House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., harshly criticized President George W. Bush for threatening to veto eight of 12 appropriations bills because Democrats want to spend $23 billion more than he proposed — after signing bills that raised federal spending 7 percent annually when Republicans were in power. “Please, Mr. President, do not lecture us about fiscal responsibility,” Hoyer said during a recent speech at the National Press Club. He has a point. Republicans lost their majority in Congress in great part because of their profligate spending. Federal outlays actually increased faster under Bush and the GOP majority in Congress than they did during the 1990s under Bill Clinton.

What Hoyer didn’t say is that, instead of trying to whittle down the deficit, Democrats now want to go on a spending binge of their own. Case in point: Their plan to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program would force low-income smokers to pay for health insurance for up to 4 million middle class children who already have coverage. This $35 billion expansion of SCHIP Congress passed last week would not only blow another gaping hole in the federal budget, it would take us another step toward government-run — i.e. socialized — health care coverage.

Politico reports that a 1993 internal White House memo written by the staff of then-first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton noted that the backup plan if Hillarycare failed was to create a state-run health plan for uninsured children who didn’t qualify for Medicaid: “Under this approach, health care reform is phased in by population, beginning with children,” the memo says. “Kids First is really a precursor to the new system. ...”

SCHIP, passed by the Republican Congress in 1997, is just such an incremental, back-door way to do what couldn’t be done legislatively, which is to have the federal government take over America’s health care system. It’s chilling to think of government bureaucrats making life-and-death decisions for the rest of us. Anyone who likes the idea should remember how the Federal Emergency Management Agency fumbled the Hurricane Katrina recovery.

This story continues below
Advertisement

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris van Hollen, D-Md., is already targeting eight Republicans who voted against increasing funding for SCHIP from $25 billion to $60 billion over the next five years. Radio ads accuse them of “vot[ing] in lockstep with President Bush and against children.”

The ads don’t mention that the bill rewards states that used SCHIP funds to cover children more than 250 percent over the federal poverty line or non-parental adults — and are only now worried about being able to pay the ballooning costs. Or that other states would be penalized for their efforts to hold down costs. Hoyer is right. President Bush should have vetoed a lot more appropriations bills during the last six years. But that shouldn’t stop Bush from doing the right thing now, including vetoing the Democrats’ plan to replace our doctors with their bureaucrats.