Providing for the consideration of the Senate amendments to the bill (H.R. 976) to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide tax relief for small businesses, and for other purposes.

Mr. Speaker, for those of us who have served in this body for some period of time, all of us know that the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell) has been as focused on health care for all Americans as anybody who's served in this body, with the sole exception, perhaps, of his father. For over half a century, the Dingells have focused on making sure that Americans in the richest land on the face of the Earth had access to health care.

I want to congratulate my friend, Mr. Dingell, and I want to congratulate his partner, Charlie Rangel, one of the senior Members of this House, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, who has worked collaboratively with Jim McCrery, and I want to congratulate Jim McCrery; I'll congratulate him again while he's listening; who has worked, I think, positively with the chairman, and I thank him for that.

I rise in support of this legislation. Today the Members of this body must answer this fundamental question: Will you stand with millions of American children who, through no fault of their own, but they live in families of limited means, have no health insurance? Or will you stand with the few, including at least now President Bush, although I hope he changes his mind, who are ideologically opposed to this legislation, and thus being willing to leave millions of American children stranded without the health insurance coverage they need and that they deserve?

Mr. Speaker, the bottom line is this: we must not sacrifice the health of our children on the altar of a conservative ideology. We must pass this bill.

The fact is, President Bush himself stated on the campaign trail in 2004, in fact, it was at the Republican Convention, and I would hope all my Republican colleagues would listen to the President's quote, if you haven't already seen it and read it. He said this as he addressed the American people asking them for their vote for a second term, which they gave him. He said this: ``In a new term, we will lead an aggressive effort to enroll millions of children who are eligible but not signed up for government health insurance programs.''

President Bush said that as he appealed to the American public for their support for a second term, that he would aggressively pursue a program of adding millions of children, eligible but not included, in the health insurance program.

``We will not allow a lack of attention or information to stand between these children and the health care they need.'' That is what President Bush said to the American public from the convention floor in 2004. We, tonight, are going to give him the opportunity to fulfill that promise to the American public.

Unfortunately, the President is threatening to renege on his campaign promise and to veto this legislation. Let's be clear: this fiscally responsible legislation will ensure that some 10 million children will receive health insurance coverage. That's approximately 4 million more than are covered under the Children's Health Insurance Program today. And so what we consider today is not young Master Snyder, who was on this floor, or Gemma Frost, with whom we met earlier today. Gemma Frost will be covered. Luckily, Master Snyder's father is covered, as all of us are, under a Federal Employee Health Benefit Plan to which our employer contributes. Gemma Frost was not so lucky.

The truth is, those 4 million additional children are eligible under existing guidelines, not new guidelines that we've created. They are the children that were eligible that President Bush talked about in 2004 that he wanted to vigorously assume inclusion in the program. Millions, he referred to.

This legislation does not change eligibility guidelines. It simply strengthens CHIP's financing, increases coverage for low-income children, and improves the quality of care they will receive.

In contrast, under the President's proposal, and I hope my friends would put this fact in juxtaposition to the President's representation in 2004 on the floor of the national convention that you held as your party, his proposal would decrease, by 800,000 children, the numbers that would be covered under CHIP in the future. Now, that's included in the 4 million, so actually it's a net 4 million difference between the proposals.

Ladies and gentlemen, we ought not to retreat from our children's health. We ought not to retreat from working families concerned about the inclusion of their children.

And I suggest to my friends concerned about cost, we ought not to give the answer, they can go to the emergency room. Why not? Because all of us know that is the most expensive intervention in the health care system in America. And so not only do we put our children at risk, but we compound our costs.

It's no wonder, Mr. Speaker, that this legislation has received strong support from Members of both sides of the aisle, as well as a wide range of health care providers, including private insurers, doctors and hospitals.

For example, Senator Hatch has already been quoted, but it bears repeating. He said: ``We're talking about kids who basically don't have coverage. I think the President had some pretty bad advice on this.''

Don't take that bad advice. Let us join hands; let us be together on this issue. You voted on a prescription drug program far more expensive than this one, and unpaid for.

Senator Grassley stated: ``The President's understanding of our bill is wrong.''

That's the former chairman of the Finance Committee, Republican, senior Member of the United States Senate. He says, ``The President's wrong.'' He urges him, he says, ``I urge him to reconsider his veto message.''

Every one of us, as we vote tonight, can send a strong message that will perhaps help him to reconsider that position.

Now, let me say, those who complain that this bill will induce people with private insurance to drop their coverage and enroll in the CHIP program are simply grasping at straws. Why do I say that? The fact is, even America's health insurance lobbying group supports this bill.

Finally, let me mention two other points. First, I am very pleased that this legislation includes a comprehensive dental benefit that will give low-income children the dental care they need and will provide States with flexibility in how they provide such care.

Why do I bring that up?

Dental care is important. A 12-year-old child who lived approximately 8 miles from this Chamber, Deamonte Driver was his name, he was 12 years of age. He had three siblings. He got a toothache. His mother did not have coverage and tried to get coverage, tried to get dental care, and she could not get dental care, and that toothache became an infection in the brain, and Deamonte Driver died just months ago, just 9 or 10 miles from where we stand. That is one of the reasons, one of the

four million reasons that I stand here to say that we need to pass this legislation.

Secondly, I'm very disappointed that the Senate Republicans insisted that we remove the House-passed provision on Medicare, as well as our provision that would have allowed legal immigrants who pay taxes to be eligible.

