Small Business Tax Relief Act of 2007--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

SMALL BUSINESS TAX RELIEF ACT OF 2007--MOTION TO PROCEED -- (Senate - July 30, 2007)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I thank the chairman of the committee for his kind words, and my kind words go to reemphasize the close working relationship over a period of 6 years, now going into the seventh year, he and I have had being leaders of both the Republican and Democratic members of the Finance Committee. I thank him very much for continuing that working relationship while he was chairman a few years ago and now chairman again. That is why this committee produces legislation that eventually gets to the President. I thank the Senator very much.

The State Children's Health Insurance Program--and people watching will hear the acronym SCHIP used often--is the product of a Republican-led Congress 10 years ago, 1997, and it is sunsetting this year. That is why we are here reauthorizing and bringing more kids into the Children's Health Insurance Program. It is very much a targeted program designed to provide affordable health coverage for low-income children of working families. These families make too much to qualify for Medicaid but struggle to afford private insurance if they can even get it. It is important that we reauthorize this targeted program for children. The Finance Committee bill proposes a reasonable approach for reauthorizing SCHIP that is the product of months of bipartisan work in the committee. Chairman Baucus referred to innumerable meetings. We don't keep track of the number of meetings we have, but for every meeting Senator Baucus and I have been involved in, usually Senator Hatch and Senator Rockefeller were there as well. In the meantime, including a lot of weekends of work, the staffs of the respective Senators were involved in negotiations to get us to the floor this day.

Once again, I emphasize what I heard Senator Rockefeller say. This is a bipartisan bill voted out of committee on a vote of 17 to 4. It is a compromise. I think it is the best of what is possible. Clearly Members on the left would want to do more. My colleagues on the right want to do less and go in a different direction. Neither got what they wanted. That is pretty much the essence of a compromise, not only on SCHIP but the essence of compromise in the Senate probably over two centuries of the Senate's history.

This compromise bill maintains the focus on low-income, uninsured children and adds coverage of an additional 3.2 million low-income children.

Although I have been pleased with the bipartisan cooperation that led us to the substance of the bill, I can't say the same for the way in which the bill is now being debated on the floor. Without participation or consultation, the Democratic leadership decided to use a so-called shell revenue bill, the House small business tax relief bill, as a vehicle for debate. The Democratic leadership will correctly maintain that the reason for this unusual maneuver is a strategic decision to accelerate a couple of procedural steps. That is nothing new in the Senate. You can't find fault with trying to shorten up the process because the Senate process is already long enough. But since there is no House-passed SCHIP revenue bill in the Senate now and not likely to be one by the time the Senate debate ends this week, the Democratic leadership wants to take a shortcut now.

While I share the goals of completing Senate action on SCHIP and doing it this week, I would rather not be debating a general tax bill. This shortcut means, then, that it is legitimate for Members on both sides of the aisle to raise unrelated tax amendments. That was not the posture we took in committee. In fact, we discouraged that, and we got both Republicans and Democrats to agree to voting this bill out as a health insurance bill and not as a general tax bill except for the provisions that relate to tobacco. Of course, now we are on the floor. The stage is set very differently.

When I found out about this maneuver from the Senate Republican leader, Mr. McConnell, I urged the Democratic leadership, through Senator Baucus, to reconsider. I feared this shortcut would only widen the playing field for the first stages of the debate. Obviously, my counsel was rejected. It is disappointing but so be it.

Despite my objections to this procedural maneuver, I do support the Senate Finance Committee bill and will have more to say about it after the cloture vote this afternoon. In fact, I will have a lot to say about it. I will have a lot to say about particularly people who believe we have gone too far. I want to make very clear that it would be impossible to do what the President said he wanted to do under the amount of money he wanted to put into this program, which was $5 billion over what is presently being expended. Obviously, we are way above that at $35 billion, but we were able to do what the President wanted to do and cover some more kids. I will go into details on that later on.

I yield the floor.

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