Category: Connecticut
Connecticut Official Doesn’t Want Medicaid Cuts
MEDICAID
The Norwalk Hour
Kelly Carroll
Boston University Washington News Service
11/1/2007
WASHINGTON – A Connecticut state official has asked the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services to refrain from making cuts to long-running state Medicaid programs.
David Parrella, director of Medical Care Administration for the state Department of Social Services, testified in Congress Thursday that proposed cutbacks in programs and funds would do more harm than good.
“Despite the occasional messiness that ensues in a program of this size, we are not a runaway train on spending,” he said at a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. “To restrict the state option to use Medicaid to fund any of these activities will only make life harder for the millions of poor Americans who look to you for answers on health care.”
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has recently proposed several restrictions to Medicaid state programs to correct what the Government Accountability Office called “inappropriate financing arrangements.” According to Marjorie Kanof, representing the agency, these arrangements, particularly a state’s ability to shift fiscal responsibility for Medicaid services to the federal government instead of its own, have had “significant fiscal implications for the federal government and states.” She also noted that although the exact amount is not known, “additional federal funds generated through these arrangements…was in the billions of dollars.”
Kanof, who is the managing director of health care for the agency, added: “States’ use of these creative financing mechanisms undermined the federal-state Medicaid partnership as well as the program’s fiscal integrity. States must share in Medicaid costs in proportions established according to a statutory formula.”
Rep. Chris Shays (R-4th), a member of the committee, agreed that states should pay their proper share of Medicaid costs.
“If I was governor, I would say to my staff, ‘I want you to get as much money out of the federal government as you can get,’” he said in an interview. “The problem is, that’s not being true to the program. It’s finding loopholes and taking advantage of them. I’m not a state legislator. I’m a member of Congress, and I have an obligation to make sure our federal dollars are spent honestly.”
In his testimony, Parrella said that, with these restrictions, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is trying to put new limits on how a state can raise its share of Medicaid funding, as well as trying to redefine what services are coverable. According to Parrella, who has experience working in the Medicaid field, Washington has good reason to worry about the integrity of its program, but in some areas, Washington is incorrect.
“They maintain that the elimination of $20 billion in federal Medicaid funding for Medicaid administrative activities…is appropriate because these activities were never intended to be part of Medicaid, despite decades of approved state plan amendments across the nation,” he said in his testimony. “It is surprising that this philosophy should come at a time when most experts in the field would say that the nation’s health care system is in a state of crisis.”
Shays, on the other hand, said that none of the planned changes would kill any program within Medicaid. Instead, they would slow the increase in spending by only eight-tenths of a percent.
“There’s no cuts here, this is slowing increase,” he said. “There’s more money being spent. We are spending tens of billions more dollars every year. It’s just an issue of who has to make up” the extra spending
Connecticut, through Medicaid, its HUSKY A program for uninsured children, and state-administered general assistance, is able to provide health care for low-income people. According to Parrella, Connecticut has not had a problem with inappropriate financing of programs or with shifting costs from the state government to Washington.
“Where money wasn’t being spent on the health care providers…that’s what they are really trying to clamp down on. But we don’t have any history of that,” he said.
If there is a problem in other states, he said, “then they should issue regulations about that. Very simply, if you’re going to spend Medicaid money, the money should go to Medicaid providers and pay for Medicaid services. Period. End of story.”
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House Takes on Weir Farm National Historic Site Amendment Act
FARM
The Norwalk Hour
Kelly Carroll
Boston University Washington News Service
10/30/07
WASHINGTON – Weir Farm is still looking to expand its authority beyond its Wilton and Ridgefield borders.
On Tuesday, a House subcommittee heard testimony regarding legislation that would allow the site to acquire new facilities for both visitors and administrative purposes.
“Weir Farm contributes to Connecticut’s rich culture and history,” testified Rep. Chris Shays (R-4th), who introduced the bill in March. “It is the only National Park Service site in Connecticut, and the only park in the country dedicated to an American painter,” impressionist J. Alden Weir.
