[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 18]
[House]
[Pages 25387-25388]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                 SCHIP

  (Mr. WELCH of Vermont asked and was given permission to address the 
House for 1 minute.)
  Mr. WELCH of Vermont. Mr. Speaker, we have 47 million Americans 
without health insurance. Today, we are going to have an opportunity to 
vote on providing 10 million children with continued health care 
coverage that they are going to need. This is, as in the spirit of many 
of the good things we have done, bipartisan. The Governor of Vermont, 
Republican, supports it. Republican Senators Hatch and Grassley support 
it, done a tremendous job. The response from the President, 
unfortunately, is to veto this legislation.
  It is hard to understand how it is that, when the cost of this 
program is the equivalent of 2 weeks' spending on the war in Iraq, we 
can't find it in our capacity to spend that money to make certain that 
parents, when they go to bed at night, know their kids, when

[[Page 25388]]

they need a doctor, will have access to the health care that they need. 
Our opportunity here in this House is to send the President a message, 
in the hopes that he will do the right thing and sign this bill, with 
an overwhelming bipartisan bill that reflects the bipartisan work and 
bicameral work that was done to bring it to the floor.

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