Jim Hightower Channels John Edwards (sorta)

This video is priceless.

It's always impressive to see a politician take an unbending stand on principle, so I salute George W for going against popular opinion by vetoing the SCHIP bill, which would have extended health coverage to some six million uninsured children in our country.

Bush said that what irked him about this children's health proposal is the principle of providing government-financed, coverage which he derided as "federalized" medicine. George, you see, is a die hard privatization ideologue, and he insists that people should get their health care from the free market, not the government. The vast majority of his Republican colleagues in Congress agreed, voting to uphold his veto of the children's bill.

This news prompted Alan, one of our stalwart [listeners] [readers] in Fort Collins, Colorado, to suggest a national campaign in support of this principled stand that the Republicans in Washington have taken. Since Bush and his GOP allies don't believe in federalized medicine, Alan says it is our duty to free them of the burden of having their own health coverage paid for by us taxpayers! As a matter of principle, we must take away their government health plans and let them buy their own in the free market.

This idea offers two pluses: one, taxpayers will no longer have to pay benefits to politicians who are ideologically opposed to them, and, two, the money saved can be redirected to the millions of American children without health coverage.

Edwards has said that in the first 6 months of his first term if Congress did not pass a UHC bill, he would invoke the 27th amendment and that no one in Congress, the WH, or the Executive Building would have those privileges.

Maybe JRE could take a tip from Alan and Jim in the way of rephrasing this concept, such as "if Congress doesn't pass a UHC the first 6 months in office, they should resign their health care privileges or else I will take them away from them."

That would get the attention of the crossovers.