Roy Blunt: “I'm thankful to the former chairman and the ranking member for yielding to me on this bill. It seems to me that what we…”

“I'm thankful to the former chairman and the ranking member for yielding to me on this bill. It seems to me that what we have here is a bill that has not benefited from the process of hearings. Most of our friends in the majority today, I assume, will vote for this bill. Most of our friends on our side are going to vote against this bill, and I believe that during the month of August the voters will have the hearings that we should have had in advance. I believe what we'll find out is this bill has needless problems in it in the name of expanding SCHIP. My good friend, Ms. DeGette, mentioned the moon mission. It does seem to me that, in this bill now, the moon is the limit. The original bill said 200 percent of poverty, with some flexibility to the States. We're in favor of extending these guidelines. The original proposal, as we understood it from the majority, was 400 percent of poverty. Families who made 80, $85,000 would get free health insurance for their children. I don't think that limit is there any more. I believe it's up to the States under this bill. If you made 1,000 times the poverty rate and your State wanted to insure you, they could do that and your initial payment from the Federal Government would be 95 cents on every dollar.”