Joe Sonka December 24th, 2007

(crossposted at BlueGrassRoots)

Here we are on Christmas eve, so let me tell you a story about the Kentucky Grinch. The man who seeks to strip children of their health care. The man who seeks to block new student loans that would allow more kids to go to college. The man who would seek to smear the family of a child simply because he advocated the expansion of SCHIP, from which he benefited. And then lie about it on camera. The man with…. no lips.

And only so he could fill his coffers with insurance company dollars.

First, let's go back to early Septmeber as Mitch joined the small fringe minority who don't care if you poor kids can afford college.

Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell today voted against the bi-partisan College Cost Reduction Act of 2007, a bill which will benefit tens of thousands of Kentucky students and families and make the single largest investment in student aid since the GI Bill.

"As the cost of college continues to rise and more and more Kentuckians feel the pinch, Mitch McConnell has turned a deaf ear to the need to make college more affordable," DSCC spokesman Matthew Miller said. "Kentuckians want a leader who will work for their children's education, not one who stands in the way of it."

The bi-partisan legislation passed 79-12.

Today, McConnell Rejected Largest Single Student Aid Investment Since GI Bill. The bill McConnell voted against this morning - which passed 79-12 with overwhelmingly bipartisan support - will cut roughly $20 billion from lender subsidies and use the funds to beef up aid to college students and cut interest rates on subsidized loans in half. It also includes a $1,090 increase in the maximum Pell Grant award and debt forgiveness after ten years for certain public-sector employees. "This bill will do more to help students and families in this country pay for college than any effort since the GI Bill," said House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller. [Vote 326, 9/7/07; CQ Today, 9/6/07; Wall Street Journal, 9/6/07; HELP Press Release, 9/5/07]

New Student Aid Bill Will Benefit Tens of Thousands of Kentucky Students and Families. In the 2005-06 school year, nearly 80,000 Kentucky students received federal Pell grants. Still, though, more than half of Kentucky's college seniors graduate with debt. [HELP Committee, September 2007; US Department of Education, 2005-2006 Federal Pell Grant Program End-of-Year Report]

Debt Forgiveness Program Will Be a Huge Benefit for KY Nurses, Teachers and Law Enforcement Officials. Under the bill McConnell opposed today, a starting teacher in Kentucky earning $30,619 with the state average loan debt of $15,861 could have loan payments capped at 15% - reducing his or her monthly payments by 29%. After 10 years of teaching, all remaining debt would be forgiven - in this case, a benefit worth $9,049. [HELP Committee, September 2007]

But Mitch's plot to stick it to poor kids did not end there. Later that month, Mitch once more joined the fringe minority in the Senate to vote against the expansion of SCHIP for the children of low-income families.

Great news from the Senate yesterday, as the expansion of SCHIP, (providing health insurance to children of poor families) passed by a veto proof majority of of 67 to 29.

And who was part of that radical fringe minority who delight in sticking it to poor kids? Our own Mitch McConnell, of course. Thanks for writing our own campaign commercial scripts for us next year, Mitch.

This truly sickening stance taken by McConnell and the Bush Administration is laid out in full detail here:

“The Bush administration has argued that some parents drop their children's private health insurance to enroll them in cheaper, taxpayer-funded coverage through the State Children's Health Insurance Program. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that for every 100 kids who enroll in the program now, 25 to 50 were previously covered in the private market.”

 

I see. So families that are struggling to get by on a low income, paying through the nose for crappy insurance, having to deal with predatory lenders, and trying to care for their children on the scarce money that is left….. it's those families that we shouldn't lend a hand too. They should continue to be in a situation where they have to choose between paying health care for their child or being able to pay all of their bills and living expenses.

And the reason why Mitch doesn't want to expand this coverage? Because it doesn't let the insurance industry squeeze every sinlge penny it possibly can out of the working class.

This vote is the perfect encapsulation of who Mitch McConnell is. If you are not a big money contributor, you do not exist.

After Bush vetoed the popular, bi-partisan legislation that 80% of Americans supported, what did Mitch do? Vote against it again.

