Adam is in the extreme minority on this vote.

Last night Putnam & 158 of his extreme-right-wing friends voted against the SCHIP renewal and expansion act. Thankfully, the bill still passed with a huge bipartisan majority of 265 votes.

CHIP (the Childrens Health Insurance Program) is bipartisan 1990s program that provided Medicare-style health insurance to poor kids who can’t otherwise get coverage.

SCHIP expansion isn’t just good policy, it’s popular too. Nearly 9 in 10 voters want to see the program expanded. And for good reason, it’s a program that saves tax-payer money by making sure children get preventative care (and thus end up costing the saftey-net system less in the long run). It’s also an extremely important program to keep kids in school (healthy kids learn better), out of crime (kids in school are kids not on the street)… and the obvious fairness issue whereby it’s not kids fault their parents don’t have healthcare coverage for them.

Adam Putnam also chooses George Bush over Florida
SCHIP has passed the Senate with a veto-proof majority, but George Bush has threatened to veto the program. Which means Bush’s last chance to keep his veto from being over-ridden is in the house. While the bill passed the house with a huge bipartisan majority, it was a handful of votes short of the 2/3rds needed to override the veto. This means that Putnam’s large opposition to the bill is perhaps the only roadblock to keeping SCHIP from being renewed / expanded.

Here are some key stats on Florida’s SCHIP health insurance:

Number of Florida kids enrolled in CHIP: 303,595
Number of Florida kids eligible for CHIP or Medicaid but not enrolled: 464,011
2008 Funds available to Florida under bipartisan bill: $529,299,416

So, let’s get this straight: Adam Putnam is leading the fight against insuring poor kids. Specifically, he voted against 750 thousand of those kids right here in Flrida, and he voted against a half billion dollars in funding Florida would have gotten to help pay for those kids.

Good job Adam. I hope you have good luck with your “Poison Kittens & Shoot Old People Act” scheduled for a vote sometime next week. It’s probably more popular than voting against SCHIP.

Wednesday, September 26th, 2007 @ 4:46 pm Congressional Votes, Partisan Politics
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