I love Jon, but doesn't it seem a little odd to raise money from a tax that hits the poor, send the money to Washington, then have Washington send a percentage of that money back to the states with strings attached?

And if the goal is to stop people from smoking, why are we tying children's health care to a tax stream that requires people to keep smoking?

Perhaps I am missing something here.

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I thought John Oliver's "Oliver Twist" take on this issue to be perfectly parallel to what Charles Dickens went through when he wrote stories highlighting the terror and despair of child labour in 19th Century England. At the time, Charles Dickens was called, by business and government, a liberal. The word didn't have the stigma it has gained in the US since Karl Rove, but it was an attack on Dickens. A way to label him as a bleeding heart and not to be taken seriously.

Over a hundred years later, and "big business" still maintains the status quo. Dead children are an externality in their economics.

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to take responsibility for their own health. Well, I hope they don't have to work 40 hours a week on top of kindergarten classes everyday. That would leave no play time and we know kids need at least an hour a day. Then again they could get up an hour earlier.

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The Dickens bit was funny, well done, and spot-on.

Even so, I think this whole argument is lame, since it's only about children. Don't adults need health care?

It looks and smells like an attempt by Democrats to avoid substantive changes to business as usual, while appearing to be helping children, providing health care "reform", and painting the Republicans as cold and heartless.

And I really hate it when parents' parade their kids with signs to support their causes, as if a kid that age really understands or cares about the politics. Put their sad little faces up to the camera so we can guilt our policies through the system. Sounds like something "pro-life" fanatics or Karl Rove would cook up.

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For Bush and other members of the Republican party, any plan that smacks of socialism is bad. The ones with the loudest objections either have high salaries to pay for first-rate plans or are government employees. According to these hypocrites, you can’t have a government-run or sponsored health plan in America. Socialized medicine is equated with communism and considered un-American. Yet our President and all government workers, are using this “socialist” health care plan which is denied to the rest of the people. This is never brought up or questioned by the media. Instead, to distract us from the real issues, all we hear are stupid arguments about how to find the money to pay for it. There’s plenty of money to expand or build new military bases, money for thousands missiles which can cost up to 6 million a piece, for tax-cuts for the rich; suddenly a relatively small chunk of change becomes scarce for our nation’s poor. It’s obvious where the priorities are and always have been. But in the long term, by neglecting the health of its citizens, Americans will end up paying a much higher price.

Robert Lightfoot

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Aw, are you trying to put the poor Insurance companies, and poor Drug companies, OUT OF BUSINESS! What are you, some kind of communist?

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Families with incomes of up to $80,000 annually will qualify under this SCHIP plan. Think it was only for poor kids? No no no. People that can afford their own health plan will drop that and go with the tax payer paid plan. But Bush is so evil to veto it, ha!

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