Bush Veto of SCHIP Expansion Sustained by House

The House of Representatives just failed to override Bush’s veto of a bill that would have greatly expanded the cost and scope of the federal SCHIP health care program. The vote for the bill was 273-to-156, or 13 votes short of the two-thirds margin needed to override the President’s veto.

Congressional leaders immediately began engaging in deceptive spin. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid claimed the veto harmed “America’s poorest children,” even though the nation’s poor children are already covered by Medicaid and SCHIP, and the whole point of the SCHIP expansion bill was to extend health-care subsidies to households that are not even poor.

Moreover, the SCHIP program, which was originally designed to help poor children, now covers childless adults, and “some states spend more than half their SCHIP funding in care for adults, not children.” So much for truth in advertising.

Earlier coverage of the SCHIP bill today can be found here and here.