Whose Side Are They On?

The lead item in today's CongressDaily (subscribers only, sorry) is "Republicans Blast Democrats For Not Negotiating Further On SCHIP Legislation." Basically what we're seeing here is exactly how deeply ingrained the Republican Party's loathing of cute children is. Representative Deborah Pryce (R-OH) is the ringleader of a group of 45 House Republicans sufficiently vulnerable to electoral defeat, that they decided to vote to spend some money to help sick kids get medical care. The George W. Bush, driven by the same small government principles that have led him to lavish hundreds of billions of dollars on failed wars and tens of billions more on corporate subsidies, decided to veto the plan.

Pryce and her colleagues then decided to turn around and blame not George W. Bush who vetoed the bill and not the congressional Republicans who prevented the bill's bipartisan supporters from overriding the veto but instead . . . House Democratic leaders for their unwillingness to water the plan down further. Thus Pryce et. al. get to signal to their child-hating paymasters that, despite their vote, they have big businesses back and are doing the very most they can within the confines of objective political constraints to make sure that working and middle class families get no help with their health care. Pryce wants them to realize that she isn't a less fanatic supporter of this child-bankrupting agenda. If anything, she's working harder on behalf of America's tobacco companies and insurance firms since she's out there running real risks on their behalf.

Photo by Flickr user Betsssssy used under a Creative Commons license