"bushs-flexibility-on-s-chip-is-empty-rhetoric","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/bushs-flexibility-on-s-chip-is-empty-rhetoric\/","title":{"rendered":"Bush’s flexibility on S-CHIP is empty rhetoric"},"content":{"rendered":"

Under the headline, “Bush hints at spending more on children’s health bill,” I think the AP is misreading<\/a> the president’s weekly radio address a bit.<\/p>\n

\n

President Bush signaled a willingness Saturday to spend more than what he had recommended for a popular children’s health program, but provided no specifics on how much higher he would go.<\/p>\n

The president on Wednesday vetoed legislation that would increase spending for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program by $35 billion over five years. Bush has called for a $5 billion increase. Several Republicans in both chambers have sided with Democratic lawmakers on the issue.<\/p>\n

“If putting poor children first takes a little more than the 20 percent increase I have proposed in my budget for SCHIP, I am willing to work with leaders in Congress to find the additional money,” Bush said in his weekly radio address.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This may sound like renewed flexibility on the president’s part, but it’s not nearly that encouraging. Indeed, the day he vetoed the bill extending healthcare to low-income children, he told<\/a> a friendly Pennsylvania audience, “I’m more than willing to work with members of both parties from both Houses, and if they need a little more money in the bill to help us meet the objective of getting help for poor children, I’m more than willing to sit down with the leaders and find a way to do so.”<\/p>\n

The emphasis there is on “a little more money.” Bush is kinda sorta interested is striking a compromise, just so long as it’s very close to his demands. What Bush may or may not understand, though, is that the current, bipartisan S-CHIP bill is already<\/i> a compromise measure. It’s exactly why it passed with such a strong majority, and why Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) ruled out<\/a> compromising on the compromise earlier this week.<\/p>\n

The AP report suggested Bush’s comments this morning were a “hint” at conciliation. If only that were the case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Under the headline, “Bush hints at spending more on children’s health bill,” I think the AP is misreading the president’s weekly radio address a bit. President Bush signaled a willingness Saturday to spend more than what he had recommended for a popular children’s health program, but provided no specifics on how much higher he would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13141\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}