In Washington, the Senate Finance Committee will consider the future of one of the most successful bipartisan achievements of the past decade. The State Children's Health Insurance Program, which insures thousands of children in Massachusetts and millions more nationwide, is reaching a crisis. Congress must act now to protect this important commitment to our most vulnerable children and expand it to insure every child in America. No child in America should lack health insurance. No child should be left vulnerable. Yet today we leave 11 million American kids under age 21 without health insurance. And that number will only grow if the federal government refuses to provide enough funding for the programs that states use to insure our most vulnerable children. Nearly 10 years ago, I co-authored, with Ted Kennedy, the bill that became S-CHIP, a bipartisan compromise that committed the federal government to help states cover the costs of insuring children of the working poor. But as health care costs rose an astonishing 73 percent over the last 5 years, states are finding that the same federal health care dollars don't go as far as they once did. Massachusetts is short $90 million in federal S-CHIP funds. Unless Congress and the Administration fund these programs, states like Massachusetts will face an awful choice: Go broke shouldering an unfair and unsustainable burden or stop providing health coverage to kids. One-third of kids with asthma nationwide suffer without the medication they need - many because they lack health insurance. In the wealthiest nation on the face of the earth, that is nothing short of a disgrace. Denying kids health insurance is not just immoral, it's ultimately more costly than insuring them. In the long run, this is an obvious choice. In a given year, uninsured kids are only half as likely to receive any medical care. That neglect leads to chronic disease. Uninsured kids also cost us productivity when parents must choose between working and caring for a sick child without the help of a doctor. Kids in public insurance programs perform 68 percent better in school, and insuring all of them would reduce avoidable hospitalizations by 22 percent. The first, crucial step is to fund S-CHIP at a rate that keeps pace with rising costs and doesn't bankrupt the states. When the President unveils his budget in the coming weeks, he should commit to a substantial increase in coverage for our nation's kids. We should work across party lines to build up this successful bipartisan achievement instead of allowing it to collapse under its own weight. But that is just the beginning of what we must do to insure each and every one of our nation's 11 million uninsured children under age 21. Two years ago, during the presidential campaign of 2004, I had the privilege of crisscrossing this nation and meeting great families every day. Their stories of struggle and sacrifice so inspired me that on the first day of Congressional session in January 2005, I introduced my Kids First plan to provide health insurance for ever child in America. And this year, the very first bill I introduced to this new Congress was the Kids Come First Act of 2007, which expands current programs to make absolutely certain that every child in this country receives health insurance. Instead of creating a new bureaucracy, Kids First builds on programs with a proven track record of success - Medicaid and S-CHIP - to create a genuine federal-state partnership for healthy children. The federal government pays for the most expensive part, enrolling all low-income children in Medicaid automatically. For their part, the states help pay to expand coverage to children not in poverty but still in need. A program like Kids First would save Massachusetts more than $219 million annually - funding that can offset the costs of our state's brand-new universal coverage plan. States across this country would save more than $6 billion every year. And every child can have health care. While this is a wise investment, it will not be free of cost. How will we find the money to make this down-payment on a healthy future? It's a matter of priorities: Instead of funding tax cuts for the rich, we should reverse the unethical, budget busting Bush tax cuts to the top 1 percent. Later this year, the Senate will consider reauthorization of the Children's Health Insurance Program. We must honor that commitment and set out to finish the project of insuring every single American child. I hope that the President will agree to support Kids First. But with or without his help, we can and must make good on a basic premise of the American Dream - that every child in every American family deserves a safe, healthy start in life.