S-CHIP: What Republicans Should Do

As a fiscal conservative, watching the S-CHIP fiasco unfold is infuriating - Michelle is blogging it - particularly when the answer is so obvious, assuming the current crop of Republicans were genuinely committed to fiscal responsibility.

You locate one or two representative working class families with children and parents who provide for them, including their health care, through consistent employment and smart choices. You simply have the child make the case that the family doesn't begrudge helping genuinely disadvantaged families, but little Timmy, or Sally, or whatever, can't understand why their Mommy and Daddy has to give up some of their hard-earned money to subsidize health care for families that, in some cases, make even more money than they do. You fight fire with fire.

At least that's what you would do if you had any fire in you. The current crop of Republicans on Capitol Hill look like idiots. Their messaging is bad, their outreach and co-ordination is bad. Maybe the bulk of them are just bad.

I'm sick of watching it, especially when there are probably a thousand twenty-something year-olds on Madison Avenue who could do a better job. If this is the best effort that the Republicans have, they should pack it in and stay home in 2008. Because at the rate we're going, many of their voters will. If the representation fiscal conservatives vote for won't show up when it counts, why should we? Get in the game, Republicans.

Follow developments here.

Comments

[maninthemiddle]

You make a highly important point.
I have been amazed at the inept public relations and marketing of both the administration and the RNC.

They have a higher hill to climb with a generally unreceptive media, but miss opportunity after opportunity.

They seem to feel that positions stand or fall purely on their merit, and are above the marketing fray. We have yet to reach that Olympian plain, and that had best soon be recognized.

The cleansing might need to start with those responsible.

[seekeronos]

The original S-CHIP was one thing, but the GOP better realize that the expansion of it is nothing more than a step down the slippery slope to single-payer socialist style Gub'mint Halpth-Kare.

[IslamoLlama]

"You simply have the child make the case that the family doesn't begrudge helping genuinely disadvantaged families, but little Timmy, or Sally, or whatever, can't understand why their Mommy and Daddy has to give up some of their hard-earned money to subsidize health care for families that, in some cases, make even more money than they do. You fight fire with fire."

That would be the logical move except, and here's the devil of the details, those people are damn hard to find. Get a working father of four making $45k/year who can afford providing his family with full coverage insurance and actually pays enough taxes to begrudge the difference that SCHIP will cost him?

You might as well hunt down the guy living below the poverty line who is so eternally grateful for the Bush tax cuts.

Here, at least, you could enter into a civilized debate and start asking the serious questions about if and how means testing should be implemented, what qualifies as "poor", and who should benefit from government sponsored subsidies and programs. But, again, the devil is that Republicans don't really like SCHIP. They just prefer SCHIP to Democratically proposed Universal Healthcare. SCHIP was a compromise under Clinton after the failed Hillarycare plan. But Republicans didn't suddenly discover compassion for the impoverished. They just had to come up with an alternative to "nothing".

SCHIP was great middle ground. The Republicans have chosen to cede the middle ground. If they really want to recover from this debacle, they'll have to stake out some turf they can actually share with more than 24% of the public who still support Bush.

[waka waka]

Congratulations, party of Scrooge. The House came up 13 votes short to override Mr. Compassionate Conservative's veto.

[scarshapedstar]

Okay, that's a great idea and all, but you're basically shouting "Fuck you, and I hope your kids die" in the faces of the 47 million Americans without health insurance, and I doubt you'll win over the Americans with really shitty health insurance (i.e., the other 250 million) that requires pre-approval of emergency ambulance rides or doesn't consider cancer to be "life-threatening" or any of the other Best Healthcare In The World (tm) antics that millions of us saw in SiCKO.

[seekeronos]

"--- The House came up 13 votes short to override Mr. Compassionate Conservative's veto. ---"

W00t! High fives all around.

...

...

"--- SCHIP was great middle ground. The Republicans have chosen to cede the middle ground. If they really want to recover from this debacle, they'll have to stake out some turf they can actually share with more than 24% of the public who still support Bush. ---"

Well, IslamOsamaRama... it's like this:

Bush said in a presser yesterday that if the DemCong would actually pass a bill for keeping S-CHIP that was worth more than being used for bird cage liner or fish wrapping... he'd play ball with it.

