It's been 109 days since the Republican Congress allowed funding to expire for the Children's Health Insurance Program and community health centers. The Senate could have passed their clean, 5-year extension bill in September, before the funding ran out because the bill was through committee and ready to go. Instead, they tried another run at Obamacare repeal.
They could have brought it up in October, before the crisis really set in. But they spent the month doing basically nothing and then devoted November and December to their tax bill, prioritizing the nation's millionaires—who apparently qualify as actual humans—over children, which they're all now freely admit to Vox's Dylan Scott are just "leverage."
They say they want an opportunity to come back to the program in later years and maybe change it. They think having an expiration date for CHIP's funding six years down the road will give them leverage to take another look at the program and whether they want to reform it.
“I’m not for funding something without us having to consider it from time to time,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), who said he does support the six-year CHIP extension, told me Wednesday.
He added, explaining the importance of having those funding deadlines: “So you can review it. So you have leverage. If something’s not being properly managed ... you’ve got leverage to make the bureaucrats fix it.” […]
House Energy and Commerce Chair Greg Walden (R-OR) told reporters that the potential savings from extending CHIP beyond six years could also come in handy down the road if Republicans have other policy priorities that they need to pay for.
“We want to look at the program going forward, because there are some ideas about reforms,” Walden said, explaining why Republicans aren’t proposing a longer extension. He declined to name any specific changes that the majority wants to make.
One lobbyist closely aligned with House Republicans, when asked by Scott if the strategy has been to hold back on CHIP to have it for later, said simply "Yes."
Jam the phone lines of House and Senate Republicans. Call (202) 224-3121, and tell them to stop holding kids hostage and to pass a clean funding bill for CHIP and community health centers.
So they're playing that card now, pitting this leverage against their other leverage, the DACA recipients now living in legal limbo in the only country most of them have ever known. If you insist on helping the young immigrants, Republicans are telling Democrats, you take away health care from 9 million children and we shut down the government.
None of these kids are millionaires, and they're all already born and a lot of them aren't white, so none of them have actual personhood in Republicans' eyes.