California Republican Congressional Delegation Disappointing in Vote on Children's Health Bill--With One Exception

By Anthony Wright
Executive Director of Health Access California

It's disappointing SCHIP didn't get a veto proof majority. It's even more disappointing how little California was able to get there, compared to other similar states.

The SCHIP Reauthorization Bill, H.R. 976, passed in a broad bipartisan vote of 265-159, with 1 Representative saying "present" and 9 not voting.

The problem is that the two-thirds vote needed to override a veto is 290 votes. So while the bill has a veto-proof majority in the Senate, and even though SCHIP got more House Republican votes than expected, we are 25 votes shy in the House.

President Bush can veto the bill, as he has promised, and it will stick.

All but 12 Democrats voted for the bill. Of the Republicans, 45 voted for it.

In the SCHIP battle, a few states have been targeted, namely New York, New Jersey, and California, as states that expanded their state child health insurance programs above the norm of twice the poverty level. All three started their programs under Republican Governors (Pataki, Whitman, and Wilson, respectively). And all three have lots of children on the program now, have a high cost-of-living and are thus justified in a higher eligibility level, and recognize that SCHIP reauthorization is a big deal for the state to draw down federal funds--not to mention the benefit of providing health coverage to the children of the state.

So how did we do compared to the other states that are particularly targeted? In comparison, California did poorly in getting our House Representatives to vote for the interests of their state.

Of our 19 California House Republicans, only one--Mary Bono--voted for the measure. (Another did not vote.)

In comparison, New Jersey had 3 out of 6 Republicans in a 13-member delegation vote for SCHIP. New York both had 4 out of 6 House Republicans in a 29-member delegation vote the interest of their state over their President. (To complete the tri-state area, Connecticut also meets the criteria above, and has only one Republican Congressman out of a 5-member delegation, and yes, he voted for SCHIP.)

For whatever reason, our counterparts in the Mid-Atlantic did a much better job in getting their Representatives to represent them, in bringing in federal funds and extending coverage to children. As a result of California's inability to produce the votes, we may have to have hundreds of thousands of children disenrolled from California's Healthy Families program shortly.

Comments

Posted by: sean at September 27, 2007 10:19 AM

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