Washington – Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) today responded to the House of Representatives’ vote to override the Administration’s veto of H.R. 976, legislation to reauthorize the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) through Fiscal Year 2012. The CHIP program was created to provide health coverage to children of the working poor whose family income is too high for Medicaid, but cannot afford private health insurance. Today’s House vote was 273 to 156, 13 votes short of overriding the President’s veto.
“Although it comes as no surprise, I am extremely disappointed by this vote,” Hatch said. “Many of us worked so hard to deliver this solid, bipartisan compromise to the President. I regret we weren’t able to persuade him to reauthorize CHIP because this bill is truly about helping low-income children who do not have health care. I plan to continue my work with my colleagues and the Administration to find some way to bring both sides together to reauthorize CHIP, which has been a tremendous success for the last 10 years in providing health care to low-income children.”
Hatch was part of a bipartisan coalition on the Senate Finance Committee that crafted a compromise to continue CHIP for the 6 million children currently in the CHIP program, and expand it to extend coverage to nearly four million more low-income, uninsured children.
View related PDF: SCHIPLetterwithSignatures.pdf (214.2 KBs)
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