Joe Barton: “there's a great movie from the sixties or maybe the seventies called ``Cool Hand Luke.'' Paul Newman is Cool Hand Luke…”

“there's a great movie from the sixties or maybe the seventies called ``Cool Hand Luke.'' Paul Newman is Cool Hand Luke, and he gets imprisoned for some minor infraction and he just doesn't conform with the regulations of the prison. And finally in exasperation the prison warden is talking to him in front of the chain gang and utters the famous line, ``What we have here is a failure to communicate.'' Well, what we have here tonight apparently is another failure to communicate. The Republicans in the House of Representatives want to reauthorize SCHIP. Some of the Republicans in the House of Representatives even want to expand SCHIP. But what we don't want to do is make SCHIP the surrogate for universal health care for children that are not in low-income or moderate-income families. We don't want to do that. And the bill before us would do that. It would cover children up to 300 percent of poverty, explicitly, which is above the median income in this country. And it would not have any substantial reform on what are called ``income disregards.'' An income disregard is, some States have said, well, we're going to disregard this amount of income or we're going to disregard that particular expense. So for all practical purposes if a State chooses to disregard income, then there is no cap, and the bill before us doesn't have reforms in that measure.…”