Social Security Disability Insurance

Floor Speech

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, one of the things that marks service as a U.S. Senator is the chance to meet really remarkable individuals, and among the remarkable individuals I have had the chance to meet in my time in the Senate, there are few, if any, who are more impressive or memorable than those who have been diagnosed with ALS, commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease.

Competing with them for being impressive and noteworthy are the friends and family and advocates who become their support system and their caregivers. It is not just those with the diagnosis, but it is also the family, friends, and caregivers who face incredible bravery. I remember someone once saying that a special kind of courage is maintaining good morale in the face of terrible circumstances, and few circumstances are more terrible than a diagnosis of ALS amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

We know how it ends. We know it is always fatal. There is no treatment. There is no cure. There is nothing to halt or reverse the effects of ALS. Those of us who have ALS patients visit us watch the decline as they move from people who can walk to people who need a wheelchair, to people who need an increasingly complex wheelchair.

For all this suffering and for all the certainty of how it ends, we still make ALS patients and their family members wait 5 months before they can begin to receive the Social Security Disability Insurance benefits they earned by contributing into Social Security.

The logic, I am told, of this 5-month waiting period is that it allows temporary conditions to abate, but ALS is not a temporary condition. It does not abate. It does not reverse. Sadly, some ALS patients lose their fight with the disease before even receiving benefits.

I have been working with Senator Cotton to pursue bipartisan legislation to eliminate this 5-month waiting period for ALS. Chairman Hatch, in one of his final acts as chairman of the Finance Committee, expressed his approval of this and his desire to help me bring it forward, and Ranking Member Wyden on the Finance Committee has helped get it to the floor so we can have this opportunity to pass it by unanimous consent.

I hope very much that as a simple act of humanity, we can step aside from bureaucratic considerations and allow this small population of Americans who face the extraordinary blow of this diagnosis to move immediately to the benefits they signed up for by contributing to Social Security.

With that, I would yield the floor to Senator Cotton of Arkansas.

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. 379, a bill to eliminate the 5-month waiting period for disability insurance benefits under such title for individuals with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; that the bill be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate, as we come into this Christmas season.

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, let me go on the record to say how much I disagree with my colleague's view of this; the notion that we can't help anyone until we can help everyone is simply not the way the world works. The notion that we can't help anyone until we have solved whatever financial problems he sees in Social Security, again, means we will help no one.

I do believe Lou Gehrig's disease is a sufficiently distinct illness, with an inevitable fatality, and the slow loss of function for the individuals involved as the disease takes away, one by one, their various abilities to stand, to speak, and eat. I think it does set it apart.

If the Senator has other illnesses he thinks are equally cruel and equally lethal that he would like to add to the list, then I think we should consider that. The notion that we can't help fellow Americans with this disease because we haven't solved other problems is one I categorically reject.

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I simply note that the Senator seems to be making precisely the argument that he is denying that he has made.

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, at the Senator's desire, he may add any of those whom he wishes, and we will consider that going forward. Unless and until he does that, we are in a position that unless we are helping all of them, we will help none of them.

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