Why is that of concern?

Because my granddaughter, 5 years of age, who just started kindergarten, she may sit next to one of those children in her kindergarten class, and that child who is legally in the United States may get sick. But if that child cannot access health care and sits next to my granddaughter, my granddaughter is at risk.

We want everybody in this country to be healthy so that the rest of us can be assured that we operate in a healthy environment. That is why we want that provision.

Ladies and gentlemen of this House, Speaker Pelosi was right: I don't believe there's a person in this House that doesn't care about their own children, about their neighbor's children, and about the children of our country. All of us care. We need to come together, however, and see how that care can be transformed into meaningful, tangible help.

Mr. Speaker, we have a rare and wonderful opportunity tonight to do the right thing, to put aside partisanship, to elevate the practical, responsible, and moral solution above the ideological.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, let's seize this opportunity. Let's do the right thing. Let's stand with America's children. Let us pass this historic legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes.

My friends, this is almost an historic occasion because, like the President of the United States said, it is our intention to extend health care to cover 10 million kids.

I don't care how you cut it. You can call it socialized medicine. You can say it's outside of the budget. But when you go home, the question basically is going to be were you with the kids or were you not? It is not just the human and right thing to do, but from a fiscal point of view, how many billions of dollars do we save by providing preventative care to these youngsters? And certainly from a tax writer's point of view, how many of these kids are going to grow to be productive workers so that they can pay taxes and make a contribution to this great Republic?

I don't know how you're going to explain how the kids can go to emergency wards if they get ill, as the President of the United States has indicated; but I know one thing, those of us who have kids and grandkids want the very best for them, and we do have this occasion now.

Now, there are a lot of complaints from the other side that they did not participate in the writing of this bill. Having been in the minority for so long, let me say that every one of you on the Republican side that did not participate, that complained, you have good cause. You were not involved. And I might heartily add, neither were Members on the Democratic side involved.

If you really want to find out who called the shots on this bill, which is not the House bill, it's those people on the other side of the Capitol that believe that everything that has to pass the Senate, that you need 60 votes for. And that's the long and the short of it. So, you may call it the Democratic majority, as I once did, but they're being held hostage by the Republican minority.

And so I participated in terms of seeing what they wanted to do. And believe me, what they said to the House of Representatives, Republicans and Democrats alike, take it or leave it. And so if you want to join with me in looking for someone to criticize, after the debate we can meet in the lobby and talk about it.

But you had an opportunity to vote for a better bill; it was here. And for those who are concerned that legal immigrants can't get services, I hope you voted for the House bill because it was in there. But if you really want to complain about it being un-American, walk with me to the other side, and we'll find the culprits who did it, and they're not Democrats.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Announcement By the Speaker Pro Tempore

I have a parliamentary inquiry, Mr. Speaker.

Does it violate any of the House rules if I refer to the bill before this House as the ``Republican-controlled Senate'' bill?

Well, does it violate any of the House rules if I refer to this bill as a bill that is a Senate bill controlled by the Republicans on the other side of the House? I want to make it clear it's not a House bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume because I want to share a lot of complaints about what those Republicans did to a good, decent House bill. So if you want to join with me with your criticism, don't criticize anyone here. It is not my fault that your leaders were excluded from the so-called ``conference.'' We had no conference.

I know how it feels to have been in the minority, having been there for a decade. So I share with you why you were left out. But had I been in charge, and not the Senate, I would have wanted you there, your judgment. Even if it was just to read the bill over and over and over, at least you would have been participating.

I yield to the chairman of the Health Subcommittee. No one is in a better position to let you know that this is not the House bill. As hard as he worked to reform Medicare, to make certain that we preserved it, to reform that bill, to get $5 billion for the people in the rural areas, to help the aged poor, and really to help the doctors that work hard every day and deserve a decent reimbursement, that, my friends, was in the House bill. But our friends on the other side, the Republicans said, ``No, take it or leave it.''

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman that worked hard for the House bill, the gentleman from California (Mr. Stark).

(Mr. STARK asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I am going to act as if I didn't hear that gentleman call this bill a fraud four times. I was in that back room with Senator Grassley, Senator Reid and our dear friend Orrin Hatch. It's their bill. So you call it what you want. But please don't call it a fraud, because it is a Senate bill. And they are very sensitive over there. So I just want to make that clear.

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to give 1 minute to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. LaHood). I cannot think of a Member of this House that has worked harder in trying to bring civility, no matter what the issue was. I heard he wasn't going to run for reelection. I just want him to know publicly that both sides of the aisle will miss him.

(Mr. LaHOOD asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Let me tell you what it means, distinguished ranking member. Distinguished ranking member, what it means is that the deal that we cut, if we change anything over here, the Republicans on the other side are going to drop everything. So we are trying to cooperate with this Republican Senate bill. So even if the distinguished gentlemen here would want to agree, we can't do it. We are held hostage by the other side.

Let us put down our arguments and march over there and correct this thing. But I agree with you, that language should have been corrected with both Houses, but the Republicans objected to any changes or any additions.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel), a member of the Ways and Means Committee who is a leader in the Democratic Party, a leader in our Congress, and a leader in our country. We are proud to have him on this bill.

(Mr. EMANUEL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

I can discuss it in some detail.

If we can get them to open up this, we can do business.

