CHIP

Floor Speech

CHIP -- (Senate - October 01, 2007)

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, last week, the Senate voted overwhelmingly to approve the bipartisan agreement to reauthorize the Children's Health Insurance Program. On Saturday, on television I saw that the President called our agreement--our bipartisan agreement, I want to emphasize--he called it irresponsible.

Specifically, in his radio address, the President said we ``put forward an irresponsible plan that would dramatically expand this program beyond its original intent.''

Well, I am here to respond to that accusation by President Bush. To call what we agreed to as irresponsible is an insult to an agreement we reached and is an insult to 67 Members of the Senate and 265 Members of the House who voted in favor of it.

Calling our bipartisan proposal irresponsible ignores reality. The reality is that the current program--the program of the last 10 years, sunsetting yesterday--is out of control. The present program is failing. That is--to emphasize--the reason for passing the bipartisan bill that we passed. Because the present program is not working the way it was intended, and with this legislation we corrected a lot of problems to turn that around.

So the President is about to veto a bill that fixes the problems and improves the program for the future without having put a credible alternative on the table. We have not heard from the President as to what he would do about the SCHIP program except he wanted to save it and expand it.

The current program does not have adequate funding just to keep running with no changes. Under current law, the current program is authorized to spend $25 billion over the next 5 years. That is the baseline amount. But the Congressional Budget Office says the $25 billion baseline amount will not fully fund the program. So the President says he wants to keep the program going. You cannot do it the way it is funded right now.

Now, what does the Congressional Budget Office say? It says that without more funding, 840,000 kids would lose coverage. Without changes, as many as 22 States will not have any funding to run the program next year, and Iowa is one of those States--my home State. Senator Harkin is on the floor; he would agree with that, I am sure.

Anyway, the President never said he wanted this program to lose kids, but the Congressional Budget Office says, doing what we are doing now, 840,000 kids would lose coverage. So keeping the current level of funding is not responsible, but if the President vetoes that bill, that is what we are doing. Of course, to the President, ignoring that fact is ignoring reality.

Let's look at what the President proposed. The President proposed a $5 billion increase in funding in his budget, but that is also insufficient funding. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the President's proposal would cause 840,000 children to lose coverage. That is right. The President's proposed $5 billion of new funding, without doing anything to get more kids covered, I think is hardly the responsible thing to do.

The proposal put forward by Senator Lott and Senator Kyl that we voted on 2 months ago--now maybe 3 months ago; I guess it was in July we voted on it--was an alternative to the bipartisan product we eventually passed. The proposal by Senators Lott and Kyl devoted twice as much funding as what the President did. To me, that is recognition enough that the President's thinking on the Children's Health Insurance Program is off track. The Lott-Kyl proposal was the alternative children's health insurance proposal offered during floor debate in July. My good friends put some serious thought into what they developed. They proposed about $10 billion in new Children's Health Insurance Program funding. That proposal covered 900,000 additional uninsured children, according to the Congressional Budget Office, but the Lott-Kyl proposal only received 35 votes--barely a third of the Senate.

There are good ideas in the Lott-Kyl proposal. They took a serious look at what populations should be covered by the SCHIP program, and it doesn't result in kids losing coverage as the President's proposals do, as the President's budget does, and that for sure is going to happen with a veto. But with all due respect to my friends, 35 votes is hardly a ringing success.

So how much funding is really needed to keep the program afloat? Well, the Congressional Budget Office says $24 billion of additional funding is needed to provide States with funding so that States can operate their programs as intended. That means $24 billion is needed to make sure there are no funding shortfalls, and $24 billion is needed just to fill the hole in the baseline and cover the kids whom States would like to cover if they had sufficient funding. The compromise agreement provides that level of funding and then goes an additional step by offering States incentives to cover more low-income kids, meaning kids and families under 200 percent of poverty. Now, that is the goal of reauthorization--to cover more low-income kids.

