The legislation also provides a 0.5 percent increase for Medicare doctors for six months, delaying a scheduled 10 percent pay cut.
Bush twice vetoed more ambitious earlier bills that would have expanded the children's health program to cover about 10 million children in low and moderate income families, despite bipartisan support.
Bush and Democrats have been locked in a fight over budget and spending and the president said the previous bills were too costly and would push more children into government-run health care instead of private plans.
Bush also objected to raising tobacco taxes to pay for the proposed expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program known as SCHIP.
Democrats had hoped for a short-term extension so they could reopen the battle before the November 2008 presidential and congressional elections, but Republicans forced them to extend it through March 2009.
Amazing to me how some politicians would have rather made it a short extension, risking the low incomes childrens health insurance in upcoming battles, simply to "use" the children as a political tool in the 2008 elections.
How sick is that?
This is what politics have become.
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