Orrin Hatch helped write the original Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) in the 1990s. He continues to acknowledge that the program has provided critical assistance to tens of millions of working families. Pushed by Sherrod Brown to reauthorize the program he said this:
“[L]et me tell you something: we’re going to do CHIP. There’s no question about it in my mind. It’s got to be done the right way. But we, the reason CHIP’s having trouble is because we don’t have money anymore.”
Followed almost immediately by this:
“I have a rough time wanting to spend billions and billions and trillions of dollars to help people who won’t help themselves – won’t lift a finger – and expect the federal government to do everything.”
He was talking about CHILDREN.
And he said this while literally fighting to end the estate tax which provides people who haven’t lifted a finger with massive windfalls of money.
Have we crossed through the looking glass into a Dickens’ novel?