Does president Bush really believe what he’s saying about the effort from congressional Democrats and some leading Senate Republicans to provide health coverage for millions of uninsured children? He’s portraying it as the first step on a slippery slope toward ‘government-run healthcare,’ as if senior senators in both parties were conspiring with Michael Moore to import Cuban doctors to inoculate and indoctrinate American children. In fact, Congress is moving responsibly to remove a blot on the nation: the 8 million children without health insurance. It is doing so by expanding the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, a state-federal partnership that the Republican Congress and President Clinton created in 1997 to cover kids in working-poor families. Final votes on the House and Senate floors could come this week. Bush, seemingly determined to provoke every possible confrontation with congressional Democrats, has pledged to veto the bills. And with the GOP congressional leadership, he is fighting the proposals with a swarm of misleading and hypocritical arguments. Bush complains that expanding the program costs too much. But cost was no object when Bush and congressional Republicans sought to court seniors by creating the Medicare prescription drug benefit in 2003. […]