However, despite their use of underhanded tactics, their attempts to pull Republicans to the Democrat side by threatening to otherwise paint them as being evilly against children, their refusal to compromise, and their shutting the minority party out of the writing of the legislation, Congressional Democrats have been both surprised and dismayed to see support for their position decline, rather than increase, over the course of the debate. The vote on the second-try SCHIP bill saw only one Representative, Vern Ehlers (R-MI), defect from the position taken on the first SCHIP vote and he crossed over to the nays, rejoining his party on the side of realism and fiscal restraint.

The fight will continue past this week. Federal funding for SCHIP in its current form ends on November 15, so at the very least an extension of the current program will have to be agreed upon and passed. However, the Democrats have made the massive expansion of government-controlled healthcare too large a priority in their 2007 legislative agenda, and have spent too much money and political capital on it, to let it go at that. The issue will almost certainly come up again in the not-too-distant future, though likely not as a stand-alone. According to a source on Capitol Hill, the Democrats most likely course of action would be to bury SCHIP into a bill that Republicans would ordinarily overwhelmingly support, like a military quality-of-life bill or another piece of legislation that addresses a GOP staple issue, thereby forcing Republicans to appear to be voting against and President Bush to be vetoing (if he maintains a firm commitment) both the military and children, an apparent lose-lose situation.

That, though, is a bridge that must be crossed when it is reached. For now, the GOP has once again scored a legislative victory, as Minority Whip Roy Blunt and Chief Deputy Whip Eric Cantor again produced the necessary number of Republican voters to limit this latest attempt at government health care expansion to a total well-short of a veto-proof majority. This gives the President the flexibility to continue doing the right thing on this matter, as well. The war on this issue is far from over, but as long as each battle is won, the GOP remains far closer to overall victory than to defeat.