Senate Panel Okays Child Health Plan

WASHINGTON — Brushing aside threats of a presidential veto, a Senate committee yesterday overwhelmingly approved a five-year, $35 billion expansion of a children's health insurance program that would be financed through higher tobacco taxes.

A majority of Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee joined all of the committee's Democrats in voting to reauthorize the State Children's Health Insurance Program, which subsidizes insurance for children and some adults with incomes too high for Medicaid but not high enough to afford private insurance. The vote was 17–4.

"There are more kids without health insurance than there are kids in the first and second grades," Senator Baucus, a Democrat of Montana and the committee chairman, said. "Americans overwhelmingly support getting kids covered."

The additional spending approved by the committee would bring total SCHIP funding to $60 billion over five years — double what the administration has proposed. The tax on a pack of cigarettes would increase by 61 cents to help pay for the expansion.