Bush says time wasted on SCHIP

President Bush said yesterday that congressional Democrats are “wasting time”passing legislation to expand children’s health coverage that they know he will veto, and he also said lawmakers are dragging their feet on a slew of other bills and one key nomination.

“This is not what congressional leaders promised when they took control of Congress earlier this year,” the president said. “In January, one congressional leader declared, and I quote: ‘No longer can we waste time here in the Capitol, while families in America struggle to get ahead.’ ”

“He was right. Only a few weeks left on the legislative calendar — Congress needs to keep their promise, to stop wasting time and get essential work done on behalf of the American people,” he said.

Congress has not yet passed any of the dozen spending bills that fund the federal government, but has taken time to mull a nonbinding resolution defining as genocide the mass killings of Armenians in the closing days of the Ottoman Empire.

“Today Congress set a record they should not be proud of: October the 26th is the latest date in 20 years that Congress has failed to get a single annual appropriations bill to the president’s desk,” he said in a terse statement to reporters in the White House’s Roosevelt Room.

The president’s comments came a day after the House passed new legislation to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Senate passage is likely because senior Republican Sens. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa and Orrin G. Hatch of Utah support the bill. But the White House vowed another veto yesterday, and lawmakers were unable to override the president’s last veto of the legislation.

The Bush administration says the bill does not provide suitable assurances that the poorest children eligible will be covered first and has no safeguards to assure that money will not be spent on people who are ineligible, including illegal aliens.

Democrats complained about the president’s pledge to again use his veto.

“President Bush — the biggest-spending president in 40 years — threatens to veto our requests based on the laughable claim that he is fiscally responsible,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said: “The president would rather spend another $200 billion in Iraq and leave our children to pick up the tab.”

But Mr. Bush said Democrats are wasting time.

“After I vetoed their last SCHIP bill, I designated members of my administration to work with Congress to find common ground. Congressional leaders never met with them. Instead, the House once again passed a bill that they knew would not become law. And incredibly enough, the Senate will take up the same bill next week, which wastes valuable time,” he said.

The new version still calls for an additional $35 billion for SCHIP over the next five years — $30 billion more than Mr. Bush requested — and a 61-cent federal tax increase on a pack of cigarettes to help fund the program’s expansion.

Mr. Bush had proposed a $5 billion increase for five years but recently has said he is willing to spend more.

As he did in his most recent White House press conferences, Mr. Bush used his bully pulpit to pressure lawmakers to move quickly on several pressing matters. He complained that Congress had failed to pass a permanent extension of a moratorium on state and local taxes on Internet access, although the Senate on Thursday night approved a seven-year extension of the Internet tax moratorium and differences with a House-passed version will now have to be worked out.

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