The House of Representatives, as promised, has passed another bill to expand S-CHIP (although not veto proof), after President Bush’s veto last week. Democratic leaders have made several changes, which respond to the arguments opponents were making last time around: it would not cover children in families making over three times the poverty level ($61,950) or illegal immigrants. As with Senator Kennedy’s proposed amendment to the bankruptcy bill (which was defeated)---Kennedy's amendment would have exempted those whose debts arose from medical expenses from the bill’s “mean’s test”---this bill will expose that opponents don’t really oppose the bill for these reasons. This will give liberals another opportunity to show how undemocratic Republican policies are. To be sure, Americans are liberal: 63%, across party lines, support expanding SCHIP; 86% support reauthorizing it. Democrats now need to create a space where they can advance progressive policies responsibly and fairly. When it comes to taxes, lower isn’t always better.

Republican opposition this week belies some troubling priorities: President Bush has requested another $46 billion this week for Iraq. But shifting priorities is not enough. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the total cost of the Iraq fiasco could wind up reaching half the cost necessary to fund projected shortfalls in Social Security. The Congressional Budget Office also estimates that the Bush-era deficits will cost $700 billion in interest alone.

S-CHIP expansion would be paid for with cigarette taxes, which are regressive. It would be glorious if Democrats had responded to Republican opposition to this feature by proposing an income tax increase. As Daniel Gross reported in Slate, though, Democrats are becoming the party of CEOs and “have been loath to embrace measures that would alienate their new friends”: the major candidates opposed a war surtax and Congressional Democrats have opposed taxing income made by private-equity and hedge-fund managers as income rather than capital gains. Moreover, this country’s political discourse leaves little space, it seems, for an alternative vision. Even in California, for example, where residents face a perennial threat from wildfires, fire departments have struggled to raise sufficient tax revenue. A looming figure from the CBO seems much more abstract and hence more difficult to use.

The U.S. has to pay for Iraq, even if the next President and Congress forged radically different priorities. And, domestic initiatives---from global warming to Social Security to healthcare to infrastructure development---will require more revenue. While Republicans are signing Americans for Tax Reform no-tax-increases pledge, let’s remember that it was actually Ronald Reagan who raised taxes twice for the empirical reason of budgetary necessity (reversing some corporate tax cuts in 1982 after budget projections proved widely optimistic and increasing payroll taxes in 1983 to cover projected shortfalls in Social Security).