Small Business Tax Relief Act of 2007 --Continued
Floor Speech
SMALL BUSINESS TAX RELIEF ACT OF 2007--Continued -- (Senate - July 31, 2007)
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I speak today in support of the Children's Health Insurance Program. I want to first applaud the Finance Committee for its bipartisan 17-to-4 vote to approve this bill. I thank Senators Baucus, Rockefeller, Grassley, and Hatch, Majority Leader Reid, and also the staff of the Finance Committee for all their hard work through the very difficult negotiations that made it possible to bring this critical measure so strongly to the floor.
I also recognize Rhode Island's role in this piece of legislation, going all the way back to the distinguished Senator John Chafee, one of the early bipartisan sponsors of the bill. Now on the floor today, my senior Senator, Jack Reed, has been one of the most powerful and outstanding advocates for this program in this institution. I am proud to join him in supporting this bill and in this fight.
I am proud also to represent a State with one of the lowest rates of uninsured adults and children in the Nation. There is a reason. Rhode Island has worked over the past 15 years to achieve this success, beginning with the RIteCare program in 1993. In 2001, the creation of this Children's Health Insurance Program allowed Rhode Island to further reduce the number of uninsured children in the State. I am proud to have been part of Gov. Bruce Sundlun's team when he started the original RIteCare program in 1993.
As health care costs skyrocket, and the number of people in this country who lack health insurance approaches the staggering number of 50 million, we in Congress have an obligation to strengthen initiatives like RIteCare that make health care more accessible.
For years, the Children's Health Insurance Program has given millions of uninsured American families access to health care for their kids. And pretty much everyone has thought this was a good thing. But now, setting aside reason, and driven by ideology, President Bush has threatened to lift his veto pen for only the fourth time in his Presidency to take that security and peace of mind away from these children and from their worried moms and dads, from families similar to the ones the Senator from Ohio highlighted in his eloquent remarks a moment ago.
The President claims the $35 billion improvement over 5 years is too expensive. The President would prefer only the $5 billion he included in his budget. But that funding level would result in 1 million American children losing their health insurance. We certainly cannot look to President Bush for leadership.
How ironic, after all we have heard from this administration praising the State Children's Health Insurance Program and even taking credit for expanding coverage, for encouraging State flexibility, and for spurring innovation at the State level.
Listen to what they used to say. In the administration's plan outlining the President's second term, their fact sheet boasted:
The year before President Bush took office, some 3.3 million low-income children were enrolled in SCHIP. By 2003, that number had risen to 5.8 million, a 75 percent increase. Over that same period, by working cooperatively with State Governors, the Department of Health and Human Services increased the number of low-income adults on Medicaid by 6.8 million.
That was then, this is now.
After that, the administration went on to lament the fact that ``millions of children who are eligible for SCHIP or Medicaid coverage are not yet enrolled. Billions in Federal dollars available to the States to insure these children remain unspent because these children haven't been signed up.''
Then, at the 2004 Republican National Convention, President Bush promised this:
In a new term, we will lead an aggressive effort to enroll millions of poor children who are eligible but not signed up for the Government's health insurance programs. We will not allow a lack of attention or information to stand between these children and the health care they need.
But now the same Bush administration, the same President, is aggressively planning to deny health insurance to poor children. How does this make any sense?
The President's rationale for this new parsimony was revealed before an audience in Cleveland on July 10. Here is the President's approach to health
insurance for America. You just pointed this out, Mr. President:
I mean, people have access to health care in America; after all, you just go to an emergency room.
Well, that is a thoughtful approach. Once again, we cannot look to our President for any leadership on this issue.
The administration has also expressed its opposition to the cigarette tax that will fund the increases in children's health insurance, calling it--get this--among the most regressive revenue-raising measures one could propose. That is from a letter from Secretary Leavitt to Chairman Baucus and Senator Grassley.
The irony department is open late in the Bush administration. In evaluating their crocodile tears about regressive tax measures, consider that this Nation will spend $233 billion in 2008 on the Bush tax cuts, 30 percent of which will go to the top 1 percent of income earners. From 2008 through 2011, the period we are talking about for children's health care, those tax cuts will cost Americans, in lost revenue and interest on the debt, nearly $1 trillion, 22 percent of which will go to people who earn more than $1 million a year.
This chart illustrates just how the cost of tax cuts for the top 1 percent of Americans compares to the cost of expanding health care for children in this country. We are spending vastly more each year on tax cuts for the Nation's highest income earners than we are fighting for in children's health care.
