Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed a bill to pry more American children away from health coverage that their families prefer and rope them into government dependency via SCHIP (state children’s health insurance plan). The vote was 265 to159, with one abstention. 45 of the 196 Republicans present voted for this government expansion – almost one quarter of the GOP legislators there. Even worse, it had already passed the Senate by a veto-proof 68 to 31.

President Bush has confirmed his long-promised veto. Because the current SCHIP will expire on September 30, Congress and the President must agree to a CR (continuing resolution) within the next few days to keep SCHIP alive for a few months.

We greet the President’s veto with a sigh of relief. This irresponsible bill would have had many harmful effects, not the least of which would be to reward states that recklessly expand SCHIP because private health insurance within their states is hopelessly messed up by government over-regulation. It’s no surprise that New Jersey Governor Corzine and New York Governor Spitzer are at the head of the line of those screaming bloody murder at President Bush: their states are a lowly 48^th and 50^th in the Index of Health Ownership.

(Indeed, one unstated goal of SCHIP expansion is to bail out those states where government rides rough-shod over people’s freedom to buy health insurance of their own preference by imposing those costs on residents of states that have superior, i.e. minimal, regulation.)

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has promised to re-visit this awful SCHIP bill, and there can be little doubt that she will be dedicating the entire weight of her office to chipping away at Republican opposition. If yesterday’s quorum stayed the same for another vote, she’d only need to entice 19 of the 151 Republican resisters to achieve it.

And she will use every trick in the book to do so. Can you imagine the impact of over-riding a veto on such an important domestic program this late in the President’s final term?

President Bush is not afraid of a fight. Indeed, he sort of picked one with a recent letter demanding such commonsense accountability from states as enrolling 95 percent of lower-income kids in SCHIP before signing up richer kids. (That’s what first set off governors Corzine and Spitzer, among others.)

Fortunately, our colleagues at the Heritage Foundation have prepared for this showdown via a proposal that leverages the President’s larger health policy agenda into the SCHIP debate, by giving tools such as tax credits to kids between 200 and 300 percent of the FPL.

Heritage's alternative re-frames the debate over SCHIP renewal and gives the President and Republican legislators the opportunity to seize the initiative at this critical juncture.  Would you want to be the Republican Congressman who votes against giving families the money they need to buy health insurance of their choice, instead of Nancy Pelosi's? I sure wouldn't.