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Schwartz) who is an outstanding member of the Ways and Means Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I think my time along with Mr. McCrery's is short. If you can give us the amount of time, I think I am going to pass right now.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to Mr. Jason Altmire, a distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania.

Mr. Speaker, it's my pleasure to yield 1 minute to Dr. Steve Kagen, who would share his views with us.

Mr. Speaker, I have two speakers so I think I will reserve my time at this time until we can get a little equality in the time. I think I only have 2\1/2\ minutes.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to an outstanding member of the Ways and Means Committee from the sovereign State of New Jersey (Mr. Pascrell).

(Mr. PASCRELL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, when Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi shattered the glass ceiling and made history as the first woman to become Speaker in the history of the United States Congress, the one picture that remained to commemorate this great event was the children that were there when she was sworn in. It wasn't a symbol of the war or the deficit or the Republicans or Democrats; it was this Congress sharing with the rest of the country our deep commitment to the children of our country. And that is our investment.

Whether you are liberal, conservative, Republican, or Democrat, no one can challenge that our most precious human beings are those who cannot protect themselves. We have this opportunity to join with the Speaker as she closes this argument to set aside the partisanship and to be able to say, no matter what our differences, it was the children, it was the children that prevailed, and I voted with them.

I yield the balance of my time to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

The answer is no. I was allowed to testify at the Rules Committee last evening. That's the only formal opportunity I was ever given in the last 9 months on this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I am going to speak extemporaneously since my prepared remarks are in the Record. I remind the body that the Democratic majority took over the House and the Senate in January of this year. They set the schedule. They set the agenda. They decide what hearings are held. They decide what bills are marked up. They decide which issues come to the floor of both bodies. Not the Republicans.

It is insulting to sit here and be told that somehow when the same party, of which I am not a member, controls the agenda in both legislative bodies of this great Congress that somehow the Republicans are responsible for this late effort to reauthorize SCHIP.

I told the distinguished chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee the day after the election last November, Mr. Dingell of Michigan, that I was looking forward to working with him on SCHIP reauthorization, and while I don't know it as a fact, I am fairly certain that Mr. McCrery had a similar conversation with the distinguished chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Mr. Rangel of New York.

Now, how much bipartisan cooperation have we had in the House of Representatives? The answer is almost none. It is my understanding that Mr. Rangel and Mr. McCrery did talk some in their committee, but in the Energy and Commerce Committee we held a number of generic hearings. We never held a hearing specifically on SCHIP. We never held a legislative markup in subcommittee. We never held a legislative hearing or markup in full committee. We got a 565-page bill the night before the scheduled markup, and it was take it or leave it. Well, we left it. And that bill passed the House, but barely.

What has happened since that bill passed? There have been discussions in the Senate between the Republicans and the Democrats apparently, and the House Democratic leadership have participated. But the House Republicans have not been allowed to participate. So what is the result of that? The result of that is a 300-page bill that the House Republicans saw at about 6:14 last evening and a Rules Committee in which it was voted to not give a Republican substitute, not give a Republican amendment, not even give a Republican motion to recommit.

So we are going to have twice now a major bill in which there is bipartisan support for is going to come to the House of Representatives with no Republican input, not even a motion to recommit.

Now, I don't know how many times the Republicans did that to the Democrats in the last several Congresses when we were in the majority, but I bet I could count them on the fingers of one hand, and I might be able to count them on the fingers of one finger.

Don't you think the American people deserve at least a substitute or a motion to recommit? Now, we are going to be given a chance later this evening to have 1 hour of debate, 1 hour of debate, and then an up-or- down vote, and we are going to get enough votes to sustain the President's veto, and maybe next week Mr. Dingell and Mr. Rangel and Ms. Pelosi will contact Mr. Boehner, Mr. Barton, and Mr. McCrery, and we may yet get this bipartisan agreement. We may get it next week, and I hope we do. But I don't want the American people to be under any illusion. The bill that's coming before the floor tonight is a backroom deal that the most that can be said for it is that it does have money in it for the children of America, which we support. And there are lots of reforms that we probably support, too, if we are ever given the chance to have that discussion.

I would hope we would vote ``no'' on this rule, take it back to the Rules Committee, at least make a substitute or a motion to recommit in order, and put back in the rule in terms of earmarks. There are at least two earmarks that we know in the bill that nobody has talked about.

One of the earmarks is from the great State of Michigan, $1.2 billion over 10 years. It's just a gift of $1.2 billion for their FMAP program. And if that's not an earmark, I don't know what is. And under the Democratic leadership's own rule in this Congress, that should have at least been disclosed. And last night at the Rules Committee, they said there were no earmarks in the bill. And I believe when Ms. Slaughter, the distinguished chairman, said that, she believed it. I don't think she knew it was in the bill. But it is. That at least ought to be corrected.

Vote ``no'' on the rule and send it back to the committee.

Mr. Speaker, this rule is an apt reflection of the underlying SCRIP legislation. Like the bill, it tramples democracy in a feckless commitment to bad politics over good policy. The House Democratic leadership wants to embarrass and weaken the President, and that goal is more important to them than extending health care to needy children.

So we're being instructed--not even asked--to swallow a multi- billion-dollar bill without having a legislative hearing at any level, without having a subcommittee markup and without having a conference. We're each supposed to analyze and comprehend a 299-page enigma that was unveiled last night. There'll be no amendments, of course, and no motion to recommit. This is getting to be a bad habit, isn't it?

