For Immediate Release –Monday, July 30, 2007       
Contact: Annie Patnaude, (202) 349-5880

WASHINGTON, DC – The grassroots free-market group Americans for Prosperity applauded a strongly worded Statement of Administration Policy issued today in which the White House threatened to veto the Senate’s massive expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). AFP Executive Vice President Michelle Korsmo issued the following statement:

“On behalf of our hundreds of thousands of Americans for Prosperity members who are concerned about the rising cost of government, we applaud the Administration’s veto threat of the Senate’s massive expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Plan (SCHIP).

“The cost of government is already too high. This proposal changes the nature of SCHIP from covering children in need to being an entitlement offered to children of middle-class families with incomes over $80,000. It is this reckless fiscal behavior expanding government dependence that our membership is most concerned about and it must be stopped. Increasing the size and scope of government-run health care programs also puts our country on the dangerous path toward universal government-run health care. Such a system would be characterized by long waiting lines and substandard quality of care, judging by international experience.

“As the White House pointed out with acumen, broadening the income eligibility guidelines for SCHIP to the middle class would lead many families with children who already have private health insurance to drop their coverage in exchange for taxpayer-funded benefits. Congress needs to work on embracing free-market solutions that will improve access to affordable, private health insurance, not move us toward a government-run health care bureaucracy that will be unable to meet America’s health care needs.

“Funding an expansion of SCHIP with tax hikes is an especially bad idea. Cigarette tax hikes largely fall on low-income Americans and are an unstable revenue source since fewer and fewer people are smoking. I have even noticed SCHIP expansion proponents argue that the benefit of higher cigarette taxes is fewer people will smoke; a worthy cause, but who will be left holding the bag to pay for the program when the revenue source diminishes?”

Americans for Prosperity (AFP) is the nation’s premier grassroots organization committed to advancing every individual’s right to economic freedom and opportunity. AFP believes reducing the size and scope of government is the best safeguard to ensuring individual productivity and prosperity for all Americans. AFP educates and engages citizens in support of restraining state and federal government growth, and returning government to its constitutional limits. For more information, visit www.americansforprosperity.org

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