Dave Camp: “Madam Speaker, House Republicans strongly support the SCHIP program, and, as many speakers have said, this program was…”

“Madam Speaker, House Republicans strongly support the SCHIP program, and, as many speakers have said, this program was created on a bipartisan basis 10 years ago. We are advocating that the program remain what it was intended to be, and that was a program that helps low-income children who cannot otherwise get health insurance. Had we been able to sit down on a bipartisan basis anytime over the past 9 months, I am convinced that we could have come to an agreement that reauthorizes this important program without turning it into a massive expansion of government-controlled health care. Instead, the majority first produced a massive expansion of SCHIP, partially paid for by cuts to Medicare. Madam Speaker, fundamentally, the majority chose to shortchange the most vulnerable members of our society, seniors and the disabled, in order to force middle and upper middle-class families out of private health insurance and into a government program.”