ALEXANDRIA, VA – First Focus President Bruce Lesley released the following statement regarding the failed override of President Bush’s veto of bipartisan legislation to renew the State Children’s Health Insurance Program:

“No American child should go without health insurance. The legislation proposed by Congress would have moved our nation on the path to reduce the number of uninsured children in our country from 9 million to 5 million. The veto and failure to override the veto instead sets our nation on a course to increase the number of uninsured children to over 10 million. This is an enormous tragedy.

Democratic and Republican governors across this nation were preparing plans to make further progress to improve the health and well-being of our nation’s children.

Now, states are reversing course and are making plans to cap, limit, or even reduce coverage to children based on the failure of the federal government to renew this highly successful program. Leaving state SCHIP programs at last year’s funding levels is billions of dollars short of the need.

Incredibly, after enacting a major Medicare prescription drug benefit in 2003 costing over 11 times that of SCHIP, 99 Members of the House who supported Medicare are now opting to draw the ideological line at legislation that will insure nearly 10 million poor children.

Congress must first come together to immediately fund this year’s SCHIP shortfall before children start losing coverage and then pass legislation that will at least cover over one-third of the nation’s uninsured children.

Members of Congress and the Administration are sitting in Washington enjoying their government-run, Federal Employee Health Benefits and even Medicare, which do not expire. The health of their children are not in jeopardy.

SCHIP has been an enormous success story that has cut the number of uninsured children by one-third. Now, that progress is being reversed. When conservative Republicans such as Charles Grassley (IA) and Orrin Hatch (UT) stand alongside Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid (NV) in support of a program, a true compromise exists. These leaders have put the well-being of children over politics. The rest must act now.”

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