Here it is, $2.1 billion for children's health care in 2008, $70 billion for the richest 1 percent; $5 billion in fiscal year 2009 for children's health care, $72 billion for the richest 1 percent; and in 2010, gosh, we go all the way to $7.9 billion for children's health care with only $82 billion for the richest 1 percent.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that in just this year alone--just this year alone--we are paying an extra $46 billion in interest, not paying back the debt, just in interest, on the Bush tax cuts--$46 billion just in 1 year. And the whole thing we are arguing about here is $35 billion over 5 years for children's health care. It is truly mind-boggling.
But it doesn't end there. The President has also threatened to veto the bill based on its coverage of adults. This is a policy that the administration has previously, explicitly, repeatedly approved. This is a sudden ideological U-turn of stunning and deeply hypocritical proportions.
As recently as last summer at a Finance Committee hearing on children's health insurance, then CMS Administrator Mark McClellan said the following:
Extending coverage to parents and caretaker relatives not only serves to cover additional insured individuals, but it may also increase the likelihood that they will take the steps necessary to enroll their children. Extending coverage to parents and caretakers may also increase the likelihood that their children remain enrolled in SCHIP.
That was then, this is now.
This administration has approved waivers to cover parents in New Mexico, Illinois, Oregon, New Jersey, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Fewer than 2 months ago, on May 30 of this year, Leslie Norwalk, who was then Acting Administrator of CMS, was ``pleased to inform'' Wisconsin that its extension request for what they call BadgerCare--it is equivalent to RIteCare in Rhode Island--had been approved through March 31, 2010. BadgerCare covers roughly 67,000 parents. Again, this waiver was approved by the Bush administration 8 weeks ago, and now he is threatening a veto for care that covers adults.
Here is a copy of the letter that CMS Administrator Mark McClellan sent to my home State of Rhode Island on January 13, 2006. It reads:
We are pleased to inform you that your amendment to the RIteCare section 1115 demonstration, as modified by the Special Terms and Conditions accompanying this award letter, has been approved.
It also notes:
Rhode Island's request to renew title XXI, section 1115, demonstration project, dated July 15, 2005, with additional information ..... has also been approved.
Finally, it notes:
Individuals who, at the time of initial application, are custodial parents or relative caretakers of children who are eligible under the title XIX State plan or the title XXI State plan .....
Are in the demonstration population and, of course, ``we look forward to continuing to work with you and your staff.'' Signed Mark B. McClellan, M.D., Ph.D., the Administrator of CMS. This was January of 2006. This is the Bush administration. This is them signing off on adults, custodial parents, or relative caretakers of children being in the plan.
Yet now the President is shocked--shocked--that this program may cover some adults. Who didn't send him the memo?
At the end of May, I spoke on the Senate floor about some of the major problems facing health care in this country. I talked about the lack of investment in quality improvements, the lack of a national information technology infrastructure, and a reimbursement system that pays doctors to perform procedures rather than to help patients get well. I took these issues to the Senate floor because the structure of our system is unsound, its underlying mechanism is broken, its signals are misaligned.
But there are a few shining lights in the American health care system, and the Children's Health Insurance Program is among the brightest. This program respects State flexibility, it encourages responsiveness to local needs, it fertilizes structural creativity in the health care arena, it safeguards the vulnerable, it unites families, and it invests in the future of our Nation.
The Children's Health Insurance Program means that children are more likely to receive medical care for common conditions such as asthma or ear infections. It means that children have higher school attendance rates. It means that children have higher academic achievement. It means that children have more contact with medical professionals and receive more preventive care. It means that children stay out of expensive urgent care settings, such as the emergency room.
We choose now in this bill and in this debate between providing our Nation's children with health insurance and not providing our Nation's children with health insurance. It is as simple as that. We choose now whether every individual in this Nation, regardless of age, gender, race, income, or health status deserves the stability and the safety that health insurance provides. We choose for millions of American families how much they have to worry, how much moms and dads have to worry about the health care of their children.
It is my duty as a representative of the people of Rhode Island, and it is our collective duty as representatives of a great Nation to stick up for the most vulnerable members of our society and for programs that protect those who cannot protect themselves. We must certainly not give up in the face of an administration that willingly violates its own principles in order to create an issue on which the President can deliver a veto as a desperate political stunt in the last bleak chapters of his collapsed Presidency--not at the cost of health care for children. That would be truly pathetic.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source