President George W. Bush’s veto of the proposed expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) is a catastrophic bungle, with far-reaching implications for him and for children desperately in need of free health care. The veto should never have happened. Now that it has, Congress needs to act swiftly and in unity to override it.

Such hope for bipartisan unity on the SCHIP bill is not unfounded. The staunch Republican following that the president has managed to maintain up to this point has finally taken a step back and begun opposing him on the issue. Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) noted in an interview with New York Times writer David Stout shortly after the veto: “Unfortunately, I believe that some have given the president bad advice on this matter,” and that supporting and passing the current version of the children’s health insurance bill is the “morally right thing to do.” Hatch is just one of many Republicans in the House and Senate who hope to override President Bush’s veto: Sens. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) are two others who have vocally expressed their disapproval of Bush’s veto.

The widely supported bill, if passed, would expand coverage from 6.6 million American children to over 10 million uninsured children. This whopping expansion would increase Bush’s proposed $30 billion child health care budget by an additional $35 billion, while covering an unprecedented number of needy children.

Pertinent for California youth, SCHIP currently covers about 800,000 children in the Golden State; none of these families are qualified for Medicaid and their family incomes are no more than 200 percent above the Federal Poverty Level, as reported by UC-San Francisco. And according to The Los Angeles Times, “In California, [SCHIP] is Healthy Families, the highly successful program that matches every state dollar with two from the federal government and entices parents to obtain and contribute to health coverage for their kids.”

President Bush has told the public and Congress that he believes the proposed expansion unnecessarily furthers a federalized health care system. Although SCHIP is administered by states, it is indeed jointly funded by the federal and state governments, with the federal government matching state funds up to a certain limit. This aspect of federal involvement seems to have struck a chord of discomfort in the Bush administration.

As a compromise, Bush has hinted that he would be willing to expand the program by about $5 billion, less than one fifth the proposed expansion. Regardless of the president’s worries about a federalized health care system, we need to keep the big picture in mind: the health care needs of children in this country should be adequately provided for, and Bush’s suggested compromise would not accomplish this task.

Time is of the essence, too. The original SCHIP began in 1997 and was scheduled to last through the 2007 federal fiscal year. If some version of the bill does not pass before the program expires in November, millions of children will be left without insurance. Because of this potential catastrophe, the president likely expects Congress to crawl back to him with a watered-down version of the bill.

The Senate has enough votes to override Bush’s veto; the House is where the true battle will take place, with Representatives about 20 votes short of the necessary two-thirds supermajority. Although there is a glimmer of hope when the override bill comes to the House floor tomorrow, the prospects are rather dim.

If the House cannot override the veto, Congress must still take advantage of the overwhelming support for the SCHIP bill in an effort to negotiate a stronger version than the president proposes. With both Democrats and Republicans rallying for an override of what is only Bush’s fourth veto of his presidency, we can only hope that a bright future awaits SCHIP and the uninsured children of America.