In his acceptance speech at the 2004 Republican presidential convention, George W. Bush said:

America's children must also have a healthy start in life. In a new term, we will lead an aggressive effort to enroll millions of poor children who are eligible but not signed up for the government's health insurance programs.

At the White House on Wednesday, Bush said:

I believe government cannot provide affordable health care.

He said so in defending his threat to veto bipartisan legislation that would reauthorize and expand the State Children's Health Insurance Program, which provides health coverage to 6.6 million poor children. So does Bush really believe what he says--that government cannot deliver on health care? Then does Bush want to shut down Medicaid and Medicare?

That remark was more evidence of Bush's sloppy thinking. It's pretty clear that Medicare and Medicaid have done a better job of providing health coverage for the poor (young and old) than the private sector. (Economics 101: it's hard for private industry to help you if you don't have much money.) And S-CHIP has also been a success. Bush vowed he would expand it in 2004. Now he dismisses government healthcare programs.

As for the current S-CHIP debate, a bipartisan Senate majority--including Republicans Orrin Hatch and Charles Grassley--wants to add $5 billion a year to the program to cover more of the children already eligible for it and to expand the program to assist children not now eligible. Bush has offered to increase the program by only $1 billion a year, which would leave many kids out in the cold. And he apparently would rather stop the whole program than see Republican and Democratic lawmakers enlarge it.

Bush said that the debate of S-CHIP represents a "philosophical divide." Well, he's going to make millions of kids pay for his government-can't-do-healthcare philosophy. So much for compassionate conservatism.

HANDCUFF AWAY. Whenever Congress debates the Iraq war, Bush-backers on and off Capitol Hill argue that Congress does not have the authority to micromanage the commander in chief. Actually, there's a bit of hypocrisy on this point. When House Democrats tried to attach various conditions to funding for the Iraq war earlier this year, their Republican antagonists decried the move as micromanaging. Yet when the Democrats recently pushed a measure calling for withdrawing troops within 120 days, some Republicans slammed the legislation for being too vague. In any event, fans of the Iraq war often cry foul when congressional foes try to infringe upon Bush's prerogatives regarding the war. Now comes the Congressional Research Service, the nonpartisan research arm of Congress, to say, Hey, if the House and the Senate want to legislate a president's options during a war, there's nothing wrong--constitutionally speaking--with that.

The new report notes:

It has been suggested that the President's role as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces provides sufficient authority for his deployment of troops, and any efforts on the part of Congress to intervene could represent an unconstitutional violation of separation-of-powers principles. While even proponents of strong executive prerogative in matters of war appear to concede that it is within Congress's authority to cut off funding entirely for a military operation, it has been suggested that spending measures that restrict but do not end financial support for the war in Iraq would amount to an "unconstitutional condition." The question may turn on whether specific proposals involve purely operational decisions committed to the President in his role as Commander in Chief, or whether they are instead valid exercises of Congress's authority to allocate resources using its war powers and power of the purse...

The report provides historical examples of measures that restrict the use of particular personnel, and concludes with a brief analysis of arguments that might be brought to bear on the question of Congress's authority to limit the availability of troops to serve in Iraq. Although not beyond debate, such a restriction appears to be within Congress's authority to allocate resources for military operations.

Tip of the hat to Secrecy News for bringing this to our attention. You can read the full report here.

Posted by David Corn at July 19, 2007 11:20 AM