Bush urges compromise on child health bill

ROGERS, Ark. - President Bush said he is ready to negotiate with congressional Democrats over a children's health insurance program he vetoed, provided they make helping poor children the priority.

Bush said the federal government already spends $35 billion a year on children's health through Medicaid. The program Congress sent to the White House "doesn't focus on poor children," Bush said yesterday in a speech to business leaders.

He said it expanded eligibility, while "half a million children aren't being helped."

The president on Oct. 3 vetoed the State Children's Health Insurance Program, known as SCHIP, which would increase spending over five years to $60 billion, more than doubling the program's budget. Bush proposed raising it by $5 billion over the same period, saying the congressional version was too expensive and went too far.

Representative Roy Blunt of Missouri, the second-ranking Republican in the House, has said he is confident that Bush's veto will be upheld in a House vote scheduled for Thursday.

"Isn't that sad for America's children?" House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, said Sunday on ABC's "This Week."

The legislation originally passed by Congress would have added about 3.8 million children to the 6 million now covered by SCHIP, with the additional funding paid for by raising the federal tobacco tax to $1 on a pack of cigarettes, from 39 cents.

Speaking here yesterday, Bush defended the veto. He said the measure would move SCHIP beyond the original intent of serving poor children and make benefits available to higher-income families, encouraging them to abandon private insurance for government coverage.

"Not only is the eligibility requirement being expanded way beyond the scope of the program," he said, it "sounds like there's a nationalization of medicine going on here." There are "six or seven states" in which more money is being spent on adults than children, the president said.

If the veto is upheld, "I call upon the leadership in Congress to come to the table" and "get money to those families that the program was intended to help," he said.

Bush has ordered Ed Gillespie, his chief political adviser, to join Michael Leavitt, Health and Human Services Secretary, and White House economic adviser Al Hubbard in helping to negotiate a new children's health insurance package after the veto-override attempt.

Bush said he is heading for a "fiscal showdown" in Washington and chided Congress, saying it has failed to meet the deadline for passing any of 12 spending measures for the new fiscal year, which began Oct. 1. A temporary money bill was passed to fund government programs until Nov. 16.

The president has threatened to veto 11 of the 12 bills, mostly because they exceed his $933 billion domestic spending budget by about $23 billion.

Congressional leaders argue that the difference represents about 2.4 percent of the domestic discretionary budget, and that $16 billion of the $23 billion would go to restore Bush's proposed cuts in low-income housing, job training, and other areas.

The Bush administration says that over five years, such spending would increase by $205 billion.