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Posted on 09/20/2007 3:27:53 PM PDT by mdittmar
WASHINGTON, DC— Today, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, released the following statement in response to President Bush’s threat to veto the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.
“This is a cruel threat to needy children and I urge the President to reconsider. It’s outrageous that there are nearly 9 million uninsured children in America and over 600,000 more since 2005. This Administration has failed on healthcare and our children are paying the price. Congress has been working in a bipartisan way to get a Children’s Health Insurance Program bill that will make quality health care available to children of working families. This bill will allow children to get the quality healthcare they deserve, and should be signed into law before the program expires next week. After watching hundreds of thousands of children lose their health coverage on his watch, it's incomprehensible that President Bush would veto the bill that fixes the problem. This is a cruel threat to needy children and I urge the President to reconsider."
How many are illegal aliens? This would just be a backdoor way to confer upon them and their parents legal status in this country. Trying to make GWB look like the Grinch who stole healthcare from kids.
All these people live in states and cared for locally, there is no need for any federal health care program.
The only constitutional legislation the feds could be involved in would be transportability across state lines.
We need to tell our federal representative to limit all discussion to that. Their is no need for federal, Washington DC health care.
” Administration has failed on healthcare and our children are paying the price. “
why is it this administrations fault these people have kids they can’t afford?
God help us if the party of the Pig Kennedy and his Utopians win next year.
Mary Jo would have appreciated some healthcare in that submerged car.
Pay for them out of the Kennedy trust funds, Ted. I would like to see his federal tax returns, complete with the names of all of his trust funds.
Kennedy needs to go back to the bar and stay off the Senate floor.
The only cruel hoax is Ted Kennedy foisting off b.S. bills that he knows will never go into effect.
He’ll probably sleep it off, and take care of business in the morning...
That’s how he’s operated for decades.
“Anybody seen ma neck brace laying around?”
- On cue at 7:30 PM, Senator Kennedy began reading from a manuscript gripped tightly in his hand:
My fellow citizens:
I have requested this opportunity to talk to you, the people of Massachusetts, about the tragedy which happened last Friday evening. This morning I entered a plea of guilty to the charge of leaving the scene of an accident. Prior to my appearance in court it would have been improper for me to comment on these matters, but tonight I am free to tell you what happened and to say what it means to me.
On the weekend of July 18th, I was on Martha's Vinyard Island participating with my nephew, Joe Kennedy, as for 30 years my family has participated in the annual Edgartown Sailing Regatta. Only reasons of health prevented my wife from accompanying me. On Chappaquiddick Island off Martha's Vinyard, I attended one Friday evening, July 18th, a cookout I had encouraged and helped sponsor for a devoted group of Kennedy campaign secretaries. When I left the party around 11:15 PM, I was accompanied by one of these girls, Miss Mary Jo Kopechne. Mary Jo was one of the most devoted members of the staff of Senator Robert Kennedy. She worked for him for four years and was broken up over his death. For this reason and because she was such a gentle, kind and idealistic person, all of us tried to help her feel that she still had a home with the Kennedy family.
There is no truth whatever to the widely circulated suspicions of immoral conduct that have been leveled at my behavior and hers regarding that evening. There has never been a private relationship between us of any kind. I know of nothing in Mary Jo's conduct on that or any other occasion - and the same is true of the other girls at the party - that would lend any substance to such ugly speculation about their character. Nor was I driving under the influence of liquor.
Little over a mile away the car that I was driving on an unlit road went off a narrow bridge which had no guard rails and was built on a left angle to the road. The car overturned into a deep pond and immediately filled with water. I remember thinking as the cold water rushed in around my head, that I was for certain drowning; then water entered my lungs and I actually felt a sensation of drowning; but somehow I struggled to the surface alive. I made immediate and repeated efforts to save Mary Jo by diving into the strong and murkey current, but succeeded only in increasing my state of utter exhaustion and alarm.
My conduct and conversation during the next several hours, to the extent that I can remember them, made no sense to me at all. Although my doctors inform me that I suffered a cerebral concussion as well as shock, I do not seek to escape responsibility for my actions by placing the blame either on the physical and emotional trauma brought on by the accident, or anyone else. I regard as indefensible the fact that I did not report the accident to the police immediately. Instead of looking directly for a telephone after lying exhausted on the grass for an undetermined time, I walked back to the cottage where the party was being held, requested the help of two friends, Joe Gargan and Paul Markham, and directed them to return immediately to the scene with me ( it then being sometime after midnight ) in order to undertake a new effort to dive down and locate Miss Kopechne. Their strenuous efforts, undertaken at some risk to their own lives, also proved futile.
