DeWine's Record Shows TV Spot To Be Misleading At Best
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
If you haven't seen the ad check it out here before reading this post.
Senator Mike DeWine's current TV ad touts the GOP hack as two things; an advocate for children and an independent legislator. Is either one of those claims true? Of course not.
Both of these claims can be debunked with one quick check of DeWine's voting record. According to the Ohio Republican Party's blog "The State of the Union," DeWine "has a 96 percent voting record in support of Bush's agenda." If there is one thing the Bush agenda is not, is pro-children.
Bush has repeatedly cut programs aimed at bettering the life, health and education of the nation's children. For example, The Children's Defense Fund had this to say about the Bush administration's 2004 budget:
The Bush Administration's 2004 Budget includes a radical proposal that gives states unprecedented latitude to scale back coverage of necessary health care for children and to impose substantial costsharing requirements that could restrict children's access to needed health care. This proposal would put at risk one in three of the nearly 30 million children getting health care in Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP). The Bush budget fails to adequately address the health care needs of the 9.2 million children who still have no health insurance and the proposals could actually add to the number of uninsured children if states ultimately decide to shift funds away from children or impose unaffordable cost-sharing on families. Finally, the Bush Administration fails to restore $1.2 billion in CHIP funds that expired from the program at the end of the 2002 fiscal year; a decision that may force some states to drop coverage for some children because of inadequate CHIP resources in future years.
(CDF Fact Sheet - "Radical Administration Medicaid Proposal Threatens Nearly 40 Years of Health Care Progress For Low-Income Children")
While it's all well and good for Mr. DeWine to claim he is a children's advocate because of this one bill, what good does specific pharmaceutical testing for kids do a kid whose family can't afford the medication in the first place?
Let's take a quick look at some of the other votes DeWine has cast in favor of Bush administration policies: (courtesy of On The Issues )
- Voted NO on $100M to reduce teen pregnancy by education & contraceptives. (March 2005)
- Voted NO on $5B for grants to local educational agencies. (Oct 2005)
- Voted NO on funding smaller classes instead of private tutors. (May 2001)
- Voted NO on spending $448B of tax cut on education & debt reduction. (Apr 2001)
- Voted NO on restricting violent videos to minors. (May 1999)
- Voted NO on increasing tax deductions for college tuition. (May 2001)
Don't believe the hype, DeWine is neither an advocate for Ohio's children nor independent from the actions and philosophies of the Bush Administration. If anything, he's complicit up to eyeballs. There will be a lot of this nonsense from now until November. Remember the facts.
