[NYTr] Bush Veto to Worsen Clinton's Legacy of Child Poverty;

[nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com]

Democracy Now - Jul 24, 2007
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/24/1431211

Children's Defense Fund's Marian Wright Edelman Calls on Congress 
& Bush Administration to Help the Country's Nine Million Children
Without Health Insurance

As President Bush vows to veto a bill expanding the Children's Health
Insurance Program, Marian Wright Edelman says Washington must do far
more to help the nation's children and to truly leave no child behind.

The Senate is expected to vote this week on a bill that would extend
health insurance to more than three million low-income children.
Earlier this month senators reached a bipartisan agreement to add
thirty-five billion dollars to the Children's Health Insurance Program
over the next five years by increasing federal taxes on cigarettes. The
extra funding would help cover some of the nation's nine million
uninsured children as well as some adults with incomes too high to
qualify for Medicaid but not high enough to afford private insurance.

A new poll released Monday from Georgetown University's Center for
Children and Families shows 91% of Americans support expanding SCHIP to
cover more children. It even has bi-partisan support in Congress, and
approval -- if tepid -- from major pharmaceutical and insurance groups.

It sounds like a no-brainer. But there's one obstacle: President Bush
has vowed to veto the bill. Speaking last week at a health care forum
in Maryland, he explained why.

    * President Bush: “I believe government cannot provide affordable
health care. I believe it would cause -- it would cause the quality of
care to diminish. I believe there would be lines and rationing over
time. If Congress continues to insist upon expanding health care
through the S-CHIP program -- which, by the way, would entail a huge
tax increase for the American people -- I'll veto the bill.”

President Bush wants to cut the proposed increase by $30 billion,
keeping it to just $5 billion. Marian Wright Edelman is President and
founder of the Children's Defense Fund. She is a veteran attorney long
involved in civil rights causes. She joins me from Washington, DC.

TRANSCRIPT

AMY GOODMAN: The Senate's expected to vote this week on a bill that
would extend health insurance to more than three million low-income
children. Earlier this month, senators reached a bipartisan agreement
to add $35 billion to the Children's Health Insurance Program over the
next five years by increasing federal taxes on cigarettes. The extra
funding would help cover some of the nation's some nine million
uninsured children, as well as some adults with incomes too high to
qualify for Medicaid but not high enough to afford private insurance.

A new poll released Monday from Georgetown University’s Center for
Children and Families shows 91% of Americans support expanding SCHIP to
cover more children. It even has bipartisan support in Congress and
approval, if tepid, from major drug insurance companies. It sounds like
a no-brainer, but there's an obstacle. President Bush has vowed to veto
the bill. Speaking last week at a healthcare forum in Maryland, he
explained why.

      PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: I believe government cannot provide
affordable healthcare. I believe it would cause the quality of care to
diminish. I believe there would be lines and rationing over time. If
Congress continues to insist upon expanding healthcare through the
SCHIP program, which, by the way, would entail a huge tax increase for
the American people, I’ll veto the bill.

AMY GOODMAN: President Bush wants to cut the proposed increase by $30
billion, keeping it to just $5 billion. Marian Wright Edelman is
president and founder of the Children's Defense Fund, veteran attorney
long involved in civil rights causes, leading child advocate in this
country. She joins me from Washington, D.C. Welcome to Democracy Now!,
Marian Wright Edelman.

MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN: Thank you, Amy. Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: It's very good to have you with us. Can you please explain
what this SCHIP program is?

MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN: It is a program to serve families with children
above a very low income level who are not qualified for Medicaid. And
many people are under 200%, the majority, of poverty and many states
have -- some states have gone beyond that, because -- and we have been
pushing this year to have families up to $62,000 covered, all of them,
with comprehensive care, because the American people in our own focus
group in polling understand that they cannot afford decent healthcare
for their children, as more and more employers drop it. So it’s for --
90% of the people eligible for SCHIP work. And I have resented in the
past Mr. Bush continuing to talk as if CHIP is a public assistance
program. These are working people playing by the rules, cannot afford
healthcare for their children and cannot get it from their employers.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, explain exactly how the SCHIP program would be
funded. What is the deal that Republicans and Democrats have worked out
in Congress?

MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN: Well, the Senate has proposed to fund SCHIP, $35
billion tobacco tax, that the tax was proposed in a budget resolution
by Oregon Republican Senator Gordon Smith. It is a public health good
in and of itself and will save lives to increase the tobacco tax. The
other major proposal to fund SCHIP at least a $50 billion level, which
is likely to come forth in the House, would take the excess profits
from insurance industries, from the Medicare Advantage program, and
apply that excess profits to fund children's health. And maybe when we
come to conference there will be some combination of the two.

What I want to say, though, is that there are nine million uninsured
children, and we have been talking all year about the need to fund all
of them. And while we are pleased with the first step of the Senate,
that’s going to leave almost five million children in working families
uninsured, at risk of death and continuing suffering and school
failure, and three million isn't enough. And the House, hopefully, will
do better with its $50 billion, but why is this country at this time,
the richest in the world, arguing about how few or how many children
they can serve? We ought to -- this is a no-brainer. The American
people want all of its children served. All children deserve health
coverage, and I don't know why we’re having such a hard time getting
our president and our political leaders to get it, that children should
have health insurance.

AMY GOODMAN: Where do cigarettes come into this?

MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN: Well, cigarettes come into that because
cigarettes kill and cigarettes provoke lung cancer, and every child and
every human being we can, by increasing the cigarette tax, stop from
smoking or slow down from smoking is going to have a public health
benefit, save taxpayers money from the cost of the effects of smoking
and tobacco. And so, the Senate has said that this is going to be a six
-- they are going to impose a sixty-one-cent increase on the tobacco
tax, that would yield about $35 billion, far short of the $50 billion
that they promised in their budget regulation resolution. But this is
the first step, and it's a good thing to have a cigarette tax. The more
people we can stop smoking, the more lives we’ll save and the more
taxpayer money we will save in hospital and other cost.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain why the President says he is going to veto
this?

MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN: I can't explain the President. The President
doesn't understand what he's talking about. These are hollow words. He
talks about government-funded care. He doesn't understand that the CHIP
program and Medicaid program for children are already being delivered
by a variety of private HMOs and others, and that choice will continue.
When he talks about government-run healthcare, that's not got anything
to do with this bill. We know that the way in which CHIP and Medicaid
have been run are far more efficient than the private industry system
of healthcare. They don't have these big middleman costs. And so,
nothing is going to change in the delivery of health services for
children under CHIP or Medicaid, so it's a bogeyman. And either he’s
just spouting hollow words, or he fundamentally does not understand
about the cost and the efficiency of these programs, which have worked
and saved money.

He made a comment a few weeks ago about -- just everybody can get
healthcare; just take them to the emergency room. Well, you can go to
the emergency room, but that means you're going to spend thousands and
thousands more taxpayer dollars to have people go to an emergency room,
when we could have prevented that through primary care. Asthma treated
in his state of Texas in a doctor’s office will cost about, you know,
$111. That same asthma, if it gets more serious and the parents have to
take their children to the emergency room, is going to cost about
$11,000. He is uninformed, and I don't know why when the American
people really do get it, overwhelmingly want all American children to
be covered, you know, why he continues to misstate things, argue for
tax credits, which are inefficient, won’t make healthcare affordable.

But we just have to remember that this is the man who told us that the
mission was accomplished. He got us into a war on a false basis of
weapons of mass destruction. He promised Katrina's children that he
would respond to them. He promised he was going to be the education
president and then squandered taxpayer money on tax cuts for
millionaires and to leave no child behind and then squandered taxpayer
money on tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires and under-funded
education. So I think, you know, he's setting up these ideological
bogeymen, and it's just something that we should not find believable,
and I hope the Congress will not pay attention, they will do what they
should do for children and let the President do what they do and then
override him if he continues to leave millions of children behind
without healthcare on no basis at all.

