Kevin Brady: “it is bad enough that Congress continues to play politics with the war, now they are playing politics with little kids.…”

“it is bad enough that Congress continues to play politics with the war, now they are playing politics with little kids. Despite broad bipartisan support for children's health insurance, this new leadership has settled on a divisive scheme to score political points rather than sit down and work out a reasonable solution. Make no mistake, earlier you heard somebody say this is just a time-out. It's not a time-out. It's a cop-out. It's a cop-out to all the political hacks in Washington who want to spend 2 weeks covering your television sets and our newspapers and radio airwaves with their misleading ads rather than sitting down with us. Meanwhile, the working poor who are parents are wondering if they are going to have any insurance for their kids past Christmastime. It doesn't have to be this way. I was here in Congress when we started this program. We sat down together with President Clinton and worked out a good program. There are a lot of us Republicans willing to do the same today. I am hopeful that President Bush's veto will finally move our Democrat friends to stop playing political games with our kids, to sit down and pay for this bill and make it a reasonable one, end the abuses we all know are there and move this bill in a way that the President can sign it because our kids need this bill and we need to stop. It is shameful these political games we are playing here today.”