Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/senate-looks-to-expand-childrens-health-insurance-program Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript The Senate is expected to move forward with a five-year extension of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, which covers 6 million low-income children nationwide. Health correspondent Susan Dentzer provides an update on those efforts. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. JUDY WOODRUFF: Finally tonight, efforts to expand a health insurance program for low-income kids. Gwen Ifill has the story. GWEN IFILL: The State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, was created in 1997 to help close the coverage gap between poor children who received Medicaid and low-income children whose parents earned a little too much to qualify for government help. Today, the joint federal and state program covers over six million low-income children and has been expanded to cover several hundred thousand adults, as well.Now up for renewal, the SCHIP program has been caught up in an increasingly bitter battle between its supporters in Congress and the Bush administration over how much more to spend.A bipartisan Senate agreement would raise the tax on cigarettes to increase spending by $35 billion on top of the $25 billion already in place. But the president is proposing an increase of only $5 billion, and White House aides have said he would veto the Senate plan.