Demanding a federal budget that is fair, responsible, and meets our nation's priorities

Monday, July 16, 2007

JCT Issues Reports on SCHIP Financing

To fully offset a $35 billion expansion of SCHIP, the Senate Finance Committee has proposed raising tobacco taxes to about $1 per pack. The Joint Committee on Taxation released reports on the proposed revenue changes on Friday.

• Estimated Revenue Effects Of The Revenue Provisions Related To The State Children's Health Insurance Program
• Description Of The Revenue Provisions For Markup Of The State Children's Health Insurance Program

The five-year revenue generation from the proposed tax would be $35.7 billion, with a ten-year total of $71.1 billion.

As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities notes, for 61¢ per pack of cigarettes, the plan would extend insurance coverage to 4.1 million children who would otherwise not be insured. Citing CBO figures, the Center also points out that conservative talking points that the plan would primarily encourage parents of privately insured to switch to SCHIP are simply false.¹

In other words, nearly two-thirds (66 percent) of the children who would gain SCHIP or Medicaid coverage under the bill are children who would otherwise be uninsured, not children who would otherwise have private coverage.

Compassionate Conservative^® President Bush, meanwhile, remains adamantly opposed to expanding health care coverage to children.

¹I am shocked - shocked! - that conservatives would misrepresent the facts to further an ideological agenda