At the Tuesday hearing by the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands, Karen Taylor-Goodrich, the service’s associate director for visitor and resource protection, said the department supports the bill. A National Parks official had previously testified before a Senate committee in support of the bill.
The bill would expand the area in which the park would be allowed to gain new land and facilities. Existing law sanctions acquisition only in the towns of Wilton and Ridgefield.
“This expanded authority would reduce the cost of building support facilities and would address concerns that local towns have expressed about the location of administrative facilities in residential neighborhoods,” Taylor-Goodrich said in her prepared testimony.
She said the site is currently seeking to acquire the Georgetown Wire Mill, a National Historic Place, in Redding. Weir Farm currently leases the mill and would like to exchange nine acres of land it owns in Ridgefield for 12,000 square feet of the mill. Gaining the mill, she said, would “reduce construction, operating and maintenance costs for the park,” as well as aid in creating “environmental sustainability.”
Weir Farm was established as a historic site in October 1990. The land was once owned by Weir, remembered for cultivating the American impressionist movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is one of only two national parks that deal with artistic expression and the visual arts, and, according to Shays, is host to approximately 15,000 to 17,000 visitors a year. The site now works to maintain the landscape as it was in Weir’s lifetime.
“Weir Farm provides its visitors with a true understanding of the life of J. Alden Weir and the beautiful landscape he captured on canvas,” Shays said. “[This bill] would allow the Park Service to continue to improve its off-site administrative facilities in keeping with the park’s mission to maintain the integrity of a setting that inspired artistic expression, and I strongly urge the committee to support this bill.”
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Coinciding with Lawsuit, House Discusses Aviation Noise
FAA
The Norwalk Hour
Kelly Carroll
Boston University Washington News Service
10/24/2007
WASHINGTON—A congressional committee has tackled a subject that has southwestern Connecticut towns, including Norwalk, up in arms: aviation noise.
On Tuesday, the town of Norwalk, led by Mayor Richard Moccia, joined in a multi-town lawsuit against the Federal Aviation Administration. This comes almost two months after the agency announced its Integrated Airspace Alternative, a design plan intended to reroute aircraft from the New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia airports over southwestern Connecticut towns, including Norwalk. Community members have expressed concern about noise pollution.
“I’ve been receiving complaints from residents about increased noise,” Michael Coffey, president of Norwalk’s Common Council, said in an interview. “We are attempting to be a part of this to see if there can be a solution.”
The Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s Aviation subcommittee heard testimony Wednesday from aviation and noise pollution experts on the issue. Rep. Jerry Costello (D-Ill.), the chairman of the subcommittee, said: “The purpose of the hearing is to learn more about these issues … what communities have done and what they are doing to address the problem. [Airports] must reach a balance between the need to expand with the quality of life of the people who live near and around our airports.”
Although some testified at the hearing that noise is a “significant” problem, several witnesses at the hearing spoke of the gains that have been made in aviation over the years.
Carl Burleson, director of the federal agency’s office of environment and energy, said the agency has offered noise-abatement air traffic procedures and grants to help reduce noise. He also discussed the agency’s strategy of soundproofing schools and hospitals to reduce the impact of noise.
For Burleson, technology is one of the main factors in noise reduction.
“Advances in technology must play a crucial role if we are to repeat our successful past 30-year effort at reducing noise while growing the aviation system,” he said. “We are identifying technology gaps and targets we will need to address to meet the noise challenges in the years ahead.”
Alan Epstein, vice president of technology and environment for the East Hartford technology company Pratt and Whitney, testified that the company has created a new “geared turbofan” engine, designed to generate a very low level of noise for passenger aircraft. Epstein promised the new engine would be in service as early as 2012, and would create less noise not only in and around airports but also in flight.
“The less noise, the less concerned you are about where it goes,” he said, referring to the new flight plans over Norwalk.
Coffey, however, said he was less than confident.
“If there was a plane that was totally silent, and residents were safe, I hope it would be part of the solution,” he said. On the other hand, he said, “the population is growing, the density is growing…. The biggest part of the problem is the noise problem.”
