Higher Edcuation Amendments of 2007

Floor Speech

HIGHER EDUCATION AMENDMENTS OF 2007 -- (Senate - July 23, 2007)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

CHIP

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Massachusetts and the Senator from Wyoming for their thoughtfulness.

This is especially appropriate, since Chairman Kennedy and the distinguished ranking minority member are on the floor. Both of them have great interest and involvement in health care. I thought it would be appropriate to talk for a few minutes about the upcoming CHIP legislation, the legislation that deals with the Children's Health Insurance Program, which is so important to America's youngsters.

There was a markup in the Senate Finance Committee last week and it passed out overwhelmingly, to a great extent because of the very important and laborious work done by Chairman Baucus, Senator Rockefeller, and also the senior Republicans on the committee, Senators Grassley and Hatch. I commend them greatly for their toil.

I wish to take a couple of minutes today to talk about the issue because the administration has indicated that at this point they would veto the legislation, which came from the Senate Finance Committee by a 17-to-4 vote. I am very hopeful they will choose not to veto this legislation because I felt it was striking in the Finance Committee last week that Senator after Senator on both sides of the aisle, including Senator Conrad and Senator Lott, for example--leaders of their respective parties on economic issues--they concurred that the system in this country is broken. The health care system cannot control the costs. Millions fall between the cracks. Administrative expenses are soaring. We have largely sick care rather than health care. This is something Democrats and Republicans alike agree on.

The administration has the view that one of the key changes that needs to be made is the Federal tax rules as they relate to health care. I share their view that these rules are a mess. But it is not going to be possible to get to the question of broader reform until you first get bipartisan cooperation on the urgent and immediate needs of this country's youngsters.

Frankly, I came out of the markup last week very encouraged about the Senate's interest and desire, on a bipartisan basis, to move ahead to fix health care. I think the clear feeling in the Senate Finance Committee is that this country cannot afford to wait to fix health care. I know there are a lot of people, particularly in the media, think tanks, and others who think: Let's wait a couple of years for another Presidential election. Let's wait 2, 3 more years.

That is sort of the way it goes for the political class. But for people who are hurting in this country and businesses that are struggling to meet the health needs of their workers and are dying to offer them coverage and cannot afford it, I don't think it is acceptable to say let's wait around a couple more years. It strikes me as pretty callous to say let's wait for another election, when we have all those needs of workers and businesses in parts of the country where there have been tremendous layoffs. They say: Well, they can wait a couple more years before anybody talks about fixing health care.

That is not what I heard in the Senate Finance Committee last week. I heard Senator after Senator--not just Senators Conrad and Lott but Senators Crapo, Salazar, and other colleagues on both sides of the aisle--making it clear they share my view that the health care system is broken. Now, for the first time in more than 13 years, the Senate has an opportunity to work in a bipartisan way to fix health care.

Senator Bennett, a member of the Republican leadership, has joined me in legislation--the Healthy Americans Act--that has been able to pick up support of labor and business. We have structured it so all our citizens can get health care coverage, such as their Member of Congress does, through the private sector, at no greater cost than we are spending as a nation today. The bill has been put together so workers and employers win with the very first paychecks that are offered. I don't see why America should wait any longer to fix health care. What we should be doing is building on the important work of Chairman Baucus and Senator Grassley, Senators HATCH and ROCKEFELLER and move to get CHIP passed in a bipartisan way and meet the immediate needs of this country's youngsters and then move on to do what I have heard members on both sides of the aisle on the Finance Committee call for last week and that is to fix American health care.

The reality is--and you and I have had a chance to talk a bit about it, Mr. President--the system we have today was largely designed more than 70 years ago. It was set up after World War II. There were wage and price controls. Our troops were coming home. We wanted them to get good benefits. So we put it off essentially on the employer, and the Tax Code would change to make that possible. Well, a system designed for the 1940s surely doesn't make sense for 2007, when the typical worker changes jobs seven times by the time they are age 35.

