Bill Scher: And Your Point Is? (Bush's "Over Half the Families in America Are Not Poor")

[marmar]

from OurFuture.org:


And Your Point Is?
Submitted by Bill Scher on October 24, 2007 - 10:22am.


The State Children's Health Insurance Program bill is not going away. House leaders announced that they are bringing another SCHIP bill to the floor this week, with minor changes but still expanding the program to cover a total of 10 million kids.

The White House responded by whipping out a fresh "fact" sheet. The headline?

"Just the Facts: 'Over Half the Families in America Are Not Poor.'"

And your point is?

Apparently, this is their point: "Congress' bill would result in 57 percent of children in America and about 53 percent of families with children being potentially eligible for public assistance. The President has said poor children should come first. Over half the families in America are not poor."

Of course, there is no way 57% percent of America's kids would be in SCHIP. America has 74 million kids, and there's only enough funding in the bill to cover 10 million.

More importantly, as far as SCHIP goes, it doesn't matter that the number of those in poverty has risen to "only" 36.5 million people and 12.8 million kids in the Bush Era.

SCHIP has never been about providing health coverage to kids in poverty. That's the purpose of Medicaid. SCHIP is about providing health coverage to kids who are not in poverty, but whose parents still can't afford insurance.

During the SCHIP debate, the White House and its conservative allies have already managed to advertise their complete callousness to the struggles of working families.

Now they are advertising their failures to reduce poverty.

Once again, Mission Accomplished.

http://commonsense.ourfuture.org/and_your_point?tx=3

[MrModerate]

1. And I say to the 'Lican policymakers and PR geniuses . . .

Keep it up! Dems can save a bundle on negative ads we won't have to run during the general because the 'Licans will advertise their own idiocy and wickedness.

I'm sure there's a cabal of 'Lican high priests somewhere manipulating what appears to be self-immolation into some way to sweep to victory in 2008, but I'll be damned if I can figure out how.

[XemaSab]

2. "Half the families in America make more than the median family income!"

ZOMG! :o

[jwirr]

3. The point of having a SCHIP program is not that the families are

poor or rich. The point is that having a severely disabled child can make a family poor in a heartbeat. It was started to help families with the cost of catastrophic illnesses. I know - my daughter is one of the high rollers in health care.

[valerief]

4. If you're one paycheck (or two or three) from homelessness, are you poor? nt

[unpossibles]

5. to be fair, Bush's quote was taken out of context

I'm pretty sure the whole statement was, "Over half the families in America are not poor, but we sure are working hard to increase that number so we kin git enough people to enlist in the next three wars we got scheduled."

[librechik]

6. then he laughed with amusement.