Each of us represents several hundred thousand people, and most of them come from families that work hard and pay taxes. They do their part, and we should, too. But we can't do much more than voting object when we are not even able to know what's in the bills we're voting on.

Most of what we know about this SCHIP bill is what we hear in the halls and see in the newspapers. For some, that's enough because the harder we listen and the more we look, the more we discover that is troubling. What on earth is the $1.2 billion earmark for Michigan all about, anyway? And how many more like it are tucked away in this bill?

We cannot actually know most of what's in this bill, but we can suspect much. We can certainly suspect the State Children's Health Insurance Program grew from a fraction of the House SCHIP bill to become an entire pretend conference report. All we know for sure is that we're being asked to pass another major

piece of legislation based on blind faith and guesswork.

I wonder why we can't do now what we're surely going to do later-- pass a simple extension of the SCRIP program and then have the honest public debate about policy changes that should have occurred over the last 10 months. Mr. Deal and I propose to extend the authorization of SCRIP for an additional 18 months, and more than a hundred of our colleagues have agreed. There are no gimmicks, no budget trickery, no politics and no changes.

But the majority will want their pound of the President's flesh first. Everybody gets that, and maybe it won't work so well as they hope because, after all, everybody gets it. This rule and this legislation aren't about children or health. They are about a cynical exercise of raw power for the sake of a fleeting political advantage.

I wish the Democrats wouldn't do it this way, but I'm under no illusion that wishin' or hopin' will change the speaker's mind. I look forward to the President's inevitable veto because it will give us a chance to have a real discussion and write a transparent bill instead of foisting this mystery package on the taxpayers and the needy children of America.

We can work together and do this right, and I believe that eventually, we will. The best first step would be to reject this pathetic rule and start working on real legislation now instead of later.

Let me thank the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts and the chairman of the full Committee on Ways and Means and the chairman of Energy and Commerce. This is correctly stated by the chairman of the Ways and Means: this is not the House bill.

I love our children. I have great concerns about this legislation, but I have more concerns about my Republican friends who are opposing this legislation, and I am outraged about the President's threat of a veto. Even this bill does not cover the 6 million children that we need to cover, it only covers 2.4 million. My friends, this is not Medicaid; this is SCHIP. This is for working men and women whose children don't have health insurance; 2.8 million are insured. We wanted 5 million, 6 million; but, no, we only have 2.8 million, 3.2 million left out.

And then, of course, there was the possibility of insuring some adults, the most vulnerable sick adults, under SCHIP with remaining monies. This bill does not do that. And then, of course, we look at individuals who are of legal immigrant status and we tell them they cannot be covered--these immigrants are here legally.

We also are asking people to come to the emergency room with a sick child with citizenship documentation. And let me say, this is for all of us. And so you have a sick child and you're looking for citizenship documentation. On the other hand, I am grateful that we have parity with dental and mental care for SCHIP children. And pregnant women are covered. And then we have the ability to enroll the children quickly, because one of the problems of SCHIP is that children are not enrolled. But the real crisis is no answer coming from the White House children's health care. The only thing coming from the White House is a veto pen.

So not only will 6 million children be left out in the cold, but the small number, 2.8 million, that was squeaking through the door will be thrown under the bus because we won't be able to cover them because a veto pen is waiting for us. We can do better. America is better than this.

I love our children. We need to do this in the right way. We certainly don't need a veto pen by the President of the United States. We should love our children and respond to their health needs.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to express my disappointment in the version of the State Children's Health Insurance Program Act of 2007 which has been brought before this body today. This bill, which has been largely driven by the Republicans in the Senate, falls far short of the mark to mend the broken pieces of our healthcare system and provide healthcare coverage for some of our most vulnerable populations in this country. Instead of covering an additional 6 million uninsured children, this bill increases coverage for 3 million, leaving 3 million children uninsured. This bill also fails to provide vision coverage and provides very little mental coverage for our children. Pregnant women may also suffer under this bill because this bill, unlike the previous House version, does not guarantee additional coverage for pregnant women. This bill also denies coverage to parents, college-aged adults, and legal immigrants who currently have coverage in some states.

This is extremely important because reauthorization of SCHIP is crucial to closing the racial and ethnic health disparities in this country. Narrowing health care coverage of our children, as this newly agreed upon version does, clearly falls far short of the goal that we had hoped for in our efforts to decrease health disparities. It is crucial that this Congress continue to bring awareness to the many health concerns facing minority communities and to acknowledge that we need to find solutions to address these concerns. My colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus and I understand the very difficult challenges facing us in the form of huge health disparities among our community and other minority communities. We will continue to seek solutions to those challenges.

Reauthorization of the SCHIP bill is crucial to realizing those solutions. However, we must not compromise away the health of millions of children who will under this new SCHIP version go without healthcare coverage. It is imperative for us to improve the prospects for living long and healthy lives and fostering an ethic of wellness in African- American and other minority communities.

Looking at the statistics, we know that the lack of healthcare contributes greatly to the racial and ethnic health disparities in this country, so we must provide our children with the health insurance coverage to remain healthy. SCHIP, established in 1997 to serve as the healthcare safety net for low-income uninsured children, has decreased the number of uninsured low-income children in the United States by more than one-third. The reduction in the number of uninsured children is even more striking for minority children.

