Clinton (positive) role in (SCHIP) children's health program disputed (2008)

[Baobab]

http://archive.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/03/14/clinton_role_in_health_program_disputed/?page=full



Clinton role in health program disputed

By Susan Milligan

Globe Staff / March 14, 2008

WASHINGTON - Hillary Clinton, who has frequently described herself on the campaign trail as playing a pivotal role in forging a children's health insurance plan, had little to do with crafting the landmark legislation or ushering it through Congress, according to several lawmakers, staffers, and healthcare advocates involved in the issue.

In campaign speeches, Clinton describes the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, as an initiative "I helped to start." Addressing Iowa voters in November, Clinton said, "in 1997, I joined forces with members of Congress and we passed the State Children's Health Insurance Program." Clinton regularly cites the number of children in each state who are covered by the program, and mothers of sick children have appeared at Clinton campaign rallies to thank her.

But the Clinton White House, while supportive of the idea of expanding children's health, fought the first SCHIP effort, spearheaded by Senators Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, because of fears that it would derail a bigger budget bill. And several current and former lawmakers and staff said Hillary Clinton had no role in helping to write the congressional legislation, which grew out of a similar program approved in Massachusetts in 1996.

"The White House wasn't for it. We really roughed them up" in trying to get it approved over the Clinton administration's objections, Hatch said in an interview. "She may have done some advocacy [privately] over at the White House, but I'm not aware of it."

"I do like her," Hatch said of Hillary Clinton. "We all care about children. But does she deserve credit for SCHIP? No - Teddy does, but she doesn't."

Neera Tanden, policy director for the Clinton campaign, said that the senator had "always been pushing for SCHIP" and that the White House had opposed the 1997 Hatch-Kennedy amendment to create the program because President Clinton had made a deal with the then-GOP leadership not to back any amendments to a contentious budget bill. The SCHIP plan - which provides federal matching grants to help states' uninsured children - was to be paid for with a hefty tobacco tax, an idea many Republican and tobacco-state lawmakers opposed.

Chris Jennings, who was a Clinton healthcare adviser during her years as the wife of a president, said Clinton had been a longtime and tireless advocate for expanding children's healthcare, and Jennings was baffled by suggestions that she had not been instrumental in getting the plan approved. Jennings noted that SCHIP was indeed adopted, in a second attempt, that same year.

"She was very proactive. At every step of the way, she was always pushing" for the concept of expanding healthcare for children, Jennings said.

Tanden, the campaign official, suggested that politics were at play in the criticism of Clinton. She noted that Kennedy and others had earlier been complimentary of Clinton's role in SCHIP, but have been more critical since lawmakers started taking sides in the Democratic presidential primary.

"Obviously, some things have changed between last fall and now. Some people have endorsed other candidates," Tanden said.

Kennedy has endorsed Obama, a move that deeply upset the Clinton campaign. Hatch initially endorsed Mitt Romney for the GOP nomination, then switched to Senator John McCain of Arizona after Romney left the race. Hatch, a longtime Kennedy friend, said he didn't want to criticize Clinton, but felt that the record should be set straight about how the SCHIP program was developed.

Asked whether Clinton was exaggerating her role in creating SCHIP, Kennedy, stopped in the hallway as he was entering the chamber to vote, half-shrugged.

"Facts are stubborn things," he said, declining to criticize Clinton directly. "I think we ought to stay with the facts."

Many members of Congress said they believe Hillary Clinton has a deep and sincere commitment to children's health issues. She has sponsored numerous bills and amendments dealing with a plethora of healthcare matters.

But privately, some lawmakers and staff members are fuming over what they see as Clinton's exaggeration of her role in developing SCHIP, including her campaign ads claiming she "helped create" the program. The irritation has grown since Nov. 1, when Clinton - along with fellow senators and presidential candidates Barack Obama, Chris Dodd, and John McCain - missed a Senate vote to extend the SCHIP program, which was approved without the votes of those lawmakers.

