Sen. Tom Harkin has been hard at work this week to build support in Iowa for legislation to expand health care coverage to more children of low-income families living in Iowa and states around the country.

The effort by Sen. Harkin comes on the heels of last weeks vote with Sen. Grassley and 66 other Senators to more than double spending for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) by increasing funding from $25 billion to $60 billion. The spending increase would allow federal and state health care programs to insure an additional 3.3 million children and would be funded by raising federal cigarette taxes from 39 cents to $1 per pack.

Unfortunately, President Bush has decided to side with large HMOs and other special-interests instead of the millions of children across the country that would benefit from increased access to health care, by threatening to veto the bill.

That is why Sen. Harkin is working to build support and override any veto by President Bush and call attention to the fact that many Iowa children would actually be dropped from the state HAWK-I medical program if President Bush’s proposed spending bill becomes law, according to the Gazette Online:

The president says this is a place where private insurance should be and we don’t want to go to socialized medicine,said Harkin.

That is just nonsense, the Iowa Democrat said. These are people right above the cutoff line for Medicaid. This is really a moral question.