The original budget worked just fine, and even kept lazy bums like Graeme Frost's parents from having to lay their financial plans with some actual thought for their kids, rather than futzing around like overgrown kids with their hobbies playing at work.

But don't cry into your $6 latte just yet; maybe your Hitlary will have her socialist way and her Looneyversial Hillary's Gub'Mint HalpKare after all.

[IslamoLlama]

"Bush said in a presser yesterday that if the DemCong would actually pass a bill for keeping S-CHIP that was worth more than being used for bird cage liner or fish wrapping... he'd play ball with it."

This was the proposal to actually defund SCHIP down to $5 billion, right? You realize that the bill's got bipartisan support specifically because even Senators like Orrin Hatch were voting for it, right? The bill had about as much across-the-aisle support as you could ask for.

The "original budget" ends up scrapping thousands of kids off the rolls. Florida, for instance, ends up cutting several hundred thousand kids off the CHIP rolls if the current budget stays in effect. And the program was ridiculously popular, especially down here in Texas where people turned out in waves to petition their local Congressmen to support it.

This failed override vote will haunt the GOP well passed November. You've basically ceded any vestige of sanity on the US healthcare crisis. Dems are now the official health care party. Guess who the soccer moms and NASCAR dads will be voting for?

[Lala]

Why is Gov. Spitzer pushing schip to be 4 times the poverty level? Here's why I'll be paying 1,000 dollars a month to insure my 23 year old. If NY would allow insurance companies to compete and if they'd drop mandatory coverage of some items I'd be paying more like 2 or 3 hundred. Also, all you taxpayers will be paying for NY to waste money, Medicaid, for one, is rife with fraud.

http://www.bcnys.org/connect/2007/Feb-HealthCare.pdf

How Albany Drives
The Cost Higher
Hidden within the more than $128 billion
New Yorkers spend on health care each year
are billions of dollars of taxes and other costs
imposed by state leaders in Albany.
For instance, employers and individuals
who purchase health insurance pay $2.5 billion
in annual taxes to support graduate
medical education, hospitals’ charity care and
other programs. Charges for graduate medical
education alone add $458 to the annual
cost of a family health policy in New York
City, and $219 in Rochester — making coverage
even harder for employers to afford.
Until recently, the $2.5 billion in healthcare
taxes represented the state’s largest single
business tax (the corporate income tax
now generates more revenue). The taxes are
imposed under the state’s Health Care
Reform Act, which expires on June 30, 2007,
unless Governor Spitzer and the Legislature
renew it.
All New York taxpayers contribute to the
overall cost of health care in an even more significant
way, through tax dollars that support
the state’s huge Medicaid program. Medicaid
represented 32 percent of all personal healthcare
spending in the state in 2004, compared
to a nationwide average of 17 percent. In his
health-care address, Governor Spitzer pointed
out that New York spends more than twice the
per-capita national average on Medicaid,
$2,215 for every state resident.
Historically, state leaders have justified a
sprawling Medicaid program — and related
initiatives such as Family Health Plus — as
an effort to help New Yorkers who otherwise
would go without proper health care. But
there’s good reason to conclude that, by driving
up the cost of health insurance, Albany’s
laws and taxes drive down the number of
families and individuals with privately paid
coverage. Less than 54 percent of personal
health-care spending in the Empire State is
privately paid (through private insurance or
out-of-pocket). Nationwide, that figure is
nearly 62 percent; in other northern states
such as New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois and
Michigan, it’s even higher.
States such as Massachusetts and California
are moving toward requiring almost all residents
to obtain health insurance. Public policy
in New York takes the opposite approach —
encouraging healthy individuals to go without
coverage until illness or injury forces
them to obtain it. In the early 1990s,
Governor Cuomo and the Legislature adopted
policies known as community rating and
guaranteed issue. The latter policy requires
insurers to provide new coverage to uninsured
individuals virtually on demand, and
limits the price differentials insurers can
charge regardless of how much they expect
to pay out in claims for a policy holder with
an illness or injury. As a result, premiums for
healthy (especially young) New Yorkers are
higher than they could be — thus discouraging
those individuals from paying into
health-insurance pools at all.
What To Do About
Those High

[Lala]

http://www.nysun.com/article/58120

Alicia Colon in the NY Sun

Dr. Gratzer asked me, "Why do homeowners carry insurance? Why do we insure our cars?" I answered, in case of an accident or disaster. Health insurance, he said, isn't like that. It covers everything, and that's the problem, but it can be fixed.

