On Sunday Senators Trent Lott and Chuck Schumer debated the S-Chip program on Fox News Sunday.

After reading the full transcript I can’t understand how the Congresscritters who voted for this increase realistically plan to pay for the program.

Senator Schumer says it’s pay as you go.

In one way or another, they lose out for the rest of their lives in many ways. So we think it’s important to cover as many kids as we can.

The president could disapprove any waiver above 200 percent. He recently approved one as high as 350 percent for New Jersey. And so I don’t think that’s the real argument people are against it.

And second, we are very responsible on this. We pay for it. We Democrats have adopted a plan, which the Republicans never did when they were in office, called pay-go. Any new program has to be paid for.

This is fully paid for and will not increase the deficit. We do it by raising the tobacco tax.

The plan is to raise the tobacco tax to $1 per pack. Apparently someone has studied this and says it’s the less affluent people who smoke so it would actually be a tax on the poor to pay for the program.

Then there’s the question of encouraging people to quit smoking. If the poor do most of the smoking and the government wants people to quit smoking where is the money going to come from to pay for this insurance?

Senator Lott:

But one other thing. This bill has a typical Washington sleight of hand. It’s got about a $40 billion shortfall over a 10-year period, and they fund it with a 61-cents-a-pack tax increase, bringing it to $1, and say, “By the way, that will discourage people from smoking.” That’s good.

But the problem is if people do stop smoking, you won’t have the money and the program won’t be paid for. Then you’ll have to either cut the program or raise taxes somewhere else. Typical Washington — now you see it, now you don’t.

This is a program I, frankly, was unaware of until now. It’s supposed to make sure poor children have health insurance, which is a good idea as far as it goes.

The problem is it’s not just children of poor families getting the insurance, and the president (any president) has the authority to bump up the income level in any state. President Bush has done so in a couple of instances, including a 350% increase in income eligibility in New Jersey.

Now I know New Jersey is more expensive to live than where I live, but 350% more?

Then we have the unintended consequences of adults getting on the program also.

WALLACE: Senator Schumer, I’m going to get to that in a moment. But let me just ask you about one other aspect of this, because I want to move on to another key point here.

As Senator Lott points out, it doesn’t just cover children, although it’s overwhelmingly children, about six million, but 700,000 adults are also covered by the program now, including some adults without children. Why should that be allowed?

SCHUMER: Right. It shouldn’t, and the bill phases that out and puts strong incentives on the states to get the adults out of the program. It should just be for kids. And that’s what the bill works for.

But let me tell you this. To do what President Bush wants to do, take a million kids off the rolls, not increase, not even stay the same, but decrease because 700,000 adults are covered, and that number’s going down — that’s not fair to those kids.

LOTT: Hey, Chris, let me make two points right quick. First, Chuck is right. This administration and the previous administration, but especially this one, gave too many waivers to too many states. That is a part of the problem.

But here’s my point. We do need to move the program up. We need to make it a better program. Now, we can fight. We can have a partisan political charge, counter-charge, or we can come together with a solution to make sure that low-income kids are really covered.

Do the Democrats want to do that, or do they want an issue? That’s what’s at stake.

WALLACE: … to Senator Lott’s question, do you want an issue or do you want a compromise?

SCHUMER: Well, it clearly was a compromise. The senior Republican on the Finance Committee, Senator Grassley, hardly a free- spending liberal — the number two senator on the Finance Committee, Senator Hatch, one of the most conservative Republican senators — not only voted for this — that’s not the case — they were involved intimately in the negotiations.

They were with Senator Reid and Senator Baucus, our two leaders on this issue, for hours, days, weeks, coming up with this program. They’re proud of the program.

You can see it in their speeches — not just Pat Roberts, but Senator Grassley said the president hasn’t read the bill. Now, he doesn’t usually talk like that about the president.

So this is a broad bipartisan bill with the broad support of the American people, 70 percent, 80 percent, and you do have a small number of Republicans who are very, very conservative on this, whose values, I think, are out of whack with America’s values in saying that kids shouldn’t get covered.

And they always come up with this reason or that reason not to support it. But this is a tempered, moderate bill.

WALLACE: Senator Schumer?

SCHUMER: It’s careful. And it’s gotten broad bipartisan support.

WALLACE: Senator Schumer, let me ask you, what’s going to happen if the president vetoes this and you can’t override him? Will the Democrats keep voting and sending this bill to the president?

SCHUMER: Yes. We do have enough votes already to override the president in the Senate — 51 Democrats, 18 Republicans, 69…

WALLACE: Yes, but not enough in the House.

SCHUMER: That’s enough. We’re somewhat short in the House. From what I’m told, there are some House members, mainly Republicans but a few Democrats, who might change.

But my guess is we will not have enough to override in the House. Speaker Pelosi has said, and I agree with this, that she is going to try and send this issue back to the president over again because it is so needed, so desperately needed, by our kids and with such broad support.

LOTT: That shows it’s just totally politics. Now, the president’s going to veto it. It’s going to be sustained. We need to sit down and make some changes so that we can actually get broader support and the president can sign it.

That’s the way it works here in this city. There’s at least three parties to every negotiation — the House, the Senate, the Republicans, the Democrats and the White House.

So, like trying to set a timetable for withdrawal in Iraq the Democrats are determined to waste precious legislative time on legislation they know will be vetoed and not overridden in the House.

Why? Senator Lott said it quite well. It’s totally politics and the Democrats don’t really care if it passes or not. It’s a political issue and that’s all that matters.