Four days from now, a wildly successful effort to provide healthcare to 6 million low-income children will disappear.

This summer, in a rare moment of bipartisanship, Democrats and Republicans in Congress came together to expand the State Children’s Insurance Program (known as SCHIP) to provide healthcare to millions more children. It was a simple test of priorities, and both sides agreed to put kids first.

Unfortunately, President Bush has chosen a different course. He is putting ideology and political confrontation ahead of the health of our nation’s children, has unilaterally declared war on SCHIP, and is threatening to veto the bipartisan bill.

If the president follows through on his threat, his stubbornness will carry a serious price for American families. Health insurance for millions of children is on the line, and we know what happens when children lack access to proper care: Minor conditions become costly chronic diseases and preventable illnesses can even claim the greatest cost — the life of a child.

That is why Congress rose above partisan divisions to pass a bill expanding coverage to 3 million additional children — 2 million of them poor enough to be eligible for Medicaid, but still uninsured.

President Bush is not even willing to spend enough to retain the children who are currently on the SCHIP rolls. Make no mistake: Under the president’s proposal, kids will be kicked off SCHIP, and they will go uninsured.

Unfortunately, this president’s war on SCHIP doesn’t end with a low-ball figure or a veto threat. During the August recess, the administration stealthily imposed draconian new restrictions that effectively kill states’ efforts to cover kids above 250 percent of poverty — in direct defiance of the will of Congress.

The new rules require children to stay uninsured for a full year before joining SCHIP and implausibly demand that states guarantee that families aren’t losing employer-based coverage. It seems they would rather put thousands of children at risk than have a few receive benefits who might find coverage elsewhere.

As states struggle to find their own solutions to today’s health care crisis, it is the president — not Congress — who is imposing federal controls on healthcare.

Don’t believe me that these new rules tie states’ hands? Just ask Republican governors like Mitch Daniels of Indiana — Bush’s staunchly conservative former budget chief. While the administration insists that any child above 250 percent of poverty — $50,000 for a family of four — is too rich for SCHIP, Daniels has raised his state’s coverage to 300 percent. Like many of his Republican counterparts, Daniels understands that with the cost of private insurance for that same family approaching $12,000 per year, the real choice is this: SCHIP or no healthcare at all.

That is why I joined with Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), Gordon Smith (R-Ore.), Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) to introduce a bill last week to block the administration’s new regulations, which we believe are both unethical and infeasible. A few years ago, this White House called Massachusetts’s state health plan “a model for national reform.” Now, by changing the rules in the middle of the game, the president has put this experiment at risk — and our children will suffer for it.

SCHIP has had an immeasurable impact on the lives of people like 9-year-old Alexsiana Lewis of Springfield, Mass., who was losing her vision from a rare eye disease. Alexsiana’s mother Dedra lost her health insurance benefits when she cut back her hours to care for her daughter. “If I didn’t have [SCHIP-funded] Mass Health right now, my daughter would be blind,” Dedra said. “We’re really at the mercy of the politicians.”

No child’s healthcare should be held hostage by politicians in Washington — especially by a president’s veto pen. Unfortunately, and stubbornly, this president has threatened to put SCHIP into the same category as stem cell research and a new policy in Iraq: Things the American people desperately want but this president won’t allow.

This boils down to a question of priorities. America’s families want a government that puts kids first — but we’ll settle for a president who doesn’t insist on putting children’s health last.

Kerry is chairman of the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee and a member of the Commerce, Science and Transportation, and Finance, committees.

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