Texas Democrats proposed, fought for, and passed the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) that provided health coverage to over 500,000 Texas children in working families until the Republicans gained control of the Legislature in 2003. Although CHIP is a compassionate program that is also sound fiscal policy, an alternative to welfare and a bargain for taxpayers, Republican budget cuts slashed the number of children receiving CHIP benefits by more than 213,000 before Democrats increased their numbers in the State House and forced partial restoration of CHIP coverage in 2007. In the meantime, Texas lost over a billion dollars in federal funds to states that covered more of their children while Texas, under the Republicans, passed laws and developed policies that make CHIP enrollment more difficult. In addition to erecting barriers to enrollment, virtually all outreach programs were dismantled, and the failure in processing CHIP applications by the massive private-sector outsourcing contract with Bermuda-based Accenture resulted in many children losing CHIP coverage, with tragic consequences for some Texas families.

Democrats support full utilization of all federal funds that have been set aside specifically to improve the health of Texas children, and we oppose the redistribution of those funds to other states. Unless all punitive Republican policies are reversed and private contractors are held accountable, many Texas children who qualify for CHIP coverage will go uninsured and the federal dollars reserved for Texas children will continue to be spent in other states. We support full restoration of the original CHIP program and policies, reinstatement of the simplified application process, aggressive outreach to enroll all eligible children, and a 12 month period of continuous health coverage. We further support congressional Democrats’ expansion of the federal SCHIP program to allow greater opportunity for states to provide health coverage for children and a maintenance of effort provision to protect the program from cuts by Republicans in the Legislature.