House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Democrats are about 14 Republican votes shy of being able to override the president’s veto of a children’s health-insurance expansion and will spend the next 10 to 14 days putting pressure on those lawmakers to switch sides.
Pelosi declined to give odds for success for the lobbying campaign to round up enough support to more than double funding for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, known as SCHIP. House Republican leaders have vowed to stand firm.
President Bush vetoed the legislation Wednesday, saying it would cost too much and would expand the program beyond children from low-income families. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt on Sunday repeated the president’s pledge to seek a compromise.
The administration believes the program should put “poor children first,” Leavitt said.
“The president thinks it’s wrong that some under this bill could receive public subsidy for their health insurance,” he said on “ABC This Week.” “We’d like to get SCHIP reauthorized and move on to the larger debate of how we can get every American to have access to affordable policy.”
Meanwhile, Pelosi, a California Democrat, said on “Fox News Sunday,” “The best thing that could happen for our country, for our children, for the president of the United States, is that we override this veto.”
Bush proposed adding $5 billion to the program over five years, while the measure passed by Congress would add $7 billion a year over that period for a total of $35 billion. The federal government now spends about $5 billion a year on the program.
SCHIP is a joint program of state and federal governments designed to cover children whose families don’t qualify for Medicaid assistance yet can’t afford private insurance.
The measure passed by Congress would add about 3.8 million children to the 6 million now covered, limited mostly to families with income at 300 percent of the federal poverty level, about $62,000 for a family of four. The additional funding is designed to be paid for by increasing tobacco taxes.
Bush has said that while he supports the program, expanding eligibility would encourage some families with insurance to cancel it and let the government pay for their doctor bills. He said Congress’ proposal would assist children in families with incomes as high as $83,000 a year in some states.
New Jersey now has the most generous program, open to children in families earning as much as $72,000 a year.
