Re: Preview of the bull*** you'll hear from the Republican liars

I guess that means you do not understand the game of politics as it is played here in the United States.

"Kickin' Ass and Takin' Names" <PopUlist349@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:1186599892.337183.220820@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Attack Ads You'll Be Seeing

By Ruth Marcus
Wednesday, August 8, 2007; A15



Here's an emerging line of attack you can expect to hear more of in
the 2008 congressional campaigns -- especially if you live near a
vulnerable Democratic incumbent: Democrats vote to give welfare
benefits to illegal aliens.

Or, even better: Democrats vote to take benefits away from deserving
senior citizens to pay for welfare for illegal aliens.

Ugly? Absolutely. Devastating? So Republicans hope. True? No.

Bashing Democrats on immigration -- accusing them of doing everything
but carrying illegals' luggage across the border -- is a GOP mainstay.
But the accusations that Republicans started to peddle last week
reached a new low in dishonest nativism.

The first salvo involved the House version of the measure to extend
the children's health insurance plan, SCHIP.

"What we do is take, at the cost of seniors who get . . . choices of
their own health-care plans, we take it away," former speaker Dennis
Hastert (R-Ill.) claimed during the House debate. "We wipe it out, and
we give it to people who are illegal aliens."

"That bill, if it becomes law, would take $197 billion out of the
Medicare trust fund, from our seniors, to give to illegal aliens,"
charged Rep. Ron Lewis (R-Ky.).

Leave aside the inflated numbers. Leave aside the scare talk about
"our seniors." (AARP, the seniors' lobby, supports the bill.)

The provision at issue would repeal a 2006 requirement that everyone
applying for Medicaid provide proof of citizenship -- passports or
original birth certificates. That might sound sensible, but it has
been a cumbersome, expensive solution to a non-problem.

In 2005, when he was overseeing the Medicaid program for the Bush
administration, Mark McClellan noted that an inspector general's
investigation did "not find particular problems regarding false
allegations of citizenship, nor are we aware of any."

Because many Medicaid applicants don't have such papers easily at hand
-- they're not the passport-carrying types -- the requirement has
resulted in tens of thousands of eligible children being denied
coverage or kicked off the rolls and has cost states millions of
dollars to administer.

In Virginia, for instance, during the first nine months of
implementation, the state's Medicaid rolls fell by 11,000 children --
even as the number of children enrolled in SCHIP, the parallel program
for children in families earning slightly more, continued to rise. The
impact wasn't on Hispanic children, whose families tend to have
documents available and whose enrollment numbers continued to
increase, but on white and African American children.

The House provision makes the documentation requirement optional for
states, which, after all, have an interest in seeing that their
Medicaid dollars are spent properly. Adults on Medicaid would still
have to prove citizenship, swear that their children are citizens and
provide their children's Social Security numbers. And states would
have to conduct annual audits to ensure that no illegal immigrants are
being covered.

Opponents point to Congressional Budget Office estimates that lifting
the documentation requirement would raise costs $2 billion over 10
years. But, CBO Director Peter Orszag told me, that's almost entirely
because it would increase enrollment of eligible children.

Not that those inconvenient details matter much. "Target Dems Go the
Extra Mile for Illegal Immigrants," crowed the House Republicans'
campaign arm. It sent out individualized releases accusing vulnerable
Democrats of voting "to give illegal immigrants government healthcare
benefits." You can see the 30-second ads coming.

But the debate over the health insurance bill looked tame next to the
howls of outrage over a later vote on a proposal to change the
agriculture spending bill to bar funds from being spent on illegal
immigrants -- specifically, for housing benefits or in hiring. That
is, of course, prohibited under existing law, as California Republican
Jerry Lewis acknowledged in making the motion.

Republicans had a legitimate beef with the way the vote was hustled to
a premature close, giving Democrats a victory that might not have been
theirs. But at a news conference the next day, Republicans took pains
to emphasize that this was not simply about procedural mistreatment.

"The radical leadership of the Democrat Party reversed that vote in
order to again give more government benefits to illegal immigrants,"
said Jeb Hensarling of Texas, who chairs the conservative Republican
Study Committee.

To the Democratic leadership, said Tennessee Republican Marsha
Blackburn, "it is more important to let illegal immigrants be paid,
fed and sheltered with U.S. taxpayer dollars than it is to let the
voice of the American people be heard."

Paid, fed and sheltered? Federal law already prohibits this. But this
debate isn't really about making good use of federal funds. It's about
using immigration as a weapon against at-risk Democrats -- and
assuming voters won't bother to learn the truth.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/07/AR2007080701287_pf.html


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