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Floor Statement: SCHIP

SCHIP - Wednesday, January 28, 2009 View video | Can't view the video?

Madam President, I call up Amendment 67 and ask for its immediate consideration.  I'm here today to lend my full support to the reauthorization of the State Children's Health Insurance Program. SCHIP was created with the noblest of intentions, to cover low-income children whose families did not qualify for Medicaid but who could not afford private health insurance.

Unfortunately, there are too many children today who are eligible for CHIP that are not enrolled. I strongly believe that before we consider expanding the scope of this program, as the present bill does, we need to focus on the currently eligible population of low-income children.

That's why I joined with a number of my colleagues in supporting an alternative known as Kids First. It focuses on the original intent of SCHIP, and that is to cover low-income children. Kids First provides funding to Texas over the next five years at levels beyond projected spending by the Texas Health and Human Services Commission. Across the country thousands of children are eligible but not enrolled in health insurance programs like Medicaid or SCHIP, and I believe we need to focus on those children first.

Tragically, in my state -- not something I'm proud of -- 850,000 children are eligible for Medicaid and SCHIP, but they're not enrolled. I think it's important we focus our efforts on getting these children covered. And that's why Kids First provides $400 million for five years for outreach and enrollment.

We can all agree that during these tough times, it's important that we assist as many low-income children as we possibly can. But it's also necessary that we accomplish this goal without placing excessive burdens on taxpayers. Kids First protects taxpayer dollars and pays for the funding by reducing administrative costs, duplicative spending and eliminating earmarks. Unfortunately, the bill that's now on the floor is structured in such a way that it provides billions of taxpayer dollars to cover children whose parents earn up to $100,000 and more, and eliminates the requirement that states first cover low-income children before expanding their programs.

You might ask how that could possibly be so. Well, through a mysterious thing known as income disregard, that would under this bill allow coverage at 350 percent or higher of poverty, but then allow the states to disregard certain income which, if fully employed, would mean that a family earning about $120,000 -- a family of four -- would be eligible for CHIP coverage even though children in my state whose families of four who make only $42,000 a year would not be covered. It's important we take care of the low-income children who are the original focus of the SCHIP program before we see that money being drained off, using it in other states to cover adults or to cover families making as much as 400 percent of poverty and more.

I think the bill on the floor takes an unfortunate step backward in terms of fiscal responsibility as well. The bill imposes regressive tax on middle- and low-income families and relies on the creation of 22 million new smokers to avoid the future imposition of an additional tax - a staggering, staggering fact.

To improve the bill and to focus on low-income children, I've offered this amendment that prohibits redistributing funds to states that have expanded their SCHIP program to higher income families or adults, at least until we take care of the low-income kids first. The current bill rewards states for exceeding their budget, even if they spent outside of the original intent of the program. In fiscal year 2007, for example, 14 shortfall states that received redistributed funds, out of those 14, seven of them had expanded the SCHIP program for children beyond the 200 percent of poverty level. Of those seven, four had expanded their programs above 300 percent. Redistributed funds should be reserved for covering low-income children, to assist states with specific outreach and enrollment activities that will help enroll large numbers of low-income children who are eligible but not enrolled.

We have a choice. We can either focus on low-income children or we can choose to expand the program and leave many low-income children behind. I hope my colleagues will join me in refocusing our efforts to cover low-income children first, which is what my amendment will do.