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Spending priorities

In Congress, Democrats lack votes to drive changes in domestic spending. The casualties are programs such as children's health insurance

Published on Tuesday, Dec 18, 2007

Congressional Democrats knew that if push came to shove, they wouldn't have the numbers to override vetoes of their spending plans for 2008. President Bush knews it, too, and rubbed in the point, rejecting one spending bill last month, threatening the same for others and chiding the Democrats about runaway spending.

This weekend, the House Democrats bowed to the cruel reality. In an effort to move on budgets for federal departments before the Christmas break, they fashioned an omnibus bill for domestic spending that largely stays within Bush's spending limits.

If the White House appears to have won that arm-wrestling contest (it said it is encouraged by some of the concessions), the confrontation has also underscored the task the Democrats face, with their slim majorities, to shift spending to crucial programs that would be shortchanged by a president lately touting fiscal responsibility. No effort this year has illustrated this contest of priorities than the failed attempt to reauthorize the State Children's Health Insurance Program. Last week, Bush rejected for the second time Congress' bid to spend an additional $35 million over five years to cover the health of approximately 10 million poor children.

Among other objections, the president assailed the increased spending (from a proposed increase in taxes on tobacco products). His own budget offered a meager $5 billion more to SCHIP for five years. That amount would be inadequate even to sustain the current enrollment. Missing on the president's radar was that more working households are losing health coverage as a result of high premiums or spending higher percentages of the family income on health care.

It was disturbing that the White House chose to wage an ideological battle against ''socialized medicine'' using the popular and successful children's health-care program as a tool. More discouraging yet were the misleading claims (for instance, that the Democrats included middle-class families with incomes around $80,000 a year) that Bush deployed.

The Senate approved the initial SCHIP bill with bipartisan margins wide enough to override a veto threat. In the House, where the approval margin was narrower, there weren't enough votes to counter Bush when he did veto the bill in October.

To their credit, advocates of SCHIP continued to tweak the proposals to address Bush's major concerns. Among other changes, the revised bill capped eligibility for SCHIP at 300 percent (about $60,000 for a family of four) of the federal poverty level. It strengthened incentives to enroll first the poorest children eligible for Medicaid. It speeded up the time to remove childless adults from the program.

If the hope was that the changes would persuade Bush to ensure more low-income children received the benefit of good health care, it did not work out. He still claimed the cost was unacceptably high, even as uninsurance among children is rising again.

Congressional Democrats have conceded their helplessness against veto threats. They should hold out for smarter spending priorities.

Congressional Democrats knew that if push came to shove, they wouldn't have the numbers to override vetoes of their spending plans for 2008. President Bush knews it, too, and rubbed in the point, rejecting one spending bill last month, threatening the same for others and chiding the Democrats about runaway spending.

Get the full article here.



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