AUSTIN — Although Congress has not yet agreed on a long-term solution to fund the Children’s Health Insurance Program, Texas will have enough money to keep kids covered through March.

When Congress passed a short-term spending bill in December to keep the government open until Jan. 19, nearly $3 billion was appropriated to keep state CHIP programs running. Texas will receive $248 million from that funding, state Health and Human Services Commission spokeswoman Carrie Williams said Friday.

“This will carry us through March 31, 2018,” Williams said in an email. “If Congress does not fully reauthorize CHIP by that time, Texas would pursue redistribution funding as it did previously with CMS.”

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services originally pledged more than $135 million to extend the state CHIP program through the end of February. Williams said Congress passing the spending bill means Texas won't need that money.

“It was not imminently needed,” Williams said. “Redistribution of funds could come up again if the program isn’t reauthorized.”

State officials estimated that without additional federal funding, CHIP would have shut down on Jan. 31. Texas law forces the program to close once federal money runs out, unless the Legislature agrees on a different source of funding.

Congress allowed CHIP funding to expire Sept. 30. The program covers more than 9 million children nationwide, 400,000 of whom are in Texas. The delay in reauthorizing CHIP has confused children's health advocates because both parties have supported CHIP since its creation in 1997. Matt Moore, vice president of governmental relations at Children's Health in Dallas, told The Dallas Morning News in December that he's disappointed CHIP reauthorization has taken so long.

“There are a lot of members of Congress who thought it would be taken care of earlier in the year,” Moore said. “As time went by, CHIP kept getting pushed back to the back burner.”

The House passed a bill in November extending CHIP for five more years, but the Senate has yet to do so.