Battles set after health bill veto
Bush called child insurance coverage too broad, costly. Democrats will push for an override. They already are making it a campaign issue.
WASHINGTON - Democrats yesterday seized control of President Bush's veto of expanded children's health-insurance coverage, making clear that they plan to use it as a political hammer against Republicans in next year's elections.
Hours after Bush vetoed legislation to renew and expand the State Children's Health Insurance Program, the Democrats who control Congress said they would schedule a vote for Oct. 18 in the House to try to override the veto.
Between now and then, a two-week wave of advertising and rallies is aimed, at least officially, at pressuring 15 to 20 more House Republicans to support the override. About 45 House Republicans voted with the 265-159 majority that approved the measure last week.
Democrats are also prodding 11 of their own who voted against the bill or missed the first vote. All told, Democrats need to pick up 25 more votes to override Bush's veto.
If their override effort falls short of the two-thirds majority needed, that could put even more momentum behind Democratic efforts to make this a major 2008 campaign issue, one that Democrats say will hurt GOP presidential candidates as well as House incumbents who stand with Bush.
The president said the legislation - which would have boosted funding by $35 billion over five years, to $60 billion - would have expanded the program too much to cover children from wealthier families and would have displaced private insurance for many.
In a sample of the rhetoric with which Democrats can hit veto defenders, Sen. Barack Obama (D., Ill.) said: "At a time when we're spending billions of dollars on a war that should never have been authorized and giving billions in tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans, today's veto shows a callousness of priorities that is offensive to the ideals we hold as Americans."
Surveys show that renewing and expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program to cover nearly four million more children enjoys wide public support. Also supporting the measure are 43 Democratic and Republican governors and more than 300 child-advocacy, health-industry, religious and civic groups.
In a statement to the House, Bush said he vetoed the bill "because this legislation would move health care in this country in the wrong direction."
Later, in a Pennsylvania appearance before the Lancaster Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Bush expanded on his reasons for the veto: "The policies of the government ought to be to help poor children and to focus on poor children, and the policies of the government ought to be to help people find private insurance, not federal coverage."
The Democratic National Committee wasted no time in trying to turn the veto into a weapon. As Rudy Giuliani, who leads Republican presidential candidates in national polls, campaigned yesterday in New Hampshire, the DNC blasted out a release declaring that the "Giuliani-backed Veto Denies New Hampshire Kids Health Care."
SCHIP was established in 1997 to help cover children whose families earned up to twice the federal poverty level. Medicaid and SCHIP have helped cut the uninsured rate for low-income children by about a third, but about nine million youngsters remain without health coverage.
In Pennsylvania, 164,485 children were covered under the program in September. New Jersey extends the insurance to 123,885 children.
New Jersey covers children of families at up to 350 percent of the poverty level. In Pennsylvania, families at up to 300 percent of the poverty line get either free or subsidized coverage. Above those levels, families can buy coverage at Pennsylvania's cost or about $150 a month.
On Monday, Gov. Corzine filed a federal lawsuit to prevent a cut in SCHIP that would deny 10,000 Garden State children coverage.
The bill Bush vetoed would have covered an additional 3.8 million uninsured youths by 2012 and increased program enrollment from 6.6 million youngsters to more than 10 million. It would have boosted SCHIP funding through steep tax increases on cigarettes and other tobacco products. Bush had proposed increasing funding by $5 billion over five years.
Ed Gillespie, Bush's counselor, suggested there might be room to compromise.
"If there is a question as to whether or not the 20 percent increase in funding that he has proposed . . . would not cover the children that the program intends to cover, he is open to talking about how much more it would take to do that," Gillespie said.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) said recently that a Bush veto would leave no room for compromise.
A temporary funding agreement keeps the expiring SCHIP program afloat through Nov. 16.
A Closer Look at SCHIP
or the State Children's Health Insurance Program, subsidizes health coverage for families that earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but too little to afford private insurance. More than six million children participated in 2006, and 670,000 adults received coverage as a result of waivers to states.
The vetoed bill expands coverage to 10 million children and move some adults to Medicaid.
The bill would limit the full federal match to three times the poverty level, or $61,842 for a family of four. New Jersey could maintain its eligibility, but New York would need a waiver to cap at $82,465.
The bill would raise the program's annual cost to the federal government to $12 billion, with the increase paid by raising the federal excise tax on cigarettes from 39 cents
a pack to 61 cents.
About 3.8 million of those children would get coverage under the bill, the Congressional Budget Office says, and about
two million children with private insurance would switch to SCHIP.
- Associated PressEndText
Read the president's Lancaster speech via http://go.philly.com/schipEndText