Opening Remarks by Rep. Diana Degette (D-CO) and Rep. Janice Schakowsky (D-IL) on a Conference Call Subject: Upcoming Vote to Override President Bush's Veto of the Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act

Statement

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REP. SCHAKOWSKY: Hi. I hope -- can you hear me all right? I'm in the parking lot on my cell phone of the Martin Luther King Lab School where I just left the assembly of these absolutely wonderful, adorable children doing a Martin Luther King presentation -- all the different grades. And I knew I was going to be on this call, and I'm looking at these children and hearing them talk about Martin Luther King and quoting him and "I have a dream" and singing songs about, "He had a dream". And it's standing room only with parents and grandparents in the audience.

And I was thinking, you know what, they all have a dream, too. And one of those dreams is that their children are going to be able to grow up healthy and have the health care that they need when they need it. And this is a very diverse group of students. And I know that they are exactly the children that SCHIP would cover. Not the poorest of the poor, but children of working families who simply can't afford it, some of the 9 million children in the United States that have no coverage, that won't be able to see a doctor or a dentist. And in fact, could grow up with life-long health care problems that could have been prevented with early care.

There's a little boy in my -- one of my granddaughter's class that was -- instead of wearing a white shirt, was wearing a black shirt. And he told his class that he just doesn't have one. Well, you know what, if you can't afford a white shirt, I bet you they don't have health care for him either.

And we've been -- that is, we the Democrats have been doing our best to meet the objections, reasonable or not, of the administration just because we want to get the solution where we can cover these 4 million children, especially, as been mentioned several times now, as we finish an economic downturn. I -- it just boggles the mind that this is not a priority for this president. We're talking about $7 billion for a year.

We're spending $10 billion a month in the, on this tragic war in Iraq. He calls this program excessive spending. For crying out loud, it's just so frustrating that with 81 percent of Americans supporting this legislation, with 9 million children in need, and still this bill would only cover an additional 4 million of them, that this is considered excessive spending.

So we just are urging all of our colleagues to bring this home to their district for the children of their district, and to join us in overriding this veto, for what is really a very modest bill to save our children and give them what they need.

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