Poster Children: Harry’s Kids, not Jerry’s Kids
Posted by Mark on October 9, 2007
Michelle Malkin takes a look at the kids trotted out by the Defeatocrats in response to President Bush’s veto of last week:
A few weeks ago, Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid lured two young children to the public spotlight to help him pass a massive expansion of government health insurance. Gemma and Graeme Frost, 9 and 12 years old respectively, were severely injured in a car accident three years ago. Their parents obtained government health care through the non-meansassets-tested Children’s Health Insurance Program in Maryland. President Bush’s veto doesn’t change that. And there’s the rub.
She continues:
What is verifiable: The Frosts own a home in Baltimore purchased for $55,000 sixteen years ago–and now worth an estimated $300,000. That’s a lot of equity. In addition, the children’s father, Halsey Frost, owns commercial real estate and his own small business, but chose not to buy health insurance for himself and his wife, whom he hired as an employee. She now apparently works freelance at a medical publishing firm, which also reportedly doesn’t offer insurance. Gemma and Graeme both attend expensive private schools; the Frosts have two other school-age children. Reid’s staff says Gemma and Graeme receive tuition breaks. But it’s not clear when those scholarships were instituted and/or whether the other two receive tuition aid as well. Moreover, Frost’s family comes from considerable means. The children’s maternal grandfather was an engineering executive. Their paternal grandparents hail from affluent Bronxville, New York, where the grandfather is a prominent facilities management consultant and chairman of the municipal planning board.
In other words: The public trough is not Halsey Frost’s last and only resort.
The accident was horrible. The children deserve much sympathy and compassion. But this family made choices. Choices have consequences. Taxpayers of lesser means should not be forced to subsidize them.
And this is a family that is already covered. The dems want to expand the program.
Michelle ends her column with this:
This is not about The Children. It’s about the purported adults in the Democrat party leadership, the left-wing blogosphere, and the sycophantic media who can’t debate policy without flinging their peas when challenged.
Financial assets are at the very core of this debate. Schip was supposed to be a bridge to help insure children in poor families who barely missed out on qualifying for Medicaid. The Democrats are pushing the Schip eligibility level to 200, 300, 400 percent of the federal poverty line. The kids’ program is no longer just for kids and may well cover illegal aliens to boot.
Instead of sitting on the sidelines, Republicans need to force the Left out of its ideological infancy and stop this disastrous entitlement juggernaut.
I repeat what I told the Times reporter:
If Republicans don’t have the guts to hold the line, they deserve to lose their seats.
And lose their seats they will. Republicans win only as long as they run as conservatives, both socially and fiscally. Why would someone vote for a Republican trying to act like a weak kneed Socialist, when the real one can be chosen by voting Defeatocrat?
