Pressure from congressional Democrats isn’t going to sway Rep. Roscoe Bartlett into voting for an expansion of government-run health care. The Maryland Republican, who was the only member of the state’s congressional delegation to side with President Bush in the debate over SCHIP, told Democrats that he’s not switching his vote. Bartlett is one of the Democrats’ targets in their quest to sway enough Republicans to override Bush’s veto.

Congressional Democrat leaders have delayed a vote to override the Presidents veto of their plan to expand the S-CHIP program. They have singled me out as a target by lobbyists of special interests group, such as labor unions.

Only Democrat Congressional leaders could demand that a family earning $82,000 a year could qualify for their expanded S-CHIP program and simultaneously call that same family rich enough to force them to pay the AMT, Alternative Minimum Tax. It just goes to show that what Democrats really want is to have the government control how to spend the money that American taxpayers earn.

I want to thank Senate Democrat Leader Harry Reid for recognizing that I cast the only correct vote in the Maryland delegation against the Democrat version of S-CHIP. Im proud that I voted to create the bipartisan S-CHIP program in 1997. I support continuing S-CHIP health insurance for all children of the working poor, but that is not what this debate is about.

Democrats are demanding that S-CHIP be expanded because they want to force government-controlled, taxpayer-paid health coverage onto middle-class and upper-class families who already have private health care coverage that they themselves control. The Democrat S-CHIP bill is a crucial step toward achieving their ultimate goal of universal health care, that is government-controlled health care that Americans soundly reject.