House Democrats Scaling Back Children’s Health Insurance Plan

House Democrats are scaling back plans to reauthorize the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, as budget scoring problems and rising costs make a five-year bill unlikely.

Instead, they likely will pursue a shorter reauthorization, leaving states that depend on SCHIP money less certain about future funding. House Democrats say they are still planning to base the core of the new SCHIP bill on legislation from the last Congress.

President Bush twice vetoed reauthorization bills in the 110th Congress that would have expanded the program by $35 billion over five years, to $60 billion.

Since then, however, the costs of the program have grown and the revenue-raising ability of the 61-cent-per-pack tobacco tax that would have funded it has shrunk.

“The budget window has changed and with it the numbers,” said a senior aide the House Democratic leadership.

“The [reauthorization] length may or may not be five years, depending on what [Congressional Budget Office] gives us.”

It will almost certainly be shorter because the budget office will probably assign a lower cost “baseline” to the bill, which will restrict how much money lawmakers can devote to it.

“Since the baseline has changed and the costs have gone up since we passed the bill last year, we are heading towards something under five years,” said an aide to a senior House Democrat who worked on the SCHIP legislation.

The SCHIP program covered 7.1 million people — mostly children — in 2007 and is projected to cost the federal government $6.1 billion in 2009, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.