Mayor Moccia agreed.
“It’s not as if people bought houses near airports,” he said in an interview. “It’s a quality-of-life issue.”
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Jim Himes Eyes the 4th District Seat: ‘I Am Going to Win This Race’
FOURTH
The Norwalk Hour
Kelly Carroll
Boston University Washington News Service
10/22/2007
WASHINGTON -- Jim Himes knows the history.
He knows that Rep. Chris Shays (R-4th) has been in office for 20 years and 11 terms.
He knows the 4th congressional district in Connecticut has become one the most expensive seats in the country, and also one of the most important.
And, he knows that last election’s Democratic challenger, Diane Farrell, collected more than $3 million in campaign contributions, only to lose by a narrow margin on Election Day. Yet none of this has discouraged the former vice president of Goldman, Sachs and Co. from throwing his hat in the ring.
“I am working as hard as I can,” said Himes, a Cos Cob resident and Democrat. “I am going to win this race.”
Since he announced his intention to run, Himes has raised over $600,000. In the second quarter of the year alone, less than 11 weeks into Himes’s campaign, the first-time congressional candidate posted a total of $352,000 raised. This is an amount, according to spokesman Michael Gordon, that no candidate running against Shays has ever posted in their first months.
During the third quarter of the year, from July through September, he raised almost $260,000. As of the end of September, the most recent reporting period, he still had $546,699 in the bank. Shays raised $360,308 during the three months that concluded at the end of September, and has pulled in $848,031 overall. He has $593,791 in his war chest.
“[They] are on pace to set a record,” said Dr. John Orman, chair of the politics department at Fairfield University. “You have to have money to look respectable.”
In 2006, former Westport Selectwoman Farrell lost to Shays by narrow 51 to 48 percent of the vote. Farrell, who also lost to Shays in a close race in 2004, raised more than $3 million for her 2006 campaign. Shays, who has been able to garner loyal donors over his 20 years in office, raised more than $3.8 million during the race.
The race was the ninth-most expensive in the country in 2006. The huge sums of money were required because of the 4th district’s close proximity to the expensive New York media market.
Himes’ early showing has garnered approving attention from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which has long targeted Shays. Connecticut is widely known for its Democratic tendencies, having voted for both Vice President Al Gore and Sen. John Kerry in the last two presidential elections. In addition, Shays is the only Republican in the entire Connecticut delegation. This is not only a seat the Democratic Party wants, but also, according to an official with the committee, a seat the Democrats think they can gain.
“Jim Himes will have to raise a fair amount of money just to compete,” said the official. “A struggle to raise money means a struggle to convince people of your message.… But the goal is to meet with as many people as possible, to get the message out there”
She added, “Washington has gotten to Chris Shays.”
Himes is certainly taking the committee’s advice and getting to the people. While he raised less during the third quarter of the year than during the second, the majority of the contributions came in donations of $250 or less. He called this a good sign.
“The very high number of grass-roots donors indicates that people are very excited with change,” he said. “It’s great to be a candidate.”
Himes out-raised Shays in the second quarter by more than $70,000 and was only about $100,000 behind Shays in the third. This, paired with the narrow margin of Shays’ victory in 2006, has caused Republicans to sit up.
“The reality is that we are going to give [Shays] every resource he needs,” said Julie Shutley, spokeswoman for the National Republican Congressional Committee. “Money is a factor, but it’s not the only factor.”
This may be one point upon which Democrats and Republicans can agree. Himes, for example, calls the focus on fundraising a “shame,” preferring to talk about issues, like the Iraq war.
“Chris Shays needs to be held accountable for getting us into that catastrophe,” he said, referring to Shays’ support of President Bush, and his stated belief that progress is being made in Iraq. “He has ignored other issues.”
John Armstrong, a self-employed information technology consultant from Weston, donated $1,000 to Himes’ campaign committee. Although Armstrong notes that he tries to be proactive by donating to congressional campaigns, he understands what the money will ultimately be used for.
