Listening to Rep. Michael Arcuri you’d think the sky was falling on poor children. The congressman has bought into the rhetoric of Washington Democrats and is deliberately misleading his constituents about the program. It’s a shameful act, but one we’ve come to expect from Arcuri.
A classic case is this WKTV story about Arcuri’s visit to the Upstate Cerebral Palsy Children’s Center — a perfect photo opportunity for the pandering politician to play political games in Utica.
About 800 children whose families use Child Health Plus are enrolled at UCP. Without this financial support, those families would face some serious hardships.
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Democrats in congress say they aren’t giving up on their expanded SCHIP bill, which was vetoed by President Bush.
“This is not a benefit to wealthy people who can afford it,” Arcuri said. “This is not going to pull people with an insurance program. This is going to give insurance to people who need it most who to the working class to people who can’t afford it for their children not for themselves.”
It’s bad enough that WKTV fails to check the facts, but what’s even worse is that they let Arcuri get away with spinning the story.
For starters, SCHIP isn’t going away. The program was extended until mid-November to give lawmakers time to work out a compromise. That’s hardly ever reported, and for good reason — Democrats such as Arcuri want you to believe poor kids are living without health insurance.
It’s also important to remember that no one will lose coverage under President Bush’s plan. The White House is insisting that poor kids are covered first, which should be the priority of the Upstate Cerebral Palsy Children’s Center. Bush doesn’t want to expand the program to families making $83,000 per year as New York would like to do — hardly “wealthy” in Arcuri’s own words, but certainly not poor either.
