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Pelosi vows another SCHIP vote after GOP sustains Bush’s veto |
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By Jackie Kucinich, Jonathan E. Kaplan and Mike Soraghan
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Posted: 10/19/07 07:19 PM [ET] |
Following the House’s failure Thursday to override President Bush’s veto of legislation expanding a children’s health insurance program, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) vowed to send a similar bill to Bush in two weeks.
Pelosi said at a press conference after the vote that any future legislation reauthorizing the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) would cover 10 million children — the program currently covers 6.6 million. She declined to discuss whether Democrats would make other changes to the bill.
House and Senate Democratic leaders huddled shortly after the vote to confer on how to alter the bill to secure more Republican votes. Democratic aides said they would offer cosmetic changes, making it clearer that the bill does not allow illegal immigrants to be covered and capping the income eligibility level.
Democratic leaders did not mention the $35 billion five-year cost of the program, indicating that they might be willing to settle for less if the program covers 10 million children.
“We will type it in bigger, bolder letters, but we will not compromise on the goal of insuring 10 million children,” the House Democratic Caucus chairman, Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), said Wednesday.
Democrats needed 286 votes, two-thirds of those present, to override Bush’s veto of the $35 billion SCHIP reauthorization. The measure failed, 273-156; 44 Republicans joined 229 Democrats to vote for the override. Two Democrats, Reps. Gene Taylor (Miss.) and Jim Marshall (Ga.), voted to sustain the veto. Four lawmakers, including Rep. Bobby Jindal (R-La.), did not vote.
Democratic leaders made it clear that they would make Republicans pay for voting to sustain the veto. Pelosi cited polling data showing that 82 percent of American voters supported renewing the SCHIP program.
“Too many Republicans decided not to side with all of those people and all of those groups, but rather to side with the president of the United States, who said no to including more children,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told reporters at a press conference following the vote.
“In November, President Bush will be at his Crawford ranch and the polls will catch up,” Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) said. He questioned Bush’s intelligence, asking rhetorically whether he vetoed the bill “due to a lack of intellectual capacity.”
“It isn’t over,” Energy and Commerce panel Chairman John Dingell (D-Mich.) said.
Sensing the political dangers of further opposition to renewing the program, groups of Republicans quickly stepped forward to offer warnings of excessive partisanship and proposals to end the standoff.
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino told Congress to “stop playing politics” and reiterated Bush’s willingness to find a compromise.
“If enrolling these children requires more than the 20 percent funding increase proposed by the president, we will work with Congress to find the money,” she said Thursday.
Some lawmakers worried about the political fallout.
“The time for partisan politics is over,” said Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), who voted to override Bush’s veto. He is facing the possibility of another tough reelection fight.
“[Voters] want us to get the job done. [Democrats] run the risk of overplaying their hand,” Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) said.
Centrist Republican lawmakers, who voted to override Bush’s veto, sent a letter to Pelosi on Thursday asking her to reintroduce legislation, which would eliminate adult coverage, deny coverage to families whose incomes were 300 percent higher than the poverty level and limit coverage to U.S. citizens.
“Some relatively small changes can be made to reach a compromise,” said Rep. Heather Wilson (R-N.M.), who is running for Senate. “We came very close to having two-thirds of both houses vote to override the veto. That means the president would have to come to the table. They know they don’t have a whole lot of leverage.”
Rep. Mike Castle (Del.), another moderate Republican, said, “Democrats can very easily come back and do another bill that won’t get Republican support. The public is going to say, ‘Yeah, but those kids still aren’t insured.’ ”
Castle added that Democrats were going to have to find more cost savings to win Bush’s support if they want the program to cover more children.
A third group of 38 Republicans sent a letter to Bush on Thursday outlining six general principles for a compromise, but Democrats argued that those principles, such as not covering illegal immigrants and limiting coverage to poor children, are in the current bill.
A fourth group of conservative Republican lawmakers sent a letter on Thursday to Bush outlining its ideas of how to reach a compromise. Their proposals mirror a Senate alternative introduced by Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) at a joint press conference on Thursday. The legislation would pare down the cost and give tax credits to families with incomes between 200 and 300 percent of the poverty level.
The debate over whether to override Bush’s veto took an acrimonious turn when Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.) accused Republicans of being willing to spend money “to blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the president’s amusement.”
Republicans moved to sanction Stark, but Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.), presiding over the House, ruled that his remarks did not violate House rules.
Jeffrey Young contributed to this article. |