“[Himes] is building a war chest,” Armstrong said. “He will spend it on advertising, unfortunately. It’s the nature of the world these days. Hopefully he’ll do a good job selling his position.”
Even though Himes may feel that it is an “outrage” to focus on the fundraising aspect of his campaign, he realizes that it is all part of the political process, especially in the expensive 4th district,. Pleased as he is with the “self-gratifying” support he has received from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and with the number of people he has already reached, Himes said he is merely interested in getting his message out there.
“I am interested in recapturing all of those things that make this country great,” he said. “Law, opportunity and good government.”
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House Fails to Override SCHIP Veto
HOUSE
The Norwalk Hour
Kelly Carroll
Boston University Washington News Service
10/18/2007
WASHINGTON – All five Connecticut members of the House voted Thursday to override President Bush’s veto of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. The effort to override failed, however, 273 to 156, 13 votes shy of the two-thirds majority needed.
Democratic leaders are expected to try to revive the legislation before the end of the session.
“I am disappointed the House was unable to override the veto,” said Rep. Chris Shays (R-4th), one of 44 Republicans who voted for the override. “This was a good, bipartisan bill, worthy of passage.”
“Going forward, our primary goal must be to enact legislation that significantly reduces the number of children without health insurance,” he said.
Rep. Joe Courtney (D-2nd) said in a teleconference after the vote that the House is going to let the legislation sit for a few weeks to allow more pressure to build, possibly from constituents, on those members who opposed the bill. House Democrats will then reintroduce the bill for consideration sometime before Thanksgiving, he said. Congress has passed an extension of the program until Nov. 16.
Vigorous debate ruled the House floor before the vote Thursday morning, as both sides made their arguments for and against the legislation. Democrats, who have been the main supporters of the program’s expansion, continued to refer to the millions of children who stand to lose public health care, to the chagrin of some Republicans.
“It’s bad enough we are playing politics with this war, we are now playing politics with our kids,” said Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas). “Why don’t we sit down and find a solution that’s right for our children?”
This was not the first time Republicans have recommended coming to a compromise over the Democratic legislation. On Sunday, Bush responded to an assertion by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) that the President “never talked about a compromise” on the legislation.
“If they need a little more money in the bill to help us meet the objective of getting help for poor children, I'm more than willing to sit down with the leaders and find a way to do so,” Bush said in a statement.
The State Children’s Health Insurance Program was created 10 years ago to insure children in families whose annual income is too high to make them eligible for Medicaid but too low to afford private health care insurance.
In August, Congress voted to reauthorize the program for another five years. The Bush administration later created new requirements for program eligibility, leading both the House and Senate to introduce bills both reauthorizing and expanding the program. These bills met with opposition, mostly from Republicans who said the program was covering children whose parents’ income was well above the federal poverty level. In Connecticut, that income ceiling is 300 percent of the poverty level, or almost $62,000 a year for a family of four.
“It’s crucial that Connecticut retains the ability to cover children up to 300 percent of the poverty level,” said Mary Glassman, director of legislative affairs for the advocacy group Connecticut Voices for Children. “Connecticut residents understand what it takes to keep kids healthy. This is just a temporary setback.”
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Shays Frustrated with HUD’s Late Payments to Section 8 Housing Assistance Program
HOUSING
The Norwalk Hour
Kelly Carroll
Boston University Washington News Service
10/17/2007
WASHINGTON – Rep. Chris Shays (R-4th) berated the Department of Housing and Urban Development Wednesday for what he called its inability to provide timely monetary assistance to all participants in the department’s Section 8 project-based rental assistance program.
“I happen to be a Republican, with a Republican administration, and I am more offended than my Democratic colleagues, who I think are being very nice to you,” Shays said, addressing a senior department official during a House subcommittee hearing. “You’ve made a fool of yourself.”
In the past months, the department has been two to eight weeks late in providing subsidized rental assistance to some owners of Section 8 housing. Owners are then in turn late in making payments to mortgage lenders and service and utility providers, something members of the Financial Services Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity deemed intolerable.
