Jay Rockefeller: “Yesterday marked a critical juncture in the fight to provide comprehensive and affordable health care coverage for our…”

“Yesterday marked a critical juncture in the fight to provide comprehensive and affordable health care coverage for our Nation's children. Congress had a tremendous opportunity to improve the quality of life for hundreds of thousands of children, not just for the foreseeable future, but also over the long term. September 30, 2004, should have gone down in history as the day Congress set aside partisan politics and took a stand for children. Unfortunately, yesterday will be remembered as the day Congress chose political rhetoric over action and failed to protect health care coverage for children in working families. Some of my colleagues will argue that September 30 only marked a statutory deadline and didn't really matter in terms of coverage for kids. I strongly disagree. Yesterday's deadline was about keeping our promise to America's working families that their children will have access to comprehensive, affordable, and reliable health care coverage. We in Congress have broken that promise, and it is unconscionable to think that Members would go home to campaign while the health care of some of most vulnerable children hangs in the balance. We must act now to preserve health care coverage for children enrolled in the Children's Health Insurance Program, CHIP. This is too important an issue to delay even a day.”