10-04-07, 9:51 am

Wednesday, October 3rd President Bush exercised just his fourth veto to block funding to reauthorize the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP), insisting on weakening the program to exclude hundreds of thousands of children from the popular health care program and to prevent another nearly 3 million children from being enrolled.

The bill would have provided about $7 billion per year over the next five years to add about 3.8 million uninsured children to the nearly 6.6 million children already covered under S-CHIP provisions. The Census bureau estimates that almost 9 million children lack health insurance.

The president's veto, imposed in a rare, closed-door setting away from the media, sparked a swift outrage from broad sections of the country. In response protests are sweeping across the country.

According to the Louisville, Kentucky Courier-Journal, a protest by local residents took place within hours of the veto. In fact, by Thursday (Oct. 4), about 250 protests were organized by alone.

The wave of protest reflects enormous popular support for the program. Recent polls show that about 3 in 4 Americans support S-CHIP, and 43 governors of both parties urged passage of the reauthorization bill.

Organizations who supported passage of the bill weighed in after the veto announcement as well. The St. Joseph Health System immediately set up a take action page for readers to urge their representatives to vote to override the veto.

Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, said “The President’s veto is a slap in the face to America’s children. For millions of children in working families, it says ‘No health care for you.’'

USAction President William McNary released the following statement: 'It is obscene for President Bush, who ran as a 'compassionate conservative,' to veto funding for children's health care while continuing his mismanaged, endless war in Iraq. '

Sister Carol Keehan, president and CEO of the Catholic Health Association, also condemned the veto and urged Congress to override it. 'One person should not stand in the way of bipartisan compromise or the will of the American people,' she said.

Robert Borosage of Campaign for America's Future described Bush's decision as a sell-out to corporate America. 'The president chose the special interests of big insurance companies over the needs of millions of children who need coverage,' said Borosage.

Borosage saw the veto as a kind of admission that public programs are effective. '[Bush] knows,' he stated, 'that millions of children now go without adequate health care because their families can’t afford insurance, but he says he has an 'ideological' problem with expanding the program because it might provide coverage to children whose families might otherwise find a way to pay for private insurance.'

National Organization for Women President Kim Gandy decried Bush's hypocrisy. 'It is shameful that our president, who enjoys government-subsidized health care, vetoed the SCHIP renewal, but also that Congress dropped coverage for legal immigrant children in hopes of avoiding the veto pen,' she said.

'The President’s decision to veto legislation that would provide health care to millions of children is nothing short of disgraceful,' said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. 'With the sweep of a pen, he has slammed the door on these children’s best opportunity to grow up healthy and to reach their fullest potential,' said the union leader.

On Capitol Hill, lawmakers from both parties denounced the veto. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), in a press conference held by Senate leaders on Wednesday afternoon, urged an override and said, 'It's disappointing to me that the president vetoed this bipartisan bill.'

The veto ensures that all of the problems the president finds in the S-CHIP program will remain, Grassley added, and 'in the process nothing has been done to cover kids that are out there without health insurance.'

Grassley noted that the changes to the bill demanded by the president won't be able to 'accomplish what [Bush] says he wants to accomplish.'

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that as many 800,000 children already enrolled in S-CHIP would be excluded from the program under the funding levels President Bush has hinted that he would accept. The veto also blocks approximately 3 million uninsured children slated to be added to the program under the reauthorization bill's provisions.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) took a sharper line than Grassley. Why would President Bush say no to kids who need health care, he wondered.

'It is an outrageous act on the part of the president,' Rockefeller said. 'I search for his motivation, but that's not constructive. All it does is make me angry.'

'There are a lot of kids today and a lot of parents that are sweating bullets,' he concluded.

On the campaign trail Wednesday, Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama reacted strongly to the news of the veto. 'At a time when we’re spending billions of dollars on a war that should never have been authorized and giving billions in tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans,' Obama remarked, 'today’s veto of this bipartisan plan shows a callousness of priorities that is offensive to the ideals we hold as Americans.'

In a speech on the floor of the House on Wednesday, Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-SC) noted that the veto shows where President Bush's priorities are. 'President Bush has shown the American people,' Clyburn thundered, 'that his priorities are not with the American people, that his priorities are not with our nation's uninsured. His priorities are not with the millions of families struggling to make ends meet.'

Clyburn added that the veto shows that Bush values the special interests of the country's millionaires and billionaires above all else.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) added, 'The President's veto ... must not stand.'

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi vowed to work to override the veto. 'We will continue to work with a bipartisan majority in Congress and 43 governors from across the country to increase support for SCHIP in the House so we can override the veto and provide 10 million children the health coverage they deserve,' she told the media Wednesday.

The House voted to schedule an override vote for October 18th.

--Reach Joel Wendland at