For Our Next Obstruction...

...let's deny kids health insurance!

This time, the obstruction may not come from the Senate conservatives, but from Mr. Lame Duck himself, President Bush.

Today, the Senate Finance Committee passed a bipartisan compromise to expand the State Children's Health Insurance Program, investing an additional $7 billion a year of new tobacco tax revenue to cover 3 to 4 million additional children (out of 9 million that remain uninsured).

The compromise scales back what Democrats initially proposed, which was $10 billion a year. In turn, the bipartisan bill is estimated to only cover half of those kids who are already eligible for SCHIP coverage, yet still lack coverage.

And expanding the program still won't bring us comprehensive reform to provide affordable, quality health care coverage for all.

Nevertheless, the compromise would expand coverage to some and be a positive step forward.

And with the large bipartisan committee vote today, a conservative filibuster seems unlikely.

But there's more than one way for conservatives to obstruct progress. Bush has pledged to veto the compromise, keeping millions of kids uninsured.

This is not surprising, he has been railing against plans to cover kids for months. Not surprising, just disgusting.

How does Bush rationalize this? He says, "government involvement in health care will lead to less quality care and rationing over time."

But Bush does not propose scrapping SCHIP and replacing it with some so-called free-market approach that would end this terrible government involvement. He simply proposes to underfund the program, denying kids health care.

If he cared about covering the uninsured, he would have done something about it in the last six years.

Instead, he is obstructing the efforts of those who do care.

Views expressed on this page are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Campaign for America's Future or Institute for America's Future