AMY GOODMAN: Marian Wright Edelman, who is President Bush listening to?
Who are the forces arrayed against children, poor children, getting
health insurance and the increase on the cigarette tax?

MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN: Well, that’s a good question. I think it must be
the insurance industry that wants to protect their profits, because he
certainly is not listening to the American people, who -- you know, 90%
of whom want to have healthcare for all children and provide
comprehensive healthcare.

He certainly isn't listening to his own state, that has -- when he was
governor, was the last state to implement the CHIP program. And we have
just gotten bipartisan support to restore over 200,000 children that
Texas had cut. But with Republican leadership, we were able to restore
127,000 children and to simplify the access to care, after we lost a
child to cancer who should have been treated by Medicaid and the
barriers that we're trying to correct in the new legislation for CHIP
just kept that child from getting served. There are a million uninsured
children in Texas, but he's not even listening to his own home state
that desperately needs healthcare for its children, the highest number
of uninsured children of any state.

So -- and he must be listening to himself or his close advisers who do
not understand or have compassion for the children of this nation and
do not understand the cost effectiveness of investing in children
preventively and seeing that they get what they need before they drop
out of school. A child who can't see the blackboard, can't hear the
teacher is not going to learn. He doesn’t seem able to make the
connection between good healthcare and doing well in school, though he
says he favors education.

In our efforts over the past months to build support for what is an
obvious no-brainer to make sure that every child gets preventive
healthcare, we have been able to put together the support of over 1,200
national, state and local organizations, representing over 100 million
people, the mayors, the educators of all kinds, child and family
advocates. Mr. Bush does not seem to hear or to know what is going on,
but somebody needs to teach him, and I hope that the Congress will hear
and act to cover all children and at least keep their commitment to
provide at least $50 billion from the excess profits of insurance
companies and from tobacco, which kills.

AMY GOODMAN: Marian Wright Edelman, I’m looking at a piece from the
Congressional Quarterly, "Kids’ Health Gets Political," written by
Rebecca Adams. And it says, “On June 27, President Bush summoned six
health care experts reflecting conservative and liberal views to the
Oval Office to discuss a popular program that provides health coverage
to children from poor families and to think out loud about how to cover
more uninsured people.

“Conservatives have long been uncomfortable with the way the initiative
called the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP puts the
government on the hook for billions of dollars of health care spending,
though they have been careful not to criticize its intent. The
discomfort has become especially acute since Democrats took control of
Congress and proposed an ambitious expansion calling for as much as $50
billion more spending to cover more kids.”

Then it goes on to say, “For more than an hour, four think tank
analysts who were among the visitors said, the president — flanked by
his top political adviser, Karl Rove, Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten,
Health and Human Services Secretary Michael O. Leavitt and other aides
— quizzed them about how the program could be paired with efforts to
provide tax breaks for Americans who buy private medical insurance
coverage. The line of questioning reflected Bush’s belief that the
market is better equipped than the government to address the needs of
uninsured families. The experts and the president engaged in civil
back-and-forth, gently parsing the merits of deductions, tax credits
and mandates to buy coverage. One visitor, lobbyist and former
Democratic Sen. John B. Breaux of Louisiana, offered tips on how to
frame political arguments on health care.

“The gathering might have been the last high-level consultation on
health care between the White House and Democrats for some time.

“Immediately afterward, Bush gave a previously scheduled health care
speech during which he depicted the future of children’s health
coverage in starkly partisan terms: as a choice between government-run
health care and a market-driven system that empowers consumers.”

MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN: You know, nonsense. And we should not and the
President should not be playing politics or partisan politics with the
lives of children who are dying from tooth abscesses, who are dying
from things that they should never, never have to die for in the
richest nation on earth. You know, if we had such a wonderful
private-market health system, why in the world are there forty-six
million uninsured Americans? Why are there nine million uninsured
children? You know, the system is broken! And we've got to change it.

