Looks like the State Children's Health Insurance Program might have a second shot at life, after all. Or maybe not.
President Bush's budget proposal for 2009 – his last – reached Congressional computers last week just before the Super Tuesday drama swept the announcement into yesterday's news pile. (For the first time, the budget shipped via e-mail in a bid to save a few trees.)
Predictably, nearly every Democrat – and editorial page writer – groused about the size of the plan, and the deficits it would continue to ring up. Like that's never happened before.
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What you might have missed, though, was Bush's bid to give SCHIP another shot. His proposed budget would boost the program's spending by almost $20 billion over the next five years. That's actually a $5 billion bump over Bush's last proposal.
Of course, Bush's numbers still aren't going to be high enough for the Democrats in Congress, whose last bill would have boosted the program's finances by $35 billion over that same five-year window.
Bush's budget also includes a stipulation that would limit availability to children of families making no more than two-and-a-half times the poverty level, which is another pill Congress isn't eager to swallow.
While it appears to be a good faith effort to meet in the middle on Bush's part, there's just no way Congress will bite. They have enough problems with this budget – both real and imagined – that a single SCHIP concession won't make a bit of difference.
Stay tuned. Maybe until November.
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