2 Democrats Who Voted Against Childrens’ Health Care
What a relief it is that the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009 appears to be headed down the path to becoming law. The House of Representatives has passed the legislation (H.R. 2), the Senate will soon vote to approve it, and President Obama surely will sign the act into law.
Right wing mythology about government programs to help people is that the programs end up rewarding irresponsibility and laziness by providing services to people who ought to find a way to get those services on their own. That criticism’s logic absolutely falls apart when it comes to the State Childrens’ Health Insurance Program, though. Children are not responsible for the economic troubles of their parents, and they won’t learn any positive lessons about life by having medical care withheld from them when they become sick.
Practically speaking, the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009 is a sound financial investment of our nation’s resources. After all, healthy children grow up to become productive adults. Sick children, on the other hand, grow up to be unhealthy adults, who continue to weigh down the economy for much of their lives.
This economic logic ought to be easy for anyone to understand, but two Democrats in the House of Representatives don’t seem to understand that helping America’s children stay healthy is a good idea. One of them, Georgia’s Jim Marshall has been a source of steady disappointment on matters such as this for years. The other Democrat, however, is a new source of disappointment. His name us U.S. Representative Bobby Bright, and he was just elected to his seat in Congress a couple months ago.
On his new web site, Representative Bobby Bright writes that “Our younger constituents are the future of our district”. That’s a nice sentiment, but with his vote against the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009, Bobby Bright is treating his younger constituents as if they’re nothing but a special interest group.
Congressman Bright ought to be ashamed of himself – voting against his constituents’ interests after just a couple weeks in Washington, D.C.
[...] Visiting the official congressional web site of U.S. Representative Bobby Bright, one gets the feeling that he doesn’t care too much about communicating with his constituents. Almost the entire site is filled with links to other governmental agencies that can help constituents with problems because, it seems, that Congressman Bright isn’t quite ready to take care of those matters himself (especially when it comes to his district’s children). [...]
I will not question his decision, but I wanna see at least one good program he could bring in the senate in the future, something having to do with health and economics as well.
Why, Shieldon, wouldn’t you question Bobby Bright’s decision to withhold health care from millions of children? Why wouldn’t you even question it? Could it be because you’re from the company California Health Plans? What kind of citizen wouldn’t even question the decisions of the nation’s leaders?