And the kinds of things that the bipartisan support for the State
Children’s Health Insurance Program has in the Finance Committee, and I
hope he will talk to the Republicans who have worked hard to work with
the Democratic leadership of the Finance Committee to put together a
very modest, sensible step forward. He should listen to them. But he's
simply playing an ideological game that has no relationship to the
pressing needs of American families, the children who are dying and
suffering all over this country, the Katrina children who have been
left out there to dry without mental health and health coverage,
without comprehensive benefits two years after the storm.

You know, shame on this president, who is talking slogans without going
out and listening to the cries of children and parents and of members
of his own party from his own state. I mean, he needs to get out of his
bubble, and he needs to get out and reflect. What every American knows
is that no child should be allowed to go without the basic human right
of healthcare in the richest nation on earth.

And I hope that the Congress on both sides of the aisle will stand up
and do what is right and sensible and cost-effective and what the
American people want and let the President be left out there to be
told, and then I hope he will override the veto, and we can continue to
see how he continues to misserve the children of this country, to use
our trademark slogan, “Leave no child behind,” while leaving millions
of Katrina's children behind, while leaving millions of children
without the mental healthcare that they need and leaving millions of
children in this country without fundamental healthcare, which they
would get if they lived in any other major industrialized nation. So I
just hope that the President will not be allowed to prevail and that
the Congress will stand up and do what is right and that the American
people will really let their congressmen know that this is the time in
the richest nation on earth to catch up with the rest of the decent
industrialized world and cover all of its children.

This president is not believable, and he is out of touch. And children
need healthcare, and every parent knows that. And this is the time, and
this is the year, and this is the means to do it.

AMY GOODMAN: You, in 2000, the Children's Defense Fund, your motto has
always been “Leave no child behind.” The Republicans adopted it for
their convention. Explain what ensued. You were going to sue them?

MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN: We were going to sue them. We couldn't find the
-- this is our trademarked mission statement, and we believe it. And we
believe that the richest nation on earth should not leave thirteen
million children behind in poverty and nine million children behind
without healthcare. 80% of our black and Latino children are unable to
read and write in fourth grade; 60% of our white children are unable to
read. And we believe that this is something that is going to be an
Achilles’ heel of this nation. But the President of the United States
simply appropriated -- in our view, illegally -- our trademarked slogan
and then proceeded to use it as a fig leaf to hide policies that gave
massive tax cuts to the rich at the expense of the poor, to widen the
gap between rich and poor, to say he was going to do education while he
put far more money into people who did not need it. And they refused to
cease and desist.

We did try to get a lawyer for the first year to take this case against
the President -- it was a case of first impression -- but we couldn’t
get anybody who would touch this political hot ball, and eventually
did, but decided that we didn't want to spend all of our time on trial
or sitting up in courts and being deposed and that we would simply turn
our attention to trying to show the hypocrisy in this statement between
what he said and his administration did. And those of us who are
concerned now, after years, looking at the words on the war and the
facts on the war, who looked at the words about helping the poor and
the ways in which the rich have been helped overwhelmingly at the
expense of the poor over the last six years, can see that this is not
an administration that cares for its people, that is really going to go
about providing a level playing field for its children. And with the
poverty, I think that the Katrina with the poverty of Katrina's
children before and the absolutely scandalous neglect and abandonment
of those Katrina children, all of this time after their storms, this
president has not acted.

And so, I just hope that we will hold him accountable for, in fact,
leaving no child behind, and I hope that the Congress will begin to get
its ball bearings back again and respond to the American people and try
to make sure that children do not suffer or are not the political
fodder in an election year and that they will do what is right and
sensible for all of its children and that we will get back as a nation
to trying to give real meaning to “Leave no child behind,” because that
is about the future and that is about the very core of American
democracy. Can we stand up for children? If we can't stand up for
children and for children's health, we don't stand for anything in this
nation.

AMY GOODMAN: Marian Wright Edelman, we have to break, but I’d like to
come back to you, president and founder of the Children’s Defense Fund.
We'll be right back with her in a minute.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: Our guest is Marian Wright Edelman, president and founder
of the Children's Defense Fund. We're talking about children's health
insurance. We're talking about children's welfare, in general.

