30-Something Working Group
Floor Speech
30-SOMETHING WORKING GROUP -- (House of Representatives - July 11, 2007)
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Mr. PALLONE. I want to thank my colleague from Florida, first of all, for being here tonight and for being here for so many nights for so many years now. I know they call them the ``30-Something,'' but it's several years now that you've been doing this on a regular basis, and drawing attention to what the Democrats are doing, and of course when we were in the minority, pointing out the contrasts between ourselves and the Republican majority.
I don't want to give a course in history here tonight, but I have to take issue with what my colleagues from Tennessee and Georgia just said with regard to the children's health initiative.
First of all, I think it's really important, and I know you say this all the time, that we're not here as ideologues. I'm not here because I'm a liberal or a conservative or because I want a government-run program or a privately run program. As far as I'm concerned, if everybody could get health care under some kind of privately run insurance program and it was all affordable and we could cover everybody, that would be fine with me. The only reason that the SCHIP or the children's health program was set up about 10 years ago, and I was there and I was part of it at the time, and it was done on a bipartisan basis, Republicans and Democrats supported it, was because we realized that there were more and more children in this country that were going without health care.
And we did not set up an entitlement. I heard my colleagues from Tennessee and Georgia on the Republican side repeatedly refer to this as an entitlement program.
It is not an entitlement program. It is a program that simply gives money in a block grant. I mean, nothing could be less of an entitlement than a block grant, to States like Georgia and Tennessee that they match to try to cover children that don't have health insurance.
Now, let me stress this is for parents who work who have children. We have a Medicaid program for people who are very low income. But what we found 10 years ago, and again, on a bipartisan basis, just as many Republicans as Democrats, what we found 10 years ago was there are a lot of people who work for a living, but they don't get health insurance on the job and they cannot afford to go out in the individual market privately and buy it. I mean, that could cost you $12,000-$15,000 a year if you have to go out for a family of four and buy health insurance. If you're making 20, 30, $40,000 a year, you can't afford to pay $12,000-$15,000 a year for health insurance for yourself and your children.
So the Federal Government decided, let's give some money to the States. They will match it, and they can help cover these children of working parents whose income is a little too high so they don't qualify for Medicaid, but they can't get health care on the job because their employer doesn't offer it, and they can't afford to go out and buy it on the individual market.
Now, what is wrong with that? There is nothing wrong with that. I cannot understand how anyone on the other side of the aisle, including my two Republican colleagues that just spoke, would come out and say that we don't want kids to have health insurance. I mean, what are they talking about? There is no alternative for these people other than to go to the emergency room or the hospital. They can't get it on their job. They can't afford to buy it privately on the individual market. They have no alternative. And that is simply all we offer to do.
And now my colleagues on the Republican side are talking about entitlements, raising socialism. I mean, this is not an ideological issue. This is just a practical way of trying to deal with a problem.
Now, let me tell you something. You already made reference, my colleague, to the fact that some States this year ran out of money to pay for this children's health initiative very earlier, and the State that came here crying first was the State of Georgia.
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Mr. PALLONE. Well, I just want to follow up on what you said. You know, this money that we give to States to help cover these kids in the last few years has run out very early for a lot of States. And, again, it was the gentleman from Georgia's own State, it was State representatives, Secretary of Health and Human Services, whatever they call that person in the State, came down here in February. And they were over in the Speaker's office, and I was asked to come. And there were Republicans and Democratic Congressmen in that room. Now, I can't say for sure that the gentleman who spoke tonight was there, but there were other Republicans. He may have been, but I don't want to say for sure because I don't remember. But there definitely were Republican Congressmen from the State of Georgia in that room over in the Speaker's office, along with Democrats. And they said, you've got to pass an emergency supplemental bill to give us more money for SCHIP because we're going to run out of our yearly allotment on March 1; two months into the year. So they said, please, do something. Well, what we did is we attached that to the emergency
supplemental bill. Some people know that as the Iraq supplemental, but it really covered a lot of different things.
And as you say, we put $750 million just to cover Georgia and other States to the end of this year. And you know how difficult it was. The President threatened to veto it three or four times. We finally got it passed. And every month I would get calls or letters from the Georgia delegation saying, when are you going to pass this money because we're going to have to tell these kids that they don't have any health insurance.