The bill we passed last week makes other important improvements to the program. Those improvements include better dental benefits, improves mental health coverage, with an outreach program to get the word out to kids for the kids to enroll. A bipartisan compromise is a responsible approach to funding the program and returning it to its original intent--covering lower income kids--and not covering more adults in 3 of our 50 States than our kids are being covered in those States.

Now let me shift gears and talk about the alternative to authorizing the program. The alternative to a reauthorization of SCHIP is a simple extension of current law, and calling for a simple extension of the current program without addressing the many problems it has--and I just suggested one: 3 States out of 50 cover more adults in the children's program than they cover children. Now, if you want to talk about the word ``responsible'' and whether Congress is responsible in this bill, I would say anybody who wants to leave the program the way it is--and that is what is going to happen with a veto--that is an irresponsible position to take, to keep a program going that is covering adults in a children's program. We want to cover kids, low-income kids. So the SCHIP program today, which is the way it has been for the last 10 years, is far off track.

The President has it backward when he says our bipartisan proposal ``expands the program beyond its original intent.'' With no changes, it is the current SCHIP program that has strayed far from the original intent. I wish to remind my colleagues of 1997, passing the State Children's Health Insurance Program. There is no ``A'' in SCHIP. It was never meant to cover adults, but adults are being covered. We want to get back to the original intent of this program being for kids.

First of all, the current program covers kids at incomes far above what was considered low income in 1997. It covers parents, and in some States it even covers adults who have no kids. Under the bipartisan agreement passed last week, this program will return to its roots: covering kids, covering low-income kids. Even though the administration approved of States covering childless adults--now, I want to emphasize that: This administration approved the States covering childless adults. Under our bill, childless adults will be phased completely out of the program. This is a responsible thing for Congress to do. This is one of the reasons the President should sign the bill, because the present policies are irresponsible.

Even though the administration approved of States covering parents, under our bill States will no longer be able to get enhanced Federal funding for covering parents. Even though the administration approved of States covering childless adults, under our bill States will only be able to cover higher income kids if they demonstrate they have covered their lowest income kids first.

The agreement passed last week creates new financial incentives to discourage States from spending a penny to cover anyone other than low-income children. All the financial incentives in the agreement are entirely focused on low-income children and, let me emphasize, families of under 200 percent of poverty.

The administration has done nothing to turn around this irresponsible program which is now on the books. In fact, they have made it worse. Yet they have the audacity to call our bill irresponsible. Those who say our bill is irresponsible clearly haven't read the bill. This bipartisan compromise provides coverage for more than 3 million low-income children who don't have coverage today.

If this bill is vetoed and if at the end of the day all

we do is simply extend the program that has now been on the books for 10 years, what will we have accomplished? Will adults be gone from the program? No. Will States have a disincentive to cover parents? No. Will States be encouraged to cover low-income kids before higher income kids? No. Will the funding formula be fixed so that States are not constantly challenged by funding shortfalls? No. Finally, will we have done anything to cover kids out there who are not covered today? The answer is no. No, no, no, no. Is that responsible? No. It is continuing current law. Let me emphasize, it is a continuation of the current law that is the irresponsible thing to do. The program is broken as evidenced in just one way: the 3 out of 50 States covering more adults than kids, in some instances covering adults who don't have any kids.

The program has strayed. It needs fixing. In fact, the bipartisan agreement follows the path laid down by the President himself. I have said this repeatedly. The President made a promise at the Republican Convention in New York:

We will lead an aggressive effort to enroll millions of poor children who are eligible but not signed up for the government's health insurance programs.

President Bush said that. An extension of current law will not do that. He may not want to hear this quote again and again, but until he honors the commitment he made in that speech by making a proposal to cover more low-income kids, I intend to keep repeating it.

The President can keep his commitment by signing the bill we passed last week. But if he is going to veto it, he owes those of us who tried to keep his commitment with our bill a sense of what serious policies Congress can adopt to cover more kids.

I yield the floor.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source