Two attempts by the Democrat congress to expand government

Democrats’ S-CHIP begins the road to Socialized Medicine

Today the House of Representatives will vote to decide whether to reauthorize the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP). However, Democrats in Congress want to expand S-CHIP in grossly undesirable ways and incrementally push us toward socialized medicine. We must make sure our members of Congress understand what the proposed legislation does; unfortunately representatives don’t always read or understand laws they vote on.

Here are some facts:

This legislation will take away parental control of health care and will not reduce the number of uninsured.

This legislation would move thousands of children from private insurance to government-run health care (unnecessarily adding to tax payer expense), including children from households that can afford health insurance.

This legislation may allow states to cover low-income children who already qualify for coverage through other programs; and high-income children in families making as much as $84,000/year (roughly 4 x the ‘poverty level’).

Under this legislation, thousands of low-income children’s families would be considered rich on tax day – and be subject to the Alternative Minimum Tax – but poor when it comes time to qualifying for welfare benefits.

This legislation defines “children” as persons “up to age 25” (are 25 year-olds ‘children’?).

Under this legislation illegal immigrants would be covered for health insurance; no citizenship check is required.

Although President Bush has allowed for states to provide protections to unborn children, the next president may decide to remove these protections. The current legislation would not codify the existing protections for the unborn into law.

Congress should focus on uninsured children in low-income families as the present S-CHIP law does. The new extension of S-CHIP being voted upon should not replace private health insurance. It may be that the government should provide tax relief to parents to enable them to buy health insurance for their children but Congress should not expand and change the current law which should be renewed ‘as is’ and without adding more incremental changes toward socialized medicine.

How you can help -

you can make a difference: discuss these facts with your friends, neighbors and elected representatives, and send a letter to your local newspaper.

Another proposed law to take our rights away

Also this week, the House Natural Resources committee will vote on a huge National Heritage Areas land grab bill that would empower and enrich anti-property rights special interest groups. Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) plans to introduce the "Celebrating America's Heritage Act" which would create six new National Heritage Areas.

The special interest groups lobbying for this bill already received a one million dollar earmark to lobby for this land grab project. Now they will get another $15 million should this bill pass; money that can be used to further lobby for property rights restrictions.

Should Grijalva's bill become law (and it will be approved by the Democrat-dominated committee), anti-property rights interest groups and the National Park Service will have the power to force land use restrictions property owners across the nation. National Heritage Areas are preservation zones run by the National Park Service in "public/private" partnerships with environmental special interest groups. The groups get millions of tax dollars for the sole purpose of lobbying local governments to strip landowners of their property rights.

As Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) explains about Heritage Areas:

“Once] a federal line is drawn around property for a heritage area, the door for annual federal earmarks and grants are opened...When the federal government draws a federal line around private property, negative impacts on the private property owner will always result."

It’s amazing how vigilant the public needs to be at all times to prevent big government legislators from getting further into our lives; and proponents of this expansionism are devious enough to cloak proposed laws with innocuous sounding names.