Joe Barton: “I was in the House when SCHIP was passed. I was not in the leadership, but I was on the committee. My recollection is a…”

“I was in the House when SCHIP was passed. I was not in the leadership, but I was on the committee. My recollection is a little bit different than my friend from Illinois. There were some Republicans, I think Senator Hatch was one of the ones in the Senate; Congressman Archer, who was the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. This did come out of the effort to reform welfare as it was then. There was a concern that as we tried to move primarily women who were single head of households off of welfare, if they didn't have a job that had health care, their children, in order for them to work, transition to work, that they needed health care. And President Clinton and the Republican leadership in the House and the Senate did agree that SCHIP was the answer. And it was a bipartisan agreement. I would give the President credit for supporting it, but I would also give the Republican leadership in the House and the Senate credit for supporting it also at that time. The bill that is before us tonight is not the bill that passed in 1997. We have over 600,000 adults on SCHIP, a children's health insurance program. Rhetorically, my friends on the majority side say they really don't want adults to be covered. But nothing in this bill moves those adults off of SCHIP.”