The new rules require children to stay uninsured for a full year before joining S-CHIP and implausibly demand that states guarantee that families aren’t losing employer-based coverage. It seems they would rather put thousands of children at risk than have a few receive benefits who might find coverage elsewhere.

As states struggle to find their own solutions to today’s health care crisis, it is the president — not Congress — who is imposing federal controls on health care.

Don’t believe me that these new rules tie states’ hands? Just ask Republican governors like Mitch Daniels of Indiana — Bush’s staunchly conservative former budget chief. While the administration insists that any child above 250 percent of poverty — $50,000 for a family of four — is too rich for S-CHIP, Daniels has raised his state’s coverage to 300 percent. Like many of his Republican counterparts, Daniels understands that with the cost of private insurance for that same family approaching $12,000 per year, the real choice is this: S-CHIP or no health care at all.

That is why I joined with Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), Gordon Smith (R-Ore.), Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) to introduce a bill last week to block the administration’s new regulations, which we believe are both unethical and infeasible. A few years ago, this White House called Massachusetts’s state health plan “a model for national reform.” Now, by changing the rules in the middle of the game, the president has put this experiment at risk — and our children will suffer for it.

SCHIP has had an immeasurable impact on the lives of people like 9-year-old Alexsiana Lewis of Springfield, Mass., who was losing her vision from a rare eye disease. Alexsiana’s mother Dedra lost her health insurance benefits when she cut back her hours to care for her daughter. “If I didn’t have [S-CHIP-funded] Mass Health right now, my daughter would be blind,” Dedra said. “We’re really at the mercy of the politicians.”

No child’s health care should be held hostage by politicians in Washington — especially by a president’s veto pen. Unfortunately, and stubbornly, this president has threatened to put S-CHIP into the same category as stem cell research and a new policy in Iraq: Things the American people desperately want but this president won’t allow.

This boils down to a question of priorities. America’s families want a government that puts kids first — but we’ll settle for a president who doesn’t insist on putting children’s health last.

This post also appeared in The Hill’s ‘Leading the News’.