Look very closely at Congressman Chris Shays' recent actions on the renewal of the State Child Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and you'll understand how he really operates. In September, Mr. Shays joined with 45 Republicans and 220 Democrats to pass the renewal and extension of SCHIP (HR 976, Roll Call #906, September 25), which had just passed the Senate by an overwhelming and veto-proof majority. The bill extends health insurance to the children of poor and working class Americans who can't afford private health insurance, and was credited with sharply reducing the number of uninsured children over the past ten years. Naturally, George Bush vetoed the measure, for which he became the butt of jokes from Jon Stewart, and drew the ire of the AARP, American Medical Association, American Federation of Teachers, Catholic Health Association of America, the March of Dimes, and American Cancer Society, among many others. Following Bush's veto, Mr. Shays promised he would vote to override it, calling the SCHIP extension, "a good, bipartisan bill that is worthy of passage." But as always with Mr. Shays, one has to look behind the curtain to find out what he's really up to.
On the same day that he told Connecticut Post that he would vote to overturn the veto, he voted with his party's right-wing leadership to kill the SCHIP extension he'd just pledged to support. Understanding that the bill was still a few votes short of the two-thirds necessary for an override, the Democratic leadership introduced legislation (HR 976, Roll Call #938, October 3) to postpone the vote on override for two weeks in order to try to convince more congressmen to support it. The Republican leadership, however, demanded that the vote be held immediately, a move that would have meant certain death for the measure. Chris Shays? He voted with his leadership to for an immediate vote that would have killed SCHIP. Moreover, in May of this year Mr. Shays joined 147 other Republican congressmen in signing a pledge that he would vote to sustain any presidential veto of a spending bill that exceeded the president's budget request. In other words, his public pledge to vote for SCHIP notwithstanding, Mr. Shays had already gone on record promising to vote against it. So his vote last week to kill SCHIP was no surprise at all.
Of course, if one understood Mr. Shays' opposition to most sensible health care proposals, his paper-thin support for SCHIP, a program that a WSJ.com/Harris Interactive survey last month demonstrated enjoyed overwhelming support from the American people, including a margin of more than two-to-one among Republicans, would come as no surprise. Mr. Shays also opposed empowering the federal government to negotiate lower prices on pharmaceuticals for Medicare recipients, even though the Veterans' Administration has been able to reduce the prices it pays for the most popular drugs to just 50% of the price paid by private insurance companies. And Mr. Shays went out of his way to support George Bush's unpopular "Health Savings Account" proposal in Bridgeport last year, a scheme that even the Congressional Research Service estimated would not reduce health care costs in America.
Now, might Shays still vote to override? My guess is only if his leadership is assured of the votes to kill the bill. In that case, the Republicans would play "catch and release," permitting him to vote to please local constituents. But if it looks very close, here's betting that Shays will once again stick with his right-wing buddies and vote to kill it, just as he did this week on the snap vote.
That's how "Both Ways" Shays really operates.