See if you can spot the errors in this paragraph, which appears in this Crypt (Politico) piece about the SCHIP debate.
Malkin and other bloggers have revealed over the past week that the Frost family owned two properties, as well as a couple cars, and had a $45,000 income. The accusation against Democrats, and by extension the Frost family, is that they are too middle class to be granted any subsidized health insurance for their children.
Here are the errors:
Bloggers didn’t “reveal” the Frost’s income, the Democrats and MSM journalists did when they brought the Frosts forward to rebut the president’s veto.
The Frosts own three cars, not “a couple.” The number and make of the cars is relevant, as it bears on how expansive (or not) SCHIP is. Should people who can afford two late-model SUVs (which liberals are supposed to denounce as eeevil) plus a big Ford F-250 qualify for government-subsidized health insurance that’s supposed to be for the poor? We can have that debate and we ought to, but what’s to debate if one side keeps crying foul whenever the other side brings up inconvenient facts?
I like the Politico, I really do, but packing two serious errors into one paragraph takes some talent.
The SCHIP argument that’s currently underway isn’t even about the Frosts per se; it’s about whether the program ought to be expanded by $30 billion (the president wants a $5 billion increase; the Democrats want $35 billion). That’s why these facts actually matter.
The story itself is about another family that the Democrats have trotted out to serve as their SCHIP model. But there’s a problem with this story, too, and I’m not talking about their finanaces or anything like that: The family they have brought forward already qualifies for SCHIP and neither the proposed Democrat expansion nor the president’s veto changes that.
Can’t the Democrats find anyone who doesn’t qualify for SCHIP? And if they can’t, what does that say about the program or the scale of the proposed expansions of it?
Update: I should have said that the Frosts drive, as opposed to own, the three cars. We don’t know for a fact that they own them. There could be leases involved, and if there are, that might be an indication that there are some bad financial choices being made. Those of you who’ve ever leased a car and aren’t in fact made of money know what I mean by that.
