Kevin Freking, AP, January 14, 2009
Making a down payment on President-elect Barack Obama’s promise of universal health coverage, the House voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to expand government-sponsored insurance to 4 million more children in working families with income too high to qualify for Medicaid.
Between 300,000 and 600,000 of the new enrollees could be non-citizen children of legal immigrants who have been in the country less than five years, a sticking point for some Senate Republicans who also will consider a similar bill.
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Forty Republicans joined Democrats in passing the bill 289-139. Congress passed similar legislation in 2007 but it was vetoed both times by departing President George W. Bush.
The bill would raise the federal excise tax on cigarettes by 61 cents to $1 a pack to pay for the $32.3 billion cost of expanding the State Children’s Health Insurance Program for the next 4 1/2 years. Other tobacco products would experience a comparable tax increase.
About 7 million children now get government-sponsored health care through SCHIP.
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“This is only the beginning of the change we will achieve with our new president,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who got a congratulatory call from Obama after the vote.
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The bill would provide coverage for pregnant legal immigrants in addition their non-citizen children who entered the U.S. in the past five years.
Current law requires a five-year waiting period before legal immigrants become eligible for coverage under Medicaid and SCHIP. Supporters say expanding coverage would mean children could get treatment for acute conditions like asthma and diabetes so they were less likely to need care in an emergency room.
“These are not illegal immigrants. They are children who go to school, go to daycare with our children, our grandchildren,” said Rep. Gene Green, D-Texas. “Those children ought to have health care.”
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Original article
(Posted on January 15, 2009)
Comments
Yes! Yes! Yes! Please provide health care for Mexican citizens, For Nigerian citizens, for Cuban citizens, for Somali Citizens, for Haitian citizens, for Ethiopian citizens, for Iraqi citizens, and on, and on, and on.
As for American citizens — you will simply have to do with less! This is a change we can all believe in.
You’ve got to be kidding me??? How much more money do these geniuses want to spend?? There is no money, people. It’s being created out of thin air. The U.S. government (Federal Reserve) is “printing” money, injecting billions of electronic dollars into the financial system.
Can you say, “Monopoly money”?
I don’t know what brings it out in me concerning her. Is it the utter hypocricy of the women? Is it the double dealings and conflicts of interest her and her husband are involved in with Star Kist corporation of American Samoa? In January of 2007,when the minimum wage was increased from 5.15 to 7.25, Pelosi had American Samoa exempted from the increase so Del Monte Foods who owns Star kist, would not have to pay the higher wage. Paul Pelosi, her husband owns 17 million dollars worth of Star Kist stock. Seventy five percent of the workforce of American Samoa is employed by Star Kist.
How about when Pelosi, became speaker of the house and in charge of the Democrats two years ago. Remember before that how she raged against the Bush Administations conduct of the war? Yet, when she had the power, at a time even most Republicans had had it with Bush, Pelosi immediately declared “impeachment is off the table.” I wish I could have seen the look on the faces of the idiot far left. But it was another example of her hypocricy.
Then, her California vineyards and her involvement with, or I should say non-involvment with the illegal immigration issue. It was found that Miss Nancy indeed did not employ illegal aliens or at least too many of them, because her end of the business was fermentation. But the growers she got all of her grapes from all employed illegal underpaid workers.
But what if the extra tax makes people stop smoking?
That would be a disaster for the health of our most vulnerable population! (Children are our future, after all.) So the next step should be funding public service announcement urging people to smoke, and passing legislation that legalizes smoking in schools, restaurants, office buildings, and airplanes. While Pelosi’s at it, she could lower the age for buying smokes, pass federal marketing subsidies for tobacco companies, and install cigarette vending machines in the lobbies of public buildings!
Since Barack is now the “Smoker-in-Chief,” he would make an excellent role model.
“Light one up for the children!”
Why should my tax money be used for non-Americans? I know they are just kids whose parents broke the law…so let their law breaking parents cover their medical bills or just go back to Mexico. There is insurance for Mexico’s poor uneducated criminals in Mexico - it’s called Seguro Popular and it’s actually better than the SCHIP, it covers more.
Just WHY in the name of hell should American taxpayers be forced to provide FREE healthcare to the children of illegal immigrants? Don’t we have a million better ways to spend that money? Instead, like on our own needy people. Let Mexico take care of its own.
I want to SCREAM! Raising the cig tax AGAIN to such outrageous amounts to pay for ILLEGAL and millions more “poor” kids and I can’t even afford health care for myself? $1 a PACK more in taxes?? Then the States will feel free to raise the state taxes on cigs also! I hope EVERYONE quits smoking or gets them some other way without paying these asinine government taxes and hope the program fails and they have NO money for all these illegal kids and the “poors” health care! Picking on ONE group of people to pay for their asinine free health care is sooo unconstitutional that I don’t know where to begin!
“Speaker Pelosi: This is just the beginning of what we will achieve with our new president.”
She’s acting as if the country is in a boom situation. It’s truly amazing that these fools think they can spend their way to prosperity as part of some perverted Keynesian strategy.
People, they are taxing SMOKERS, not the rest of society. This makes it even WORSE! They are telling us it is okay to tax a GROUP of people (who no one likes, anyway, right/) to provide free health care that they (smokers) won’t even be entitled to!