Dr. Gratzer says that our health system is mired in a World War II economic model that can only increase the government's role, but if we unleash the market forces that have transformed so much of our economy, American health care will be cheaper, better, and more accessible for everyone. Mini-clinics like the one in my CVS pharmacy on Hylan Boulevard are a great concept where patients can walk in and get treated by licensed physician's assistants for minor ailments.

So why, I inquired, can't we just have hospital and emergency coverage? Good question, I was told. Dr. Gratzer referred me to www.ehealthinsurance.com, where I learned that my state doesn't allow me that choice. At home I entered my uninsured 25-year-old's particulars along with our ZIP code into a dialogue box. Several different insurance plans popped up with prices ranging from $275 to $779 a month. I then re-entered a Connecticut ZIP code and the plans I saw ranged from $69 to $325. Now how is it that New Yorkers don't have a choice in the various plans offered by insurance companies?

[BARRASSO]

Lazy bums who own a small business should all die, if only the poor weren't allowed to breed this wouldn't happen. If bush would just get on board the birth control gravy train we could eliminate all this breeding by the lower classes!

[IslamoLlama]

That's a great argument against the way New York City handles its taxes, but what does it have to do with people living in Baltimore or Houston? If this was a blog about NY State politics, you might have something to talk about. But like Lala pointed out, Connecticut doesn't have the price problems that New York has, and yet we still see people in Connecticut enrolled in CHIP. Explain.

[Lala]

Their are poor people in CT?

NY wants schip to cover 4 times the poverty rate, CT doesn't?

NY wants to cover adults?

NY isn't going to pay for this expansion?

[Lala]

correction

There are poor people in CT?

[bobInStamford]

A client just called me regarding his oil futures position. November crude is now trading at $89.50/barrel. I repeat - $89.50. The cowardly male cheerleader promised 'victory', 'wmd's' and 'liberation'. Instead, we have $500 Billion quagmire and $90 crude. Meanwhile, the 'troop-supporters' attack a 12 year old brain-damaged boy and his family about their eligibility for medical coverage. The heros have HUNDREDS of billions for a failed war (sorry Terry Gain but you lose yet again) but don't have $35 billion over 5 years for the children that the aforementioned cowardly male cheerleader needs to have healthy so that they can go to Iraq.

Thats why you mouth-breathers are getting your clocks cleaned.

Amen, Semper Fi and SURGE ON!!!

[IslamoLlama]

"November crude is now trading at $89.50/barrel. I repeat - $89.50."

And yet prices are lower today than they were six months ago, by about $.50 where I live. There was never a crude oil shortage, just a supply shortage generated by a lack of functional refineries. The shortage was compounded by Hurricane Katrina, which decimated supply routes through Louisiana.

Of course, if you want to know why no one is building any more refineries, you have to explore the concept of "peak oil", and recognize that - in a very subtle and money-whorish fashion - the oil companies are making us conserve whether we want to or not. Exxon doesn't vote Democrat or Republican, so they'll happily see Oil Man Bush in office now and Hillary/Obama/Edwards in power tomorrow, so long as everyone still fills up at the local gas station well into 2020.

But that really has nothing to do with SCHIP.

[Mike]

Harry Reid’s now infamous FREE SPEECH SUPRESSION LETTER is now at $851,000!!!

[templar knight]

Wow, a lesson on the petroleum industry from the likes of Boob and his evil twin Islamoboob. Hahaha, I laughed my ass off after reading the Islamoboob's little screed, as if he had a clue about why no refineries have been built in the US for over 20 years, not even including a number of refineries that were forced to close by draconian environmental laws and regulations passed by---liberals and their allies.

So you two clowns should just slink back to the swamps of the Left, and quit showing your ignorance, as it is akin to cottage cheese thighs on IslamoBoob's greasy girlfriend, or to the hairy backs of chris/Boob's boyfriends. Things that make you vomit. Blec!

[MM]

Indoctrinate U.

The Minnesota Association of Scholars and the Tocqueville Center on the University of Minnesota campus will sponsor the Midwest Premiere of Evan Coyne Maloney’s important new documentary about political correctness on college and university campuses, Indoctrinate U. [T]his 90-minute film has been receiving rave reviews since its World Premiere in Washington DC last month. We [at the Tocqueville Center] believe it’s powerful enough to help stem the PC tide that still threatens to engulf our campuses.

