The Republican War on Children's Health continues($).

The House failed Wednesday to override President Bush's second veto of a children's health insurance bill, again confounding Democrats' plans to expand government-sponsored health coverage to include an additional four million low-income kids.

The override failed 260-152, 15 votes short of the two-thirds majority required. Democrats wound up no closer to enacting their signature health policy proposal than they were in October, when their attempt to override Bush's first veto failed by 13 votes. In fact, Democrats lost ground since they passed the second bill Oct. 25 by 265-142, because three Democrats and two Republicans who supported that bill were absent for Wednesday's vote

Roll call here.

Rep. Jim Marshall (D-GA) was the lone Democratic 'nay' vote.

I don't know where to start with this week's Samuelson column ("Lollipop Economics"). It's a mess. I guess the quality control person at the Post had the day off.

As expected, Samuelson devotes another chunk of prime pundit real estate to heft the long term fiscal imbalance on the shoulders of the Baby Boom generation and their impending retirement. This is, of course, just wrong, wrong, wrong. As has been documented numerous times, the fiscal challenges of the next fifty years lay squarely in the rapidly raising cost of health care.

The premise this time for his Social Security bashing is Washington's current obsession with fiscal stimulus. Samuelson's main point is that a $100 billion economic jump-start is nothing more than an election-year gimmick aimed at bribing voters. That Samuelson fails to recognize that good politics and good policy are not mutually exclusive is simple-minded, and absolutely cynical when literally thousands could be affected by it. However, he also objects to fiscal stimulus on the grounds that:

1. Such a package is too small to do any good ("something much larger is needed")
2. 1.1 million lost jobs is no big whoop ("a setback, but not a disaster")
3. This recession is different than others ("Only time and patience will cure some economic problems")
4. And besides, recessions are good ("[they] dampen prices and incipient inflationary psychology")

Wow. Logically Samuelson cannot simultaneous believe (A) and (C). And while (B) and (D) are complimentary, they underscore his total lack of concern for people.

UPDATE: I hope Congress listens to the Congressional Budget Office, and not Samuelson, when it says:

[T]o add three-quarters of a percentage point to the growth rate of GDP over a year, it might be necessary to increase the budget deficit for the year by close to three-quarters of 1 percent of GDP, or about $100 billion.

President Bush said in late 2007 that Social Security reform awaits the election of the next president, effectively deferring any action on reform before 2009.

The biggest issue for the next president will be entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, Bush said Nov. 7 in an interview with German television reporters.

"[I]t's very hard to get done because a lot of the politicians here in America really don't want to confront the problem until it becomes immediate," Bush said. "So I tried for seven years to get Congress to do the hard work. They didn't want to, and so the next president is going to have to try to do it."

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Posted by Craig Jennings, 11:49:37 AM

Monday, January 07, 2008

Wednesday, January 02, 2008