Chip Veto

Floor Speech

CHIP VETO -- (Senate - October 03, 2007)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, it is a strange thing when the President of the United States uses his veto pen. He does it so rarely. He has only used it on two issues. Once, when we tried to change the policy on the war in Iraq and tried to bring our troops home in a responsible manner, the President vetoed it. The second was on stem cell research. When we tried to open up this opportunity for medical research to save lives and spare suffering for American families, the President vetoed it--not once but twice. Today, the President used his veto pen for the fourth time. Unlike other vetoes, there were no television cameras, no reporters, no announcements made. Quietly, in his office, the President signed the veto of the children's health insurance measure.

This children's health insurance measure is a program that has been in business for 10 years. It is a successful program, and it has strong bipartisan support in Congress. We started this program because 15 million kids in America did not have health insurance. They were not the poorest kids. The poorest kids have coverage under Medicaid. They were not the fortunate children, those who were lucky enough to have health insurance through their parents. They were the ones caught in the middle, the kids of working parents who make such a low wage and have so few benefits they cannot provide health insurance for their kids.

So when President Bush vetoed this bill, why did he veto it? In a short, one-sentence statement he said: It was a middle-class entitlement.

I would say to the President: Isn't it about time someone stood up for the middle class in this country? To argue that a couple making $60,000 a year, without health insurance where they go to work, can spend $800 or $900 a month on health insurance and not feel that pain in their budget tells me the President or his advisers are out of touch with America.

When I go home to Illinois, and our colleagues go home to their States, the first thing you hear about is health insurance. You know what it is--people say: We don't have it where we work, and we cannot afford to buy it. We have health insurance, but it doesn't cover enough. Those are the realities of family life in America, and the President's veto today tells me he is out of touch with the real issues challenging middle-class working families in America.

Fortunately, we have put together a bipartisan bill. With the leadership of Senator CHUCK GRASSLEY of Iowa and ORRIN HATCH of Utah on the Republican side, MAX BAUCUS on the Democrat side, and Senator Kennedy of Massachusetts, we have a compromise bipartisan bill. It is paid for. It does not add to the deficit. A tobacco tax on cigarettes and other tobacco products will pay for health insurance, so we will move from 6.6 million kids covered to 10 million kids, over 5 years, moving toward the goal of all children in America having health insurance.

The President's veto today tells me he doesn't share our goal that every American, every family, should have health insurance that they can count on and afford. It tells me the President is not in touch with the real life of middle-class working families struggling to make ends meet, struggling to pay for college, struggling to make sure their kids have health insurance.

This is an opportunity for Congress to come together, the House and the Senate on a bipartisan basis, to say to the President: Pay close attention to America. America needs a helping hand, and working-class, middle-class families need an opportunity for health insurance that they can afford for their children.

I urge my colleagues on both sides, let's continue this effort on behalf of these families to provide affordable health insurance for kids across our Nation.

I yield the floor.

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