Nathan Deal: “well, here we are again. When the bill came up the first time, we had not had a chance to mark it up in the committee.…”

“well, here we are again. When the bill came up the first time, we had not had a chance to mark it up in the committee. We were not allowed amendments on the floor. And the process has been a take-it-or-leave-it because it appears that the issue is let's talk about children going to emergency rooms rather than doing something about extending the SCHIP program. And here we are again saying we don't want to do anything tonight; we want to reserve the time to talk about it in January. Well, there is an old saying that we ought to mean what we say and say what we mean. If the Democrats really want an SCHIP program, which I think they do, and Republicans do as well, then there ought to be some principles which have been on the table all along that should be able to be agreed to. One is that this is children's health insurance plan, and there ought not to be either a continuation of nor an expansion of the addition of adults into that program. And yet that continues to be one of the issues on which there is no agreement. Another issue is that it was intended to be for children at the below 200 percent of poverty level. We have said we should have been a saturation below 200 percent of poverty at 90 or 95 percent of those children before States start moving up the ladder, not to the working poor, but in some cases by many States' standards to the very rich or at least the middle income when you get to 300 and 350 and 400 percent of poverty.”