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The Republicans of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce issued a satirical press release grossly misrepresenting the vetoed legislation that would have expanded the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Based in the fictional Springfield from The Simpsons, the release featured the rich Montgomery Burns and Mayor Quimby jockeying for government funded health care.
The release quoted Burns saying, “The little darlings are needy? Me, too. I need somebody to pay ,” suggesting that well-off parents would be allowed access to free health care should SCHIP be expanded.
Such scenarios, however, have absolutely no basis in reality. Under the vetoed plan, parents would only be eligible for coverage if they work low-income, uninsured jobs and the poorest children be “first in line” for coverage. The release comes just a day after the Republican Leadership in the Senate was found by ThinkProgress to be propagating known fictions about 12-year-old SCHIP beneficiary Graeme Frost. As Paul Krugman recapped in the New York Times:
Right-wingers began “insisting that the Frosts must be affluent because Graeme and his sister attend private schools (they’re on scholarship), because they have a house in a neighborhood where some houses are now expensive (the Frosts bought their house for $55,000 in 1990 when the neighborhood was rundown and considered dangerous) and because Mr. Frost owns a business (it was dissolved in 1999).”
Indeed, the “press release” and their previous smear campaign betrays the callous zeal with which House Republicans and some Senate Republicans have sought to prevent the needed expansion of SCHIP. While an astounding 91% of Americans want “Congress to help states cover more uninsured children”, a “vast majority [of Americans] also supported covering uninsured parents in low-income working families,” and “more than 600,000 children joined the ranks of the uninsured last year,” House Republicans are more concerned with scoring cheap brownie points with an out-of-touch Bush administration. (via Atrios, Wonkette)
*Seriously Joe, stop.
sure, i’d love to expand health care for kids, just not fund it through an increased smoking tax. why burden only smokers with another tax increase?