Linking directly to the AP's GOP stenography, Brandon Kelm of Wired Science says that a veto of SCHIP expansion "might just save the Democrats from themselves." Why?

Funding one-time or less-necessary federal programs—road repairs, high-grade toilet seats—with tobacco taxes makes sense. But if the tax hike discourages people from smoking—something that Democratic leaders say would be a plus—then the program will be stuck scrambling for new funding sources when it comes up for approval again.

Beliving this requires you to believe this: an increase in the tobacco tax that would, if we're extremely lucky, reduce consumption by 10%, will somehow decrease cigarette purchases so severely that when SCHIP comes up for renewal again, the same tax will not pay for at least 90% of the renewal cost.

The population will increase over the next decade, and if tobacco consumption declines at a steep enough rate during that period, we'll have at least the same number of smokers even though it's a lower percentage of the population, so the money stays the same. Will we have even more families in need of SCHIP when it's up for renewal again? Maybe so (I have no way of predicting that), but this turns the GOP argument into "we're going to make sure people still can't afford health insurance, so more people will need this over the years, and therefore we can't afford it."

This is strange logic at best, saying that the goal of US health policy should be to give up on health care for people who can't afford private insurance because we should manage the economy in a way to make sure that number rises.

But, then again, as noted, all of the GOP's other arguments for why kids shouldn't have health care have fallen flat with the public, so they've got to try to milk this one for all it's worth. I just didn't expect Wired to be so credulously stupid about it.