AUSTIN – Tens of thousands more youngsters in working-poor families are closer to getting medical coverage in the next two years after a Senate committee approved a plan late Thursday to expand the Children's Health Insurance Program.

But a bigger CHIP still isn't a sure thing.

While the Senate Finance Committee endorsed a bill to let families again renew coverage for their children annually, instead of every six months, its plan also would impose an electronic income check at midyear for about 43 percent of CHIP households. The vote was 12-1, with committee chairman Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, the only one voting no.

The families that would be scrutinized have incomes exceeding 150 percent of the federal poverty level. For a family of four, that is $30,975 a year.

House Speaker Pro Tempore Sylvester Turner, D-Houston, the bill's main author, said the additional checks are a deal-breaker.

"I will not accept the change," he said.

Sen. Kip Averitt, who authored the Senate's rewrite of Mr. Turner's bill, called it "a very significant improvement" over rules imposed in 2003, when lawmakers grappled with a $10 billion budget shortfall.

But the Waco Republican acknowledged that his version would cost about $59 million over the next two years, while the House's would cost nearly $74 million. New estimates from the Health and Human Services Commission show that the House plan would add 135,000 youngsters to CHIP and the Senate plan nearly 102,000.

Earlier, the two chambers' budget negotiators tentatively endorsed spending up to $90 million more on CHIP in the next two years – if the partial restoration bill passes.

As passed by the House and approved by the Senate panel, the bill would let working parents once again deduct from income their child-care expenses, do away with a 90-day waiting period for new applicants and loosen limits on vehicle values and bank balances.

CHIP is designed to help families that make too much to qualify for Medicaid but too little to afford private coverage. The cuts made four years ago have helped reduce enrollment to 306,000 children, from 507,000 in September 2003.

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst has resisted undoing a change that depressed enrollment the most: going from a six-month policy to one lasting 12 months, as Texas had from 2000 to 2003. Mr. Dewhurst said more frequent checks of income are needed to protect taxpayers, though in recent weeks he has said electronic checking could be the answer.

Mr. Turner, though, has said CHIP policies should mirror private, employer-provided health plans, most of which are renewed every 12 months.

"Why do we need to do that?" he said of the Senate plan. "That is too many families that are subject to being disenrolled because of that ... hurdle being imposed."

Mr. Averitt said the Senate's version would mean less paperwork for families and "be a very unintrusive process, to make sure everybody's still eligible."

He added, "The clients won't even know that that's happening."