In 2006, SCHIP provided insurance to 6.7 million children. Of these, 6.2 million were in families whose income was less than $33,200 a year for a family of three. SCHIP works in conjunction with the Medicaid safety net that serves the lowest income children and ones with disabilities. Together, these programs provide necessary preventative, primary and acute healthcare services to more than 30 million children. Eighty-six percent of these children are in working families that are unable to obtain or afford private health insurance. Meanwhile, healthcare through SCHIP is cost effective: it costs a mere $3.34 a day or $100 a month to cover a child under SCHIP, according to the Congressional Budget Office. There are significant benefits of the State Children's Health Insurance Program when looking at specific populations served by this program.

Minority Children: SCHIP has had a dramatic effect in reducing the number of uninsured minority children and providing them access to care; Between 1996 and 2005, the percentage of low-income African American and Hispanic children without insurance decreased substantially; In 1998, roughly 30 percent of Latino children, 20 percent of African American children, and 18 percent of Asian American and Pacific Islander children were uninsured. After enactment, those numbers had dropped by 2004 to about 12 percent, and 8 percent, respectively; Half of all African American and Hispanic children are already covered by SCHIP or Medicaid; More than 80 percent of uninsured African American children and 70 percent of uninsured Hispanic children are eligible but not enrolled in Medicaid and SCHIP, so reauthorizing and increasing support for SCHIP will be crucial to insuring this population.

Prior to enrolling in SCHIP, African American and Hispanic children were much less likely than non-Hispanic White children to have a usual source of care. After they enrolled in SCHIP, these racial and ethnic disparities largely disappeared. In addition, SCHIP eliminated racial and ethnic disparities in unmet medical needs for African American and Hispanic children, putting them on par with White children. SCHIP is also important to children living in urban areas of the country. In urban areas: One in four children has health care coverage through SCHIP. More than half of all children whose family income is $32,180 received health care coverage through SCHIP.

Children in Urban Areas: SCHIP is also important to children living in urban areas of the country. In urban areas: One in four children has health care coverage through SCHIP. More than half of all children whose family income is $32,180 received healthcare coverage through

Mr. Speaker, I rise as a supporter of the State Children Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which focuses on covering children in families at or below 200 percent of the poverty level ($41,000 per year). I have voted to extend this program and to provide additional resources to ensure that those living in families below 200 percent of the poverty level ($41,000) have access to affordable health insurance through the SCHIP program.

What I cannot support is the Democrat's SCHIP bill, because their bill: 1. Fails to place a priority on first enrolling uninsured children in households earning less than $41,000 per year (200 percent of the federal poverty level); 2. Expands government subsidies to those making nearly $80,000 per year; 3. Spends half of the additional SCHIP dollars to enroll children in the government SCHIP program who were otherwise enrolled in private insurance; and 4. Virtually eliminates all funding for SCHIP beyond 2012 because they have no way to sustain funding for SCHIP beyond that date.

It is fiscally irresponsible to expand this program by enticing millions of children in families earning as much as $82,000 per year to drop private coverage and enroll in the SCHIP program that cannot be sustained. In August, House Democrat leaders forced an earlier version of SCHIP through the House that cut over $150 billion from Medicare and moved that money into SCHIP so that they would have a way to pay for millions of new SCHIP enrollees over the next ten years, including millions of currently insured children from middle and upper middle class families.

Their plan to cut Medicare was rejected not only by Republicans, but by the U.S. Senate,

and most importantly by the public at large. But now the bill before us is simply a bait and switch. They have brought a bill before us today that nearly triples the size of SCHIP over the next five years-- including enrolling millions of children currently ensured by private plans--only this time they have chosen to hide from the public how they plan to pay for the program for the next ten years. They ramp up the annual budget of SCHIP to nearly $14 billion a year, and then they simply leave it to a future Congress to find a way to continue paying for the massively expanded SCHIP program. It turns out that their nearly tripling of the federal cigarette taxes still leaves them tens of billions of dollars short. Americans should be on notice that in 2012 the Democrats will ask for another $180 billion to continue SCHIP for another ten years.

Particularly troubling is that by significantly expanding SCHIP enrollment eligibility those in families making upwards of $80,000 per year, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that millions of new SCHIP enrollees will be children that move from private coverage to the SCHIP program. By moving children from private insurance onto the government program, this bill essentially enrolls five uninsured children for the price of ten. Enticing millions of children to drop private coverage and sign up for SCHIP is short-sighted and fiscally irresponsible, particularly given that it goes bankrupt in 2012.

What we should be doing is focusing this program on enrolling uninsured children in households earning less than $41,000 per year. Mr. Chairman, our children and the American taxpayers deserve better that what the Democrat leadership has put before us today.

In February of this year, states that had overspent their SCHIP funding grants came to Congress begging for more money to ``insure uninsured poor children.'' The root problem in many of these states was the fact that they had use their federal grant to enroll children in the SCHIP program who were neither poor nor uninsured. New Jersey, for example had used their grant to enroll children in families with incomes of more than $72,000, even though there were and still are over 150,000 children in New Jersey in households earning less than $41,000 who are uninsured.

I offered an amendment in February that would have refocus SCHIP to make sure that children in families under 200 percent of the poverty level were covered first. My amendment was rejected by the liberal majority on the Committee, who stated that they had no intent to refocus SCHIP on lower income children. Rather, they planned to continue expanding the program to those well above the poverty level-- to include adults and illegal immigrants--as a step toward universal government-run health care. In today's Washington Post, liberal columnist E.J. Dionne Jr., removes any doubt of this goal by writing: ``This battle [over SCHIP] is central to the long-term goal of universal coverage.''

