A matter of principle -- or principals? Rep. Rahm Emanuel with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi after the House failed to override President Bush's veto of the children's health insurance bill. AP Photo by Charles Dharapak

by David Nitkin, updated by Mark Silva

The White House took a claws-out swipe at House Democrats today -- and Rep. Rahm Emanuel in particular -- over their insistence on sending President Bush a second child health care bill that is only slightly revised from a version vetoed by the president earlier this month.

Telling reporters that Congress has "not made the changes the president talked about" to refocus the expiring State Children's Health Insurance Program on lower income children, White House Deputy Press Secretary Tony Fratto accused Emanuel, the Illinois Democrat and aggressive chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, of playing politics with the issue rather than trying to get things done.

"The last principle Rahm Emanuel knew was in high school," Fratto said during a morning session with reporters, eliciting whistles, groans and gasps from the press corps.

Emanuel had his own words for the White House:

“I’ll gladly see my high school principal, if President Bush will allow 10 million kids to see a pediatrician,'' he replied. "And by the way, after I helped negotiate the bill to create SCHIP, Governor Bush was second to last in enrolling kids in SCHIP, but I do appreciate the lecture.”

Bush, a former governor of Texas, has pledged to veto the revised initiative that was passed by the House on Thursday.

Proponents say they addressed Bush's concerns by prohibiting money from being spent on children in families that earn more than three times the federal poverty limit, or $61,950 for a family of four. The White House says the revised legislation is still too expensive and is an encroachment by the federal government into private health care, and opposes a federal cigarette tax increase that would fund the $35 billion expansion over the next five years.

The White House has said it is willing to negotiate on components of the program, which expired this month but was temporarily extended through mid-November. But Fratto said yesterday that congressional Democrats did not appoint negotiators to meet with White House officials before the House passed the new bill.

Democrats sense political advantage over the issue, and liberal interest groups have already begun running advertisements in the districts of vulnerable Republicans who voted against the expanded children's health care program.

David Nitkin covers the White House for the Baltimore Sun, a Tribune Co. paper.