0

Pete Stark opens a can of whupa-s

Posted on by Josh Richman

Republicans aligned with the president don’t want to fund the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), but “they sure dont care about finding 200 billion to fight the illegal war in Iraq,” rages Rep. Pete Stark, D-Fremont, chairman of the House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee. “Where are you going to get that money? Are you going to tell us lies like you’re telling us today? Is that how you’re going to fund the war? You don’t have money to fund the war or children. But you’re going to spend it to blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the president’s amusement.”

“The truth is that Bush just likes to blow things up in Iraq, in the United States and in Congress.”

Yes, Drudge already has it. And that’s Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Alamo, chairing the debate as temporary speaker and reminding Stark at the end that members are not to refer to the President in a personal way.

Josh Richman

Josh Richman covers state and national politics for the Bay Area News Group. A New York City native, he earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri and reported for the Express-Times of Easton, Pa. for five years before coming to the Oakland Tribune and ANG Newspapers in 1997. He is a frequent guest on KQED Channel 9’s “This Week in Northern California;” a proud father; an Eagle Scout; a somewhat skilled player of low-stakes poker; a rather good cook; a firm believer in the use of semicolons; and an unabashed political junkie who will never, EVER seek elected office.

More Posts
  • gabriel

    Pete Stark voted against the original CHIP program in 1997, probably because it was a program created by the GOP at the time. I guess he was against it before he was for it. Grandstanding like this does nothing to help the debate, all it does is add more poison to it. But if your whole career was only about scoring political brownie points with the leftist fringe, I guess this is the kind of Congressman you would get.

  • David

    Gabriel is sadly misinformed and evidently narrowly-focused. Pete Stark was against
    the GOP CHIP as it was first voted on because it was not inclusive of the people who
    earn too much for medicaid but not enough to afford their own insurance! This is
    precisely what the newer seeks to accomplish. But the republicans don’t want to give
    that much of a break to people who are too intellingent to vote republican. Therefore
    Pete is actually studing the issue a lot more deeply then you have apparently bothered
    to! And, I applaud Mr. Stark for having the guts to tell it like it is with regards to Bush’s
    war and the willingness to spend money on it but not on health care for our children in
    need. Dubya and all the Republicans who support him are the true hypocrites in this
    case!

  • Oaktownpolitik

    Comments in other papers are highly supportive of Stark for being fed up enough to tell it like it is. It says something about Pelosi who is more than willing to chastise fellow and fella Dems but not the sorry folks who voted for and got us into this mess and want to perpetuate it.
    I really get a kick though out of right wing posters who talk about the “civility” of the debate in regards to gruesome and unnecessary deaths in both our country and Iraq. It’s a false and hypocrticial gentillity reflective of false issues and phony “values.” A phony gentillity existed under the Third Reich too and American society increasingly reflects the teflon exteriors of phony niceness which conceal values of brutality, hate and viciousness underneath.

  • Karen Green

    For those of you who think that Pete Stark was out of line please check out this video at youtube and see if you feel the same way after the viewing. Pete remembered it hence his appropriate outrage.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0TnqUlB4Gg&eurl=http://www.hoffmania.com/blog/2007/10/backbone.html

  • MartinezTom

    …been a dem my whole 52 year old life and I’ve never been so dissapointed in my party. What a bunch of weenies! 20 years from now, if we have not completely lost our freedom of speech, this administration and for it’s complacency, this congress, will be known as the governmental body having the most damaging effect on the human race, ever! Pete was justified but now I have even lost respect for him because he eeked out the apology. . . just like a mouse. Dennis is the only candidate that could possibly change the course of our democracy, and he hasn’t a chance . . . so sad!