Joe Barton: “everybody has said all that needs to be said on this debate; we just haven't said it this third or fourth time that we…”

“everybody has said all that needs to be said on this debate; we just haven't said it this third or fourth time that we are here on the House floor. As the minority leader pointed out, at some point in time it still may be possible to reach a consensus on reauthorizing the SCHIP program because people on both sides of the aisle want to keep the program moving forward. The problem that most Republicans have is that we support the base program for near low-income children between 100 and 200 percent of poverty. We don't think that the SCHIP program, which was a children's health program, should be for adults. We don't think it should be for illegal aliens. We think it should be for children between 100 percent to 200 percent of poverty, and perhaps slightly higher than that if a good-faith effort has been made to cover children in that income bracket. My friends on the other side of the aisle appear to want to use this as a surrogate for universal health care.”