Another SCHIP veto override attempt is expected today, and is again expected to fail. This time, the economy as backdrop will be highlighted.
"The struggling economy gives Democratic lawmakers another weapon in their effort to expand a popular children's health insurance program. In the end, however, they appear to have made little headway in overcoming a presidential veto...
The bottom line is these kids need coverage," said Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., who is chairman of a House health subcommittee. "SCHIP is the best way to handle it."
Both sides say they're willing to sit down after the vote in an effort to reach a compromise.
You can expect SCHIP to be prominently featured in the fall campaigns, particularly if the GOP
continues to peddle scare stories about the popular program. Steve King, (R) IA-05:
Gov. Chet Culver and his liberal allies in Congress, such as Democrats Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and Harry Reid of Las Vegas, lost their effort to lay the cornerstone of socialized medicine for America. President Bush signed his name to an 18-month extension of the SCHIP program - legislation that I sponsored and signed my name to last summer.
Pelosi and Culver tried to push SCHIP bills through Congress that reflected her San Francisco agenda and values, not Iowa Midwestern common sense. Their bills would have given taxpayer-funded health insurance to Iowa families of four with annual incomes from $77,437 to $103,250, and would have given $6.5 million in Medicaid mostly to illegal immigrants. That's not a proposal for poor kids. That's the cornerstone of socialized medicine.
That was pretty good for two paragraphs, fitting in immigration (a big loser for the GOP in every primary and caucus so far, even as SCHIP blocks illegal immigrants from funding), socialized medicine (polls show Americans aren't scared of that moniker, recognize government-run Medicare as a boon, and want SCHIP passed by overwhelming numbers) and San Francisco values (midwesterners care about children's health even if midwestern Republican congressmen don't).
Last week, Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said the SCHIP vote Wednesday will be the first of many this year that will pit competing philosophies about the role of the government in providing health insurance. The year, he predicted, "will be replete with the kind of conflict this town is famous for."
Competing philosophies?
The Los Angeles Times on Monday examined how Democratic presidential candidates Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), Barack Obama (Ill.) and former Sen. John Edwards (N.C.) "have been sniping at each other for months over health care," although they each have proposed that all U.S. residents "have the choice of buying a government-run plan modeled on Medicare." The candidates acknowledge that their proposals are "broad brush strokes for now," but the "consensus among the three means that, if a Democrat is elected, a new government insurance plan for the middle class could well be part of the strategy for tackling one of the nation's most worrisome problems," according to the Times
Bring it on.