Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Poison Pill Provision in S-CHIP Legislation?

Nothing surprises me at this moment, but Mark Levin had been pointing this out for some time. Democrats were going to push their socialist agenda along many fronts, including nationalized health care. They're including some of those proposals in the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP) legislation, which is supposed to be for children who need health care. Speaker Pelosi says that they're extending coverage to another 4 million children.

What's wrong with that? Well, it does so much more than that.

The only thing is that the Democrats have redefined who poor people are, who children are, and who is eligible for assistance. Quite a few Republicans who have voted on prior versions are going along with this nonsense, which just goes to show that fiscal responsibility is a thing of the past for Congress and our government in general.

The bill redefines categories of eligibility and tortures the definitions of poverty and children. Would you consider someone to be poor if they make under $80,000 a year? That's what the bill would do, based on eligibility of 200% of the poverty line. More egregiously, the bill would extend the benefits to illegal aliens, who pay no income taxes and yet are to derive benefits?

The full markup of the new bill, H.R. 2, hasn't been made available. Democrats want to act before the bill gets a proper examination, because they want to have it ready for President Obama to sign into law as quickly as possible.

The cost? They're talking about $35 billion, but the reality is that no one knows because they're only getting started raiding the Treasury. The program is supposed to be funded by a 61 cent increase in the federal cigarette tax, but it's curious how revenues generated by cigarette taxes keep falling short, so it would be interesting to see where the money will really come from to fund this program.

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