In a move already garnering backlash, President Bush today vetoed a bi-partisan bill set to expand a children’s health insurance program by $35 billion over five years.

Shortly after, Democrats took to the floor of the House of Representatives to criticize the veto.

In a sarcastic, mocking tone Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Oregon said:

“The president has rediscovered his long lost inner fiscally conservative self. After an orgy of borrowing, spending and misspending on many dubious things, his target? Ten million low-income kids.”

The “orgy” DeFazio is referring to is the spending to fight the war in Iraq. Democrats compared the bill’s $7 billion annual cost to the money spent each month on the Iraq war.

Under the legislation, the program would double — from 4 million to 8 million — the number of children covered.

Though the bill had recieved bipartisan support (67-29), some Republicans still defended their party’s leader.

Rep. Todd Akin, R-Missouri, said the bill contained “all of these little hidden gizmos, among other things that we’re going to provide health care to the children of illegal immigrants.”

Akin also liken the proposed legislation - State Children’s Health Insurance Program or SCHIP - to N.Y. Senator Hillary Clinton’s effort for universal health care when she was First Lady in the 1990s.

Democrats say the bill would not provide coverage to illegal immigrants.

Congress lacks the votes to overturn Bush’s veto. Though 67 votes in the 100-person Senate is sufficient, the 265-159 vote on September 25 in the House is short of the two-thirds majority needed.Still, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Maryland, has stated he plans to try to override the veto in coming weeks.

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