If you haven’t heard the name yet, Save Jerseyans, Andy Kim (a former Obama White House adviser) is the likely Democrat nominee in NJ-03 next fall.
He’s ambitious. He wants to defeat Congressman Tom MacArthur. He’s also willing to say anything and everything to make it happen and proved as much with a Sunday tweet:
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MacArthur and GOP are pushing tax cuts for the wealthy before helping millions of sick children. 3 month since Congress let CHIP expire—still no solution in sight. This isn't about politics, it's about the lives of 9 million children, over 100,000 in NJ. https://t.co/jASjnl6g42
— Andy Kim (@AndyKimNJ) December 18, 2017
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That’s 100% false.
Kim’s suggestion that tax reform and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) — a program which helps 9 million U.S. kids — are somehow directly connected isn’t accurate in any respect. No one is using it as a bargaining “chip” if you’ll pardon the bad pun.
In fact, as The Washington Post (hardly a conservative rag!) recently explained in a fact-check column, responding to a Jimmy Kimmel segment on the subject, “CHIP is completely unrelated to the tax legislation; in fact, it won’t be and was never going to be part of the tax bill. Congress is able to work on several issues at once — and most of the outstanding issues get wrapped up just before important holidays.“
The CHIP funding discussion is happening concurrently. There’s no immediate threat to funding. There’s universal support for CHIP; how to fund it is the only real debate happening right now. The GOP voted to fund CHIP on November 3rd; most Democrats voted against it.
Any assertion to the contrary is a bald-faced lie.
The only people politicizing CHIP at the moment are extreme partisans like… Andy Kim.
There’s enough #FakeNews floating around these days. God knows NJ-03 voters would be ill-advised to compound the problem by electing a shameless liar like Andy Kim to high office.
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