Bush administration, continuing its fight to stop states from expanding the popular Children’s Health Insurance Program [Blue state discrimination?]

White House Acts to Limit Health Plan for Children | By ROBERT PEAR | Published: August 20, 2007

The Bush administration, continuing its fight to stop states from expanding the popular Children’s Health Insurance Program, has adopted new standards that would make it much more difficult for New York, California and others to extend coverage to children in middle-income families.
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After learning of the new policy, some state officials said today that it could cripple their efforts to cover more children by imposing standards that could not be met.

Ann Clemency Kohler, deputy commissioner of human services in New Jersey, said: “We are horrified at the new federal policy. It will cause havoc with our program and could jeopardize coverage for thousands of children.”

Stan Rosenstein, the Medicaid director in California, said the federal policy was “highly restrictive, much more restrictive than what we want to do.”
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The Congressional Budget Office has said that the president’s budget, which seeks $30 billion from 2008 to 2012, is not enough to pay for current levels of enrollment, much less to cover children who are eligible but not enrolled. ...
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Two Republican senators, Charles E. Grassley of Iowa and Pat Roberts of Kansas, urged the Bush administration last week to deny New York’s request to cover children with family incomes up to four times the poverty level. The proposal, they said, violates the original intent of Congress, which wanted to focus on lower-income children.

But Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York said that, “contrary to the senators’ objections,” federal law allows states to set higher income limits.

“Granting this expansion is essential to the health and well-being of New York’s children,” Mr. Spizter said.