“Telling an owner that they have no guaranteed funding is simply unacceptable,” said Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the subcommittee.
John Cox, the department’s chief financial officer, cited lack of technology as the cause of late payments. According to Cox, the processing of owner contract renewals, a stipulation for receiving payment, is done manually and takes some time. If owner contracts are not processed in a timely manner, payments can’t be made.
“I apologize on behalf of the department,” he said. “[The department] is committed to improving systemic needs. Improved administration is critically needed.”
According to David Wood, director of financial markets and community investment for the U.S. Government Accountability Office, 75 percent of the department’s payments to owners are on time. However, eight percent are late by two weeks or more, leading to loss of services and even abandonment of the program out of frustration.
Wood, like Cox, attributed these late payments to the department’s lack of a Web-based, paperless contract renewal process, but included the department’s uncertainty about the amounts that should be attributed to each contract and inaccurate or incomplete monthly vouchers submitted by property owners.
For some subcommittee members, the real reasons for late payments were not being stated.
“I figure it’s not happening because somebody doesn’t want it to,” said Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) during questioning. “Is this… really a reflection of the administration’s basic contempt for public housing programs? When smart people do dumb things, something else is going on.”
According to Tom Hickey, director of finance for the Norwalk Housing Authority, Norwalk’s 200 rental-assistance units have not been heavily affected by the late payment problem.
“We received a letter from HUD [the Housing and Urban Development Department] saying that there would be some late payments, and there were some earlier in the fiscal year. But they caught up,” he said.
Cox assured the subcommittee that the late payments will not happen again once the department adopts a new technological system for processing contract renewals. His testimony, however, was not enough to convince subcommittee members.
“We are going to have to take some very direct action to ensure that this late payment problem does not continue, and make sure that we don’t continue to allow HUD to use late payments as a way to under-fund,” said Waters, who vowed she was going to contact everyone in her district as a way of monitoring the department’s progress. “We don’t like this. We don’t like this at all.”
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House Subcommittee Calls for Clear Strategy for Post-9/11 World
POST-9/11
The Norwalk Hour
Kelly Carroll
Boston University Washington News Service
10/10/07
WASHINGTON – The United States needs a more coherent and functional strategy to combat terrorism and other threats that have come into play since the Sept. 11 attacks, Rep. Chris Shays (R-4th) said at a House subcommittee hearing Wednesday.
“The brutal nature of the terrorist threat shattered naïve assumptions terrorists would be deterred by geographic, political or moral borders,” Shays said. “Containment, deterrence, reaction and mutually assured destruction no longer served to protect the fundamental security interest of the American people.”
Shays is the senior Republican on the National Security and Foreign Affairs subcommittee of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which held the hearing Wednesday on the threats, risks and security in the post-9/11 world.
Members of the subcommittee agreed that lacking a cohesive definition of what these threats are and the resources needed to control them are the greatest problems in effectively protecting the country.
Rep. Shays said it was recognized even before the Sept. 11 attacks that the United States lacked a practical counterterrorism strategy and needed to create one. When President Bush assumed office, he “inherited a loose collection…used as a strategic framework for a national strategy against terrorism.”
Since then, the administration has created a number of strategies in the areas of national security, military strategy, global terrorism, homeland security, weapons of mass destruction, money laundering, cybersecurity and critical infrastructure. The administration’s National Security Strategy of the United States of America, published in 2002 and updated in 2006, poses a counterterrorism strategy, but subcommittee members are calling for an evaluation of its success, if any.
“A large number of counterterrorism strategies do not necessarily mean we are any safer,” Shays said. “Only if these strategies guide us toward clearly articulated goals will they help secure our liberty and prosperity against the threats of a new and dangerous era.”
Walter Isaacson, author and former chairman and CEO of CNN, compared the current national status to the Cold War, but said the country lacks that era’s “burst of creativity.”
“This is an entirely new global struggle, and we are still using old institutions,” Isaacson said during his testimony. “We still haven’t even defined the threat very well. We are not nearly at the level of the people of a previous generation.”
