Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

I had no idea at the time that I was being a pawn in a plot to undermine our American way of life. I had no idea that I was being fed socialism in a sugar cube.

I thought the sugar cube contained serum to thwart polio. Little did I know. I was in third grade. How could I?

Yes, we all lined up on that day and took the polio vaccine in those little cubes. Then we hopped and skipped off to class, and never had to worry about a killer that had crippled hundreds of thousands.

Socialized medicine, it was.

You see, everyone in my class got the sugar cube. That included people, like me, whose families could afford inoculations, and others in my class who couldn't. They got one, too. I didn't realize it then, but that was wrong, wrong, wrong. No one has a right to be inoculated against polio. No one has the right to health care.

if a child lacks health care, it's a shame. But depriving that child of health care is the wisest policy. That way people who can't afford health care won't have children they can't afford. Right, America? Right, Rush?

We should have known that in conquering polio, the free-market system would provide for all. If it didn't, the losses would be negligible. For those who lost children, this would be an incentive not to have more. Do I hear right?

President Bush apparently is alarmed about expansion of the Children's Health Insurance Program. He says that spending another $35 billion would lead to "federalized health care."

He must know what's alarming about federalized health care. The federal government provides for all of his needs and, until recently, those of his children. Whatever the case, it must be horrific.

I admit confusion. But that was the case in third grade when I was duped into socialized medicine. As for CHIP, it was barely controversial until Bush's party lost control of Congress. The party that took over wanted to insure more children. True, $35 billion is a lot of money. But it's one of the biggest life-saving bargains imaginable, like that sugar cube I took.

Last year, for $5 billion, CHIP insured 6.5 million children. Sure, $5 billion's a lot of money. It's also roughly what it will have taken to build and operate the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad for the next four years.

The thing about CHIP is that it's not a freebie like that socialistic sugar cube. It costs families to enroll and stay current. It also involves private insurers.

Another thing about CHIP is that a lot of the slurs used against it can be laid right at the Bush administration's feet.

Take the assertion that CHIP would insure families of four up to $83,000 in annual income. Pure red herring. High-income New York was asking for that based on the block-grant system, an approach Bush favors.

It's common to hear critics deride CHIP for insuring adults in several states. But the benefits were OK'd by the Bush administration.

Bush has called for compromise. Democrats have compromised in dozens of ways. But this isn't so much about compromise as it is in blocking further government involvement in health care.

We're back to that argument: Is health care a right? Or is a child's condition simply a plight we must ascribe to fate? In case you haven't noticed, Bush tends to make curious statements from time to time.

One such line in defending his idea of health-care policy: "People have access to health care in America. After all, you can just go to an emergency room."

That's the point, Mr. President. In America, people don't expire and rot on the streets for the condition of being a pauper. We treat them. And when we say "we," that means everyone who pays a hospital bill.

CHIP gets out ahead of that emergency room visit in a cost-effective way. It's sort of like that sugar cube I took. It kept me from having polio. But look at what social destruction it wrought.