President Bush signed a short-term extension of the State Children's Health Insurance Program last Saturday. The bill is supposed to ensure that nobody will be cut from the program as it is now, but it also makes expanding it a non-issue until 2009, since the extension lasts until April 2009. In other words, the 4 million children who would have been covered under the vetoed SCHIP expansion will go without health insurance for at least another year, thanks to the president and the conservative coalition in the House.