WASHINGTON, Oct. 17 — With little expectation of overriding President Bush’s veto, Democrats in Congress said Wednesday that they would pass a new bill to provide health insurance for 10 million children, but were willing to tweak it to address some White House concerns.
Mr. Bush predicted that on Thursday the House would uphold his veto of a bill to renew and expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. He named three administration officials to “seek common ground” with Congress.
But Democratic leaders, believing they have public support for expanding the program, said they saw no urgent need to negotiate the central elements of the bill.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said Democrats in Congress would not compromise on their goal of providing health insurance for 10 million children — 6.6 million already on the rolls and nearly 4 million who are uninsured.
Many Republicans argue that the vetoed bill would allow coverage of children from middle- and upper-income families and of adults and some illegal immigrants. Democrats reject such criticism, but say they will consider revising the bill to make its restrictions and prohibitions clearer.
“We will type it in bigger, bolder letters, but we will not compromise on the goal of insuring 10 million children,” said Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus.
If Mr. Bush vetoes a second version of the bill, Democrats say they will send him a third version just before Election Day 2008.
Supporters of the bill said they had not decided exactly how to proceed after the House voted Thursday on whether to override Mr. Bush’s veto.
Some Republican supporters of the bill want to draw the White House into talks on Capitol Hill, in the hope of winning Mr. Bush’s support for a revised version. By contrast, some Democrats want to pursue a strategy under which Democrats would make modest concessions to pick up enough votes among House Republicans to achieve the two-thirds majority needed to overcome a veto.
The bill vetoed by Mr. Bush had been approved in the House 265 to 159, well short of a two-thirds majority. In the Senate, which passed the bill 67 to 29, supporters already have a two-thirds majority.
Representative Judy Biggert, Republican of Illinois, said she would vote to sustain the veto. “After that,” Ms. Biggert said, “we have to get back to the drawing board and fix the bill. It won’t take much. For example, we need to make sure that poor kids are covered before adults. If Democrats really care about kids, they will have to negotiate.”
The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, said he might be willing to “tweak something” in the bill to help the president “save face.”
Mr. Reid was asked Tuesday whether he would be willing to negotiate with the White House if Congress upheld the president’s veto. “No, no, no,” he replied. “We have negotiated.”
To win support from Republicans, Mr. Reid said, Democrats had “compromised and compromised and compromised.” Eighteen Republicans in the Senate and 45 in the House voted for the bill that Mr. Bush vetoed.
The secretary of health and human services, Michael O. Leavitt, said Wednesday that the child health program “ought to be focused on poor families.”
But the latest CBS News poll, released on Wednesday, found overwhelming support for expansion of the program to include some middle-class uninsured children.
Eighty-one percent of respondents, including 70 percent of Republicans, supported expanding the program. Three-quarters of those who supported expansion said they would be willing to pay higher taxes to finance it. The poll was conducted nationally by telephone Oct. 12-16 with 1,282 adults, and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.
Ms. Pelosi has said she hopes to wear down the president’s resistance one way or another.
“This legislation will haunt him again and again and again,” she said. “It’s not going away, because the children are not going away.”