The State Children’s Health Insurance Program was originally adopted in 1997 under Republican leadership to bring health care benefits to children of the working poor. We worked in a bipartisan way to gain support for the program and to ensure it would have stable funding for the 10 years of its authorization. I supported SCHIP then and I support renewing SCHIP now.

However, Democrats do not want to simply renew the program. They propose expansion of government-run health care, which will cause two million children to move from private insurance to government health care. This represents the first big push by the Democrats to nationalize health care.

To pay for this massive new program, the Democrats have proposed a 61-cent-per-pack increase in federal tobacco taxes, which, when added to Tennessee’s recent 42-cent increase, will constitute more than one dollar per pack. Tobacco taxes fall hardest on the working poor – the very people that SCHIP is supposed to help. Not to mention that it is bad policy to use a declining revenue stream to pay for a growing program. A study by the Heritage Foundation estimates that funding the SCHIP expansion with tobacco taxes would require 22 million new smokers over the next ten years.

In addition to the cigarette tax, Democrats have used a budget gimmick to make the legislation appear to be revenue-neutral. The true cost is deliberately understated because federal funding will be dramatically increased to enroll new children in SCHIP for the next five years, and then in 2012, the funding will be abruptly slashed by 80 percent. This abrupt cut in funding for the program in 2012 is a deliberate way for Democrats to abide by their own “pay as you go” rules while ineffectively outlining how to address this shortfall and keep children from losing their coverage.

So the outcome of this budget charade is that the SCHIP expansion will either cost $110 billion, which is $40 billion more than the Democrats admit, or will draw millions of children into the SCHIP program – many of whom already have health insurance today – and then yank the rug out from under them in 2012.

Some states are abusing the current program and spending large percentage of their SCHIP funds on adults, not children. In fact, New Jersey started covering more affluent children and now spends 43 percent of its yearly SCHIP funds to ensure adults. For the past three years, because of this program expansion, New Jersey had to be bailed out for overspending. We as taxpayers cannot afford for this to continue.

The Democrat bill makes it easier to provide taxpayer-funded benefits to illegal immigrants by weakening the citizenship documentation requirements. Under this bill, illegal immigrants must only produce a name and Social Security number to collect taxpayer benefits. It is well known that for years illegal immigrants have been using false Social Security numbers to work in the United States. It is naïve to think that they won’t do it to receive taxpayer-funded health care benefits.

There is a lot of disagreement between Members of the House and Senate over the best way to extend SCHIP, which expires at the end of the month. No child should be without health insurance coverage because Congressional leadership cannot reach a bipartisan consensus on how to move forward.

That is why I co-sponsored the SCHIP Extension Act to extend and fully fund SCHIP for an additional 18 months and increase the federal funding for the program by 33 percent. While this is not a permanent solution, this 18-month extension would provide an opportunity for Congress to work together in a bipartisan way and agree on a final bill that is worthy of becoming law, which the current bill clearly is not.