Press Conference with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV); Senator Max Baucus (D-MT); Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA); and Senators
Statement
Press Conference with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV); Senator Max Baucus (D-MT); Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA); Senator John Rockefeller IV (D-WV); Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT)
Subject: Reaction to SCHIP Veto
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SEN. REID: We're not here today to castigate the president. We're here to talk about the need for a number of new House votes -- members of the House to vote for this veto override. The president vetoed the bill today; that's over and done with, so now it's up to Congress to speak.
Virtually every governor supports this legislation enthusiastically; 69 senators, 265 members of the House, and, as I understand, we need about 15 courageous Republicans, in addition to those that voted for it previously, to vote with us. It's really the right thing to do. This legislation is so critically important.
And I have here with me individuals who have spent hours and hours trying to work this out so that we had a bill to bring to the Senate that was bipartisan; we did that. It was very, very hard to do. We worked with the House, and they had to step back a long, long ways from what passed the House to where we are today.
For people who complain about this legislation, all they need to do look at it, read it, understand it. It's legislation that is directed toward making the program better. Do I wish we had more money in it? Of course I do. Do I wish there were more people covered in it? Of course I do. But I am very, very satisfied with the compromise that we've been able to do.
I also want to -- here, because I haven't had an opportunity to do it publicly -- is to express my appreciation to the chairman and the ranking member of the Finance Committee. They worked so very, very hard. Subcommittee chairs -- Chair Rockefeller and Ranking Member Hatch worked so hard on this. And I want to give a special pat on the back to Senator Grassley.
Senator Baucus knows I said in a meeting of all -- the chairmen's meeting we had today talking about SCHIP, I said -- and without qualification -- no one has been more helpful in this legislation, no one than Charles Grassley. He has just been outstanding, and I appreciate all that he's done. I'm also grateful not only for his work on this issue, but all he does to help me and the Democratic Congress and the country.
Max Baucus. Speaker Pelosi is on her way, and she will be here when she gets here. And so -- Senator Hatch isn't here either; he's on his way.
SEN. BAUCUS: Thank you, Leader.
The lines are seldom so clear on an issue. This is clearly one. The president is wrong, the Congress is right. It's that clear, that simple. The president is wrong to veto health coverage for 10 million low-income American children who otherwise would be uninsured, and the Congress is right to fight like hell to override this veto. That's just what we will do. So I say the simple truth to my colleagues in the House and the Senate, the children's health insurance program works to get health care to low-income uninsured American children who would otherwise go without. Thousands of children in my home state of Montana are healthy today because of children's health insurance program. Millions more kids across America are healthy today because of CHIP.
So any member of Congress that believes that kids ought to be able to see doctors when they're sick, if any member of Congress believes that kids ought to get the check-ups they need to stay well in the first place, then those members have every reason to vote to override the president's callous CHIP veto. He had no reason, no reason to oppose it. The Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act does exactly what the president said it should do: it targets coverage towards lowest-income children, not children at higher incomes. It keeps the program for children. We moved childless adults and parents out. And there are strong, strong mechanisms to make sure that the children's health insurance program reaches uninsured kids, not kids who already have coverage.
I, frankly, can't tell you why the president vetoed this bill. He didn't do it on factual grounds. I don't know if he's just punishing kids, or if he's just pushing an ideological agenda on health care reform, or if just never got the real facts about what our bill does. God knows we tried to tell him. Whatever the reason for this inexplicable veto, it's the wrong choice for America's children.
During the Congress, we are going to right the wrong the president has done to America's kids today. We're going to get the job accomplished. We're going to do all we can to persuade the public and members of the House and Senate they've got to vote to override this veto. Why? Simply, it's the right thing to do.
SEN. GRASSLEY: Thank you, Senator Reid, for your kind remarks for Senator Baucus and me. We appreciate it very much.
I'm going to be making some of those phone calls to the House of Representatives to help find votes to override.
The rest of the stuff I'm going to say today -- you didn't come here to expect to hear anything new out of me. I've spoken more hours on this on the floor and there's not a whole lot to say, but you can't say it too often in this instance. It's disappointing to me that the president vetoed this bipartisan bill. Without this legislation, reform and renew of the Children's Health Insurance Program, without that, we're stuck with the status quo. Thanks to waivers granted by this administration, that's a program that's not focused on kids.
Congress bridged a divide and put together legislation that meets a challenge set by -- who? The president himself. The president so often has said about getting health insurance to more kids through the SCHIP program.