Marian Wright Edelman, when you talk about federal spending on
healthcare, of course, we have to also talk about how much funding goes
to the Iraq war. I wanted to get your reaction to last night's
Democratic debate that was hosted by CNN and the website YouTube. The
war in Iraq was obviously a major topic with a number of viewers asking
how and by when candidates would withdraw US troops from Iraq. This is
what Senator Barack Obama had to say.

      SEN. BARACK OBAMA: The time for us to ask how we were going to
get out of Iraq was before we went in, and that is something that too
many of us failed to do. We failed to do it. And I do think that that
is something that both Republicans and Democrats have to take
responsibility for. When I am President of the United States, when I
send our troops into battle, I’m going to make absolutely sure that
it's based on sound intelligence, and I’m going to tell the truth to
the American people, as well as the families who are being asked to
sacrifice.

AMY GOODMAN: Congressmember Dennis Kucinich criticized some fellow
Democrats for initially supporting the war and continuing to vote to
fund it. Senators Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden rejected a full
withdrawal, saying thousands of troops will be needed to stay behind.
Biden criticized New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson's call for a full
troop withdrawal within six months.

      SEN. JOE BIDEN: There is not a single military man in this
audience who will tell this senator he can get those troops out in six
months if the order goes today. Let's start telling the truth. Number
one, you take all the troops out, you better have helicopters ready to
take those 3,000 civilians inside the Green Zone, where I’ve been seven
times and shot at. You better make sure you have protection for them or
let them die. Number one. So you can't leave them there, and it's going
to take a minimum of 5,000 troops to 10,000 just to protect our
civilians. So while you're taking them out, Governor, take everybody
out. That may be necessary.

      Number three, the idea that we all voted, except for me, for that
appropriation, that man's son is dead. For all I know, it was an IED.
70% of all the deaths occurred have been those roadside bombs. We have
money in that bill to begin to build and send immediately
mine-resistant vehicles that increase by 80% the likelihood none of
your cadets will die, General, and they all voted against it. How, in
good conscience, can you vote not to send those vehicles over there, as
long as there's one single solitary troop there?

      ANDERSON COOPER: Senator Clinton?

      SEN. HILLARY CLINTON: Until we get this president and the
Pentagon to begin to at least tell us they are planning to withdraw, we
are not going to be able to turn this around. And so, with all due
respect to some of my friends here, yes, we want to begin moving the
troops out, but we want to do so safely and orderly and carefully. We
don't want more loss of American life and Iraqi life as we attempt to
withdraw, and it is time for us to admit that it's going to be
complicated, so let's start it now.

AMY GOODMAN: Hillary Rodham Clinton. Before that, Joe Biden. Marian
Wright Edelman is our guest, president and founder of the Children's
Defense Fund. Your response?

MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN: Oh, what an unbelievable squandering of life,
American life and Iraqi life, for -- on a false premise that war is a
solution to anything, but then the false premise that there were
weapons of mass destruction. What an unbelievable squandering of
resources, over $500 billion that could have been used to eliminate
poverty in this country, fund everybody with good health insurance,
educate our children. What misguided priorities! You know, we sent
thousands of young people from America and fathers and mothers into
harm's way without adequate armor -- if we were going to be there, but
we sent them in harm’s way to fight a war without the adequate armament
at the same time that we have left our children here terrorized by gun
violence and deprivation and abuse at home. You know, this is -- this
poses the most fundamental question about the values of this country,
the hypocrisy of our leaders, the lack of accountability of our leaders
by our citizens. We should get out of the war in Iraq as quickly as we
can.

