Democrats' AMT for SCHIP recipients

Robert Novak:

The Alice-in-Wonderland quality of legislating in Congress was typified this week. The Democratic Congress quickly passed a national health insurance bill, drafted in secret and protected from amendment, that constitutes the most important legislation of this session. While designed for a presidential veto, it is national health insurance -- through the front, not the back, door. Democrats view it as no-lose: either landmark health care will be enacted over President George W. Bush's veto, or, if overridden, they'll have a lovely 2008 campaign issue.

This outcome was previewed a week ago by Democratic Leader Steny Hoyer and Republican Whip Roy Blunt in a colloquy on the House floor. Blunt questioned the procedure under which radical expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) would be passed as a "bill that has not been debated." No matter, Hoyer replied. It will not really be a new bill because "there will be nothing, I think, in the bill that was not in the House or Senate bills" that were passed previously. Such is the sad state of congressional procedure today.

This business as usual on Capitol Hill is worth noting because SCHIP extension covers much more than the poor children originally intended to be helped. The new bill covers families with income up to $82,000 a year, threatening to crowd out the private health industry. Only Congress could conceive making families simultaneously eligible for SCHIP to help the poor and AMT (the alternative minimum tax) to punish the rich.

SCHIP was conceived in 1997 by the Republican-controlled Congress, still uneasy about defeating Hillary Clinton's health care plan four years earlier and intending to provide supplementary health insurance for poor children. When Democrats took control of Congress this year, they sought to transform a relatively modest program into a government takeover of health care. Separate bills were passed in the House and Senate months ago along party lines, but Republican senators blocked a Senate-House conference to iron out the differences.

...

Democrats flinched at giving Republicans a hard choice: override the veto or end the existing SCHIP program. Instead, funding is being extended by a separate bill. Nevertheless, Democrats will eagerly pummel Republicans for "voting against kids" by refusing to sanction a long step toward Hillarycare.

I think Novak has given the Republicans the answer to those ads. The Alternative Minimum Tax payers are eligible for the the SCIP program makes clear that it is not for the poor children, or in the alternative, that the Democrats argue on one hand that these people are rich and on the other that they are poor. The AMT has become a double trap for Democrats.