At a news conference on Thursday, President Bush accused Democrats of playing politics with the 10-year-old State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which is set to expire on Sept. 30.
Democrats and some Senate Republicans are looking to expand SCHIP for five years with a $35 billion budget for the program, and Senate negotiators are finalizing a deal that closely tracks a Senate-passed bill extending coverage in the program to about eight million people, mostly children, up from about six million enrolled currently.
On the other hand, Bush favors a $5 billion expansion, which the Congressional Budget Office said would result in a reduction in current enrollment. He is threatening to veto the version that Congress is likely to vote on next week. That raises the specter of a near-term lapse in funds for the programs in about a dozen states.
"Members of Congress are putting health coverage for poor children at risk so they can score political points in Washington," Bush said.
Democrats responded by accusing Bush of disregard for the uninsured. "It's outrageous that there are nearly nine million uninsured children in America, and over 600,000 more since 2005," Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts said in a statement.
Democrats, and some Republicans, claim that Bush was the one playing politics in hopes of appealing to fiscal conservatives who have been critical of recent federal spending. Some lawmakers said the president is being inconsistent, because his administration has granted some states permission to expand their programs to cover adults and children at income levels that he now says are unacceptable.
Mr. Grassley warned "political problems" would result for Republicans, if Congress must repeatedly vote to extend the program for a few months at a time. That may emerge as the fallback position if Mr. Bush vetoes the bill and the stalemate with lawmakers continues. Many Republicans worry about the potential political fallout from voting against health insurance for children.
An ideological debate is underlying the tussle. Mr. Bush alleges that Democrats are trying to lay the groundwork for a vast expansion of government-provided care that eventually would undermine private insurers. "Their Schip plan is an incremental step toward the goal of government-run health care for every American," he said.