How in the world do we put back together the huge bad will and
terrorism that this Pandora's box of this war that was falsely alleged
to be in response to terrorism and al-Qaeda? How do we put the
Pandora's box back together, and how do we begin to heal the incredible
wounds and ill will that it's conceived? But more importantly, how do
we begin to live our democracy at home? In the time that we have been
in Iraq, beginning in 2003 -- I just was talking about gun violence and
children yesterday -- we have lost in the most recent year 2,845
children in one year. That's more child gun deaths in the war zones of
our own nation than we lost in American battle casualties in Iraq and
Afghanistan between 2003 and 2006.

This war was wrong. I happen to believe that war is wrong. It has hurt
countless civilians, mothers and children and others. It has lost
families both here and in Iraq, but it has drained resources from our
children, from our poor, from our workers, from our schools. And it’s
time to stop.

AMY GOODMAN: Marian Wright Edelman, we just heard Hillary Rodham
Clinton. She used to be the head of the board of the Children's Defense
Fund, of the organization that you founded. But you were extremely
critical of the Clintons. I mean, when President Clinton signed off on
the, well, so-called welfare reform bill, you said, “His signature on
this pernicious bill makes a mockery of his pledge not to hurt
children.” So what are your hopes right now for these Democrats? And
what are your thoughts about Hillary Rodham Clinton?

MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN: Well, you know, Hillary Clinton is an old
friend, but they are not friends in politics. We have to build a
constituency, and you don’t -- and we profoundly disagreed with the
forms of the welfare reform bill, and we said so. We were for welfare
reform, I am for welfare reform, but we need good jobs, we need
adequate work incentives, we need minimum wage to be decent wage and
livable wage, we need healthcare, we need transportation, we need to
invest preventively in all of our children to prevent them ever having
to be on welfare.

And yet, you know, many years after that, when many people are
pronouncing welfare reform a great success, you know, we’ve got growing
child poverty, we have more children in poverty and in extreme poverty
over the last six years than we had earlier in the year. When an
economy is down, and the real test of welfare reform is what happens to
the poor when the economy is not booming. Well, the poor are suffering,
the gap between rich and poor widening. We have what I consider one of
-- a growing national catastrophe of what we call the cradle-to-prison
pipeline. A black boy today has a one-in-three chance of going to
prison in his lifetime, a black girl a one-in-seventeen chance. A
Latino boy who’s born in 2001 has a one-in-six chance of going to
prison. We are seeing more and more children go into our child welfare
systems, go dropping out of school, going into juvenile justice
detention facilities. Many children are sitting up -- 15,000, according
to a recent congressional GAO study -- are sitting up in juvenile
institutions solely because their parents could not get mental health
and healthcare in their community. This is an abomination.

And so, the plight of our children is very, very tenuous, and what
we've got to do is to put together -- and every Democratic candidate
and every Republican candidate, whatever their views on the political
spectrum, have got to come to a consensus that we are not going to let
children be neglected or abused every thirty-six seconds in this
country, be born into poverty every thirty-six seconds in this rich
nation. And we ought to make a commitment to ending child poverty.
Every single candidate should do that. We have got to see that we stop
the absolute scandal of a child being born without health insurance
every forty-seven seconds, 90% of whose parents live -- and working
parents, the majority of those children. There are all kinds of
children. They live in suburban and rural areas. They’re white, as well
as Latino and black. They’re all of our children.

We've got to stop the scandal of children being killed by guns, almost
eight every day. We have a chronic, silent Virginia Tech massacre every
four days among our children. And the candidates need to be forced to
address how they are going to deal with this extraordinary deprivation
of basic needs from our children and how do we come up with very
concrete commitments beginning this year, by saying we are going to get
healthcare for every child.

AMY GOODMAN: Marian Wright Edelman, the Democrats are in charge of
Congress, are in charge of the House, as well as the Senate. You've
also spoken very forcefully about the lack of support for the people
who suffered from Hurricane Katrina. The Democrats are in charge.
What's happening?

MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN: Well, the Democrats are in charge, but they
think they've got to get sixty votes in the Senate and they’ve got to
be able to override a veto in the House, but we have been pushing them
absolutely to do what is right for children. We have been a broken
record, saying “all children.” God didn't say “some” or “half.” We have
been pushing very hard for all nine million children to get health
coverage.