[IslamoLlama]

Temp, don't you live in Texas too? For christ's sake, you probably live within a dozen miles of a refinery. Did you not notice the BP explosion? I'm pretty sure if "environmental regulations" were such a problem, that plant would never have been built, much less left to detonate.

That said, it takes 10-15 years for a refinery to reach profitability. That's what Valco made a killing buying them up en mass a few years back. But conservatives don't particularly care about economics or resource management. Much easier to just blame those evil, dirty little environmentalists who want to clean our water and keep our air from smogging up.

Get off the talking points and pick up a book, TK. Especially in Texas, there are reams of information on the subject of oil prices, refinery output, and energy company profit margins.

[Lala]

Stamford will be on the map soon

SAN DIEGO (AP) -- A Chinese woman living in Connecticut tried to buy military equipment commonly used to gauge the power of nuclear explosions and export it to her native country, according to a criminal complaint unsealed Thursday.

Qing Li, 39, was arrested at New York's Kennedy Airport on Sunday as she checked in for a China Air flight to Beijing, according to investigators for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. A federal judge ordered the woman, who was living in Stamford, Conn., temporarily held in New York pending hearings in San Diego.

[dumbblonde]

"November crude is now trading at $89.50/barrel."

Indeed.

Can you say "speculation"?

[Math_Mage]

Er, IslamoLlama...Bush's proposal wasn't to decrease spending to $5 billion, it was to INCREASE SPENDING BY $5 billion over the next 5 years. And he was willing to go higher, too, just not by $35 billion.

There's debate over whether $5 billion is enough to sustain current levels of care, mostly due to rising health care costs. And those rising costs are at least partly caused by stupid mandatory preventive coverage (like Lala said at 2:48), which shouldn't be covered to begin with - if it's a regular, predictable cost, why do you need the insurance company to take an extra 10% (or *insert interest rate here*) off the top? Insurance should be for unpredictable events (like the Frosts with their car crash), not for checkups.

Meanwhile, the method that Congress is proposing to pay for this, an increase in cigarette taxes, is a regressive tax, so you're taxing the poor to pay for extra coverage well above the poverty level. And the irony of using cigarette tax money to pay for a health care bill is itself worth a laugh: "Come on, kids, smoke so your government can provide you with SCHIP!"

Most of this from these articles:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/18/AR2007071801434.html
http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2007/08/06/gvsb0806.htm

[Looking Glass]

Ed Reihl,

Your criticisms of the RNC only make sense if the MSM isn't a pack of rabid dogs, foaming at the mouth for liberal causes. It's not possible for a conservative to work with the MSM and come out ahead.

[Math_Mage]

Forget MSM - Rep. Fortney Stark's the one foaming at the mouth. Not so much for a cause, though, just to say that we're in Iraq so our military can "get their heads blown off for the President’s amusement." Shall we join together and mob his phone lines demanding a resignation or apology? More on this at Malkin's website.

[Looking Glass]

Ed Riehl,

My apologies for misspelling your name. It's inexcusable.

[Wahoo WIllie Sez]

"Get off the talking points and pick up a book, TK."

As usual LLama is absolutely correct. It is all GWs fault for being willing to take money out of his own & his oil buddies pockets so Chavez can make more money off of us. It has absolutley nothing to do with a combination of oil company greed AND environmental regulation.Nothing to do with thousands of capped off wells in Texas and Oklahoma because you greedy capitalist rednecks wont work for less than 30 bucks an hour. No, as everything bad since 1948, this too must be laid squarely on Da debil George Bush and his amazing bag of tricks.

[LOL]

Maybe the repulbicans haven't found someone like that because they're hard to find. Middle class families are struggling to pay health care dan. Average health care costs have gone up 60% in the last five years alone!

Again, if they could have found that person, they would have. Maybe you 'nuts should take off the blinders for once.

[LOL]

wow the level of idiocy in this thread is just staggering. You wingers really have no idea how the world works, it's pretty amazing, but not surprising...

One example: "And those rising costs are at least partly caused by stupid mandatory preventive coverage (like Lala said at 2:48), which shouldn't be covered to begin with"

Huh? Preventative care is cheaper than emergency care. If everyone had preventative care in this country, we would actually be spending LESS money on health care. Only a shill for the insurance agencies would suggest what you just suggested. Or someone who has no idea how the world works.

