by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalists
House Minority Leader John Boehner announced today that he is creating a GOP task force to study America's health care needs. As if Mr. Boehner pretending to even care about health issues isn't funny enough by itself, he outdid himself by naming Missouri's ever-snarling Congressman Roy Blunt to head the task force. As a longtime resident of Blunt's congressional district, I have serious doubts regarding his ability to focus on something that is clearly a non-issue to him. Here's one clue: Blunt's new wife and his son are both tobacco lobbyists.
Here's what I suspect is happening: Missouri's senior senator, Kit Bond, has announced that he will not run for re-election in 2010. Blunt is definitely planning to run for Bond's seat. He is of the old school which sees campaign contributions as the equivalent of votes, and he is very actively putting the arm on all of the big Republican donors in Missouri to fill his campaign war chest. With this new job, he will also be in a better position to attract the contributions of big medical donors and others with a vested interest in keeping the nation's health care system as dysfunctional and uncontrolled as possible.
Grab all that you can, Roy - Robin Carnahan is still going to eat your shorts!
Today President Obama signed the much heralded and sorely needed re-authorization of the State Children's Health Insurance Program. The bill will provide several million children with health coverage. It was passed during the last administration but vetoed by President Bush - trillions for war but not a dime for the health needs of poor children! This time when Congress passed the bill by wide margins in both houses, an eager President Obama was standing by awaiting it's arrival at the White House, pen in hand.
The S-CHIP bill passed basically along a party-line vote. The Senate voted 66 ayes and 32 nays. (Nine Republican Senators supported the bill, and all 32 negative votes were from the GOP.) The vote in the House was also lopsided. Two-hundred-and-eighty-nine members voted for its passage, and 139 were against. Of those 139, all but 2 were Republicans.
John Boehner, the Minority Leader of the House who is so interested in health care that he rushed to form a task force on the subject, voted against giving health care to poor kids. Roy Blunt, who represents some of the nation's poorest hill folk, also voted against the measure.
Does Roy Blunt heading a health task force fool anyone?
3 comments:
Roy Blunt says study health care needs but means finds doctors, hmo's, insurance companies, and their overpaid legal defense law firms to start coughing up cash.
Roy's not even as good a liar as Kansaa' Pat Roberts who voted for SCHIP last year before the election when he knew if it passed Bush would veto it. Roberts, with no election to lose voted against SCHIP this year.
Roy Blunt, whatever happened to that goofy guy wearing those red shoes and big grin down at the Greene County, Missouri courthouse. How did he become this perpetually scowling meanie in D.C.?
What if Roy doesn't get the nod. What if Missouri Republicans decide to nominate a military veteran. What if, not unlike Beau Biden, young "Sammie" Bond comes calling in his father's footsteps?
Marine Captain Sam Bond would be an interesting choice. Would he be 30 by January of 2011?
I have read that Blunt has been focused on sucking up all of the loose Republican money in order to keep Sarah Steelman at bay. Would there be enough left to fund young Bond in an expensive Senate race?
I remember the night Kit Bond won the state auditor's race and you called his parents from R & R's apartment to congratulate them! The world was younger then, simpler and more fun!
Rock
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