Dems Get Poster Boy for Child Health Plan

Sept. 30, 2007 — -- Democratic leaders in Congress say they have no plans to compromise on a children's health insurance measure President Bush is expected to veto next week.

Confident he has a strong campaign issue for 2008, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., brought out a new poster boy for the campaign. Twelve-year-old Graeme Frost of Baltimore, whose sister, Jemma, visited Capitol Hill last week, delivered the Democrats' radio address this weekend.

Frost, who spent a week in a coma and five months in the hospital after a family car crash left him with serious brain stem injuries, explained in articulate tones Saturday why he felt the program should be renewed.

"I had to relearn how to do a lot physical things like walking, sitting up, eating, talking," he said.

He spoke with more effort than he used to because the accident paralyzed a vocal chord and half his tongue, which he was eager to display to an ABC News reporter. The federal program paid for his recovery.

"My parents would not have been able to pay those bills so ... I'm very grateful," he said.

Funding for the program ran out this weekend. Both the president and Congress have agreed to extend the program through November as they continue their debate on long-term funding.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told reporters she telephoned President Bush on Friday to tell him she was praying for him to sign their version of the State Children's Health Insurance Program bill, which more than doubles the the $25 billion program to $60 billion. President Bush had sought a 20 percent increase to $30 billion.

The result is a standoff, at least temporarily. The Senate passed the measure with enough Republican support to muster a veto-proof majority, but the House failed to reach the two-thirds level necessary to override a veto. Pelosi says she might be able to draw that many for a veto override, but that is by no means certain.

White House Press Secretary Dana Perino poured cold water on that idea.

"The president has been very clear for months that he would veto it," Perino said in a White House news briefing on Friday.

Democrats say they have no plans to compromise. Privately, some say it is the kind of battle on Capitol Hill they relish: Sick kids versus a budget hawk concerned with fiscal restraint.

With $190 billion going to the Iraq war this year, Democrats are keenly aware that the president's argument -- that they want to give too much money to a program for ailing children -- is a tough sell in Middle America, where something like 40 million people live without health insurance.

"This is the best bill we can do; we have spent months and months on this," Reid told ABC News in an interview. "For what the president is spending in Iraq in one week, we could take care of millions of children."

The White House insists the president's objections are not simply about money, but a philosophical concern that making more Americans eligible for the program -- at higher incomes -- encourages middle-class Americans to drop their private health insurance programs and enter a government-funded program. Larger health insurance issues should be taken up separately, and later, they insist.

"We should take care of the neediest first," spokeswoman Perino said. "It's preposterous for people in Washington, D.C., to say the president does not care about children."

Hours after delivering the Democrats weekly radio address, Frost, sitting beside Reid in a Capitol conference room, gave a final pitch: "Please don't veto this bill. A bunch of children in America really need this."