For the sixth time in recent months, Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell led a  small segment of his Republican colleagues in voting against the bipartisan  Children's Health Insurance Program today – despite changes made to the bill to  address Republicans' stated concerns and a recent poll showing that over 80% of  Americans favor expanding the program. McConnell's vote to deny 51,500 Kentucky  children health care comes just weeks after he was caught on tape misleading  Kentuckians about his office's role in a smear campaign against 12-year old  Graeme Frost.

 

"It seems like every day Mitch McConnell makes another bad choice on  children's health care," DSCC spokesman Matthew Miller said. "Between getting  caught in a smear campaign against a 12-year old boy and voting against  children's health care yet again, Mitch McConnell probably wishes the SCHIP  debate would just go away. But the thousands of uninsured Kentucky children  can't be swept under the rug, and neither will McConnell's decision to turn his  back on them."

McConnell Votes Against Children's Health Care… Again. For  the sixth time in recent months, Mitch McConnell voted today to block a  bipartisan bill to expand health care to an additional 51,000 children in  Kentucky.[ Families  USA Report;

But Mitch the Grinch was not willing to stop there, oh no. Why stop at voting against helping children when you can smear individual kids and their family in the press with lies?

Graeme Frost, the child who gave the Democratic response advocating the expansion of SCHIP from which he and others would benefit, would soon find out the lenghts to which Mitch McConnell would stoop to.

Yesterday, ThinkProgress reported that there was mounting evidence that a staffer for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) may have been involved in the right-wing campaign to smear Graeme Frost and his family.

 

ABC News reported earlier in the week that an e-mail sent to reporters by “a Senate Republican leadership aide” in McConnell’s office suggested that “GOP aides were complicit in spreading disparaging information about the Frosts.” A McConnell spokesman refused to deny the office’s involvement in the affair.

ThinkProgress has obtained an email that congressional sources tell us was sent to reporters by Sen. McConnell’s communications director Don Stewart.

On Monday morning, Don Stewart sent an email with the following text to reporters:

Seen the latest blogswarm? Apparently, there’s more to the story on the kid (Graeme Frost) that did the Dems’ radio response on SCHIP. Bloggers have done a little digging and turned up that the Dad owns his own business (and the building it’s in), seems to have some commercial rental income and Graeme and a sister go to a private school that, according to its website, costs about $20k a year ‹for each kid‹ despite the news profiles reporting a family income of only $45k for the Frosts. Could the Dems really have done that bad of a job vetting this family?

In the email, Stewart attacks Democrats for allegedly doing a bad job “vetting this family.” That effort to blame Democrats for the smear campaign seems to have swayed some reporters, as CNN this morning claimed that the real story is that “the Democrats didn’t do as much of a vetting as they could have done.”

The New York Times reported yesterday that “an aide” to Sen. McConnell “expressed relief that his office had not issued a press release criticizing the Frosts.” No, what the McConnell staffer did was worse — he used the power and privilege of the Senate office to secretly propagate a baseless smear campaign against a 12-year old boy and his family simply because they disagreed on policy

And once caught red-handed in spreading lies about Frost and his family to the media, what does Mitch the Grinch do? Well, he lies through his teeth, of course.

WASHINGTON — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell knew last week — at a time when he was denying it — that his staff had sent e-mails encouraging reporters to look into the background of a 12-year-old boy used by Democrats to support expansion of a health-care program.

 

In an interview Friday with WHAS-TV reporter Mark Hebert, the Kentucky Republican said his staff had not been involved in trying to push reporters to look into the financial situation of the boy's family.

But McConnell's communications director, Don Stewart, said in an interview Monday with The Courier-Journal that he had told McConnell about the Oct. 8 e-mails sometime around Thursday, the day before the interview with Hebert.

Stewart also said, however, that he had told the senator he had sent follow-up e-mails within a matter of hours warning reporters off of the story because "the family is legit."

McConnell declined to comment on the matter last night.

Declined comment? Why don't you just go ahead and lie again like you did Friday to Mark Herbert? Don't tell me you've grown a sense of decency over the weekend, Mitch?

So parents of Kentucky, what can you do to protect your kids against Mitch the Grinch this Christmas, and future Chritsmases?

Well, go to this site and learn about the Democratic candidate for Senate who will kick Mitch the Grinch out of office for good, Lt. Col. Andrew Horne. And be sure to sign up to volunteer or give to his campaign, as the Grinch has horded up a fortune to use against him.

• Frostgate , Health Care , Mitch McConnell
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