Bill Posey: “I rise to express both my support for the State Children's Health Insurance Program, SCHIP, and my reservations about…”

“I rise to express both my support for the State Children's Health Insurance Program, SCHIP, and my reservations about the particular SCHIP bill, H.R. 2, that is before us today. I would also add that I am pleased to support an alternative version that will be offered as a substitute today. This alternative focuses SCHIP on low income children and addresses the problems with the underlying bill. Our nation faces very serious financial challenges. The Congressional Budget Office, CBO, projects that this year's Federal budget deficit will be nearly $1.2 trillion dollars. In other words one out of every three dollars that the Federal Government will spend this year will be borrowed from future generations. Given that our children and grandchildren will have to pay back everything that this generation borrows, we must give the greatest scrutiny to each and every dollar that is spent. I am committed to working to assist lower-income children who lack insurance. SCHIP was established as a bipartisan program to insure children in families too poor to pay for insurance but not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid. If that was what the bill before us did, I would be voting for it. Unfortunately, H.R. 2 goes well beyond focusing specifically on these children.”