You wonder if they ever read their own coverage!
"Putting Poor Children Second"
President Bush’s justification for vetoing a bill to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or S-chip, is that he wants to “put poor children first” rather than extend coverage to middle-class children. That explanation would be more believable if Mr. Bush had actually been putting poor children first. On far too many occasions, the president has sacrificed the interests of poor children to what he deems higher budgetary or ideological priorities. Congress should not allow Mr. Bush to do the same with S-chip.
For the past several years, the Bush administration has been squeezing federal support for Medicaid, the primary program to help the poorest families and their children. Instead of ensuring that more poor children receive coverage, the president is trying to close programs that find and enroll them. His budget for fiscal year 2008 seeks to eliminate funds for a “Cover the Kids” outreach program. A proposed rule change would also eliminate federal matching funds for local school personnel to do Medicaid outreach and enrollment activities.
The administration clearly wasn’t putting poor children first when it strongly supported Congressional bills that would impose new charges on needy beneficiaries — a step that could jeopardize health care for millions of poor children in coming years. The administration also proposed, unsuccessfully, to change Medicaid from an unlimited entitlement into a capped block grant that could have fallen short of needs in bad economic times.
As part of the anti-immigration hysteria, it imposed onerous new paperwork requirements, leading to declines in Medicaid enrollment by citizens in some states. The move also posed potential problems for foster children, for whom it is often difficult to get documents quickly, until Congress stepped in to exempt them.
In education, the president got off to a strong start with his No Child Left Behind Act. It imposed new testing and reporting requirements to measure progress in the schools. With bipartisan support in Congress, he helped to provide a substantial increase in federal funds for the first couple of years. But then his budgets and Congressional appropriations flattened out, forcing cuts in programs targeted at low-income children. The president’s latest budget calls for an overall decrease in federal support for elementary and secondary education.
Funding for Head Start and Early Head Start, which provide health and education services to some 900,000 preschool children, has not kept up with inflation over the past five years, forcing programs to lay off teachers, reduce salaries and curtail operating hours. The president’s budget also seeks to eliminate Even Start, a program to help preschoolers and their mothers develop literacy skills.
Not all of the news is so bad. The administration has done relatively well in supporting food stamps and child nutrition programs. It has also taken commendable steps to improve the quality of care in Medicaid and S-chip, increase childhood immunization rates and help states ensure that children on Medicaid get appropriate diagnosis and treatment.
A lot more needs to be done, including reducing the number of American children who do not have health coverage.
The bill that the president has vetoed would increase funding for S-chip substantially and would, in fact, “put poor children first.” Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, a key sponsor, estimates that some 92 percent of the children who would benefit would come from families with incomes below twice the poverty level, the group the president says he wants to concentrate on.
House members should vote today to override the president’s veto. It is the best way to protect America’s low-income children."
[Well, they certainly haven't received any cover from you!
And you didn't read your own paper today, did you, Times?]
"The Attorney General Nominee"
At his confirmation hearing for the post of attorney general, Michael Mukasey gave welcome answers to many questions.
[Nope, couldn't have!]
He seemed committed to the rule of law and to keeping politics out of the Justice Department. He also made good statements about Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and civil rights. Mr. Mukasey’s testimony was not entirely reassuring, however, in a few important areas.
Mr. Mukasey, a former federal judge from New York, spoke eloquently yesterday about why the rule of law is integral to this country’s definition of itself. He seemed convincing when he said that he intends to run a department guided by the law rather than politics.
Addressing the cloud hanging over the Justice Department, Mr. Mukasey said that he would sharply limit the number of people who could discuss pending matters with elected officials or their representatives, a troubling practice that came to light in the United States attorneys scandal. He said that he would set the bar high for bringing politically sensitive investigations and prosecutions just before an election, something the Bush administration has done repeatedly, apparently to help Republicans win close contests.
Mr. Mukasey spoke, in a way that Republicans rarely do these days, about the importance of civil rights and of the Justice Department’s civil rights division. He said that torture was illegal and not what America stands for, and that holding people seemingly without end is hurting America’s reputation.
