Published: 10-19-07
WASHINGTON- U.S. Rep. Joe Barton R-Ennis ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee delivered the following statement today on the floor of the House on the vote to sustain the president’s veto of the Democrats’ SCHIP bill:“Madame Speaker what we have today is a classic case of a Washington D.C. non-intersecting conversation. Since the president vetoed this bill several weeks ago my friends on the majority side have spent two weeks encouraging outside groups and perhaps their political arm to spend millions of dollars on television and radio ads bombarding targeted Republicans to get them to change their vote.
That’s only the sixth time in history that we know of that a veto has not been brought to the floor immediately on the president’s veto.
“The result is going to be that when we get to the vote in the next hour or so the president’s veto will be sustained and then hopefully we’ll have the real negotiations that should have started six or seven months ago. It’s interesting to me that we’re still having a misunderstanding about the basic facts and the reason is we haven’t had a legislative hearing in either the Ways and Means Committee or the Energy and Commerce Committee.
“We’ve not had a subcommittee markup in either of the jurisdictional committees. We really didn’t have a markup in full committee because the original bill for SCHIP was a 500-page mammoth bill that we got at midnight the day before it was supposed to be marked up in the case of the Energy and Commerce Committee. But once we do sustain the president’s veto we’re going to go and have these negotiations I hope. And first we’re going to talk about the kids.
“Well here are the facts. Under current law every child in America who is below 100 percent of poverty is covered by Medicaid. Both parties support that. Under current law every child in America who lives in a family between 100 and 200 percent of poverty is covered by SCHIP if they’ll sign up. Now there are some children in families that won’t sign up.
In Dallas Texas I’m told that only 33 percent of the eligible SCHIP children are actually in an SCHIP program.
“That’s a travesty and we ought to do something together to reach out to those children and those families and make sure that they either have SCHIP coverage or private insurance – that they have something. We can work together on that on a bipartisan basis. Now once you get above 200 percent of poverty we have a difference of opinion. The original House bill said go to 400 percent of poverty. That bill’s dead.
“The bill before us goes to 300 percent. It’s a legitimate policy argument if you want to go above and expand the program how much do you expand it above 200 percent. Do you go to 300 percent? Do you go to 250 percent? The Republicans’ alternative is let’s cover the lowest income kids first and once we get 90 percent of those kids covered below 200 percent of poverty let’s let states go to 250 percent. That’s the Barton-Deal alternative that we have a discharge petition on.
“That’s a legitimate policy argument. Now let’s talk about illegal aliens. Under current law you’re not supposed to cover a child of an illegal alien. If they’re covered it’s because there’s no verification enforcement system. In the pending bill they have Section 605 that says that no benefits shall go to children of illegal aliens but that’s all it says.
There’s no enforcement mechanism. That’s something that we can work on in the conference. That’s something that we can work on together to really put some enforcement to make sure that SCHIP benefits are for citizens and legal residents. We can work on that.
“Let’s vote to sustain the president’s veto and then let’s work together to get a program that really is for the kids not for adults really is for citizens that we can afford.”