So which is it?

[Math_Mage]

LOL:

You say that preventative care is cheaper than emergency care. Sources, please? Even if you're right, that doesn't mean the preventative care should exist.

Emergency care is an example of something that should be covered. If I don't have the money to cover the hospital bills for breaking my leg, I take out a plan with a company that will cover me if I do. In essence, I'm betting the company that I'll break my leg, and they're betting I won't. The people who break their legs "win" (if such a term can be used to describe such an injury) because the company pays the bills. The people who don't break their legs "lose" because they paid money for nothing. And the insurance company charges slightly more than the odds-based price, so they can make a profit in an average time period.

Preventative care, on the other hand, is prescheduled and preplanned. For example, if you know you're going to see your doctor twice a year for checkups, that's a foreseeable expense. If you pay the doctor through an insurance company, there's a chance the company has the equivalent of a mass-production cost reduction, i.e. they can negotiate a cheaper price for the checkups. However, they'll take a little extra money from you so they can make a profit for their shareholders - in other words, you're paying more than you otherwise would for a service you know you'll be paying for. So everyone loses except the insurance companies. Why should this be covered at all, if it doesn't benefit anyone who's getting it? The simple answer is, it shouldn't. But companies use such plans because they make money that way.

The really infuriating thing is, as Lala noted and I've heard complaints about, insurance companies have started to tack measures like preventative care onto emergency-care plans as a way to make extra money. You can't get the emergency care without the preventative care, even if you don't need the latter. And the plan becomes much more expensive because you're getting both kinds of care. By the way, this means that fewer people get healthcare, and this is what creates the problem for the lower-middle class that's above the poverty line but can't afford private healthcare.

This is where the costs are being driven up. It's most likely not the only factor, but it is a huge one.

[jj]

You know what, LOL, you ought to be put in charge. Cause you know so much about how the World works. Like when you give something to someone free, then the demand for that particular thing skyrockets. That is the way the World works, so whatever figure you and your cronies come up with for free health care, the reality will be a hell of a lot more. A whole hell of a lot more.

My conclusion: If you were half as smart as you think you were, you would have discovered a cure for the common cold.

The Reality: You're just another Lefty who somehow thinks that socialism will work this time, even though it has never worked before.

[Lala]

I took a look at my daughter's policy. This is a COBRA policy, good for 18 months after she turned 23. It costs me 450.00 per month now and it will be $1000.00 per month when COBRA runs out.

I am not obliged legally to cover her. She can go to the emergency room and get excellent care, or she can go on Medicaid if she doesn't have enough money, or she can just go under an assumed name like so many do here in New York.

The policy covers mental health, drug rehabilitation, in vitro fertilization, home nursing visits, chiroprators, podiatrists along with the normal things that most policies cover.

The mental health and the drug rehab are mandated by New York State. I can not buy a policy without these mandates.

I would prefer to just buy a major-medical policy and pay the cost of doctors out-of-pocket. I am not allowed to do that.

New York State is driving business out with these mandates. Upstate is in the doldrums. Only Metropolitan New York is doing okay.

So, Gov. Spitzer, instead of letting there be a free-market insurance industry in the State, demands the Fed. Govt pay the insurance costs for the children of a family of four making $82,500.00 per year up to the age of 25. And by the way, New York's CHip program covers the children of illegals. That goes go with his desire to let all the illegals have drivers licenses.

Fine, I'll put my daughter on that and save $12000.00 a year and you guys from other states can pay for it if that's what you want.

And don't think he'll stop at that, the next thing will be that adults over 25 will be covered.

[Lala]

The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons issued the following statement from Kathryn Serkes, director of policy and public affairs, in response to the House of Representative’s failure today to override President Bush’s veto of a bill to reauthorize and expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP):

“We support the President’s veto of this massive, messy bill that would have spent almost as much money on doctors and seniors as it would have on children’s medical care.

“This bill is an example of the worst of political sausage-making. In the old joke, we’re warned that we really don’t want to know what’s chopped up and thrown in the pot to get the end product.

“This bill is like an extremely expensive sausage filled with mystery meats that have nothing to do with delivering medical care to poor children who have no other means to get it. And no one has bothered to analyze the contents.

