"As you may know, the Democrats want to allow a family of four earning about $62,000 to qualify for the program. President Bush wants most of the increases to go to families earning less than $41,000. Whose side do you favor?"The clear implication from this is that Bush wants to help poor kids, while Democrats are more interested in helping the middle class—-a line USA Today backed when it reported that Bush wanted the "program to focus more on low-income, uninsured children." But the SCHIP program already overwhelmingly serves those low-income families, and the expanded version would do the same. As the Center on Budget & Policy Priorities noted (10/5/07), the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) determined that 84 percent of the children that would be newly covered under the Congressional plan would qualify under the current SCHIP income limits. In other words, the vast majority of the new spending would do exactly what USA Today and the White House are suggesting the congressional proposal does not focus on. The Center also reported that the CBO "found that nearly two-thirds of those who would gain coverage under the bill would otherwise be uninsured."
The Bush administration has recently argued that the president favors providing health insurance to "poor children first" and vetoed bipartisan children’s health legislation because it violates this principle.... In fact, the truth is almost precisely the opposite of what the Administration claims.Greenstein also noted that a GOP pollster discovered that opinion surveys shifted in the White House's favor when questions were worded to suggest that the White House was simply trying to focus more resources on helping poor children (Wall Street Journal, 10/12/07). USA Today, it would seem, is doing its part to assist the White House in this PR effort.