Randy's Roundup

Statement

SCHIP Update

As I mentioned last week, the House has been focusing on children's health care recently. On August 1, the House considered two versions of a bill to provide health care coverage to uninsured children from low-income families. The first version of the bill would have extended the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and approved additional funding so that states can continue to provide health care for children. I voted for this version, but unfortunately it failed.

The final version of the bill looks very different than the version I supported. It implements a new tax on private health insurance policies, opens the door for illegal immigrants to receive taxpayer-funded SCHIP benefits, and guts the popular Medicare Advantage program that provides health care for more than 7,000 seniors in the 19th District. In addition, this bill removes any income limits on recipients. Should a state choose to do so, it could expand this government entitlement program to include children from wealthy households. In fact, the state of New York already has a plan to expand coverage to include families whose income is 400 percent of the poverty level. Under this plan, a family of four whose income is $82,600 would be eligible for taxpayer-funded health care.

Because the final version of the bill takes SCHIP far beyond its original mission of providing health care to needy children and because it requires $50 billion in new SCHIP spending, I could voted against it. Although this version passed the House, President Bush has said he would veto it.

‘No Energy' Energy Bill

Late last week the House also voted on what is really a "No Energy" Energy Bill. This unbalanced legislation would place unreasonable mandates on states, result in less oil and gas production in America, and roll back important policies currently in place that help lead to greater energy independence. While this legislation spans nearly 900 pages in length, nowhere in the bill does it do anything to increase America's overall supply of energy or introduce measures to ease prices at the pump.

In addition, this "no energy" energy bill places a mandate on each of the 50 states to get 15 percent of their energy from renewable sources by 2020. Developing alternative sources of energy such as ethanol and wind is a worthy goal; however, a "one size fits all" approach that relies on a federal mandate is the wrong way to reach that goal. Texas is leader in renewable energy production. In fact, the 19th District is the leading wind energy producing district in the nation. I am proud of this fact, and I think we should constantly work to increase our renewable energy production. Yet, despite being a national leader, Texas gets less than 5 percent of its energy from renewable sources. It is simply unrealistic to expect each state to be able to reach the 15 percent level in little over a decade. Such an unbalanced approach fails to solve our energy problems and only serves to increase energy prices and cost American jobs.

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