There were, however, some troubling statements and gaps in his testimony. He said little about what he would do to determine whether the Justice Department had acted improperly in firing United States attorneys. Congress has been holding hearings, but getting to the bottom of what happened should be a core Justice Department concern. He also needs to be clearer about where he stands on executive privilege. Karl Rove, Harriet Miers and other officials have made outrageous claims of privilege that are nothing more than an attempt to stonewall important investigations.
Mr. Mukasey spoke of the importance of voting rights, but seemed unduly focused on the nonexistent problem of voter fraud and not focused enough on the real problem of eligible voters being prevented from casting ballots.
Mr. Mukasey’s discussion of torture was good as far as it went, but it was too general. The administration has said that it opposes torture, but what matters is how it defines torture. It is important for Mr. Mukasey to oppose not only the word torture, but acts that properly fall under the label.
Mr. Mukasey was a marked improvement on the terrible lineup of Justice Department officials who have testified before Congress in recent months, from Alberto Gonzales on down. We hope today’s second round of questions will show whether he would be an attorney general who looks good by the impoverished standards of the Bush administration or one who would actually be worthy of that powerful, and once honorable, office."
[Times playing FOOLEYS, too, 'eh, reader?]
"Honoring the Dalai Lama"
It is a given that whenever the Dalai Lama is honored, China’s Communist leaders lash out. It happened when the Tibetan spiritual leader, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was received by German Chancellor Angela Merkel last month, and it happened again yesterday when the Dalai Lama met with President Bush and was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in Washington.
The Dalai Lama said yesterday that he felt “regret” over the tensions. It is our hope that leaders will continue to ignore China’s protests and threats, and that by continuing to honor the Dalai Lama they will finally persuade Beijing to open serious talks about granting autonomy to Tibet.
The Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet in 1959 after the Chinese Army crushed an uprising there, is a powerful symbol of Tibet’s resistance to China’s suppression of its religious culture. In Beijing-speak, the Dalai Lama is a “splittist,” someone out to split off a chunk of China. Zhang Qingli, the Chinese party boss in Tibet, denounced the Dalai Lama as “a person who basely splits his motherland and doesn’t even love his motherland.”
The fact is that the Dalai Lama does love his motherland — Tibet — and is not trying to split it away from China. He said yesterday that he is not seeking independence from China. What he wants, he says, is “meaningful autonomy for Tibet.”
We would like to think that the spiritual leader’s lifelong dedication to nonviolence and tolerance might also rub off on some of the people he meets in Washington. “Through violence, you may solve one problem, but you sow the seeds for another,” is one of his statements that politicians everywhere might meditate upon. Or this: “The world has become so small that no nation can solve its problems alone, in isolation from others.”
[Or NEWS MEDIA ORGANIZATIONS that RUN US INTO LYING WARS, too!!!!!!
Right, Times?!]
"Catching Up to a Sad Parade"
President Bush is finally facing up to the plight of military casualties coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan. He is urging an overhaul of the knotted bureaucracies that have denied veterans their rightful care and benefits. Eight months after the first reports of horrifying government neglect, Mr. Bush has called for swift action on blue-ribbon recommendations to reform an antiquated system dating to World War II. Among the needed changes blessed by the president:
• An end to the bureaucratic redundancies that have stymied veterans’ search for care. The Pentagon should be responsible for judging the fitness to serve of the wounded and injured or their eligibility for pensions. The Department of Veterans Affairs should focus on postwar care and benefits.
• Benefits that account for lost earnings and diminished quality of life that veterans can suffer for decades.
• Automatic availability of treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, with veterans no longer having to document their suffering as war-related.
• Protection for family caregivers so they can take unpaid leave of up to six months and not lose their jobs.
Other much-needed changes include “patient coordinators” to shepherd wounded vets through the maze of paperwork and appeals, and at-home aides to work up to 40 hours a week to help the severely disabled.
Commendably, Congress is finishing work on its own package of reforms. It should be quick to incorporate the best of the White House recommendations. There’s already talk of delay in the Capitol that must not be tolerated while the flow of the wounded continues unabated.
President Bush must back up his late-blooming concern by quickly filling the crucial vacancy of secretary of veterans affairs. Returning warriors deserve a dynamic champion who will finally turn the system around, not leave it as another blot on the Bush record.
[Sorry, but my view is "TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE!"
How about ENDING these FUCKING WARS so NO ONE ELSE gets KILLED or HURT?!
How about that, hanh?!!!!]
