AUSTIN
(By
Clay Robinson, Houston
Chronicle)
July 12, 2007
—
In the words of
Democratic political consultant Kelly Fero, the 1.4 million Texas
children without health insurance are "the gift that keeps on giving."
Fero wasn't talking, of course, about the personal
suffering that many of the kids endure or the huge economic and social
losses they pose, both now and for the future.
He was talking about the politics of health care, and
how Texas Democrats have increasingly been putting Texas Republicans on
the defensive since state GOP leaders orchestrated deep cuts in the
Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) to avoid raising state taxes
four years ago.
The cuts were believed to be a factor in the unseating
of several incumbent legislators — mostly Republicans but also a couple
of conservative Democrats — during the 2004 and 2006 elections.
Some cuts restored
The bleeding was enough to prompt Speaker Tom Craddick
and other Republican lawmakers to support legislation last spring
restoring some of the reductions in the CHIP program, which insures
children of working parents who earn too much to qualify for Medicaid
but can't afford to buy their own health coverage.
But, with Texas' rate of uninsured children still the
highest in the country, Democrats promise to hammer away at more
Republican state legislators next year.
They also will use the health care issue — most likely
in a double-barreled assault — to try to unseat U.S. Sen. John Cornyn.
Just before the congressional summer recess, Cornyn
voted against the Senate's approval of a bill to increase federal
funding for CHIP by $35 billion over the next five years. U.S. Sen. Kay
Bailey Hutchison voted for it.
Cornyn voted for an $11 billion increase, which
failed, and his aides said that measure would have provided a greater
potential benefit to Texas because it would have saved the state several
hundred million dollars in already approved, but unspent federal funds.
Cornyn vulnerable
The question of future federal funding may be largely
academic unless Texas takes additional steps of its own to improve CHIP
coverage. But the issue nevertheless is sparking political debate.
Lawyer Mikal Watts of San Antonio and state Rep. Rick
Noriega, D-Houston, who are campaigning for the Democratic nomination
against Cornyn, have sharply criticized the senator's vote.
Cornyn has an additional vulnerability on children's
health care, Democrats believe, because, as state attorney general, he
tried to undo an agreement to improve Medicaid health services for
thousands of Texas' poorest children.
That agreement, signed by Cornyn's Democratic
predecessor, Dan Morales, in 1996, was finally funded with $700 million
this year after the U.S. Supreme Court, for the final time, refused to
let Texas back out of it.
Several other factors also will help decide the Senate
race, including Cornyn's strong (until recently, anyway) loyalty to
President Bush, whose popularity, even in his home state, has suffered
from the prolonged Iraq war.
And there is immigration, one of the few issues over
which Cornyn has parted company with the president.
But, if Democrats have their way, health care will
resonate.
No big supporter
President Bush's hard-line stance against additional
federal funding for CHIP is a reminder that, even as governor, he wasn't
a big fan of the health insurance program.
Bush wants to limit the increase in federal funding to
$5 billion over the next five years, which advocates say wouldn't even
allow states to continue funding their current caseloads.
As governor in 1999, Bush tried to restrict CHIP
eligibility in Texas to children from families earning up to 150 percent
of the poverty level.
But the Legislature, dominated by Democrats, enacted a
law, which Bush signed, covering kids up to 200 percent of poverty, or
about $40,000 a year for a family of four.
The difference was about a quarter of a million
children.
Then-Rep. Glen Maxey, an Austin Democrat, recounted
the experience in an op-ed article for the Houston Chronicle in 2000,
when Bush was running for president as a "compassionate conservative."
Maxey recalled
Bush telling him after the legislative victory: "Glen, congratulations
on the Children's Health Insurance Program. You crammed it down our
throats."
