McCain is right-on about the SCHIP

McCain takes the maverick stance once again - this time praising Bush's veto of the SCHIP expansion into the middle class on the backs of the poor.

Republicans need to get out in front of this RIGHT NOW. The Democrats are trying to tax the poor to subsidize medical insurance for middle class families who largely have insurance already. That needs to be the message. What Congress needs to do is pass a renewal of the existing program and then we can discuss how to cover uninsured middle class families without forcing the poor to subsidize medical insurance for middle class families who already have insurance. I am sick of the Democrats using the most vulnerable among us - poor children and deployed military personnel - as pawns to try to score political points against the Republicans. It's disgusting.

McCain: Bush right to veto kids health insurance expansion
CNN

CAMDEN, South Carolina (CNN) -- Sen. John Mccain, R-Arizona, told CNN Wednesday he agrees with President Bush's veto of legislation expanding a children's health insurance program, saying the bill provided a "phone smoke and mirrors way of paying for it."

"Right call by the president," the Republican White House hopeful told CNN's John King. "We've laid a debt on these same children...that we're saying we're going to give health insurance to."

The bill, which would cost $35 billion over five years, is meant to expand the State Children's Health Insurance Program to provide coverage to an additional 10 million children.

Bush said he vetoed the bill because he considered it a step towards "federalizing" medicine and an inappropriately expanding the program's goal beyond its original focus on helping poor children.