The Solution for Iraq: Lots and Lots of Sick Kids

President George W. Bush decided it would be much too expensive to expand the State Children's Health Insurance Program, designed to provide insurance to children who live in households with incomes higher than Medicaid levels but lower than middle class levels. So he used his fourth veto in office to keep a bipartisan health insurance bill from becoming law, because he wants everyone to know how fiscally responsible he is. In January, our hypocrite-in-chief will once again ask for more money to continue funding the war in Iraq. Would we save enough money by denying expansion of SCHIP to be able to spend another year killing Iraqi thugs and miscreants at will? Can we just consider this a way for our children be able to sacrifice a part of themselves for the good of our nation's security?

Sadly, no. Far from it, in fact. According to the CBO, the plan that Bush vetoed would have cost on average $7 billion extra per year on top of existing coverage until 2012 in order to make sure that 3.8 million children who were previously uninsured could become insured, an average of 760,000 children a year. Also according to the CBO, the U.S. government will spend $113 billion this year on the war in Iraq. In other words, by denying health care coverage to 760,000 American children, our government is able to buy 22 days of gun battles and IED's in Iraq. That's not nearly enough to win the global war on terror. We are going to need a lot more uninsured children in order to pay for this thing. At this rate, the only way we could win in Iraq is if our government could figure out a way to deny health insurance coverage to 12.3 million children a year. We're going to need a lot more vetoes.