Bluey Blog - Official Blog of Robert B. Bluey

Bush Promises to Veto New SCHIP Bill

Democrats are trying to sway Republicans with their new SCHIP bill, but one of them won’t be President Bush. The White House today released a veto threat for the Democrats’ bill. Without “significant changes,” Bush said he would reject the new version, which still expands SCHIP by $35 billion and includes small tweaks in hopes of picking off a handful of Republicans in the House.

H.R. 3963 continues to allow states to expand coverage without assuring that poor children have coverage first; continues to provide coverage for some adults through 2012; continues to allow the use of income disregards to increase eligibility levels; continues to move children from private health insurance to government programs; provides insufficient safeguards to assure that funds will not be spent on ineligible individuals; and, remarkably, actually costs more than the earlier bill, not withstanding supposed improvements in policy. Because H.R. 3963 has not addressed in a meaningful way the objections that caused the President to veto H.R. 976, the President will veto this legislation if it is presented to him without significant changes.

House Republicans are currently in a midst of using procedural tactics to delay a vote on the SCHIP bill today. They are displeased that Democrats are moving forward on a day when nearly a dozen Republicans have headed home to California to assess the damage caused by wildfires.