Tim Ryan: “I think the debate, too, has gotten a little bit off track, and I quite frankly, Mr. Speaker, find this shameful. One of…”

“I think the debate, too, has gotten a little bit off track, and I quite frankly, Mr. Speaker, find this shameful. One of the statements made by the President: Democratic Members of Congress are putting health coverage for poor children at risk so they can score political points in Washington. Now, that's a shame that that kind of rhetoric's coming out of the White House at this point. When you look, as Mrs. Jones has stated earlier, all of the Republicans that are supporting this bill, this is a bipartisan bill. But there is a small fringe group in this House and the White House that will not allow this bill to pass. Score political points? We're trying to provide health care for kids. This is not where we have a debate and everyone gets little debating points as we go along, and there are a lot of Republicans in this House and in the Senate that want to support children's health care, and for the executive branch to make these kinds of statements I think totally poisons the debate. Here's another thing that some of our friends are saying on the other side, that SCHIP is incremental steps to a government-run health care program. That's just not true. These are children who are now eligible for the program but there's not enough money in it to actually cover them, we're trying to put the money in to cover them. They will go to private doctors and they will get private health care. They're not going to go to the VA, the government-run veterans hospitals.”