While the press releases about today's bill focus on uninsured low- income children, the language in the bill is about much more than uninsured low-income children. If the bill before us was focused on low-income uninsured children, I would be voting for it. The bill before us does the opposite. It repeals recent rules requiring states to ensure that at least 95 percent of those under 200 percent of the poverty level are insured under their state SCHIP programs. Democrats leaders in Congress have responded to the rule by arguing that there is no way to ensure a 95 percent enrollment rate of uninsured children in households earning less than $41,000 per year. They argue that since they cannot achieve the goal we should simply expand the program to those in households earning more than $80,000 or more a year.

They use budget gimmicks to say that their bill is balance and paid for through higher cigarette taxes. The Heritage Foundation has estimated that the amount of money Democrats estimate they will raise from higher cigarette taxes comes up billions of dollars short and that over the next 10 years they will have to find 22 million new smokers to bring in the amount of cigarette tax revenue they hope to raise. (It is also noteworthy that lower-income Americans pay a higher percentage of cigarette taxes, but it is middle-income Americans that will receive most of the expanded SCHIP benefits under this bill.)

I am also concerned over provisions included in the bill that repeal the requirement that individuals must prove citizenship in order to enroll in Medicaid and SCHIP. This opens the program to fraud and the enrollment of illegal immigrants. In 2006, the Inspector General (IG) of the Department of Health and Human Services found that 46 states allowed anyone seeking Medicaid or SCHIP to simply state they were citizens. The IG found that 27 states never sought to verify that enrollees were indeed citizens. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that repealing this requirement will cost $1.9 billion.

And finally from a Florida perspective, Florida taxpayers come up short. Florida taxpayer will send $700 million more to Washington than we will receive back in SCHIP allocations. Where will Florida taxpayer dollars end up going? Residents of California, New York, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and New Jersey will be the biggest recipients of Florida tax dollars. Yet, Florida has a higher rate of uninsured children that several of these.

Florida voters will also be asked to foot part of the bill for a $1.2 billion earmark inserted into the 300-page bill at the last minute by the powerful chairman of the committee for his home state of Michigan.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, the debate this evening should not be about who is for insurance for children and who is against health insurance for children. The fact is that all of us, Democrats and Republicans alike, want SCHIP to be reauthorized. We will vote tomorrow, I believe, for a temporary extension of the program, and I predict that there will be a huge bipartisan vote in favor of extending the program to give this House more time to develop a true bipartisan reauthorization, long-term reauthorization of the SCHIP program.

I do expect, Mr. Speaker, this bill to pass tonight, but I also expect the President to veto this bill, and I expect his veto to be sustained by this House. At that point, I'm very hopeful that, for the first time in this process, the minority in this House will be included in discussions about how we should reauthorize the SCHIP program, because to this point, frankly, we have not been included at all. We have not been asked for our recommendations for a reauthorization; we were not even given a substitute when this matter came to the floor originally here in the House of Representatives.

So perhaps after the President vetoes and we sustain the veto, then maybe we will be brought into the room and we will have a chance to discuss with the majority what we think is the appropriate level of reauthorization for funding for this program and perhaps some of our ideas with respect to limiting those eligible for this program to the universe of people who were originally intended to be helped by the program, that is, low-income children whose family incomes are too high to qualify for Medicaid but too low to buy a policy in the individual market outside of the workplace.

So, Mr. Speaker, this evening I suggest that, rather than point fingers and say you're against kids and we're for kids, you're for tobacco, we're against tobacco, that we get through this debate and then get through the next step of the process, which I hope will be more bipartisan and more cooperative, to allow us to get a real reauthorization that we can all support as we did in the mid-1990s when we created this program.

Now, we only got this bill, this so-called compromise, last night, so we've been diligently going through it all night and all day today. We're not sure of everything that's in this bill, but I can enumerate a number of things that we believe to be facts and I think are important in this debate for this particular bill.

First of all is the matter of funding. This bill is not even close to being fully funded. Budget gimmicks are replete. The proposal assumes that funding will drop to about one-fourth of the funding in the year 2013, and then another $5 million cut after that. We all know that's not going to happen. But that was done, and I understand, just to make the budget numbers work; but Members ought to know what they're voting for.

Another thing that we're told by the Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan arm of the House and the Senate, is that under this proposal 2 million children will move from private health insurance to government health insurance. Now, surely that's not what we want. We don't want the SCHIP program, do we, to move children from private insurance into government insurance? That wasn't the intent of this program when it started.

And on the tax side, on the pay-for side, this bill proposes that we pay for a program with clearly growing requirements, growing needs with a funding source that is going to be declining, depleting, the tobacco tax. As you raise the tax on tobacco, you exacerbate the trend that has been evident in this country for a number of years of declining use of tobacco.

So to propose funding a growing program with a declining revenue source is, I would submit, irresponsible fiscal policy.

I have a few other speakers who are going to talk about some of the other weaknesses in this legislation.

At this time, I would reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, at this time, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Camp), the distinguished member of the Ways and Means Committee, the ranking member of the Health Subcommittee.

Mr. Speaker, before I recognize our next speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I agree with the gentleman that children ought not have to go to emergency rooms to get care,

that children ought to be able to go to their family doctor; but there's a good way and a not-so-good way to provide that.

