The state of Texas has mandated that schoolchildren must recite the Texas pledge, containing “under God”, every day while facing the state flag. This law follows a similar policy passed a few years ago requiring students to pledge allegiance to the American flag. To excuse themselves from the pledge without the note of a parent is illegal and subject to disciplinary action.

Note: In the cases of the Oath of Allegiance to the military and the Oath of Citizenship, one is not required to pronounce one’s loyalty to God. Neither our new citizens, our fighting men and women, nor our president or our Congressmen must, by obligation of law, attest to their faith. They do not have to provide evidence or the permission of another to feign from announcing that which they feel to be private. Schoolchildren, however, must.

Robert Jensen’s article on the Texas Pledge enunciates a great many more arguments with this law, most critically that it requires of schoolchildren in Texas a cult-like adherence to tradition, ceremony, and text thoughtlessly. One could argue that children should be educated in the origins and values of the society that will soon fall under their stewardship, but should this loyalty come without understanding?

Sixteenth century Anabaptists had a point when they described infant baptisms as invalid, preferring to baptize only once individuals attained educated adulthood. Political education, including the element of “under God”, should be a choice given to those who can truly understand its implications. Indoctrination never offers this choice. What use is faith, especially in this most dangerous condition where a pledge binds it with a powerful state, if one is never permitted doubt?

Returning to SCHIP, the federally funded program aimed at providing health care to those children whose families are neither poor enough to receive Medicaid nor wealthy enough to afford private health insurance, the Bush administration has now ordered states such as New York, which have decided to extend their SCHIP programs to those earning 250% of the poverty line, to lower their income line or lose funding. Mr. Bush claims he wants to protect citizens’ ability to purchase private health insurance. Mr. Bush says that those families can actually afford health insurance.

Some facts:

1. Employers who provide health insurance paid an average of $11,000 in 2005 for a family of four, and the family contributed an average of $3,000. And, by the way, the percentage of those receiving health insurance through their employer is decreasing. Moreover, the self-employed and those working for small businesses who cannot provide health insurance have to pay an even greater amount because they are unable to negotiate for group rates as are the large businesses.
2. The cost of health insurance rises at an average of around 6% to 10% per year in the past 7 years, twice or more the rate of inflation, and many more times the rate of growth of minimum wage.
3. There are 8 million completely uninsured children in the US who receive neither Medicaid nor private health insurance. They are obvious victims of a gap in the market, where it is not worth it to private insurers economically to provide care.

What does this mean? It means that there is a large group of people who we might call “middle class” that cannot afford health insurance, and for whom the private insurers do not wish to provide insurance. They work for small businesses or are self-employed, and paying 1/2 to 1/5 of their income for health insurance is absolutely not feasible. They are forced to play the odds, day by day, hoping that nothing goes catastrophically wrong with the health of the parents, thus destroying income to pay for the children’s health care, or to the children themselves, which would likely bankrupt the parents.

Insurance normally makes such horrors as a seriously injured parent or terminally ill child survivable, but for the uninsured every day is a gamble. Will this chest cold become the flu? Do I test this discoloration on my arm for cancer or save up the money for either groceries, house payments, or some more potentially immediate medical emergency that might just occur in the future? Living without insurance is absolute hell.

I know this because I’ve lived it. My family’s income varies dramatically because we are self-employed — we never qualify for Medicaid and never can afford health insurance. If my father or mother were to get hurt in such a way as to be unable to work, then the world stops. And, before I went to college and received my health insurance as part of a financial aid package, I saw the debate every time one of us got sick: do we go to the doctor now, or do we wait and hope that it blows over? If my parents were ill, the debate became: do I take myself to the doctor, or do I save up in case either I get worse or my son becomes sick himself?