All kinds of scrambled thoughts - all of them confused, some of them irrational, many of which I cannot recall, and some of which I would not have seriously entertained under normal circumstances - went through my mind during this period. They were reflected in the various inexplicable, inconsistent and inconclusive things I said and did - including such questions as whether the girl might still be alive somewhere out of that imediate area, whether some awful curse actually did hang over all the Kennedys, whether there was some justifiable reason for me to doubt what had happened and to delay my report and whether somehow the awful weight of this incredible incident might in some way pass from my shoulders. I was overcome, I am frank to say, by a jumble of emotions - greif, fear, doubt, exhaustion, panic, confusion and shock.
Instructing Gargan and Markham not to alarm Mary Jo's friends that night, I had them take me to the ferry crossing. The ferry having shut down for the night, I suddenly jumped into the water and impulsively swam across, nearly drowning once again in the effort, returning to my hotel around 2 AM and collapsed in my room. I remember going out at one point and saying something to the room clerk. In the morning with my mind somewhat lucid, I made an effort to call a family legal advisor, Burke Marshall, from a public telephone on the Chappaquiddick side of the ferry, and then belatedly reported the accident to the Martha's Vinyard police.
Today, as mentioned, I felt morally obligated to plead guilty to the charge of leaving the scene of an accident. No words on my part can possibly express the terrible pain and suffering I feel over this tragic accident. The last week has been an agonizing one for me, and for the members of my family; and the greif we feel over the loss of a wonderful friend will remain with us the rest of our lives.
- Kennedy put aside the prepared text. He folded his hands, looked directly into the camera and appeared to continue the speech extemporaneously. However, large cue cards picking up the text of the speech were held up out of camera range. The Senator continued:
These events and the publicity and inuendo and whispers which have surrounded them, and my admission of guilt this morning, raises the question in my mind of whether my standing among the people of my state has been so impaired that I should resign my seat in the United States Senate. If at any time the citizens of Massachusetts should lack confidence in their Senator's character or his ability, with or without justification, he could not, in my opinion, adequately perform his duties, and should not continue in office.
The people of this state - the state which sent John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, Charles Sumner, Henry Cabot Lodge, and John F. Kennedy to the United States Senate - are entitled to representation in that body by men who inspire their utmost confidence. For this reason I would understand full well why some might think it right for me to resign.
This would be a difficult decision to make. It has been seven years since my first election to the Senate. You and I share many memories. Some of them have been glorious, some have been very sad. The opportunity to work with you and serve our state has been much of what has made my life worthwhile.
And so I ask you tonight, the people of Massachusetts, to think this through with me. In facing this decision, I seek your advice and opinion. In making it, I seek your prayers. For this is a decision that I will have finally to make on my own.
It has been written:
"A man does what he must - in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures - and that is the basis for all human morality. And whatever may be the sacrifices he faces if he follows his conscience - the loss of his friends, his fortune, his contentment, even the esteem of his fellow men - each man must decide for himself the course he will follow. The stories of past courage cannot supply courage itself. For this each man must look into his own soul."
I pray that I can have the courage to make the right decision. Whatever is decided, whatever the future holds for me, I hope I shall be able to put this most recent tragedy behind me and make some future contribution to our state and mankind whether it be in public or private life. Thank you and good night.
All children.
Everywhere.
Bump!
The threatened veto is not a threat to needy children. It is a threat to the continued mission creep whose objective is widening the raid on the Treasury to award individuals and special interest groups who are perfectly able to satisfy their own needs by their own personal eforts, but have come to expect the dole to continue. A whole subculture of this dependency is still being encouraged and proactive assistance is extended, even in the absence of any demonstrated need.
This could be considered unconscionable, but it is doubtful if those who pursue this endless raid would know the meaning of the word.
Do you suppose Senator Kennedy cares more about children or more about scoring cheap political points against the President.
One way to check is to see how many children Senator Kennedy has bought health insurance for from his own money. If the number is zero, you can be pretty sure he is just playing this thing for points.
When the wealthy elitist leftists in this country have donated their wealth to the causes they claim to believe in — to an extent that reduces their standard of living to that of my own -— then I will consider contributing more taxes.
Mary Jo was not available for comment! Mary Jo was not available for comment! Mary Jo was not available for comment!
This man turned his back on a human being who needed his help. Regardless of what really happened on that bridge, he chose his career over her life. He let her die and lied about it to say his political butt.
Please explain to me why anyone should care either about what this coward has to say or why I should give a damn about the worthless people in Mass. who continue to support his worthless butt!
Exactly, I was thinking the same about Mary Jo..
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