This bill provides a government healthcare program for that. We would much rather provide a private health insurance plan for that. I would submit that there is a vast difference in those approaches.

Mr. Speaker, at this time I would yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sam Johnson), a member of the Ways and Means Committee and ranking member of the Social Security Subcommittee.

(Mr. SAM JOHNSON of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Ryan), another distinguished member of the Ways and Means Committee.

Mr. Speaker, due to the imbalance of time remaining, I would at this time withhold calling on a speaker, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling).

Mr. Speaker, I only have one speaker left to close, so I would reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I believe all of the controllers of time are ready to close.

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman that spoke right before me, the distinguished chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, said that this bill provides $35 billion for children. This bill actually provides a lot more than that. It's $35 billion in new, additional spending on top of the $25 billion that the program as currently structured spends. So we're more than doubling on paper the cost of this program. And when you consider that there's another, oh, approximately $30 billion that the tax increase in this bill does not cover, we're getting up to tripling, quadrupling the size of this program.

Now, the gentleman earlier said that no abuses such as illegal immigrants gaining benefits have ever been identified. Well, I would refer the gentleman to the 2005 HHS Inspector General report in which the Inspector General says that 47 States allowed self-declaration in the United States citizenship for Medicaid and he asked for those States to give him an audit.

Only one State did that, the State of Oregon. The Secretary of State provided an audit, and in that audit he found out of 812 individuals sampled, who were Medicaid beneficiaries in that State, 25 of them were noneligible noncitizens.

So, Mr. Speaker, under the provisions in this bill, which liberalize the current law treatment of qualification of individuals for this program, we indeed expect to see abuses of this.

So, Mr. Speaker, I urge all of us to vote ``no'' on this so that we can sustain the President's veto if the bill passes and then get together for a true bipartisan compromise on this important program.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my very good friend from Dallas for yielding this time, and I thank him for his great, very thoughtful statement on this issue.

I have got to say, as I did last night when we met in the Rules Committee, Mr. Speaker, that it really saddens me that we are here at this point. It was very proudly in a Republican Congress with a Democratic President that we came together in a bipartisan way to ensure that the very, very underprivileged in this country, children, would have access to health insurance. It is something that existed for 10 years, and we know that there are still children who are in need and we want to do everything that we possibly can to ensure that children have an opportunity to have access to quality health care. Mr. Speaker, this ain't it. This is not the answer.

I listened to my friend from Worcester begin this very thoughtful statement about bipartisanship. He mentioned two House Republicans and two Senate Republicans who made this a wonderful bipartisan measure. But I would like to yield to my friend and engage in a colloquy with him, if I might.

I see here on the floor the very distinguished ranking minority member of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, the committee that has had jurisdiction over this issue. And I would like to inquire of my friend if he knows if the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Barton) was ever invited, as he hails this great spirit of bipartisanship, to any meeting that was held by the majority in attempts to negotiate this measure. I am happy to yield to my friend from Worcester.

Would the gentleman yield me 1 minute so that I could ask the question again?

Would the gentleman yield me 30 seconds so that I can ask the question? We've got a limited amount of time here and a lot of speakers.

So the gentleman chooses not to answer my question then.

I'd be happy to yield to my very good friend from New York.

Mr. Speaker, let me reclaim my time. I was happy to yield to my friend to answer my question. It was a yes or no question.

Mr. Speaker, the distinguished Chair of the Committee on Ways and Means is a great friend of mine. I'm always happy to yield to him. I was trying to yield to the gentleman from Worcester who is managing this rule----

I would simply inquire as to whether or not the distinguished ranking member of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, the former chairman of the committee, was invited to participate in this much heralded bipartisan agreement to which Mr. McGovern has referred. And I guess the answer that I'm getting with all of this convoluted stuff is no. Well, you know what? Maybe I should yield to the distinguished former chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce to inquire of him. Mr. Rangel and Mr. McGovern seem to be unable to answer the question as to whether or not the distinguished former chairman, the ranking member, was invited to participate in this great bipartisan package that we've got. I'm happy to yield to my friend.

I thank my friend for enlightening us on that, Mr. Speaker, and I will simply say that that demonstrates that, as we've heard about this great quest for bipartisanship in dealing with an issue which should have been completely bipartisan, and was when the Republicans were in the majority, I will say. The American people were represented here in a bipartisan way in fashioning a State Children's Health Insurance Program, SCHIP, that had, first, a Democratic President, Bill Clinton, sign it, and it was a Republican work product.

It saddens me that today we now have a Democratic Congress and a Republican President, and this Republican President is going to veto the measure. Why? Because it dramatically expands the welfare state, undermines the ability for children who are truly in need to get it, and as was pointed out in an Energy and Commerce item, it's a reverse Robin Hood. It takes from the poor with a tax increase, the most regressive tax of all, as was stated by the Congressional Budget Office, and it gives to people who shouldn't even be able to qualify for this program.

And that is, I believe, just plain wrong. It is a mischaracterization of what we should see in a SCHIP program. Everybody wants to make this happen. Governors across the country wanted to make it happen. Of course, they want to have access to these resources. And Democrats and Republicans want to make it happen. But this is not the right bill. If Mr. Barton had been able to participate, I'm convinced that we would have, Mr. Speaker, had a very decent bill on this.

