Insuring Kids And Our Troops In Iraq

What could providing insurance for kids and our ongoing military venture in Iraq have to do with each other? We haven't been asked to pay for either of them. And our unwillingness to pay for either of them should raise serious questions about how much we really care about both of them.

Last year, Congress passed legislation to expand SCHIP, a federal program which supplies funds to states to insure families with children. President Bush vetoed the legislation on the ground that it (allegedly) did not cover the poorest families first and would have allowed states to include some families of modestly higher incomes. Congress failed to override the veto.

My problem with the SCHIP debate did not concern the income limits for the program; it was the funding mechanism. Congress, operating under pay-as-you-go rules, decided to pay for the program by increasing the federal cigarette tax. I think there are two major problems with this revenue source.

First, it's either not a stable form of funding, or, if it is, then we're taxing addicts. If the point of the tax is to decrease the incentive to smoke, then the expectation is that it will work and people will smoke less. But if people smoke less, where is the money for the expansion of SCHIP going to come from? If the revenue source is going to be consistent, then the expectation is that the tax will not have an effect on smoking--in other words, we'll get the money from those who cannot be deterred from the habit by higher costs, essentially penalizing people for being unable to quit. Is that how we want to fund our social programs?

But the larger problem is that taxing smokers fails to ask us to take responsibility for programs we say we want. Who could possibly be against insuring uninsured kids? Surely, opposition would be callous. Yet I wonder what it says about our commitment to this goal if we say that it's so important that we want...smokers to pay for it.

An Oregon ballot initiative last year also tried to expand the state program for insuring kids by taxing smokers to provide the revenue. Tobacco firms spent $12 million to defeat it. The New York Times ran aNovember 8, 2007 editorial"Big Tobacco Defeats Sick Kids," where they accused the companies of distributing deliberately misleading information and concluded: "The referendum said a lot about the power of money in any election, and not much about what the public thinks about the issue if given accurate and balanced information."

Perhaps. But even if it were true, there was a simple way around the machinations of tobacco companies. And that was to ask the people of Oregon, if they thought insuring kids was so important, to pay for it. There's nothing preventing us from insuring kids any time we want--if we're willing to back up our desires with action.

I made this same point regarding SCHIP at a Democratic fundraiser. Someone at my table said: what if we ask the public if they're willing to pay, and they say no? Then, I replied, our elected officials should tell us that we don't care enough to have the program. That's democracy. And that's not Congress's fault; that's my fault for not convincing enough of my fellow citizens that this program is worth paying for.

But I'd excoriate the Bush administration, and by extension McCain, for taking the same approach regarding the continuing military intervention in Iraq. Bush has repeatedly justified our massive military presence there by telling us how important it is. McCain has refused to provide any end date. And how are they paying for it? With borrowed money.

If they really thought it was so important, they should have the courage to ask us to help pay for it. Now. If we're not willing to pay for it, then maybe haven't convinced us that it's so important after all. Maybe they don't ask us because they know most of us would say no. But if we don't care enough to pay for it, then maybe we shouldn't have so many troops there. That's democracy.