This week the House of Representatives will attempt to override President Bush's veto of a bill to renew the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) for another five years. Unfortunately, overcoming that veto seems unlikely, leaving in question the future of this successful health care program.

I supported reauthorizing SCHIP because it will help children. I am disappointed it has been poisoned by political rhetoric. The Congress and the president must move beyond misguided criticism of the bill and finally enact new SCHIP legislation for the continued benefit of uninsured children.

Critics of the compromise SCHIP bill have primarily focused on two flawed arguments. First, that it violates fiscal discipline, and secondly that it is designed to shift children and families from private insurance to government coverage.

I agree that fiscal discipline must be applied to spending bills. The vetoed SCHIP program would have added $35 billion in new spending over five years. It is important to consider this new spending relative to the $1.1 trillion expended on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid annually.
The $1.1 trillion spent on these three programs in 2006 amounted more than 40 percent of the entire federal budget.

SCHIP is not like Medicare or Medicaid, which are permanent entitlement programs. Rather, it expires every five years and must be reevaluated and refinanced. Expanding SCHIP is not our primary fiscal problem. The real problem is ever-expanding entitlement spending that will not abate any time soon.

If Congress and the president are serious about fiscal discipline, they need to get serious about entitlement reform and not hide behind children's health as their flagship issue for spending restraint.

I also disagree with claims that the SCHIP compromise amounts to a massive expansion of government-run health care. I would not support Washington-run health care. I helped create SCHIP in 1997 to encourage states to cover uninsured children whose parents do not qualify for Medicaid, but cannot afford private health insurance.

Our 2007 bill stayed true to this principal. It would have brought health coverage to approximately 10 million children. About half of the new money authorized would have kept the program running for the 6.6 million children currently covered.

The rest would have gone to enroll three million new kids in the next five years.

We need to renew SCHIP. It doesn't make sense to have millions of children without health insurance. It is not good for them because they don't get the care they need.

But it is also not good for the rest of us either. If people aren't insured, they go to the emergency room for their care. That is expensive. They don't have insurance, so guess who pays for it? Everyone else.

Congress needs to reform our current health care system so all Americans have access to quality and affordable healt care. Real reform should involve amending the tax code to make it possible for individuals to afford the purchase of their own health insurance. Although I wish comprehensive reform had been part of the larger SCHIP debate, it was not.

Now we are stalemated. But there is still time for this Congress and the president to do the right thing to enact SCHIP legislation that builds on the progress we've made to provide health coverage to more uninsured children.