This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, January 11, 2008. I'm Caleb Brown.

President Bush and Congress have punted on S-CHIP the State Children's Health Insurance Program.

Now the task falls to the next president to decide if the program will be contracted,

kept, expanded, or scrapped.

But the program's perverse effects haven't gone away according to Michael Cannon,

director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute, and he says thus far presidential

candidates aren't saying much about it. Where we are with that ship right now is essentially where we were before this debate began.

The program exists as it did last year. Congress decided

to reauthorize it rather than to expand it because essentially the president

won. The president stuck to his veto threats. He followed through on them.

He vetoed S-CHIP expansion twice and the Democrats exceeded and decided they were not going

to try to expand the program. They were just going to keep it as it is for the next year or more

so that we would be fighting this battle again in March of 2009.

It seems that the Bush position was, I like the program. I just don't like it as much as you do.

He wanted an expansion. Was his position in any way based on the economics of S-CHIP?

No, I think his position, well I can't really peer into the soul of the president, but it's difficult

to find any evidence that the president took a principled stance here because the history of this administration has been one of approving

what they call Medicaid waivers and an S-CHIP proposals by the states to expand the program up

the income scale to expand it to adults even though S-CHIP is the C and S-CHIP stands for

children and yet is the C and S chip stands for children.

And yet, then the president sort of turned on a dime and he said,

well, no, we're not going to expand this program.

...