Kennedy said he patterned the SCHIP plan on a similar program Massachusetts had approved in 1996. Kennedy's account was backed up by two Bay State healthcare advocates who met with Kennedy in Boston to discuss the possibility of taking the idea nationwide: Dr. Barry Zuckerman, director of pediatrics at Boston Medical Center, and John McDonough, then a Democratic state legislator and now the executive director of Health Care for All, a healthcare advocacy group.

Kennedy, Zuckerman said in an interview, was intrigued by the idea of using a cigarette tax to pay for children's health, but worried he would not be able to get it through Congress. "I said, 'Times have changed,' and he ran with it," Zuckerman said.

McDonough, a Democrat who has not endorsed a presidential candidate, also said it was Kennedy who developed the SCHIP idea after that meeting. "I don't recall any signs of Mrs. Clinton's engagement," McDonough said. "I'm sure she was behind the scenes, engaged in lobbying, but it is demonstrably not the case" that she was driving the effort, he said.

After meeting Zuckerman and McDonough, Kennedy sought out Hatch, and the two worked on the bill together, offering it as an amendment to a budget resolution. But President Clinton - much to the surprise and anger of Kennedy - lobbied Democratic lawmakers to oppose the Hatch-Kennedy amendment, the lawmakers and staff members said.

Gene Sperling, a former chief economic adviser in the Clinton White House, said the budget resolution never would have passed the House with the Hatch-Kennedy amendment in it. He said that both the president and his wife wanted the SCHIP program and that Hillary Clinton lobbied hard to get it included in subsequent legislation.

In fact, the SCHIP program was approved later in the year, a feat Sperling said would not have been possible without the White House negotiating with GOP leaders. And lawmakers in both parties acknowledge that administration support was needed and appreciated. But they said the effort was largely driven by Hatch, Kennedy, and others in Congress.

"It was a bipartisan bill. I don't remember the role of the White House," said Representative Henry Waxman, a California Democrat who has not endorsed a candidate in the presidential race and who was the chief Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee, which deals with health matters. "It did not originate at the White House."
© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.

[Kip Humphrey]

1. Hillary Clinton has a long history of taking credit for others' efforts. For me, that is stealing

of the worst order.

Hillary Clinton, the lying, stealing, inevitable Democratic candidate.

[Jarqui]

3. I looked into this quite a bit.

Ted Kennedy conceived the idea - cloning it from a MA program and the media verified that. Orin Hatch backed him for bipartisan support. Mainly Kennedy with Hatch and others in congress assisted with the writing and amending of the legislation.

Twice they looked like they had the support to pass it and it was stopped by Bill Clinton. Hillary publicly backed her husband on stopping it. Kennedy was pissed off with both of them. Some of it was a funding issue which Kennedy had solved by paying for a bunch of it with a tax on tobacco.

On the third attempt, as part of a bigger budget deal, it got passed.

I searched the media archives. Hillary didn't say a peep about it until a few months after it passed. I watched the video of Bill Clinton talking about it as part of the budget - no credit given to Hillary. I looked in the Clinton Library for stuff on it. Nothing by Hillary. I looked at Hillary's schedule between the dates the White House turned down the legislation and the budget that passed it - she was basically locked up in the White House with no public schedule other than ceremonial stuff, foreign visits with Bill as First Lady or entertaining visiting leaders as First Lady.

Not long before, Hillary had taken a shellacking for the failure of Hillarycare. She had been secretive, etc. Bill seemed to have her on a really short leash afterwards while the acrimony died down. If she'd been heavily involved, it could have hurt getting the legislation passed because a lot of folks were still ticked off with her.

She'd taken a bunch of arrows trying to get Hillarycare passed. So, when Chips passed, I think Ted threw her and Bill a bone saying she'd helped - a consolation for the damage her Hillarycare efforts did. All she could have done was lobby from within the White House for it. BUT why wouldn't a Democratic President who had failed to get universal healthcare not want a consolation prize of getting healthcare for children - naturally, he did - so her role in lobbying wasn't that grand. Giving her some credit was a bit of an olive branch back to Bill for pummeling his wife on Hillarycare.

