During the second debate, Vice President Gore's best line of attack, everyone seemed to agree, came on the issue of health care for children in Texas, which Gore said ranks "49th out of the 50 states."
This is a breathtakingly hypocritical attack, though the Bush campaign has been inept in its own defense. As Kenneth Weinstein pointed out in these pages last month, an innovative Medicaid reform pushed by Bush and the Texas legislature would have allowed the state "to expand health care coverage to up to 150,000 needy children." That quote is from a 1997 memo signed by Clinton's HHS secretary Donna Shalala urging approval of a federal waiver, without which the plan could not go forward. Unfortunately, Texas never got its waiver. Labor unions hated the plan and got it killed. Who intervened for them? Al Gore.