Testifying along with Isaacson, Jessica Mathews, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the real impending threat to national security is not terrorism, but nuclear weapons, an area, she said, in which the United States. is in no position to lead.
“The Achilles’ heel here is that no safeguards can provide protection when a country has direct access to plutonium,” she said.
Although the witnesses could not agree on what exactly has become the biggest threat to the United States since Sept. 11, their testimonies are just the beginning of debate on this matter. Wednesday’s subcommittee hearing was the first in a series dedicated to examining long-term national security strategies.
Shays, after reading his prepared remarks, said that the problem in creating a coherent strategy is the lack of debate in Congress and in the public. Instead, he said, “We look at whether some performer should have control of her child and not have her children taken away, whether [in the case of] Anna Nicole Smith, who is the father of this child? We get into the most absurd debates at a time when we need to have meaningful dialogue.”
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McKinney Follows in Father’s Footsteps, Pushes to End Homelessness
HOMELESS
The Norwalk Hour
Kelly Carroll
Boston University Washington News Service
10/4/2007
WASHINGTON– Connecticut State Senate Minority Leader John McKinney (R-28th), asked Congress on Thursday to do more to help end homelessness in America. He urged the reauthorization of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, named after his father, the late Rep. Stewart McKinney.
“Sadly, over the past 20 years since this law first passed, we have not followed through on the promise to do more to combat homelessness,” McKinney said at a hearing before the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity. “We no longer need simply to manage homelessness, we can end it.”
In 1987, President Reagan signed the McKinney-Vento Act into law. Now, 20 years later, Congress is looking to reauthorize the bill. The Senate passed its version of the legislation on Sept. 19, while a House version is still being worked on.
According to McKinney, more federal money is needed to better provide affordable housing and services to those in need.
“We need new funding to jump-start the next phase of supportive housing development,” he said.
According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, a nonpartisan advocacy group, 5,327 people in Connecticut were classified as homeless in January 2007, 0.15 percent of the entire state population. Of the total homeless, 799 went unsheltered. According to Carole Antonetz, executive director of Norwalk Emergency Shelter Inc., increased funds should go to creating more supportive housing that would let homeless people live more independently and more affordable housing for the poor and homeless.
“We are pretty full every night,” said Antonetz, whose shelter has 95 beds. “It takes a large amount of funding.”
According to McKinney, Connecticut has become a leader in creating supportive housing. There are 3,000 permanent supportive-housing units already created or in the planning stages. But, McKinney said, the money given through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Affairs is not enough.
“Today the funds only cover the expenses of keeping current housing open,” he told the subcommittee. “While the state has tried to pick up the slack…there are many more developments proposed than there is money to cover.”
Because of the work that has been done to combat homelessness in Connecticut over the past 10 years, McKinney said, the state could be looked upon as a blueprint for creating effective movements in supportive housing and putting people into permanent homes. But, according to the senator, there is still more to be done.
“We’re not going to end homelessness unless we have more units,” he said.
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President Vetoes SCHIP Bill, Connecticut Officials Disagree
VETO
The Norwalk Hour
Kelly Carroll
Boston University Washington News Service
10/3/2007
WASHINGTON – President Bush, as promised, vetoed the State Children’s Health Insurance Program legislation on Wednesday. The bill now goes back to Congress, where Democrats are fighting hard to gain enough votes to override the President’s veto.
“I voted for…the Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act, and I was disappointed the President vetoed this legislation,” Rep. Chris Shays (R-4th) said in a statement Wednesday. “When the House considers the President's veto, I will vote to override it. [This] is a good piece of legislation that, on balance, is worthy of passage.”
The program’s reauthorization and expansion passed Congress last week, with a 265 to 159 vote in the House and a 67 to 29 vote in the Senate. With Democrats holding only a relatively slim majority in the House, considerably more than the 45 Republicans who voted for the bill last week would have to vote to override Bush’s veto by the required two-thirds majority. The Senate, based on last week’s vote, could vote to override. Last week, Congress agreed to an extension of the program, which expired Sept. 30, until Nov. 16.
