House lawmakers have proposed to do away with the program at the end of 2013, transitioning millions of kids instead to private plans on the exchange. Senate lawmakers have taken a different tack, arguing that CHIP offers both coverage and cost advantages that private companies can’t (or simply won’t) replicate. The Senate bill would reauthorize CHIP through 2019.

Today, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) became the latest lawmaker to weigh in on the distinction.

The chairman of the Senate health committee was quick to point out that he isn’t familiar with the CHIP repeal proposed by the House. Still, he told local Iowa reporters that he wouldn’t oppose such a repeal if the shift to the exchange plans wouldn’t harm kids’ coverage.

“My bottom line is just to make sure that all the kids get good coverage,” Harkin said in response to a question from my colleague Lynda Waddington at The Iowa Independent. “If this [the House repeal] is better for kids, and they can show it’s more effective — and cost effective — fine. I’ll go with that. If not, then I’ll stick with the CHIP program.”

Under the House bill, White House health officials would be required to study the shift from CHIP to the exchange, weighing the advantages of each program in terms of cost and benefits. The idea is to ensure that children won’t be moved into lower-quality health plans.

As many children’s health care advocates have warned, though, there’s nothing in the House proposal that would block the transition, even if the White House analysis found that private plans would offer inferior benefits. Such a safeguard was included in the legislation that passed the Energy and Commerce Committee in July, but budget restraints caused Democratic leaders to scrap that trigger in the final bill.

“It’s probably going to be a conference item,” Harkin said Tuesday of the CHIP repeal. And he’s probably right about that.

Mike Lillis covers congress for The Washington Independent, a Center for Independent Media site.

Most legislation that was passed during the 2009 General Assembly takes effect July 1, at the start of the 2010 fiscal year.

Iowa House Democratic staff sent out a list of the major new regulation set to be made official:

- Foreclosure protection – Iowans will see expanded services when facing foreclosure, more accurate information from mortgage brokers or bankers and active duty reservists and national guard members will have new protections from foreclosure while serving (House File 706, Senate File 355 and Senate File 364 all passed both chambers unanimously).

- Historic tax credits — $30 million in Historic Tax Credits will be available for communities (Senate File 481 passed the Senate unanimously and the House 89-3).

- Sex Offenders – Sex offenders will be prohibited from being within 300 feet of schools, parks or other places kids gather. The state will also enhance tracking of the most dangerous sex offenders. (Senate File 340 passed unanimously in Senate and 93-3 in House).

- Children’s health care – Health care will be expanded to an additional 30,000 uninsured kids, more low-income women will be eligible for health care during pregnancy and it will be easier for parents to keep their adult children under 25 on their insurance plan (Senate File 389 passed 39-9 in Senate and unanimously in House).

- Wind energy – Schools, hospitals, universities, private colleges and community colleges will be eligible to apply for wind energy tax credits (Senate File 456 passed unanimously in Senate and 94-2 in House).

- Manure application during winter – Animal confinement operations are banned from surface application of liquid manure on snow covered ground from Dec. 21 to April 1, and on frozen ground from Feb. 1 to April 1, unless there is an emergency (Senate File 432 passed 41-7 in Senate and 87-9 in House).

- Electronic logs for pseudoephedrine – Pharmacies will now use electronic logbooks to track pseudoephedrine sales and stop meth makers from “pharmacy shopping” to get enough of the drug to make meth (Senate File 237 passed 44-6 in Senate and unanimously in House).

- Job protection for volunteer emergency providers – Volunteer emergency service providers, like fire fighters and first responders, will have new protections from being fired if they are late or absent due to an emergency (House File 671 passed unanimously in Senate and House).

- Nursing home safety –Nursing homes will face higher fines for incidents resulting in death or severe injury (Senate File 433 passed unanimously in Senate and House).

- Consumer fraud protections – Iowa consumers who are defrauded will have new rights to sue the business that defrauded them, with several exceptions (House File 712 passed unanimously in Senate and 96-1 in House).

Grassley, the highest ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said this week that his counterpart, Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), was “pushed” by Democratic leaders to accept both the stimulus proposal and the enormous expansion of the State Children’s Health Care Program that passed the upper chamber last night. In a conference call with reporters Wednesday, Grassley said Baucus was not allowed the time to negotiate those bills in a more bipartisan way.

From the call:

In the case of SCHIP, I don’t blame Baucus. In the case of stimulus, I don’t blame Baucus. But it’s still not a very good environment compared to the good environment we had before where almost every mark that was laid on the table was a bipartisan mark.

So let me make it very clear that — that it was pushed — a partisan approach was pushed on Baucus by — I don’t know whether by the president-elect at that time or whether it was by the leadership of the Democratic Party in the Senate.

But we were going to sit down and negotiate until they were kind — the other side was kind of dictated to. In the case of the stimulus, even though I don’t like how it was handled, I don’t blame Baucus because he was under fire to get something done very quickly because the president wants something on his desk by February the 15th.

The debate over the renewal of SCHIP — the popular state/federal program that covers kids from families too wealthy to qualify for Medicaid, but too poor to afford their own health insurance — goes back more than a year, when congressional Democrats passed legislation expanding the program by $35 billion over five years, only to see that bill vetoed twice by former President George W. Bush. Many Republicans at the time argued that the expansion went too far to cover families that could afford their own coverage, thereby “crowding out” the private insurance market.

