Second Debate Transcript: Page 12

Oct. 11 --

LEHRER: Governor, did Vice President — are the vice president’sfigures correct about Texas?

BUSH: Well, first of all, let me say, he’s not for a government-run health care system. I thought that’s exactly what he and Mrs.Clinton and them fought for in 1993, was a government-run health caresystem. It was fortunately stopped in its tracks.

Secondly, we spend $4.7 billion a year on the uninsured in thestate of Texas. Our rate of uninsured, the percentage of uninsured,in Texas has gone down while the percentage of uninsured in Americahas gone up.

Our CHIPs program got a late start because our government meetsonly four months out of every two years, Mr. Vice President. May comefor a shock for somebody’s been in Washington for so long, butactually limited government can work in the second largest state inthe Union, and therefore Congress passes the bill after our session in1970 — ’97 ended. We passed the enabling legislation in ’99. We’ve signed up over 110,000 children to the CHIPs program for comparable states our size. We’re signing them up fast as any other state.

And I — you can quote all the numbers you want, but I’m tellingyou, we care about our people in Texas, we spend a lot of money tomake sure people get health care in the state of Texas, and we’redoing a better job than they are at the national level for reducinguninsured.

LEHRER: Is he right?

GORE: Well, I don’t know about the — all these percentages thathe throws out. But I do know that the — I speculate that the reasonwhy he didn’t answer your question directly as to whether my numberswere right, the facts were right, about Texas ranking dead last infamilies with health insurance and 49th out of 50 for both childrenand women, is because those facts are correct.

And as for why it happened, I’m no expert on the Texasprocedures. But what my friends there tell me is that the governoropposed a measure put forward by Democrats in the legislature toexpand the number of children that would be covered, and insteaddirected the money toward a tax cut, a significant part of which wentto wealthy interests. He declared the need for a new tax cut for theoil companies in Texas an emergency need. And so the money was takenaway from the CHIP program.

There’s a — you don’t have to take my word for this. There is now a federal judge’s opinion about the current management of this program, ordering the state of Texas to do some — and you should read that judge’s language about this.