House and Senate negotiators have agreed to an expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) that closely mirrors the earlier Senate version. The House is scheduled to vote on the package today, Sept. 25, with the Senate voting later in the week. President Bush has promised to veto the bill. The agreement is nearly identical to a version of the expansion the Senate passed in August. It provides an additional $35 billion in funding over five years. This additional money will enable states to sign up an estimated four million additional children, almost all of whom are already eligible for SCHIP but were not enrolled because of lack of funding. The new agreement will be financed by a 61-cent increase in the federal tobacco tax, as the original Senate version called for. Furthermore, it would replace guidance recently issued by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) that prevented states from insuring children in families above a certain threshold unless they reach unrealistically high enrollment rates among children from the lowest-income families eligible for SCHIP. The new guidance would be less restrictive, according to a press release from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). During negotiations, senators would not accept a number of provisions the House passed earlier this year because they believed the full Senate would not approve them. The original House version contained cost-reducing reforms of the Medicare Advantage program, which consistently costs more than traditional Medicare partly because it relies on private insurance companies. The House bill's increase in the tobacco tax was less steep, at 45 cents, and it included a $50 billion funding increase that would have extended coverage to five million children. The president has promised to veto the expansion, on the basis of misleading arguments. If the president does veto the bill, it will likely force Congress to vote on whether to override the veto. The override vote should be close, and therefore, it is critical as many people as possible contact their congressional representatives to urge them to vote for the new package and to override a presidential veto. The conflict between Congress and the president will be even more tense as the SCHIP program's authorization expires on Sept. 30. If it is not reauthorized in time, everyone in the program will lose their health insurance. Most likely, Congress and the president will not resolve their differences by then, so they will have to approve a temporary extension of the program's authorization. If funding levels remain unadjusted for the rising cost in health care, a temporary extension would result in fewer children covered by the program.