Did you notice the INCOME range they are talking about here that will be eligible to this “free” health care? Alot more than I ever made and I raised 5 kids!
Deport all the illegals like the law says and problemo solved!
I don’t want to pay a DIME more for these people! And Pelosi had the gall to say this is “just the begining with our new President”!!! Everyone should flood her with calls and faxes and tell her what she can do with her unconstitutional taxes! Time to also start flooding calls to Obama after Jan.20th.
“…The bill would raise the federal excise tax on cigarettes by 61 cents to $1 a pack to pay for the $32.3 billion cost…”
This wouldn’t possibly create a Black Market, would it?
Cigarette smokers are perfectly happy ‘coughing’ up yet one more dollar to support their habits ‘in the name of the children’, aren’t they?
Yeah, just one more thing for criminal gangs to steal and sell to you for cash to help build their empires.
Bon
While they’re at it, how about providing me, as a self employed small $5,000 deductible policy… I recently have been battling a 6 month long case of a unique form of shingles that has affected my balance, my hearing and my vision, and I can’t afford to have tests done. Give them free health care, because I have insurance I can barely afford to buy and definitely can’t afford to use.
Just keep smiling. This is a guarantee that America will only be worse off in 2 years and that Republicans, if they get their heads screwedon right, will retake control.IF something can’t go on forever, it won’t, and this nonsense certainly can’t continue,
I think we very well might be seeing the Beginning of the End for our Republic?? In covering all these non entitled people I can guarantee Many Deserving Hard Working Real Americans will be left out in the cold With Nothing?
Ms. Pelosi is an absolute DISGRACE and should be thrown in jail for consistently lying to the public, committing outright treason and voting against the will and the best interests of the American people!
Bobby’s comments were right on target! Also, I was thoroughly disgusted when Ms. Nancy had the nerve to say that “fences were a terrible idea.” How dare she? It’s okay for all sorts of fences to “protect” our ruling class members from the starving mobs, but it’s not okay for us to protect our own backyards from the starving Third World mobs?
This woman (with her fake toothy smile) along with Harry Reid truly darken the halls of Senate…
Someone needs to tell the government that America is out of money.
“Making a down payment on President-elect Barack Obama’s promise of universal health coverage, the House voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to expand government-sponsored insurance to 4 million more children in working families with income too high to qualify for Medicaid.”
At one time we could have had universal health coverage, but we chose empire instead. With a trillions of dollars in deficits who will pay for university health care—China? Paying for non citizens makes even less sense when we can’t afford to pay for our own people.
This appears to me to be racial, ethnic origin (anti-US native born), and age discrimination against US citizens in favor of immigrants, legal, illegal, and their children.
If our forefathers in 1776 had a moral right and ample reason to rebell against their sovereign king, George the 3rd, we American citizens today have even MORE right and reason to turn against our own government.
Consider that American taxpayers are forced, AGAINST THEIR WILL, WITHOUT HAVING EVEN BEEN ASKED FOR AN OPINION, by our government to support criminal illegal aliens and their offspring, support African countries, Latin American countries… while American citizens cannot get free healthcare, much less can pay for affordable health insurance… while American working poor have to depend on local food banks, because they earn just enough to be disqualified from federal aid, per an eloquent essay aired on NPR Radio a year or so ago.
While it may not do much good, I urge ALL READERS to write to Traitor Pelosi, to each of their State Representatives and Senators in Congress! Let these people hear from our voting citizens and voting taxpayers how we feel about how Congress squanders our hard-earned tax money.
“This wouldn’t possibly create a black market, would it?”
A black market in cigarettes already exists. Untaxed cigarettes are sold on Indian reservations, and tax cheats frequently buy them in bulk to stock the shelves of off-reservation convenience stores they own. A group of Arab men was arrested several years ago for precisely such a scam.
“…A black market in cigarettes already exists…”
And it always has—as in cigarette boats (or go-fast boats) used to smuggle drugs and cigarettes. These boats are stealthy, speedy, difficult to detect. According to wikipedia: “..Because of this, Coast Guards have developed their own high-speed craft and also use helicopters…”
The smugglers will just develop new tactics to supply the huge demand for their products—drugs, cigarettes and other contraband.
Remember the ridiculous old pictures of George Bush I out running the press in his cigarette boat off of Kennebunkport?
Where a demand exists, a market will always arise to feed it, legal or illegal. Government suppression of markets never works— Prohibition on Alcohol didn’t work and the War on Drugs is an obvious, massive government failure (one of so many).
In New York: “…The incentive to smuggle is strong. New York has the highest cigarette taxes in the nation, cashing in at $4.90 per pack…[the]70-year-old tobacco black market exploded after 2002, as cigarette tax hikes encouraged smuggling from out of state and through reservations…”
http://www.publicintegrity.org/articles/entry/1098/
Of course, the government’s own crooks want to get their hands on the black market money which is ‘robbing the state and New York City of nearly $1 billion in tax revenue’—, can’t let all those smugglers have the money for themselves, it would be put to much better use in the government’s hands ‘saving the children.’
So with overwhelming evidence of the massive failure of Trying to Suppress Consumer Demand, what does the New Regime want to put into place? ANOTHER tax on a consumer product creating an even larger Black Market.
And so the insanity continues.
Bon
