What's Congress up to?

This week the House and Senate both voted to reauthorize the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Not only does the reauthorization continue a program that has reduced the rate of uninsured children in Arizona from 25% to 15%, but it will cover an additional 4 million children nationwide (and 86,000 in Arizona) who do not currently have health insurance. The Senate passed the proposal by a veto-proof margin, but the House appears a few votes shy of the votes needed to override President Bush's promised veto. Bush wants to shrink the rolls of children insured by the program, although he claims his tax credit proposal would cover 500,000 new kids with health insurance (an eighth of what the bill that passed Congress would do).

So what else is Congress up to? Moving a bill that would create an airline passengers bill of rights, seeking to remedy the wave of passengers stuck on the tarmack inside their plane during weather delays. Beefing up enforcement at the Food and Drug Administration. And bills have been introduced, but are not yet moving, that would restore cuts made in 2005 to child support enforcement. Some Senators and Representatives in the last Congress, mostly ones who claim to be big on "family values," thought it was a good idea to cut funding from child support enforcement. While I understand Republicans have long considered themselves fiscal conservatives, I thought they were also big supporters of enforcing the law. I guess when it's deadbeat dads, that whole law enforcement thing flies out the window. Former AZ Congressman J.D. Hayworth defended the cut to child support enforcement, saying they were only cutting administrative expenses. This rationale is true - if you consider the entire child support enforcement program administrative. After all, the money pretty much goes to "bureaucrats" sitting in an office somewhere, but child support enforcement isn't like city cops. They don't find deadbeat parents by walking a beat. But they do manage to keep families out of poverty and off of welfare, and studies show that for every dollar of federal, state, and local money spent on child support enforcement, $4.58 in child support gets collected that wouldn't otherwise. To me that not only sounds like good family values, but good fiscal policy too.