Maybe next year for kids' health care

Congress just pushed health care fund­ing for some of the young­est and poor­est Min­ne­so­tans to next year's to-do list.

Lawmakers dashed out of town for the hol­i­days, leav­ing the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment with just en­ough mon­ey to keep run­ning through mid-Jan­u­ar­y and to fund the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) through March.

The stop­gap fund­ing bill squeaked through the House and Senate over the pro­tests of Democrats furi­ous that Congress was leav­ing town with­out full­y reauthorizing a pro­gram that pro­vides health cov­er­age for 9 mil­lion needy chil­dren nation­wide, in­clud­ing more than 100,000 chil­dren, in­fants and preg­nant women in Min­ne­so­ta. The CHIP pro­gram lapsed in Oc­to­ber, and Min­ne­so­ta was one of the first states to be­gin run­ning low on funds.

All three Min­ne­so­ta Republican House mem­bers voted for the fund­ing bill. Min­ne­so­ta's House and Senate Democrats voted no — in­clud­ing de­part­ing Sen. Al Frank­en, who cast his fi­nal vote against it.

Min­ne­so­ta has al­read­y be­gun dip­ping into the gen­er­al fund to keep its chil­dren's health ser­vices fund­ed, although the state Department of Hu­man Services will not be able to say ex­act­ly how many state dol­lars it is spend­ing un­til Jan­u­ar­y. The Centers for Med­i­care and Med­ic­aid Services also re­dis­trib­ut­ed funds to help the state get through the first quar­ter of 2018.

Min­ne­so­ta is also wait­ing for Congress to act on a legis­la­tive fix that would spare the state from some $300 mil­lion in fed­er­al cuts to low-in­come health care. A vote on a bi­par­ti­san fix was pushed to Jan­u­ar­y.