So I don't understand how they come down here on the Republican side and complain about this program that they helped start, that their State is asking for money. Most of the people in that room from the State of Georgia were Republican, not Democrats, okay. And we're just practically saying, okay, look, we don't want to have to run out of this money every year because obviously this program is growing because the number of uninsured kids, again, from working families, keeps getting bigger every year. It's up to something like nine million children nationally that don't have any health insurance. Okay. And what we're saying is, let's come up with a larger pot of money over the next 5 years to pay for these kids so that, there is about six million of those nine million that are eligible for the children's health SCHIP program right now, eligible under the current law. There is about 6.7 that are covered, there are another 6 million that are eligible under the current law that President Bush and the Republicans have been supporting for the last 10 years, and there just isn't enough money to cover them.
So all we're saying is, let's take some money, in this case over 5 years it would cost about maybe $50 billion to cover these kids that are already eligible for this SCHIP program.
Now, how in the world the Democratic initiative to simply pay for kids that are already eligible for this program that's already on the books becomes socialism or entitlements or some kind of radical procedure here. For the life of me, I simply do not understand. I mean, there is nothing here that's new. There is nothing new here.
I yield back to the gentleman.
Mr. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Chairman, you said $5 billion over the next 5 years?
Mr. PALLONE. We're talking about $50 billion over the next 5 years, about $10 billion more per year, to cover the rest of the kids that are currently eligible for this program.
Mr. MEEK of Florida. That's $50 billion.
Mr. PALLONE. Right. And we're not talking about anything new here.
Mr. MEEK of Florida. Over the next 5 years.
Mr. PALLONE. Right, additional money.
Mr. MEEK of Florida. Well, let me tell you, per year in Iraq we spend $120 billion.
Mr. PALLONE. Exactly. And where do these kids go? They have no place to go. The only place they go is if they get sick or they need attention, they have to go to the hospital emergency room. And what kind of a way is that to operate a health care system where you have to take your kid to the hospital emergency room because they can't see a doctor on a regular basis.
Now, one of them said community health centers. I'm all for community health centers. I think it would be wonderful if every town in the country had a community health center and you could go there and get free care, but that's not the reality. In my district, we have maybe three or four of these community health centers. I represent about 650,000 people, and we have maybe three or four of these federally sponsored community health centers. There is no way in the world that these parents that take their kids, all who are uninsured, to these community health centers. There is absolutely no way that that's going to happen.
Mr. MEEK of Florida. Imagine the line. Imagine a rural county. Imagine an urban county that I represent, everyone kind of diving into one or two locations to make it all happen. Why should we inconvenience those that are counting on their government to respond, especially on behalf of our children.
I'm glad you came down here tonight to have you here, the person that has the gavel in their hand, heard testimony from the States. I know you know what I'm saying. This is what you're doing and this is why we're here. And Americans voted for a new direction, and we're heading in that new direction. There are those that are Members of Congress that don't want to move in that new direction. And, Mr. Speaker, like I said, the great thing about our country is that we can disagree and you can voice your opinion and other ideas, but I think it's important also for the American people to get fact and not fiction. And that's what we're here about, and that's what it's all about.
You are always welcome, Mr. Chairman, to come down. I am a part of the ``something'' part of the 30-something. So you can join, and that caucus is growing. And the good thing about what we do here on the floor from those new Members of Congress, we call them ``majority makers,'' to those that have been here as long as you have been here, to see this process go full circle, 360 degrees, to be able to come to the floor at 11-something at night, to be able to set the record straight I think is important not only for Members of Congress, but also for the Congressional Record and for those individuals that are listening to the statements that are being made here on the floor that know better.
Mr. PALLONE. I appreciate it, and I know you want to get back to the Iraq war, as I think you should. I want to thank you again, and just say in conclusion from my part of this tonight, what I really don't like is trying to make this into an ideological debate.
When I hear my colleagues on the Republican side, instead of being practical and looking at what is going to accomplish something, to start making it ideological and talk about entitlements and socialism and the whole thing, we don't need that. We don't need that rhetoric here. We as Democrats are trying to accomplish things in a practical way, without ideology, without right or left and all this jargon that we are hearing from the other side.
I just hope that it doesn't continue, because otherwise I am going to come down here every night and talk about why practically speaking the children's health initiative is a good program.
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