I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
Once again, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) is in the middle of some political wrangling. In 2007, an expansion of the bill passed the Senate and House but was vetoed by President George W. Bush. The House couldn’t muster the two-thirds votes necessary to override the veto.
This year, things aren’t looking as good in the Senate — though with President Barack Obama on board, it would only need 60 votes (to invoke cloture) instead of the two-thirds vote to pass. There is partisan wrangling in the bill, and New Mexico’s senior senator, Jeff Bingaman, weighed in on an NPR story aired on today’s episode of Morning Edition. Though his piece was cut from the audio, it is available in the text version on the NPR Web site.
The plan would expand the program to 4 million extra children by 2013.
The change that most angers Republicans is the removal of a five-year waiting period for the children of legal immigrants. Again, that’s legal, not illegal.
Republican John Ensign of Nevada said, “It would seem to me that we are giving more incentives for folks to come to the United States, not just to participate in the American dream, but to come to the United States to get on the government dole.”
Bingaman disagreed.
Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) said immigrants already have an incentive to come to the United States illegally to have their children, because anyone born here is entitled to benefits as a citizen. Yet if that same family follows all the rules and enters legally, he says, “we are going to deny them the same benefits they would have had if they had come in illegally. And that just doesn’t make any sense.”
Two Republican senators who voted against the bill in 2007 were replaced by Democrats (North Carolina’s Elizabeth Dole by Kay Hagan and Colorado’s Wayne Allard by Mark Udall). Meanwhile five Republican senators who voted for the bill were replaced by Democrats, including New Mexico’s Pete Domenici, who was replaced by Tom Udall. Udall voted for the bill while in the House.
The bill has already passed the House, with all three New Mexico representatives voting in favor of the bill. If it passes the Senate, Obama is expected to sign the bill quickly.
