Joe Barton: “We are for authorization of the SCHIP legislation. We are for covering low-income and near-low-income children so they…”

“We are for authorization of the SCHIP legislation. We are for covering low-income and near-low-income children so they have health care benefits. We are for making sure that the States that are out of funding receive additional funds beginning October, 2007. So we want to reauthorize the SCHIP program. We do believe that it should be maintained as a block grant program and not become an entitlement program. We believe it should be reauthorized for a specific period of time, not become an open-ended entitlement. We believe that SCHIP payments should be restricted to citizens of the United States and legal residents who have been here at least 5 years. We do not believe SCHIP payments should be allowed for illegal aliens who have come into this country without the proper documentation. So we are for reauthorization of SCHIP. We are for covering our low-income and near-low-income children. We disagree with our friends on the majority side on the number of individuals that we are talking about. We believe that children below 200 percent of poverty that do not have health insurance or health coverage today are in the neighborhood of 700,000, not 7 million.”