A couple ways Bush is hurting our children
Post written by: beagooddad
If there is anything I’ve learned over the last 7 years, it’s when Bush says he’s against something then I am all for it.
Yesterday, Bush vetoed pumping more money into a “federally funded, state-run health insurance program for poor children.”
I know nothing about the details of this bill nor do I have any opinions on it other than that if Bush is against it, I’m for it. The proposal was to increase the funding by $35 billion over the next 5 years. Anything that uses that big of numbers is pretend money to us normal folk, but let’s talk about this for a second.
Kids not being able to afford health care seems like a bad thing. Let’s say for a second that as a country we decide to invest the time and money into trying to do something for those kids. Instead of constantly feeling abandoned by the country, government, and those with the money to afford health care, these kids just might feel like the world is trying to look out for them a little bit. Just maybe they have a chance of getting some kind of support and improving their future. It might be a pipe dream, but who knows.
Now, that’s a lot of pretend money. How can we ever afford that much pretend money? Don’t go raising our taxes for some government mismanaged program that will siphon the money off into pet projects instead of helping the kids. We’ll stick with our local charity work in our free time. All the time we donate to the local food pantry, schools and literacy programs will do more than any stupid government run program. Right? Are you with me?
Well, maybe we don’t have to raise taxes for this thing to get the money it needs.
The National Priorities Project website has a site that shows the running tally of the cost of the war in Iraq. I can’t read numbers as big as the current tally, but they do mention that the war in Iraq costs $275 million per day. Since this is all pretend money, I’ll use this number for a second.
$35 billion over 5 years works out the $7 billion a year. Sounds pretty close to my heating bills this winter. Divide $7 billion by $275 million per day and you get something like 25.5 days. So, in theory if we just stopped the war in Iraq for 25.5 days per year, we could spend the money saved to fund a $7 billion a year project to provide health care to poor kids in America. The troops over there could get almost an extra month of vacation time each year to come home and see their families.
As an added bonus, our kids will hear fewer stories about American troops (another government funded project) killing people in another country. Less Americans killing people sounds like a good thing to me.
Just think about how much money our government will have for pet projects for Americans when we decide to quit blowing up Iraq.
December 13th, 2007 at 3:10 pm
From a Reuters article/release:
“It would repeal about $13 billion in tax breaks for mostly big oil companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp.
The White House has said the bill unfairly targets the oil industry and that President George W. Bush would veto the legislation in its current form.”
That’s enough of a reason to tick me off even more … along with the crappy health insurance state of this union.
December 13th, 2007 at 4:56 pm
War and oil are just too profitable for these clowns in the White House. They don’t give a crap about the people they are supposedly serving (The American People) let alone the “middle class”. I don’t know if the Democrats would do a better job, but they could not do any worse.
December 13th, 2007 at 5:01 pm
GET OUT OF IRAQ NOW is my message . We need to get out for at least a dozen reasons. $ is one of them.
December 14th, 2007 at 9:59 am
Much agreed. And also if we stopped the war in Iraq, think about what a great example we’d be setting for America’s kids! And maybe if we stopped the war for just ONE DAY think of all the parks and playgrounds we could build so kids would have safe places to play. Stop it for another day and think of all the money that we could give to schools. Let’s just count down the days until 1-20-09 when Bush leaves office.
December 14th, 2007 at 11:59 am
Rachel, just remember that getting Bush out of office won’t necessarily fix the problem. I was in the military when Clinton was in charge and had friends that ended up in Iraq and ended up getting shot at.
I think the best way to guarantee some kind of hope for change is to vote against pretty much everybody that has been holding office over the last several years. They are almost all part of the problem.
But, I’m often been called a crackpot.