“Some physician and other groups are cynically using the cry ‘for the kids’ to advance their own agendas and self-interests when in reality, about HALF – or more than $10 billion a year -- is diverted to doctors and seniors.

“The numbers tell the story: according to the AMA’s action alerts, over ten years about $117 billion was allocated to doctors and seniors, with $129 billion for children’s programs. It includes almost $70 billion for physician Medicare payments, a pet project of the American Medical Association; about $50 billion for Medicare beneficiaries; and cuts physician-owned hospitals off at the knees, a blow to patients of all ages but a big win for the American Hospital Association.

“Also, it does such a bad job of targeting assistance to truly needy children that it isn’t even on the radar screen. About 60 percent of children currently eligible already have private insurance, and more than 75 percent eligible under this expansion already have private insurance.

“Since so many families well above the poverty level are included in this bill, a much simpler and effective strategy to get them affordable insurance would be to allow them to purchase insurance policies outside their own states. This would open up the markets for families held hostage by states with massive mandates and regulatory costs that drive up insurance premiums, such as New Jersey.

“Rather than sue the federal government to force the SCHIP reauthorizations, governors and attorneys general would do well to consider the model legislation passed this summer by the state legislator members of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) called ‘Health Care Choice Act for States.’ This simple act would increase the buying power of millions of SCHIP-eligible families without burdening the taxpayers or paying off the doctors.”

[LOL]

socialism never worked? really, cuz the american economy seems to have skyrocketed since The New Deal

[LOL]

the value of the Euro seems to have increased vis-a-vis the dollar in spite of their socialist health care systems.

[Jabba the Tutt]

Why don't Republicans in Congress fight harder and smarter? Because they are stupid and they are cowards. Their stupidity is proven on a daily basis by their incompetence. Their admission of cowardice comes right from their own mouths. I can't count the times I've heard GOP congressmen say they were afraid of what the liberal media would do, if they actually did the right thing. They've been this way for a long, long time. Even the Gingrich period was no different. Even right after they won control of Congress, they allowed themselves to be rolled on the school lunch program, because the Dems and the media said they were starving children, not to mention poisoning the water and killing the children (the ones who survived starvation presumably).

[Fred Beloit]

Why, Islamo Moe, did you actually write this? "And the program was ridiculously popular, especially down here in Texas where people turned out in waves to petition their local Congressmen to support it."

Wouldn't a bill offering free beer be even more popular? Democratics used to know how to buy votes, before morons like you took over your party. If you want to do something for middle-class kids who get sick, why don't you help found a charity hospital like Danny Thomas did. Government can't be a charity because government funding is involuntary, you know, like theft.

[Fred Beloit]

LOL, Sweden awaits you. If you tell us from whence and when you depart, I'll come to wish you bon voyage with a bottle of bubbly.

[Fred Beloit]

The BoobinBridgeport writes: "A client just called me regarding his oil futures position. November crude is now trading at $89.50/barrel." Wow, Boob, you bought at $50 too of course. Oh no? You didn't? Too bad. That is Bush's fault too I suppose. Bad luck.

[Fred Beloit]

My dear LOL, I confess to have written some very stupid things here and I have read some stupid things here written by others. But I make one request of you. Would you mind, just for a moment or two, digging yourself? "socialism never worked? really, cuz the american economy seems to have skyrocketed since The New Deal." Actually it skyrocketed since WWII. Actually the skyrocketing was caused by entrepreneurs and other capitalists using the still relatively free markets we have had here. Actually your quoted statement is incorrect in all respects.

[jj]

Uh, two points I would like to make regarding LOL's silly statements. One, Europe is not paying for its defense in any meaningful way, and the US has boomed because socialism has mostly been prevented.

Prick a liberal and you always find a socialist under that outer veneer. They just can't help themselves. It will work this time, because.....well....take my word for it. Well, excuse me if I don't.

[Fred Beloit]

Free beer and government paid autos for the millions. Vote Democraticic.

[Lala]

I think FDR and his New Deal damaged this country. I haven't read this book yet but it sure sounds interesting.

The New Dealers’ War: FDR and the War Within WWII – Historian Thomas Flemming is something of a radical. This book takes on the Roosevelt Administration with a ferocity few ever have. Flemming exposes FDR as a leader far short of what his legions of admirers would have us believe.