Keeping Wyoming's Children First

Op-Ed

Keeping Wyoming's Children First

In 1997, a Republican-led Congress created a program called the State's Children Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to deliver high quality, affordable health care to children whose parents cannot afford health insurance but make too much money to qualify for Medicaid.

I fully support SCHIP because it serves as a safety net for millions of our nation's neediest children. In Wyoming, our version of the program successfully and responsibly covers more than 5,700 low-income children. I fully understand that more can and should be done to help those children who need it the most.

That is why I have cosponsored a bill, the “Kids First Act,” that will add nearly 2 million new children to the SCHIP program by 2013 without raising taxes or the federal deficit. The legislation creates a new way for distributing the funds that would give Wyoming $10.4 million for 2009 instead of the $6.3 million under current law.

The “Kids First Act” will enable states, like Wyoming, to cover even more eligible low-income children while protecting taxpayers. It encourages states to offer premium assistance, in order to assist more children off of the government rolls and onto private coverage. The bill will also prohibit illegal immigrants from obtaining SCHIP coverage.

Unfortunately, Congressional Democrats are seeking to turn this highly successful program for low-income children into a new massive entitlement that goes well beyond its original intent.

I did not vote for the Democrat SCHIP bill because it takes away needed funding from low-income kids and instead gives it to families in New York making more than $88,000 per year and potentially even illegal immigrants. I don't know anyone in Wyoming who would characterize $88,000 as ‘low-income.'

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the Democrat bill will cause 2.4 million individuals to drop private coverage and move to government coverage, inching us closer to universal, government-provided healthcare.

To make matters worse, they have decided to pay for this massive SCHIP expansion with tens of billions of dollars in additional tobacco taxes.

But with the number of smokers on the decline, even this is not enough to pay for the program. It is projected that four years from now, program funding will be cut by more than 60 percent.

Short of finding 22.4 million new smokers, the government will be forced to either kick millions of children off of health insurance or raise taxes on all of us by tens of billions of dollars.

It is irresponsible to run a children's health program off a funding cliff. We cannot treat our nation's children like a house that we abandon when we can no longer afford to make payments.

I urge the Congress to pass the “Kids First Act” – a bill consistent with the original intent of the SCHIP program that will help the children of the working poor.

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