Chuck Grassley: “last week, the Senate voted overwhelmingly to approve the bipartisan agreement to reauthorize the Children's Health…”

“last week, the Senate voted overwhelmingly to approve the bipartisan agreement to reauthorize the Children's Health Insurance Program. On Saturday, on television I saw that the President called our agreement--our bipartisan agreement, I want to emphasize--he called it irresponsible. Specifically, in his radio address, the President said we ``put forward an irresponsible plan that would dramatically expand this program beyond its original intent.'' Well, I am here to respond to that accusation by President Bush. To call what we agreed to as irresponsible is an insult to an agreement we reached and is an insult to 67 Members of the Senate and 265 Members of the House who voted in favor of it. Calling our bipartisan proposal irresponsible ignores reality. The reality is that the current program--the program of the last 10 years, sunsetting yesterday--is out of control. The present program is failing. That is--to emphasize--the reason for passing the bipartisan bill that we passed. Because the present program is not working the way it was intended, and with this legislation we corrected a lot of problems to turn that around. So the President is about to veto a bill that fixes the problems and improves the program for the future without having put a credible alternative on the table.”