Now, let me just say that the other thing that really troubles me is what we held our last vote on just a few minutes ago. Let me just very quickly, Mr. Speaker, say that we tried very, very hard at the beginning of this Congress to take the majority at their word when they said there was going to be a great new era of transparency and disclosure and accountability.

Well, 10 days ago, Mr. Speaker, we marked the first anniversary of our passing real earmark reform in this institution. What did it say? It said there would be transparency, accountability and disclosure on items, not just appropriations bills, but on authorizing bills and on tax bills. And, unfortunately, in this so-called new era of transparency and disclosure in this new Congress, we completely subvert the notion of transparency and disclosure on earmarks, as is evidenced in this bill.

When we in the Rules Committee last night saw the majority, and they all voted, we had a recorded vote on this. They chose to waive the provision that would have, in fact, had an opportunity for disclosure and accountability; and they voted, again, against it right here on the House floor. That's why, as was said by Mr. Rogers earlier, we have a discharge petition so that we can do what we did last September 14, a year ago, and that is have real earmark reform.

Vote ``no'' on this rule and ``no'' on the underlying legislation.

Mr. Speaker, as my distinguished chairman has suggested, this is a modest proposal, with all due respect to Mr. Swift. I am not proud of the bill or the process. I would say to my distinguished ranking member from the Ways and Means Committee that they were accorded every opportunity at every point to participate in this bill, and they know it. They were not excluded until they decided they did not want to help us pass the CHAMP bill, which was a far better bill.

At this point, I have to thank my colleagues on both sides of the aisle who have helped us pass a bill that would have added a million additional children. It was a far better bill for children. It would have expanded coverage to legal immigrant children. It was better also for senior citizens. But I also have to thank our leadership and the commitment of Speaker Pelosi to suggest that when we come back, after, as we expect this bill will be vetoed, we will remember that there were a tremendous number of proposals in here which would have helped not only children, but seniors, financial help for low-income seniors, mental health parity for Medicare, improved Medicare benefits and health benefits, preventive care, rural health parity, consumer protections in part D, improved dialysis procedures, protection of Medicare from privatization, and the preservation of the Medicare system by doing away with the excessive spending in Medicare Advantage.

The allegiance of groups like AARP, the AMA, Families USA, the Alliance for Retired Americans, the National Committee to Preserve Medicare and Social Security, the AHA, all of whom helped us pass CHAMP, all have been ignored in the bill before us today.

I want to make it perfectly clear, I had no part in backing away from not only my commitments, the commitments of many of my colleagues, to these groups or to America's seniors. I know the Speaker will help us return to that commitment and pass those procedures in the future.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 976, the Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act.

As many of my colleagues have made clear, this bill is far better than what President Bush prefers. It will provide $35 billion in new funds for the CHIP program, which will enable 6.6 million children to keep their health care at the end of the month and provide coverage to nearly 4 million currently uninsured children.

President Bush proclaims to want a ``clean extension'' of the CHIP program, but don't believe him on this any more than you did on weapons of mass destruction, ``mission accomplished'' or take your pick of lies he's told. He knows full well that his proposal would mean taking health care away from needy children.

The CHIP program is a block grant so it provides a capped amount of funding to States each year. The existing program is broken. We've already had to pass legislation this year to provide additional funds to keep more than 13 States from dropping children from their CHIP roles. If the President has his way, those States will soon have to take away their health coverage anyway.

That's why I'll vote for this bill today. It is better than the status quo--and far better than the direction President Bush wants to take us all with regard to health coverage.

But, I am not proud of this bill or this process.

On August 1st, we passed a far better bill through the House of Representatives.

First, the Children's Health Insurance and Medicare Protection Act, CHAMP, was better for children. It invested $50 billion into the program and covered more than a million children. CHAMP also allowed States to use Federal funds to appropriately expand coverage to legal immigrant children and corrected a misguided regulation issued by the Bush administration on citizenship documentation that forced thousands of American children to lose their health coverage through Medicaid.

However, not only was the CHAMP Act better for children, it also provided overdue and much needed improvements to senior citizens and people with disabilities on Medicare. In the House, we combined children with seniors and created a bill that improved the health of our youngest and most needy and our oldest.

Unfortunately, Senate Republicans refused to allow our bills to go to conference. They refused to even consider attaching any Medicare provisions to the CHIP reauthorization. As a result, we are here today with a reduced CHIP package that cedes most of the House CHIP reauthorization bill to the Senate's preferred language.

I'm also not certain about whether we will really take up Medicare later this year and adopt the important Medicare improvements we passed in the House.

All of the following provisions from the CHAMP Act are now at risk: financial help for low-income seniors, Medicare mental health parity, improved Medicare preventive health benefits, prevention of the pending physician payment cuts, rural health parity, consumer protections in Part D, improved dialysis procedures, protection of Medicare from privatization through massive overpayments to private plans, and preservation of the Medicare system.

In my opinion, the allegiance of groups like AARP, the AMA, Families USA, the Alliance for Retired Americans, the National Committee to Preserve Medicare, and Social Security and the AHA--which helped us pass CHAMP--have been ignored in the bill before us today.

I want to close by making it perfectly clear that I had no part in backing away from my commitments to any Members of Congress, these groups, or to America's seniors in requesting your support for our broader CHAMP Act. I will do everything I can to see all sections of CHAMP become law. I urge my colleagues in the House and advocates across the country to urge leaders in both the House and the Senate to do the same.