Today in Arkansas (where 9.4% ( 67,123) of children go without health insurance), picking up where the GOP smear campaign left off, President Bush disingenuously defended his veto of the popular SCHIP expansion legislation.

My attitude is, let’s help the poor children. Let’s make sure the program does what it’s supposed to do…A program was created to help poor children with struggling families. When I was the governor of Texas, I supported it, and as president I supported it. But the piece of legislation I got doesn’t focus on the poor children.

President Bush may not have read the legislation he vetoed. As The Body Politik has pointed out, “the overwhelming majority of children who would gain health coverage… are precisely the low-income children the President says he wants to focus on.”

According to a Congressional Budget Office analysis of the SCHIP bill “at least 85 percent of the otherwise-uninsured children who would gain coverage under the bill have incomes below states’ current SCHIP eligibility limits;” two-thirds of “those who gain SCHIP coverage…would otherwise be uninsured.”

Moreover, since SCHIP needs “14 billion more over the next five years to keep covering current enrollees, let alone reach more of the nation’s nearly 9 million uninsured children,” Bush’s willingness to pony up just $5 billion is “tantamount to a cut.”

“The Senate already has enough votes, 67, to defeat Bush’s veto, so all the drama is on the House side for this showdown.” Firedoglake reports that “the vote to override the SCHIP veto will held on Thursday.” Please contact these representatives and encourage them to support children’s healthcare.

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