From CNN:

The Senate voted 67-29 Thursday night to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance program, a measure President Bush has vowed to veto as a step toward universal coverage.

The program would double — from 4 million to 8 million — the number of children covered.

Eighteen Republicans joined all of the Democrats in voting to expand the program from its current annual budget of $5 billion to $12 billion for the next five years.

Four senators — Republicans John McCain of Arizona and Sam Brownback of Kansas and Democrats Joseph Biden of Delaware and Barack Obama of Illinois — did not vote.

The reauthorization bill “fails to focus on poor children, and instead creates a new entitlement program for higher-income households,” said White House Press Secretary Dana Perino in a written statement.

Note that the Senators who didn’t vote on this are all Presidential candidates. Kind of convenient, isn’t it?

The President is right to veto this bill. Rather than spend a bunch of extra money to cover kids whose parents make enough to buy their own insurance, Congress should instead spend that extra money on kids and families who don’t make enough to buy their own insurance. The program is, after all, for poor families who can’t buy their own insurance, so it should concentrate exclusively on helping them.

This isn’t a question of who cares about children the most. It’s ludicrous for Democrats to try and say that Bush, a parent himself, doesn’t care about kids. Of course he does, and that’s why he’s saying “let’s take care of the poor first”.

Government has a duty to help those who cannot, for reasons beyond their control, help themselves. But it has no business helping people who can certainly afford to take care of themselves and buy their own insurance.

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