The House on Tuesday passed a bill that would expand a federal children’s health insurance bill, but without enough Republican support to override a promised presidential veto.
The bill, which aims to increase spending for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, known as SCHIP, from $25 billion to $60 billion over five years, now heads for bipartisan approval in the Senate this week.
President Bush, who believes the bill is too expensive and a step toward socializing American health care, will likely make use of his veto pen right after the Senate clears the bill. But that won’t be the end of it.
A new version of the legislation could then potentially pingpong back and forth several times between Congress and the White House, as a mostly Democratic base of supporters attempts to put political pressure on Bush to sign the bill. But Bush and Republican lawmakers who are critical of the measure say the additional debate will expose the bill’s flaws.
“The longer the bill is out there, the more problems can be seen with it,” said House Minority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo.
House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer, D-Md., did not rule out the possibility of creating a SCHIP bill more attractive to Republicans to add enough GOP support to override a veto. “We would be foolish not to find out if we can get some additional votes,” Hoyer said.
Republican support is already substantial in both the House and the Senate, which places Bush in the awkward position of facing off with top Republicans like Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, who co-authored the bill.
Democrats tout the bill as a much-needed increase in funding that will give states money to go out and find eligible children who are not enrolled in the program.
Republicans say the bill actually expands coverage to children from higher-income families.
The truth is somewhere in between. States currently have the ability to waive the SCHIP income limit of 200 percent of the poverty level and in many cases are insuring children at 300 percent of the poverty level. The SCHIP bill would ban the waivers, but set the limit at 300 percent, which according to the Health and Human Services Department is an annual income of $61,950 for a family of four. A family of four at 200 percent of the povertly level earns $40,000 annually, according to the department.
“It sounds to me like that is an expansion,” Blunt said.
The bill would pay for adding 3.3 million children beyond the 6.6 million already enrolled and also preserve coverage for 660,000 who would have lost it under current funding levels. The bill would be funded in part by a 61-cent increase in the cigarette tax.
