[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 19]
[House]
[Page 27261]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                               SCHIP VETO

  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, the vote to override President Bush's 
veto of SCHIP marks the culmination of the most disingenuous and 
deliberately misleading debate I have witnessed in my entire political 
career.
  The partisan talking points from the Bush White House have been 
disputed not only by the independent experts, but by dozens of sensible 
Republicans like Senator Grassley, Senator Roberts and Senator Hatch. 
The facts are simple: working families are having great difficulty 
providing their children with health insurance.
  This is not a program about poor kids, most of whom are already 
eligible for State Medicaid programs. SCHIP provides health care to 
children of working families who make too much to receive welfare, but 
can't afford private insurance. Everyone I talk to back home agrees 
that this is a problem government needs to address and that children of 
struggling working families shouldn't pay the price for Republican 
politics.
  The President and his Republican defenders say that SCHIP shouldn't 
go to families who earn $83,000 a year. Well, as Republican Senator 
Grassley points out, this is why the bill doesn't authorize coverage at 
that income level.
  The White House now opposes the bipartisan bill because it provides 
coverage for adults. Yet, over the last 6 years, the administration has 
cheerfully approved numerous waivers to allow States that have 
requested to extend coverage to some adults; for example, to pregnant 
women. This bill actually phases out adult coverage over 2 years, 
coverage the Bush White House used to think was a good idea, before 
they were against it.
  We have heard complaints about the process, how Republicans were shut 
out of consideration of SCHIP reauthorization. Yet Commerce Committee 
Republicans wasted hour after hour demanding the bill be read line-by-
line, aloud, instead of debating areas of concern and proposing their 
own amendments. Just because House Republicans chose to squander time 
with procedural games and stalling tactics is no justification for 
denying health care to 10 million children.
  Nothing is more ludicrous than the argument that SCHIP is a step 
towards socialized medicine. We have heard them say it time after time. 
But SCHIP is a block grant program to the States where most SCHIP 
recipients receive their coverage by private, managed care plans, 
similar to the private Medicare Advantage plans the Republicans have 
been promoting for the last 5 years.
  The argument that SCHIP is too costly rings hollow. After all, 
remember, there are 98 Republican opponents of SCHIP who voted for a 
more expensive unfunded Medicare prescription drug program, which the 
President happily signed into law.
  Five years of SCHIP expansion would cost little more than a month of 
the Iraq war, and SCHIP is paid for, unlike the President's war that is 
all borrowed money. The President's opposition, if wrong headed, is at 
least consistent. His budget proposal for 2008 underfunded SCHIP. It 
would have cut coverage for 800,000 children currently in the program.
  He drug his feet on SCHIP as Governor of Texas, and his home State 
still has the highest percentage of uninsured children in the country. 
Of course, his tendency to ignore inconvenient facts or make up his own 
is well documented.
  What I find inexplicable is the decision of House Republicans to 
follow the President's leadership down this path of denial and deceit. 
This bill is about more than health care for 10 million children. It 
could mark a turning point in the future of politics and health care 
reform in America.
  If Bush and his GOP supporters are allowed to kill this bipartisan 
compromised legislation without severe consequences, meaningful health 
care reform and progress will be delayed for years. We must lay the 
foundation for accountability at the ballot box, because the message 
will be clear. Progress would be possible only with a new visionary 
president and a Congress that will listen.
  I still hold out hope that this Congress will listen to the support 
of 70 percent of the American public, the support of 16 Republican 
governors and the bipartisan support in the Senate, that will convince 
a sufficient number of House Republicans to overturn this cruel veto 
and provide 10 million children with needed health care.

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