The bill that passed the Senate yesterday goes even further than the 2007 proposal, including dental coverage and allowing legal immigrants to get SCHIP benefits immediately, rather than suffering the five-year waiting period that’s currently in place. (Grassley had been particularly critical of the latter provision.)

The cost — projected to be $32.3 billion over four-and-a-half years — will be offset by raising the federal cigarette tax by 3 cents per stick.

For children’s healthcare advocates, the Senate vote marks the end of a long push to expand the SCHIP program. Bruce Lesley, president of First Focus, issued a statement last night calling the bill a “critical” step toward getting all of America’s 11 million uninsured kids covered — of particular importance in the middle of a recession.

No government program has been more successful in expanding children’s healthcare coverage than SCHIP. In these dire economic times, this program serves as a critical lifeline for millions of American families. While it is clear that there is more work to do to ensure coverage for all children, indeed all Americans, we are grateful for this important step in that direction.

Such statements are also indication that the SCHIP debate is just the start of much larger health care reform proposals likely to emerge in the coming months. And if you thought SCHIP was partisan, just you wait. (Yesterday’s SCHIP vote attracted nine Republicans.) As Robert Pear points out in The New York Times today:

The Senate debate showed the outlines of what promises to be a much larger political fight over universal coverage. While Democrats championed expansion of the child health program, many Republicans, including Senator John McCain of Arizona, said they worried that it was part of a long-term effort to replace private health insurance with government programs.

As an indication that Democrats plan a much larger role for the federal government in the healthcare arena, consider this: As part of the SCHIP expansion, the program has been officially renamed to CHIP. That is, the “state” has been dropped.

Mike Lillis is congressional correspondent for the Washington Independent, a Center for Independent Media site.

“Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi used budget gimmicks and debate suppression to ram a bill through the House that gives illegal immigrants and wealthy families taxpayer-funded handouts,” he said. “Taxpayer dollars designated for children’s health care welfare should go to children in need, not illegal aliens or families with high income levels.”

The bill, which passed the U.S. House 289-139, split Iowa’s delegation down party lines, with Democrats Bruce Braley, Dave Loebsack and Leonard Boswell supporting it and Republicans King and Tom Latham opposing it.

The bill calls for spending $32 billion over the next 4 years to, among other things, insure 4 million children whose families currently earn too much income to qualify for Medicaid. The cost would be covered by increasing cigarette taxes by 61 cents.

“No child in Iowa or anywhere throughout our nation should ever go without medical care,” Boswell said. “When unemployment increases, so does the number of Americans without health insurance.”

The group, America’s Agenda: Health Care for Kids, is funded by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America in partnership with International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers. It has been running ads around the country supporting Senators and Representatives from both parties who voted to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which passed Congress but was vetoed by President Bush.

According to National Public Radio and the Center for Investigative Reporting, the group has spent $11.3 million nationally the ad campaign.

The legislators benefiting from the complimentary ads were chosen because they voted for a bill expanding the children’s insurance program (which was vetoed by President Bush) but are under pressure to abandon that support, according to a spokeswoman for America’s Agenda.

“We felt these were the ones that needed to be told to continue to support SCHIP,” said Nicole Korkolis. “It’s a call to action.”

Both ads end with a narrator asking viewers to “Call Tom Harkin/Chuck Grassley today and tell him to keep fighting to insure our kids.”

Here’s Harkin’s ad:

And here’s Grassley’s:

Seeking to play the role of colorful, lovable underdog, U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, is comparing himself to 1960s football great Joe Namath.

The reason: King sees a parallel between Namath’s 1969 New York Jets win over the favored Baltimore Colts in the Super Bowl and the western Iowa Republican’s efforts for the taxpaying “underdogs,” notably King’s opposition to certain relief funding in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and a child health-care bill King thinks would line the pockets of illegal aliens.

Here is King in his most recent column:

In 1969, on the eve of Superbowl III, the brash quarterback of the underdog New York Jets, Joe Namath, famously said, “We’re gonna win the game.  I guarantee it!”  The brash statement set off a media frenzy, and the highly favored Baltimore Colts were soundly beaten by Namath and the upstart Jets, 16-7.  The historic victory brought about the merger of the old NFL and the upstart AFL.  Namath, after the game said, “There are a lot of underdogs in the world. Maybe it meant something to the underdogs in life.”

The taxpayer is always the underdog.  When I voted “NO” on $51.5 billion of wasteful spending on Hurricane Katrina, because there was no responsible plan, others said it was heartless.  The history of the money going to Gucci bags and massage parlors speaks for itself today.

In the column, King argues that an 18-month extension of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) is superior to a bill he and President George W. Bush opposed.

King, the subject of much speculation about a possible challenge to Democratic Gov. Chet Culver, used the column, which is sent to newspapers and posted on his Web site, to attempt to link Culver — who supported the Bush-killed bill — with U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. King did so in trademark fashion.

Speaker Pelosi and Governor Culver tried to push SCHIP bills through Congress that reflected her San Francisco agenda and values; not Iowa Midwestern common sense.