The veto puts us, then, in a worse position. Now, with all the faults that have been found about this bill, said about this -- not about the bill, about the present program of the last 10 years -- we're going to have adults remaining on the program. There's also no disincentive for states to cover parents. States aren't encouraged to cover low-income kids before high-income kids under the present legislation or the status quo. The funding formula is still broken, and states like mine of Iowa will be challenged by shortfalls. And in the process, nothing has been done to cover kids that are out there without health insurance.
The president's $5 billion plan doesn't work. It doesn't accomplish what he says he wants to do. It won't even cover kids on the program today, much less reach out to cover more kids. Since January, the administration has been shopping more ambitious proposals for the uninsured, but no one was buying; at least they weren't buying on the vehicle that we call SCHIP.
Along the way in trying to work with the White House, I met repeatedly with White House officials, starting early this year. My staff did even more of that. Every effort was made to bring the administration into the process. But it decided to veto the bill, I think before it was even written. The administration's position, in my way -- from their position, was "either my way or the highway." Well, that's not how the legislative process works. Now we've got to do what we can to try to override.
SEN. ROCKEFELLER: Two matters at hand. One obviously is to get the votes in the House. The Senate was 69, over what we need to override a veto. The House situation has improved substantially in the last several days, and so there's great -- there's great hope that we can override there and just have it done with.
In the event that we don't do that, then one is left to search one's soul, or some part of oneself, to figure out why he would do something like this. Why would a president of the United States faced with over 40 million uninsured people take a chance to take the most vulnerable -- about 23 or 24 percent of all uninsured people in the United States of America -- and say no to them? Why would he say that they couldn't have early childhood screenings, so that in case they were headed towards autism or had other kinds of problems, that it wouldn't be discovered early through an early screening program? Immunization. Teeth. Eyes. We've discussed it before. Mental heath.
Mental health is involved with children. Children grow up in families that are tremendously dysfunctional. When it happens with veterans that come back from the Near East, we're all over it, with billions of dollars, as we should be. Why are children so different? They don't start wars. They don't get the nation in trouble. They're just kids. But they need to have health. And they need to have education. Before everything, they need to have health. Under our bill, passed by both houses, potentially with an override of the veto coming, they would have that. Without that, they will not.
Sure, we'll keep coming back and we'll coming back and we'll keep coming back until we get it. It is an outrageous -- an outrageous -- act on the part of the president. I never really believed, although part of me said it was inevitable, that it would happen, that he would actually veto it. But he has. I search for his motivation, but that's not constructive. All it does is make me angry, discouraged. I think, you know, it's going to have a wide effect around the country, not politically so much as just a sense of, "What on Earth are they doing there?"
And so there are no explanations, but there's a lot of trauma. And there are a lot of kids today and a lot of parents who are sweating bullets.
SEN. REID: Senator Hatch, we've already said nice things about you, so it's your turn.
SEN. HATCH: (Chuckles.) Well, that's a rare occasion, is all I can say. But let me just say this.
I understand the president. I know that deep down, he knows this is a good program. He has always endorsed it. His concern is that we've spent too much money, but this started out as $100 billion, and thanks to good work of behalf of both Democrats and Republicans, we got it down to where we feel it will work at the $35 billion level.
And frankly, I don't understand how we can say it's a great program without covering the kids that really deserve to be covered, and for those who argue that it's out of control, 92 percent -- no less than 91 percent, but really 92 percent of all the kids who will be covered by this bill will be in families under 200 percent of the poverty level. Now is there crowd-out? Of course there is. There's no way you can avoid it when you do a program like this, but we have done a lot in this bill to solve the crowd-out problem.
If anybody -- are families of four getting $83,000 a year going to get benefits out of this? Well, not unless the administration agrees to it, and the applications were made and they refused to grant the waiver. This bill does not really call for that high level of expenditure. But even if it did, it would only pay for a small percentage of the 8 percent above the 92 percent, so that's not a good argument. If you add -- if you look at what we rely on around here, it's the Congressional Budget Office, and the Congressional Budget Office said this is how much money we would need to take care of the kids who are eligible for this program, 92 percent of whom are under 200 percent of poverty.
Now, to call this a march towards one-size-fits-all, government- mandated health care is just political, in my opinion, because this is a block grant to the states with the states having tremendous power over this bill -- not total power, but power. It is not an entitlement, which some -- even those who are the most partisan had to drop that accusation. What about the rule? The rule that CMS came up with, yes, we modified it to make it work, but frankly, we have much of that rule in effect. In other words, we've made the original CHIP bill much better, and I happen to know the difference between the two, as do these other colleagues here. We made it better; we made it more in line with what this administration really wanted.
