CHILDREN'S HEALTH INSURANCE PROGRAM REAUTHORIZATION ACT OF 2007--VETO MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (H. DOC. NO. 110-62) -- (House of Representatives - October 03, 2007)
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Mr. DEAL of Georgia. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Madam Speaker, the State Children's Health Insurance Plan, there ought to be something that we can agree on. The first is that the program ought to be for children. And yet we are told that in the bill the President has rightfully vetoed, in 5 years there will be 780,000 adults still in a children's health program.
Secondly, this program ought to be, as its primary target was, for children below 200 percent of poverty. We know that in States that have gone above the 200 percent level, they have left behind up to a quarter of their children in their State that are below 200 percent of poverty, and there is nothing in this bill that requires them to go back and make sure that they enroll those children. In fact, this legislation repeals the outline that CMS had put out to require 95 percent saturation of children below 200 percent of poverty. So there is no effort to go back and do what the program was designed to do, and that is to help those between the 100 and 200 percent of poverty.
Madam Speaker, the third thing is that we all ought to agree that Medicaid and SCHIP ought to be for Americans, for American children. The change that this bill puts into place will allow people who are not qualified under our current law for Medicaid or SCHIP to become eligible. CBO says that the Federal cost of that alone is $3.7 billion.
I think the last thing we ought to agree on is that we should not take a major step toward socializing health care in this country. This bill does nothing to prevent States from having what is called ``income disregards.'' That is, if a State says, well, we just won't count what it costs for housing, we won't count what it costs for food, we won't count what is costs for transportation in computing your percent of poverty eligibility, then you can go up to 800 percent of poverty. And that certainly distorts the program.
Madam Speaker, lastly, we want to talk about time and the use of time. We knew 10 years ago that this bill was going to expire at the end of last month. This was a 10-year authorization bill. We knew in 1997 when it was put in place that it was going to expire at the end of September of this year. We knew 9 months ago when this Congress went into session that unless something was done, the legislation was going to expire the end of September. And yet only at the last minute was legislation presented in this House, with no legislative hearing, and then asked to be voted on, and not a single House Republican participated in the conference committee report that we are now being asked to sustain and to agree to at this point.
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