“The President has said himself that at least the bill…has some very serious problems,” Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said in a press briefing last week. “It helps those who are well-off as opposed to those who are poor. It moves people from private insurance to government insurance. It covers adults; this is a program for children.”
Leavitt also referred to the “holes” in funding for the legislation, including the proposed increased tax on tobacco products.
According to Rep. Shay’s office, the congressman is pleased that the bill calls for an increased tobacco tax to offset the program’s costs and hopes that would save future generations from huge fiscal responsibilities. Rep. Shays also disagrees with the President that the program’s enrollment should be closed to children in families making above 200 percent of the poverty line, or $41,300 for a family of four.
Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) also criticized the veto. “This President's priorities are unconscionable,” Dodd said in a statement Wednesday. “With the resources it takes to execute just over three months of the Iraq War, we could fully fund the expansion of health care for needy children.”
Janie Friedlander, director of pupil personnel for Norwalk Public Schools, said “We would hope that all kids come in healthy and ready to learn. Without insurance, the risk is that [they won’t], and that should be a concern for everybody.”
This is only the fourth time President Bush has used his veto power during his almost seven years in office. The first, in 2006, was against expanding embryonic stem-cell research. In May of this year, the President vetoed an Iraq war spending bill that included timelines for troop withdrawal. And, in June, Bush again vetoed stem-cell legislation. Congress has failed to override any of Bush’s vetoes.
While officials in the House Ways and Means Committee said they hope enough Republicans will join with the majority and override the President’s veto, they were unsure of when the legislation would be brought back to Congress for the override vote.
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UConn Coach, Cancer Survivor, Keynote Speaker for Medical Technology Conference
CALHOUN
The Norwalk Hour
Kelly Carroll
Boston University Washington News Service
10/2/2007
WASHINGTON – University of Connecticut men’s basketball coach Jim Calhoun addressed an audience of hundreds on Tuesday as a keynote speaker for the inaugural AdvaMed Medical Technology Conference. Calhoun, a two-time national championship coach with the Huskies, was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2003.
“If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t be here,” Calhoun said, referring not only to his cancer treatment but also treatment for the general wear and tear on his body. “Thank you. I really enjoy the walking.”
The Hall of Fame coach was named a keynote speaker at the medical technology event not only because he is a cancer survivor, but also because of his work in the field of medicine, including founding, along with his wife, the Pat and Jim Calhoun Cardiology Center at the University of Connecticut Health Center. Calhoun, who has lost many family members, including his mother, to heart problems, said he wants to do all he can to make sure that no other children have to face losing a parent prematurely to heart problems.
“My mother died after a successful bypass surgery at 30,” he said. “Things that can be prevented shouldn’t happen.”
AdvaMed member companies produce medical devices, diagnostic products and health information systems that help provide early detection, less invasive procedures and effective treatments for patients. According to the association’s mission, AdvaMed advocates for advances in global health care and for ensuring access to the benefits of medical technology.
Calhoun, whose new book, A Passion to Lead, was published on Tuesday, also gave audience members his advice on leading their medical technology companies. Comparing running a company to coaching a basketball team, he stressed finding one’s passion, setting standards, motivating those beneath you and winning every day.
“Do you notice everyday victories?” Calhoun asked the crowd. “It’s a process, not an event. The national championship was an event that ended the process.”
After being diagnosed with prostate cancer in February of 2003, Calhoun took a leave of absence from his basketball team to have surgery and receive treatment. While reports at the time predicted Calhoun would be absent for up to a month, it was only a matter of weeks before he was coaching again. Two years later, he was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass.
The 65-year-old Massachusetts native has amassed more than 700 wins as a head coach. Along with two NCAA championships, Calhoun also led the Huskies to a National Invitation Tournament Championship in 1988, and has been named the Big East Conference Coach of the Year four times, more than any other coach in the history of the conference.
“Excellence is never by accident, it’s always by design,” he said. “Leaders help people cross that long, long bridge from potential to excellence.”
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