CHIP veto riles advocates

As President Bush made good on his promise Wednesday to veto a bipartisan funding bill for a popular children's health insurance plan, local child advocates were already rallying support for an override.

Support for what would be the president's first override in his administration is all but certain in the Senate and anything but in the House. Nearly two dozen Republicans would have to switch in an override vote tentatively scheduled for Oct. 15.

Congress approved a $35 billion increase in funding for the Children's Health Insurance Program over the next five years — seven times the $5 billion Bush believes should be appropriated.

The president believes any more than that amounts to a step toward federalizing health care in the United States. On the other hand, lawmakers in both parties — along with national and local child care advocacy groups — assert that $5 billion amounts to a funding cut.

Bush vetoed the bill in private, absent the television cameras and other media coverage that normally attend even routine presidential actions. The measure called for adding an estimated 4 million mostly lower-income children to a program that currently covers 6.6 million. Funds for the expansion would come from higher tobacco taxes, including a 61-cent increase on a pack of cigarettes.

"Poor kids first," Bush said later in explaining his decision, reflecting a concern that some of the bill's benefits would go to families at higher incomes. "Secondly, I believe in private medicine, not the federal government running the health-care system," he added in remarks to an audience in Lancaster, Pa.

A compromise or an extension could still be worked out. Regardless, CHIP managers in Utah say the insurance plan, which covers about 27,000 children of working Utah families who don't receive medical coverage and are too poor to buy it, can operate without significant financial stress for at least six months.

Three of the lawmakers who would have to change their minds are Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, and Reps. Chris Cannon and Rob Bishop, both R-Utah, all of whom voted against the CHIP reauthorization.

Urging their reconsideration got under way Wednesday afternoon when about 20 people protested in front of Cannon's Provo office.

"I'm here because I think it's unconscionable to leave out so many children," said Piper Manesse, a mother from Spanish Fork who came with her two home-schooled sons.