Skeptics React To Bush SCHIP Increase Proposal

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Washington, believes Congress would have to increase SCHIP funding at least $4.3 billion per year, or $21.5 billion over 5 years, to permit states to continue to cover as many children as they now cover, according to Edwin Park, a senior fellow at the center.

The Bush administration budget proposal would pay for the SCHIP funding increase solely by cutting the budget for Medicaid, Park notes.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, says congressional SCHIP reauthorization efforts failed in the past year partly because the Bush administration insisted that the program needed only about $1 billion in extra funding per year, or $5 billion in additional funding over 5 years.

“A lot of members of Congress relied on the administration’s estimates,” Grassley, the highest ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, writes in a letter to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

“I don’t know how or why they revised their estimate by more than 400% in a few months,” Grassley writes. “It’s good they got religion, but I wish they’d seen the light last fall. We might have avoided a lot of time and trouble and gotten far better policies instilled in the program.”