The only apparent conflict is over the $35 billion on top of the $25 billion.
But if you look at that, and if we're sincere, and we really want to take care of children, then, my gosh, CBO says it's going to take that much money to take care of the kids who are eligible for this program.
So if we're truly compassionate, it seems to me, we'd want to endorse this program.
And I could go on and on, but let me just say this. This is a classic compromise between the House and the Senate, between Democrats and Republicans, I think all of whom have acted in good faith, have tried to do the best they could in the interest of these children who are -- who have been left out of the programs in the past. And I really have difficult times saying -- having seen this veto.
Now, I believe that we can get the people in the House who, once they understand all these things, will cross over and vote to override the veto. And I think we need to do that. And I don't think the president is somebody who doesn't want these kids to be covered. I think he's been given some pretty bad advice by some who, though sincere, are sincerely wrong.
Thank you very much.
SEN. REID: The speaker is due here, but she's not here. So we'll take some questions.
Q Senator, is it fair to say that according to the money that's in the continuing resolution, that there are people who qualify for the program under existing rules who will remain uninsured as long as this impasse lasts?
SEN. REID: That's right.
Q Does that bother you?
SEN. REID: It's been -- it's estimated that there will be about 6 million kids who will not be able to be insured as a result of the president's veto. There are about a million and a half who will drop off, plus the 4.4 million that we would add as a result of the legislation we passed.
Q Do you take any responsibility, Mr. Leader, for those who would not -- who won't be able to be insured as long as the impasse lasts?
SEN. REID: Do I take responsibility? Not unless it's some upside-down math I don't understand. Huh.
Q Senator, I'm wondering -- you had said that over the past few days the situation has improved as far as getting an override on the veto.
SEN. REID: Yes.
Q What has changed per se, and how many --
SEN. REID: Well, let's take, for example, the state of Maryland. The state of Maryland has two Republican House members. One voted for the bill. One voted against the bill. Now, this does not involve a congressional district in Maryland; it involves the whole state of Maryland. The whole state of Maryland will suffer if this legislation is not passed.
And you could take that clear across the country.
And I am gratified to hear Senator Baucus -- I'm sorry -- Senator Grassley say that he is going to call individual members of the House who are Republicans. That sounds just like something he would do. I'm going to say this about Senator Grassley. I've served with him here in the Congress now for 25 years. He just doesn't like to lose when he thinks he's right. And he's proven that with this legislation, and I admire what he's done. I have a couple of friends I've been asked who are Republicans in the House, and I will do that. Senator Hatch will do that.
This is something that's overwhelmingly supported by the American people. And remember the way the Founding Fathers set up this country: they set it up so that one body of the legislature, one body of the legislature -- ear was in tune with the people. Every two years they have to run for reelection. And we were the body that was set up to be a little slower and more deliberate, and we have fulfilled that for sure, the slowness part of it. (Laughter.)
But those members who are Democrats and Republicans in the House who didn't vote for this the first go-round better take another look at this, because I think this could be devastating for them in their districts -- not only what it does in their individual congressional districts, but what it does to the state in which they serve.
Q Senator Grassley, you said you'd be calling House members. What kind of influence can you exert on these members when you'd be targeting members that have business before the Finance Committee?
SEN. GRASSLEY: I don't pretend to exert influence. I intend to use the rationale particularly to overcome some of the either totally wrong or intellectually dishonest arguments that were used against it, and I will give you a couple.
One, this $82,000 keeps coming up. This bill prevents that from happening, or if it was going to happen, the administration could do that right now under existing law.
Another one, there was something that I -- I'm not sure that I understand exactly what the argument was, but about illegal aliens getting some help. This is just gone the other direction to protect -- to make sure things like that don't happen and things of that nature.
So it's just a case of answering questions and trying to bring out what the facts are.
Most importantly I think we ought to understand what the president says he wants to do, what $5 million will do and what it won't do. And it's not going to cover all the kids that are now covered. The president said he wanted to bring more kids under. Do the Republicans in the House want to do that? I never had a single Republican Senator tell me that this bill should not -- that this program should not be continued.
Now, we had a lot of argument about whether or not private health insurance ought to be involved. We had a lot of arguments about including adults or not in the program as it is now, whether waivers are right or wrong. All of the excuses that Republicans in the Senate brought up to me about this bill, that was with the present program, we have corrected, in addition to the fact that if you want the program to go and you want to do what the president wants to do, cover more kids, you can't do it for $5 million. I don't know whether Republicans in the House understood that, and that's what I'm going to try to explain to them.
SEN. REID: Thank you all very much.
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