Paul Simons pays visit to Pelosi

Less than a week after hosting actor Brad Pitt, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Wednesday was paid a visit by singer-songwriter Paul Simon for a somewhat bizarre mutual thank-you session over the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).

The 67-year-old, two-time inductee into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame appeared at a four-and-a-half-minute-long press conference with Pelosi and Dr. Irwin Redlener, co-founder of the Children’s Health Fund.
Simon is a benefactor and co-founder of the Children’s Health Fund, a New York City-based advocacy group that promotes child care issues.

Simon thanked Pelosi for Congress’s role in expanding the SCHIP program, as signed into law by President Barack Obama on Feb. 4.

“It’s a wonderful opportunity for the poorest children to find medical care where there was none before,” Simon said. “I also want to say that in this financial crisis that we are suffering, the problems have to be attacked at the top of the financial and banking system but also from the bottom, who are really suffering. Poverty really, really inflicts suffering, and those that suffer the most are the children.

“We need to encourage everyone, all the senators and the speaker, to put that issue in the forefront. I know there’s a lot of competition from a lot of needy sources for attention, but I don’t want us to forget, the innocent and the weakest in our country is the children.”

Pelosi and Pitt met on March 5 to discuss Pitt’s efforts to promote rebuilding in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans, which was ravaged by Hurricane Katrina.

– J. Taylor Rushing