Jimmy Kimmel Live via YouTube Jimmy Kimmel on Monday night made a tearful plea to lawmakers to secure funding for CHIP. The Children's Health Insurance Program covers 9 million children whose families would struggle to pay for healthcare without it. Kimmel's son Billy has a heart condition that has required several surgeries. CHIP's funding expired while politicians were finalizing details of a tax bill. Jimmy Kimmel took his 7-month-old son on the air Monday night to make a tearful plea to Congress to save the Children's Health Insurance Program, a healthcare program that covers 9 million children in the US. Kimmel appeared alongside his son Billy after a weeklong break from his show, "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" Billy was born with tetralogy of Fallot with pulmonary atresia, a rare defect that required open-heart surgery just hours after his birth. Billy has undergone a series of surgeries in his short life, but Kimmel on Monday night said he had just one more to go. CHIP, first introduced during the Clinton administration, recently had its funding lapse with Congress focusing on overhauling the tax code.