Our View: Congress must restore funding for kids’ care.

Republican U.S. Senate and House members have been rushing to reconcile the differences in their rival plans to cut business and individual taxes so they can deliver a compromise bill to President Donald Trump’s desk before Christmas. Meanwhile, it’s been more than 10 weeks since Congress let federal authorization and funding expire on a program that provides health insurance for 9 million kids in lowerincome families. This dichotomy doesn’t speak well for Washington’s priorities. Congress established the children’s health insurance program, known as CHIP, with bipartisan support 20 years ago. It benefits children in families who earn too much to qualify for Medicaid, the federal-state health-care program for the poor, but not enough to afford private insurance. Almost 9 million kids, including at least 340,000 in Florida, are covered under the program. The federal government provides about 70 percent of the cost of the program — about $15 billion last year — and states pick up the rest.

Congress failed to reauthorize CHIP before the federal fiscal year ended Sept. 30. Lawmakers’ inability since then to come up with a bipartisan approach that can command majority support in both chambers is a textbook example of the gridlock and dysfunction that reign on Capitol Hill.

In November, the House’s GOP majority passed a reauthorization bill over the opposition of most of the chamber’s Democrats, because it reduced funding from other federal health programs to cover its costs. In October, the Senate Finance Committee passed its own CHIP reauthorization, but didn’t agree on how to finance it.

CHIP hasn’t shut down — yet. States, including Florida, have been drawing down leftover money in their accounts for the program to maintain coverage. A stopgap funding bill that Congress passed earlier this month allows the Department of Health and Human Services to shift some federal dollars from other programs to support state CHIP programs.

Even so, more than half the states are expected to run out of federal funding if Congress hasn’t passed a reauthorization by the end of March. That prospect is already creating disruptions at the state level and anxiety among millions of families who depend on the program.

This week a bipartisan group of 12 state governors wrote leaders in Congress to appeal for them to pass legislation to reauthorize and fund CHIP. “In the absence of congressional action, we have worked to protect coverage for children and pregnant women in each of our states, but we will need federal support to continue the program,” wrote the governors, led by Ohio Republican John Kasich and Colorado Democrat John Hickenlooper.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott didn’t sign the letter. “Governor Scott has been supportive of this program and expects the federal government to extend it in order to help low-income kids,” his press secretary wrote in response to our inquiry. Scott’s proposed spending plan for the state budget year that begins in July includes the state’s share of CHIP funding, but with the lapse in federal funding, a fiscal cliff looms. Florida is among 16 states projected to exhaust its federal CHIP dollars by the end of January, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

We understand why congressional leaders would want to cover the cost of extending CHIP. Lawmakers will never get federal budget deficits under control unless they find ways to pay for programs. Still, it’s hard to square letting this $15 billion annual program twist in the wind because of its cost while rushing to pass a tax cut projected to reduce federal revenues by at least $1 trillion over the next decade.

Any further delay in reauthorizing CHIP would be unconscionable.