US President Bush vetoed a bill to expand a children’s healthcare insurance scheme, after it was passed with a large majority (67-29) in the Senate.\u00a0 Congress had approved the bill by 265-159. It is only the fourth time Bush has used his veto power in the course of his presidency. The vetoed bill proposed higher tobacco taxes (up to $1 from 61c) to provide an extra $35 billion to insure about 10 million children.\u00a0 Bush’s rationale was that it might help children who are not really poor.<\/p>\n
Bush’s decision to block the legislation is likely to prove unpopular with many people. A Washington Post\/ABC News poll suggested that more than 7 in 10 Americans supported the $35 billion increase proposed in the bill.\u00a0 Commentators have drawn a parallel with the administration’s request for $190 billion funding for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2008 – “The president has asked for an open-ended, open-wallet commitment to Iraq, and the American children get an empty stocking”.<\/p>\n
This is another clear sign of where the US administration priorities are and again raises the issue of US political corruption.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
US President Bush vetoed a bill to expand a children’s healthcare insurance scheme, after it was passed with a large majority (67-29) in the Senate.\u00a0 Congress had approved the bill by 265-159. It is only the fourth time Bush has used his veto power in the course of his presidency. The vetoed bill proposed higher …
Continue reading Bush vetoes child health, to help cigarette manufacturers<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4hwcd-3t","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}