WaPo : Bush Vetoes Children's Health Insurance Plan

Bush Vetoes Children's Health Insurance Plan

By Michael Abramowitz | Washington Post Staff Writer | October 3, 2007

President Bush this morning vetoed a bill that would renew and expand the state-federal health insurance program for low-income children, delivering on his threat to block a measure he has said is too costly and could lead to excessive government control of the health-care system.

Bush vetoed the measure shortly before leaving this morning on a brief trip to Lancaster, Pa., where he was planning to speak to business leaders about his efforts to hold the line on federal spending. The White House has sought to make fiscal discipline a broad element of its legislative strategy this fall.

But in vetoing the bill to expand the State Children's Health Insurance Program, the president finds himself isolated politically. The measure, which would expand the program by $35 billion over the next five years, is broadly popular in Congress, even among many Republicans, and has wide support among governors, health-care groups and the health insurance industry.

Bush appears to have the votes to sustain his veto, the fourth of his presidency, in the House. But Republicans have warned the White House that Bush is endangering the party's political prospects in 2008.

Speaking to reporters this morning before Bush left for Lancaster, White House press secretary Dana Perino once again criticized Democrats for sending the president a bill they knew would be dead on arrival. She expressed hope that now that both sides have gone through the veto exercise, the president and lawmakers could sit down and work out a mutually acceptable plan to extend the health-care program.

"They made their political point, and what the president said is, 'Look, send me the bill, I will veto it, and then we will get about the business of trying to find some common ground and reach an agreement on a way forward,' " Perino said.

She added: "I think the president is willing to talk to anybody about how we continue to move forward on this program, with the focus being on how do you get back to the original intent, making sure that the neediest children get taken care of first."
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The program provides health insurance for children whose families earn too much money to qualify for Medicaid but cannot afford their own health insurance. The measure would expand the $5 billion-a-year program by an average of $7 billion a year over the next five years, for total funding of $60 billion over the period. That would be enough to boost enrollment to 10 million, up from 6.6 million, and dramatically reduce the number of uninsured children in the country, currently about 9 million, supporters say.

Bush and GOP leaders contend that the measure would push millions of children already covered by private health insurance into publicly financed health care. They say it also would create an "entitlement" whose costs would outstrip the money raised by the bill's 61-cent increase in the federal tobacco tax.

The veto does not mean the program will end immediately. Bush and Congress have agreed to extend the current program though November 16 while they try to work on a new version.

In an interview Tuesday, Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt recalled welfare reform legislation in 1996, which was vetoed twice by President Bill Clinton before he reached an accommodation with Congress, then controlled by the GOP. "A bill was arrived at, it passed, and it was a very successful initiative," he said, suggesting the same thing could happen this year on children's health care.

But this year the president and Democrats are far apart on spending on the program. In his budget, Bush proposed adding only $5 billion to the program for the next five years, for a total of $30 billion -- or about half the funding called for in the plan vetoed today. Bush aides have hinted he might be willing to go along with more funding, but not as much as contemplated by Congress right now.

Democrats began blasting Bush with the ink barely dry on the veto. "Today we learned that the same president who is willing to throw away a half trillion dollars in Iraq is unwilling to spend a small fraction of that amount to bring health care to American children," said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.).

"The Congress has done its job, passing a bipartisan bill that meets a critical need without adding a penny to the federal deficit. The president has broken his promise to America's children."