But the debate in Washington on SCHIP has quickly become badly polarized. The administration's budget request is timid -- a measure of how compassionate conservatism has been drained of boldness by budget hard-liners. At $5 billion additional over five years, there are serious questions as to whether the proposal would even maintain coverage for the number of children currently in the program. The administration's attempt to limit eligibility to families at 200 percent of the poverty line or below is too restrictive. And its alternative -- a stingy tax deduction for the purchase of private health insurance -- would be more credible if it were a generous and refundable tax credit.

At the same time, Democrats are in full overreach mode, intent on stuffing themselves at the endless buffet of liberal opportunity. Their proposal -- a $50 billion increase over five years -- represents a barely hidden agenda. Instead of reasonably expanding a successful program, they want to bloat SCHIP beyond its original purposes -- to cover more and more adults -- as a step toward their utopia of government-run universal health care. And this overreach actually reduces the prospect of political agreement that would bring swift help to uninsured children.

There are serious gaps in health insurance for grown-ups, not just children. But here the administration is correct: The answer is not SCHIP and Medicare for everyone. For the hardest cases, public programs can be useful, but all Americans benefit from the innovation and quality of a predominantly private health system.

The complete triumph of public bureaucracies, in the long run, would give us the British model of decaying hospitals and take-a-number-and-wait surgery. A serious, refundable tax credit, in contrast, would allow the working poor and the lower middle class to purchase their own health coverage, while maintaining the benefits of private medicine. Two weeks ago, President Bush signaled his openness to such a credit.

There are splittable differences on these issues. It would be a reasonable compromise to expand SCHIP significantly, while offering adults a generous tax credit to purchase health insurance. But in Washington today, to call something a "reasonable compromise" may be the kiss of death.