Spitzer Upstages Democrats

The talk in Albany and Manhattan is all of Governor Spitzer's political impotence, but with one bold policy stroke Mr. Spitzer is about to show he is more powerful than the Washington Democratic leadership, not to mention President Bush.

Earlier this month, when President Bush vetoed a bill that the Democratic Congress had passed to saddle federal taxpayers with the health insurance costs of families earning more than $80,000 a year, the Democrats in Washington erupted in paroxysms of handwringing and moral posturing. "In a country as wealthy as ours, it is immoral to deny health care to our children. President Bush cares more about politics than our nation's kids," huffed a statement from Dr. Howard Dean's Democratic National Committee.

Senator Clinton pronounced it "deeply disappointing" that "the good faith efforts of those on both sides of the aisle to address our healthcare challenges, particularly the Children's Health Insurance Program, continue to be undermined by an Administration and a minority of Republicans who chose to put politics and ideology above meeting our healthcare challenges." Said Mrs. Clinton, "The President had the opportunity this year to join the bipartisan consensus in Congress and do the right thing by providing healthcare to millions of uninsured children."

The speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, declared, "The health of our children is of the highest priority to the Democrats in the Congress of the United States. This holiday season, when families should be thinking about toys and presents for their children — my grandchildren celebrate Chanukah and Christmas … — instead, their parents are concerned about their having access to health care. It just isn't right." Ms. Pelosi said, "Let it be clear that Democrats will not rest until 10 million children in America have access to health care, and that it is paid for. … Clearly more work needs to be done to convince the Republicans that health care in America for our children is important."

Meanwhile, as our Jacob Gershman reported in yesterday's New York Sun, Mr. Spitzer is now leaning toward expanding New York's government health insurance scheme with the state's own funds, at a cost of a mere $25 million to $30 million a year in the state's $120 billion budget. In other words, he would be putting the lie to the claims of the Washington Democrats that the only thing standing between middle class children and health care is President Bush.

By doing this, Mr. Spitzer would be joining several other governors, from Mitt Romney of Massachusetts to Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, who are moving toward universal health insurance coverage in their states. They haven't hung around waiting for Washington to do it for them, or hoping Mr. Bush or Speaker Pelosi will solve the issue for them. Just as welfare reform was pioneered in Wisconsin, so the "laboratory of the states" may breed a solution to the problems in the nation's health care system.

We're not wild about Mr. Spitzer's plan for New York. There are concerns it will pull people out of private insurance and into the government-subsidized system. The existing government-run system has perverse incentives — we've reported on taxi drivers striking out of fear that having to report all their income would put them over the income limit for government-subsidized insurance.

But at least Mr. Spitzer is leading rather than complaining, and by doing so, he'll be demonstrating that it's possible to get health insurance in America without requiring a permission slip from President Bush.