That to me seems to be what happened and why but that last paragraph is my attempt at joining the dots. Backed by many media and White House records, there is no doubt in my mind that she was not very involved in Kennedy's Children's Healthcare Insurance Program.

And so it lay dormant until 2007-8 or so.

When Hillary came out with the 3AM ad, folks asked what her foreign policy experience for such 3AM crisis were. She cited the Irish Peace agreement (which turned out to be BS) and the Bosnian sniper story (pants on fire BS). She was desperate to save face and scrambling ... so she did what the Clintons often do in such situations ... lie!

When the media and others asked what her legislative accomplishments were, same problem - she didn't have much in her resume. So again, desperate to save face and scrambling ... she lied again! She said during debates, in the media and her website claimed she'd created Kennedy's Children's Healthcare Insurance Program, etc. Way over the top BS. Politicians in congress were ticked off and Kennedy and Hatch, among others, shot her down (in the above Boston article).

They gave her an inch and she tried to take a mile and got caught.

[thereismore]

4. Oh Jeez, she claims credit for passing it while she opposed it, so typical. nt

[Jarqui]

6. Here's the media on that:

Senate Unwilling to Amend Budget Resolution

Besides the highway votes, the only measure that threatened to put the two bodies on different tracks was an effort on Wednesday by Senators Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, and Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, to raise tobacco taxes to pay for health insurance for children who lack it.

That measure was killed with the help of President Clinton. Today Hillary Rodham Clinton, who led the Administration's failed health care effort in 1994, defended the President's action.

''He had to safeguard the overall budget proposal,'' Mrs. Clinton said at a luncheon. ''He will look for ways to demand full coverage for minors' health.''

Then, a couple of months later:
Through Senate Alchemy, Tobacco Is Turned Into Gold for Children's Health

But Mr. Clinton did not appear to move on the issue until a meeting at the White House on July 22 with an agitated Mr. Kennedy.

The next day in a ceremony on childhood immunizations, Mr. Clinton committed publicly to fight for the Senate plan with its higher spending for child health insurance.

Kennedy was gracious to overly credit Hillary with assistance on getting the bill passed. But it was Kennedy who came up with the idea and with Hatch wrote it, cobbled the votes together and successfully pushed Bill Clinton to finally go along with it two weeks before it passed. Hillary was a small participant who Bill didn't even mention when he announced the program.

In 2003, Hillary wrote a 600+ page autobiography (Living History). Do you know how much she wrote about this incredible effort she made for Children's Health Insurance? One sentence: "I worked behind the scenes with Senator Kennedy to help create the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP)".

By 2007-8, that had morphed into her campaign literature claiming she "designed" "created" and "championed" the program. Ads that said she "Got health insurance for six million kids" (with no credit to others). During a debate, she said "when we weren't successful on universal health care, I just turned around and said, well, we're going to get the Children's Health Insurance Program. " => total bull shit.

[thereismore]

7. Just makes me want to puke. If only Ted Kennedy were alive today!

[blockquoteBy 2007-8, that had morphed into her campaign literature claiming she "designed" "created" and "championed" the program. Ads that said she "Got health insurance for six million kids" (with no credit to others). During a debate, she said "when we weren't successful on universal health care, I just turned around and said, well, we're going to get the Children's Health Insurance Program. "

[Jarqui]

8. He was alive back then. He called her on it.

"Facts are stubborn things … I think we ought to stay with the facts." Kennedy on Clinton's bogus CHIP claims.

I couldn't find/quickly get the disk with his book, True Compass: A Memoir on it. A sister says I loaned it to her before I got all the way through it ....

EDIT: I still think Hillary only devoting one sentence to it in her 2003 memoir/biography and her husband not saying a thing about her when it was announced is pretty telling.

[thereismore]

5. It is convenient for Clinton that Ted Kennedy can't speak out anymore. He did endorse Obama in 08.

It was a mortal blow to her and she has not forgotten. Stealing Kennedy's legacy for herself seems like a natural kind of revenge.