Can all of the comfortably insured and moderately wealthy people take a moment to imagine living like that? Stop…and think about it. Imagine having the flu…or is it pneumonia?…but there is no way to know, because that doctor visit might mean that when it is known to be pneumonia it’ll be twice as hard to pay for the treatment. Hospital stays? Forget it: absolutely unaffordable. And, if it is chosen to finally go to the hospital or the doctor, what happens when the time comes to pay for a child’s doctor’s visits and medicine. Think about this horror. The fall from the bliss of middle class, but uninsured, is a harsh one that is far too frequent.

SCHIP does not fix all the health care problems in our country. It does not insure the parents (though some programs in the past have provided basic insurance to at least one parent of a young child). Sadly, nationalized health care is a completely different fight — one which will require a change of president and far more stomach than most candidates of either party have. But, in the case of the children, SCHIP still eases the minds of parents. A parent who knows their children are cared for, no matter what, will fear far less taking themselves to the doctor as needed. They will not have to save for the day their child becomes ill. Should they have to leave their self-employment behind or their job because of illness, they will know their child is taken care of.

Mr. Bush tells us to fear nationalized health care. He acts as if that in and of itself is immoral, as if the word nationalized is a sin. But SCHIP is not nationalized health care. It is not the end of private health insurance. It is insurance for those whom are economically inviable to the private carriers. It is proxy protection for the parents in families, who can devote what money they have available to their own care. For a president and party who claim to protect “family values” the decision to provide insurance of security to lower-middle class families should be a no-brainer.

Fundamentally, unless the conservative right wishes to claim that the innocent children, who had no choice to whom they were born, do not deserve an equal opportunity to succeed, regardless of their parents’ status economically, there is no reason to withhold funds from SCHIP.

Our dearest president George W. Bush has done many a foolish, destructive, and likely down right illegal thing during his tenure. To discuss them all would require volumes, and surely volumes there will be in the years to come once his presidency passes away as one hell of a historical speed bump. Perhaps his politicization of disasters and pain can best be summarized by merely watching his address to the nation about the Minneapolis bridge collapse, during which he took one minute to lament the collapse, and another 4 to lambaste Democrats in Congress for raising taxes, creating budget deficits, and all but failing to stop that bridge from falling down. We should be used to this, and perhaps we have become too used to this behavior, and the president is very aware of this fact.

We have become so accustomed to incompetency and abuse that our president has decided to resist a bill supported by nine out of ten Americans, because he knows that in the end we will not do a thing — cannot do a thing — and probably will not even notice. Our president has decided to veto only his third bill to stop the State Children Health Insurance Plan from passing. This plan, ironically, one of the most successful and appreciated policies during his governorship my home state of Texas, provides health insurance to children who qualify for neither Medicaid nor can afford health insurance themselves. This program could potentially serve 9 million children in the country, and our president will veto it because he knows that we, the American people, are irrelevant in the political process.

Some say that SCHIP raises taxes, but the taxes are primarily on tobacco products. Others say that it taxes those who pay for private health insurance, a point which I have not seen substantiated elsewhere. If that is the case, perhaps this aspect of the policy should be changed. But, the core argument underlying the opposition is that it’s a move toward socialized health care. On the first point, so what? Argue against socialized health care then, but do not pretend that the phrase in and of itself is enough to damn a policy choice that would help 9 million children — and that has helped millions of children in the past with great success and no harm to private insurance firms. As a second point, it is arguable whether SCHIP even counts as socialized health care in the sense meant by individuals such as Senator John Cornyn (R-TX). It provides for those who, as Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) pointed out, have been failed by the markets.

As a former recipient of CHIP in Texas, I can say I saw it function. Dental care and optometry, completely out of my family’s economic range without CHIP, were provided by the program before it was gutted at the end of Governor Bush’s tenure. Congress needs to utilize its veto override power to remind the president that he serves the people, not his political interests, and to show the people that this reign of Democratic and Republican failures are over. It would be a reminder to the American people that the policies of the past 8 years are not the norm, that their voice matters, and that they should not be used to this behavior from their elected officials. Congress should ask Mr. Bush, “What about the children, Mr. Bush? Are your politics more important than them?”