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After tinkering with their bill, House Democrats believe they have made the necessary concessions to attract a veto-proof majority on legislation expanding the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).
House Democratic leadership aides said that the new bill has addressed the three principle Republican complaints made about the original five-year, $35 billion expansion, which President Bush vetoed earlier this month.
A vote on the legislation is scheduled for Thursday. If it is approved with a veto-proof majority, it would qualify as a huge political victory for Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) as well as Senate Democrats, who already have the votes to override Bush.
But at press time it was unclear if Democrats had the votes, especially with California members of both political parties helping their constituents deal with the raging fires back home. Democrats fell 13 votes shy of overriding Bush’s veto on Oct. 18.
The revised measure will include provisions prohibiting coverage of adults, preventing families with incomes of 300 percent of the poverty level from qualifying for the program, and making it harder for illegal immigrants to sign up for the program.
Key Bush administration figures on Wednesday signaled a willingness to compromise with House Democrats, but congressional leaders appeared to be moving ahead as though they don’t need to deal with the administration.
Tailoring modifications to the bill to meet the needs of centrist Republicans, if successful, would allow the Democratic leadership to avoid negotiating with the administration entirely.
Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt acknowledged that the Democratic leadership has not reached out to the administration and might choose not to. “To this point, [neither] the president nor any member of his administration has had a conversation that would even approximate a negotiation,” he said. “If they have the votes, they’ll probably do their best to run the bill. We hope they don’t.”
If the House were to move ahead with a vote on a new SCHIP bill without engaging with the administration, Leavitt said, “it would be clear that they are not interested in compromise, that they’re not interested in a negotiation, that they’re simply interested in being able to expand [government] health insurance to higher and higher incomes, that they’re interested in moving people off of private insurance to government insurance, that they’re interested in seeing adults on SCHIP, and so forth.”
Despite his lack of contact with the Democratic leadership, Leavitt said its apparent willingness to revise the SCHIP bill creates an opening for the administration to make compromises. “You see policy moving in both directions; we’re beginning to see policy converge,” he said, adding, “There are clear limits.”
Moreover, Leavitt made clear that the administration continues to view the $35 billion price tag as too high and still opposes a cigarette tax increase that would pay for the expanded program. He told reporters that Bush would be willing to accept a $20 billion expansion of the bill.
“We’re prepared to meet on policy but if we find common ground on policy, we have to see changes, as well, in the budget number and we’re not prepared to fund a bill with $15 billion more money than is necessary to fund the policy on which we agree,” Leavitt said.
Sensing Democrats could be creeping closer to a veto-proof majority, House Republicans accused Democrats of rushing the bill to the floor, and GOP leaders urged their rank-and-file lawmakers to keep their powder dry before committing to any compromises.
Boehner met on Wednesday with six Republican lawmakers, including Reps. Fred Upton (Mich.) and Ray LaHood (Ill.), telling them not to commit to anything until they saw the final version of the revised the bill. Some Republicans, pointing to polls that show the public is with the Democrats on this issue, are wary of fighting this battle into an election year.
On Tuesday, White House aides also asked lawmakers, who indicated in a letter last week to Bush that they were open to compromise, not to commit to a compromise bill until they had seen a copy of the bill, a senior GOP leadership aide said.
The Republican members’ letter outlined seven principles that they believed should guide any compromise.
The lawmakers wrote that legislation expanding SCHIP should deny coverage to illegal immigrants and prohibit states from using so-called “slush funds” to cover wealthier families, among others.
Democratic leaders can count on the continued support of a variety of outside interest groups that will push for the crucial votes needed to get to two-thirds in the House.
“There’s a strong effort to maintain the intensity” of the campaigns these organizations have been waging since the first SCHIP bill hit the House floor in August, said Stacey Bernards, communications director for House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.). “I think that things have been geared up for quite a while,” she said.
Liberal activists are carrying out ad campaigns in the districts of seven House Republicans calling out the lawmakers for their votes against the SCHIP bills.
The ad campaign is funded by the MoveOn.org Political Action and is being supported by a broader grassroots outreach efforts being carried out by the MoveOne.org Political Action, big labor unions, Americans United for Change, USAction, the Campaign for America’s Future, ACORN and several other liberal groups.
Although the targeted members, GOP Reps. Tom Feeney (Fla.), Ric Keller (Fla.), Sam Graves (Mo.), Randy Kuhl (N.Y.), Marilyn Musgrave (Colo.) and Tim Walberg (Mich.), arguably aren’t the most likely lawmakers to flip their votes, MoveOn.org’s message won’t be lost on other House Republicans facing difficult reelection bids.
In addition to organizations such as these and Families USA, which are traditional allies of the Democratic Party, influential lobbying groups with ties to both parties also say they’ll keep up their efforts to get an SCHIP bill passed.
“Everything we’ve been doing, we’ve continued doing,” a spokesman for the AARP said. Those activities have included dispatching their formidable lobbying team to shore up support on Capitol Hill for the SCHIP bill, print and TV ad campaigns and grassroots activity.
Republican Conference Chairman Adam Putnam (Fla.) accused Democrats of playing politics and expressed doubt that any substantive adjustments would be made to the bill.
“They’d have to change their backdrops, and they are already printed up,” Putnam quipped. “We’re seeing movement from the White House. We’d like to see movement from the Democrats.”
House Republican Chief Deputy Whip Eric Cantor (Va.) was equally skeptical. “What is going to be presented is a meager attempt at [a compromise],” he said, indicating that Republican leadership was confident its members would vote to uphold the president’s veto. |
