Rahm Emanuel, the chief intimidator for House Democrats, didn't go for subtlety. Republicans who oppose expansion of the S-chip program will be denying "10 million American children their health care," he told Major Garrett of Fox News. Chuck Schumer, his counterpart in the Senate, took the sorrowful approach. "We're all hurt as a country when a child is not covered by health care and goes to school sick," he said. In vetoing the S-chip bill, President Bush "sided with [the] tobacco industry instead of America's children." That blast came from the nice folks at the American Cancer Society, who favor the 61-cent hike in the cigarette tax that would pay for the S-chip increase.

It isn't going to be pleasant for Republicans who believe the new S-chip legislation is bad policy. But there's a way to resist the measure and neutralize the Democratic demagoguery without suffering too much political heartburn. It consists of three steps. First, you go negative and criticize the bill as "welfare for the middle class," which it is. Second, you go positive and offer an alternative. Third, you go big picture and show how an expanded S-chip program is inconsistent with the kind of health care system most Americans want.

S-chip expansion has been easy for Democrats to defend because it affects children, including millions without health insurance. But it's a free good for the recipients, paid for by taxpayers: By definition, it's welfare. Few oppose welfare for poor children, even for children living in families earning up to

The bill vetoed by Bush, however, would offer S-chip for kids up to 300 percent of poverty ($61,950) in every state, or up to 400 percent ($82,600) in New York and perhaps other states. Millions of these children already have private insurance, but they wouldn't for long. They'd be switched to S-chip because it's free.

Supporters of the S-chip-plus bill don't have a credible answer for the crowding out of private insurance. They simply pass the buck, saying it's up to the states to limit the program to those currently uninsured. How will the states do this? The S-chippers don't say.

Then there are the half-a-million eligible poor kids who haven't gotten S-chip coverage and the 700,000 adults who have. Bush's idea of straightening out the program before expanding it makes sense. He calls it "poor kids first."

But merely opposing expansion of S-chip isn't sufficient. There are millions of children in households above the 200 percent cutoff without health insurance. Republicans need an alternative that's better than S-chip. That's step two.

Republican senator Mel Martinez has an alternative, an obvious one. "Rather than putting more people on a government-run program, we would advance tax credits to families with incomes between 200 percent and 300 percent of the poverty level," he said last week. This would be expensive--tax credits can be refundable--but not as costly as expanding S-chip. And tax credits wouldn't spur the deleterious trend toward government-run health care. They are part of any patient-run, market-driven reform.