Letter: America Is Letting Down Its Children

Congress stated in October that they did not have the funds to renew the Children’s Health Insurance Program and still have not provided funding as states run out of money. Yet Congress had no problem passing a tax bill that added $1.5 trillion to our national debt and benefited the wealthiest 1 percent. I have to seriously question these actions.

Children, our future, the most vulnerable, have been told that there isn’t enough money to provide them health insurance. Not renewing CHIP is not a fiscal question but a moral question that will affect our culture for years. Not renewing health care for our society’s least borders on blatant abuse. The richest country in the world doesn’t have the funds to insure 1.2 million children who have been covered by the CHIP program for years? Really?

Denying health care to the least in our society is a reflection of the greater moral decay that is currently devouring our country. Make America great again — for whom? Us versus them, shout down, put down, create and espouse lies upon lies. Our moral fabric of being one of the greatest democracies in the world is being torn apart, starting with our least. As it has been said in the past, if you want to know what a country stands for just look at how they treat their least in the culture. Children are always the least in any culture and America is letting them down more and more each day.

Maxine E. Marak, State College