Iowa Action Alert: Call out Congressmen King and Latham on Their Anti-Kids, Anti-Women Votes

  by Rapid Response

  Let's get started for 2010!

 
King & Latham do not care about kids and women (women voters in 2010)! 
 
Here's the roll call vote:  (HR 2)
 
King and Latham voted against S-CHIP, a bill that President Obama will likely sign into law after a Senate vote.  Bush vetoed it twice and Steve King won't support it because he says it covers illegal “aliens” and adults.  This is not exactly true, and King should be called out on this.
 
The bill will cover the non-citizen immigrant children of their legal immigrant parents and pregnant legal immigrants who otherwise would be forced to use  the emergency room for conditions like asthma and diabetes:
 
“The bill would provide coverage for pregnant legal immigrants in addition to their non-citizen children who entered the U.S. in the past five years.”
 
“Current law requires a five-year waiting period before legal immigrants become eligible for coverage under Medicaid and SCHIP. Supporters say expanding coverage would mean children could get treatment for acute conditions like asthma and diabetes so they were less likely to need care in an emergency room.”
 
“These are not illegal immigrants. They are children who go to school, go to daycare with our children, our grandchildren,” said Rep. Gene Green, D-Texas. “Those children ought to have health care.”
 
The bill is completely paid for:
 
The bill calls for spending $32 billion over the next 4 years to, among other things, insure 4 million children whose families currently earn too much income to qualify for Medicaid. The cost would be covered by increasing cigarette taxes by 61 cents.
 
9,000 kids in King's district are eligible for S-CHIP:

Steve King (and Latham, too unless you buy the argument that it was a procedural vote construed as a pay raise) voted to give himself a raise from 2003-2007:

Watch this space next week as BFIA live-blogs from DC.