If Congress does not take action soon, nearly 630,000 children may lose their health care. Why? A funding shortfall in a quirky health care program called the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). SCHIP was created in 1997 to shore up Medicaid. It covers children whose families have incomes that exceed Medicaid eligibility levels, but are still struggling to get by. This design has been remarkably successful- the share of low-income children who are uninsured has fallen by one fourth since 1997, despite a decline in employer-provided benefits. Hundreds of thousands of enrolled children may get cut off the program now, though, for two reasons:

In a continued effort to totally ignore Congress's request to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through the regular annual appropriations process, the Defense Department is in the process of constructing a new supplemental funding request for the wars for FY 2007 - reported to be a whopping $160 billion. Combined with the current $70 billion FY 2007 apporpriations for Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States could spend $230 billion on the wars by the time this fiscal year ends next September. That's approximately half of the total spending on the wars so far!

In an op-ed today in the San Fransico Chronicle, Bill Frenzel and Leon Panetta call for a "Budget Summit" to hash out the difficult budget issues:

Looking /node/6536 at the House Democrats' legislative agenda for the 110th Congress, a muddled picture emerges of the plan's composite fiscal outcome. The Washington Post points out today that the House Democrats propose tens of billions of dollars in additional spending for revamping the military, tightening port and border security, fully funding first responder needs, increasing college tuition deductions, promoting renewable energy, and expanding incentives for personal savings accounts.