The current Tax Code is regressive and it promotes inefficiency. If you are a high-flying CEO, you can get a designer smile put on your face and write off the cost of that operation on your taxes. But if you are a hard-working woman in a furniture store and your company has no health plan, you get practically nothing.

Now, my sense is, when the administration talks about changing the tax rules for health care and you look at what Senators were saying in the Senate Finance Committee about the system being broken, there is a pretty good opportunity to work in a cooperative way--not 2 or 3 years from now but to move forward in this session of Congress. To make that possible, it is going to be essential for the Bush administration to back off from this threat of vetoing the children's health program and to work with Members on both sides of the aisle so that this legislation can get passed, and it would be possible, on a bipartisan basis, to move on to fix our health care system.

We have a lot to work with. Certainly, we have seen great interest at the State level. A number of States are already moving forward with innovative programs. Mr. President, as you and I have discussed, no State can fix problems they didn't cause. No State can deal with the regressivity and inefficiency of the Federal tax rules on health care. No State can deal with Medicare. No State can deal with what is called the ERISA Program, the Employee Retirement Income and Security Act, with respect to large employers and multiemployer programs. No State can deal with that. We are going to have to have bipartisan action at the Federal level.

I have been very pleased that Senator Bennett has joined me in this bipartisan effort. My sense is there is something of an ideological truce coming on health care. We see a lot of bipartisan cooperation. Today, in fact, the distinguished Senator from Wyoming, Senator Enzi, and Chairman Kennedy are cooperating on issue after issue.

Senator Bennett and I have said on health care that Republicans have moved a long way on coverage. We recognized that to fix health care, the people who are uninsured cannot just keep passing the bills on to people who are insured. We have to cover everybody, and Republicans have acknowledged that fact.

Democrats, on the other hand, have been making it clear that they do not think we can just turn it all over to Government. We cannot turn everything in health care over to Government and expect everything to come out well. We have to have some private choices, choices in a fixed market, where insurance companies cannot cherry-pick and just take healthy people and send sick people over to Government programs more fragile than they are.

We have to fix the private marketplace, but there ought to be choices in the private sector. That, too, is an opportunity for Democrats and Republicans in the Senate to work with the Bush administration once we get beyond the question of the children's health program.

I am convinced that we are right on the cusp of being able to move forward on health care in a bipartisan way. In the other body, the Healthy Americans Act that Senator Bennett and I have been working for in the Senate will be introduced this week on a bipartisan basis. So that would then mean the Healthy Americans Act would be the first bipartisan, bicameral piece of legislation to fix American health care in more than 13 years.

Colleagues are going home every time there is a recess and talking with folks at home about health care. People are saying we know the system is broken and it is not enough to try to just take one small part. We really need to step back and make changes, for example, in the employer-based system which is hurting the competitiveness of so many of our companies. We need to have some health care rather than sick care because the system is biased against prevention. We clearly need to help those who are falling between the cracks.

Above all, we have to contain the costs. The costs are rising, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers, at far in excess of inflation, estimated to be about 12 percent this year. There is no way that is sustainable. It is not sustainable when we look at today's population trends and costs and the disadvantages our employers face.

I was very pleased last week that not only was the Senate Finance Committee able to pass the CHIP legislation on a 17-to-4 basis through the hard work of our bipartisan leadership, but I was impressed because so many Senators on both sides of the aisle said they want to go further and to fix a broken health care system. To do that, we are going to have to work in a bipartisan way. We are interested in working with the Bush administration on that issue.

I and others have said we can have differences of opinion with respect to how we straighten out this mess of a Tax Code as it relates to health care, but by and large, the administration is onto the key issue. To do this, we are going to have to recognize, first, that America cannot afford to wait any longer to fix health care. It is not enough to say let's just deal with it after the next election. That is not enough for people who are hurting in Virginia and Oregon and Wyoming. They want to see action in this session. That is what they give us an election certificate to do, to act on big issues and not just put them off for another 2 or 3 years.

So let us work together, Democrats and Republicans, in this body with the administration to pass the children's health program and then to continue that spirit of bipartisanship and fix American health care in this Congress.

I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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