By Drew Armstrong, CQ Staff

Supporters of the Democratic plan to expand children’s health care coverage began formulating a new course on Thursday following their failure to override President Bush’s veto.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Democrats would immediately begin work on another children’s health bill to send to the president.

Pelosi would not offer details about how the bill might change, except to say Democrats will not consider a funding source other than the 61-cent increase in the cigarette tax used in the current bill (HR 976) and that any new bill must cover 10 million children, as the current one would.

Democratic hopes of overriding the president’s Oct. 3 veto of their bill to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) by $35 billion over five years were always viewed as a long shot. The override vote failed, 273-156, falling 13 votes short of the two-thirds majority needed. Forty-four Republicans voted in support of an override, and 154 voted against it. All but two Democrats voted to override.

“In the next two weeks, we intend to send the president another bill that insures and provides health care for 10 million children in our country,” Pelosi said. “The president and his allies in Congress . . . may have stopped the SCHIP bill today, but we still will not allow that to deter us from our goal.”

Majority Whip James E. Clyburn, D-S.C., downplayed one oft-mentioned possibility for moving the legislation, saying the Labor-HHS-Education spending bill probably would not be used as a vehicle to carry the SCHIP bill.

House Republican leaders said they hoped the failure would bring Democrats to the table to negotiate a package the president would sign. That has not been the Democratic strategy so far, however, with Democrats instead trying to peel off moderate Republicans rather than bargain with GOP leadership.

On the override vote, Democrats picked up eight more “yes” votes — all Democrats — compared with the Sept. 25 vote on the bill’s passage. They expressed confidence they could find the additional 10 to 15 votes needed to win next time.

“We think that’s a number that is very doable, and when we bring the bill up again we believe we will have those votes to put the bill on the president’s desk,” Pelosi said.

After the vote, moderate Republicans said Democrats would have to be willing to change the bill if they wanted to attract more support.

“I believe very strongly it would be helpful to have the White House at the table at the very inception of whatever the rebuilt bill may be,” said Michael N. Castle of Delaware, a Republican who voted for the bill.

That would likely mean a smaller size for the package and perhaps stronger eligibility restrictions ensuring that lower-income children are covered before those with slightly higher incomes.

Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer, D-Md., was talking with some of the Republican moderates after the vote to discuss options, his spokeswoman said.

Drawing a Line

Even with both sides returning to the table, Pelosi drew a line that she said would not be crossed as discussions progressed.

Democrats would be willing to “meet with the president any time he is ready,” she said, but only “as long as the bottom line is that 10 million children are covered — that is not negotiable.”

Diana DeGette of Colorado, a senior Democrat involved in negotiations on the bill, acknowledged that Democrats would need deeper support from across the aisle.

“It’s not the moderate Republicans that we need to negotiate with anymore,” she said. “It’s the conservative Republicans that the moderates need to bring on board.”

DeGette did not seem willing to budge much to do so, however. She insisted that House Democrats had already done their share of compromising, referring to concessions made with the Senate that shrank the House’s much larger expansion of SCHIP and excised numerous Medicare provisions.

“We’re not even going to talk about presenting ideas to our party until they show us they have the votes in their party,” DeGette said.

Conservatives began their post-veto positioning by offering their own alternative proposals.

“Sustaining the veto today is the opportunity for us to sit down with the Democrats,” said Republican Tom Price of Georgia. Price introduced a bill (HR 3888) that would expand SCHIP by $11 billion over five years. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., introduced a companion bill in the Senate.

Their legislation would require states to prove they had covered 90 percent of eligible children in families earning up to 200 percent of the federal poverty level before permitting enrollment of children from families earning up to 250 percent of the poverty level.

States have complained that meeting the 90 percent enrollment threshold would be impossible. To help cover children in families up to 300 percent of the poverty level, the legislation would offer a $1,400 tax credit per child.

The bill would be paid for, Price said, by finding “waste and fraud” in the federal government.