Who’s going to decide which child is going to live or die? How are we
going to stop this spectacle of children dying from toothaches and
tooth abscesses because of lack of dental care? How are we going to
stop children -- Katrina’s -- continuing to suffer and drop out of
school and be depressed because of the lack of mental healthcare?

And we want the Democrats to stand up and say all children are entitled
to healthcare. It’s cost-effective. We want them to say all children
are able to get comprehensive benefits right now. We have two classes
of benefits. The CHIP benefit package is not as strong as the Medicaid
benefit package. And we have been pushing the Democrats to make sure
that all children get the same. The American people support this, and
we have been pushing the Democrats, as well as Republicans, to say that
we’re going to make it simple.

AMY GOODMAN: But what would have to happen to do that? What would have
to happen to do expand that?

MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN: Well, the Medicaid children's program, EPSDT,
has a comprehensive benefit package. What would happen to do that --
have to happen is that when the House committee meets this week, and
Energy and Commerce, if they insist that that package of comprehensive
benefits for CHIP children be made the same, and they can do that. And
we hope that the House bill will contain that, so that you don't have
two children in the same family, as we have now in many states, of
different ages, one is eligible for comprehensive benefits, which
include mental health, and the other child of a different age has got a
very weak benefit without mental or dental health. They should assure
mental health and dental healthcare and all medically necessary
children services for all children. And that's something we're pushing
for.

And the third thing that we feel is so important is that we
automatically enroll children and get rid of all these bureaucratic
barriers through which five to six million current children, who are
currently eligible for Medicaid and CHIP, are not getting it, because
they've got fifty different state rules and barriers. Mississippi has
been throwing children off. Texas has been throwing children off. These
are American children. They’re children who live in America. Their fate
to live or die should not depend on the lottery of geography, and we've
been talking about the importance of a national safety net that would
automatically enroll children at the beginning of their lives or when
they start preschool or if they’re in any means-tested program, like
School Lunch or WIC or food stamps, automatically put them into
healthcare.

The valley that ought to be fostered by a decent child health system is
that we're trying to make it easy for parents to come and get
healthcare for their children, not as hard as we can get it. So these
basic reforms are things that we have put in our All Healthy Children's
Act as the standard against which any CHIP reauthorization ought to be
measured. We've costed it out. We can’t afford not to do it. We should
treat children fairly.

We should have a level child health playing field, and we have laid
this out in 1688, which is in the House, and in 1564, which is in the
Senate. And it lays out what would make a terrific next incremental
step in seeing that we have a decent, coherent, fair child health
system. And we’re trying to get as many of those included in any CHIP
reauthorization as we can, so we hope that the Democrats and the
Republicans this week, as they mark up this CHIP bill, will say all
children, or more of the children -- I don't want to see five million,
four million, three million children left behind. None of them would
leave their children behind for another two or three or five years. We
want to see that every child gets all the benefits they need. And we
want to make it simple and easy for parents.

And then we want to cover all pregnant women, because the infant
mortality rate is twenty-fourth in the world, and low birth rate rates
twenty-second in the world, are a disgrace. And this gets many children
off to the wrong start. But these should be no-brainers. And so, we
hope that the Democrats will stand up and do what is good policy for
children. And then we’ll deal with the President when we have to deal
with the President. And if he chooses to veto a bill to give children
dental care and mental healthcare and treat their asthma in a
cost-effective way, then I hope they will override that veto, because
he's not right and he's not protecting the interests of the American
people or our American children, and he's going against their will.

So this is the time to lead. And we look to all the candidates on both
sides, and we look to the Congress for moral leadership for children,
because if we can't lead for healthcare for children, what in the world
can we lead on? And so, I think this is a wonderful opportunity.

AMY GOODMAN: Marian Wright Edelman, I want to thank you very much for
being with us, president and founder of the Children's Defense Fund,
speaking to us from Washington, D.C. Back in a minute.

MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN: Thank you, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: Thank you.