Departments of Commerce and Justice and Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2008

Floor Speech

DEPARTMENTS OF COMMERCE AND JUSTICE, AND SCIENCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008 -- (Senate - October 04, 2007)

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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, let me begin by saying that Senator Bennett and I are thrilled to be able to welcome Senator Stabenow to this bipartisan coalition, the first bipartisan coalition in 13 years that has been designed to try to finally fix American health care and ensure that all of our citizens have good quality affordable coverage.

Four Senators joined us this week. I want to say just a little bit about each one of them. First, Senator Stabenow has put decades into this cause of improving health care. Again and again, she has spoken for seniors, for kids, for holding down costs, for prevention. We sit right next to each other in the Senate Finance Committee. And to have Senator Stabenow and Senator Grassley who have pulled out all of the stops once again to try to bring together a bipartisan coalition for our children, when I think about having Senator Stabenow and Senator Grassley join those of us in this coalition and to have their support in the Senate Finance Committee, this is an enormously important day.

As Senator Stabenow said, she represents constituents facing one of the great challenges in American health care; that is, how to make the transition for so many of our key workers and companies in basic industries. When you open a business today in the State of Michigan or Montana or Oregon or anywhere else, you spot your foreign competition about 18 percentage points the day you open your doors. Those businesses in our States see premiums go up 10, 12, 14 percent a year. And they are competing in global markets against people who have State-funded health care.

So as Senator Stabenow has said, and as we have seen just in the last couple of weeks with the new UAW agreement, there is going to be change in the air. The question is how we shape it. And to have people such as Senator Stabenow and Senator Grassley, who have been leaders for years and years in this cause, it is of enormous benefit.

Senator Bennett and I are very appreciative. We are also glad to have Senators Landrieu and Coleman join us. Senator Landrieu, of course, is wrestling with the great challenge of how to reform health care in the State of Louisiana. She has looked at a number of innovative reforms that we support.

Senator Coleman, coming from Minnesota, which has been a huge tech center that has contributed to an area that Senator Stabenow has a great interest in, which is health information technology--Senator Coleman's involvement will be very helpful as well.

It seems to me this Congress has the chance to deliver a bipartisan one-two punch for health care this year. Punch No. 1 is to try to make sure our kids are covered. Americans are watching the back and forth between the Congress and the President with respect to children's health care.

Clearly, it is a moral abomination that so many of our youngsters in America do not have health care. The American people want action. They cannot understand the bickerfest going on in Washington, DC, over this issue.

I am very hopeful that the White House will continue to work, pick up on the model set out by Senator Grassley and Senator Hatch, working with Senator Baucus and Senator Rockefeller, and we will resolve this issue quickly.

It is clear to me that covering kids is a moral issue, but it is also a financial issue. If these youngsters do not get good health care, America plays catch-up ball for years and years in the aftermath. Because they cannot get the preventative services they need, they pick up illnesses, and we are already seeing the great problems with childhood obesity and chronic illnesses setting in at a very early age.

So punch No. 1 is covering the kids, and punch No. 2, as Senator Stabenow suggested, is moving on to the broader reform issue of making sure all Americans have quality, affordable coverage. What is promising about this period that we have not had in the past is that both Republicans and Democrats have been willing to search for common ground.

In our conversations, Senator Bennett, Senator Grassley, and I, and others, have talked about the need to cover everybody. Certainly, back in 1993, that was something that was a bit of a show stopper. People said: You cannot afford it. Today, many Republicans share the view of Senator Stabenow and myself that the country cannot afford not to cover everybody because what happens today is people who are uninsured shift their bills to people who are insured, and not only do they shift the bills, they shift the most expensive bills: those hospital emergency room bills and expensive treatment bills for acute illnesses.

So I very much credit Republicans such as Senators Bennett and Grassley and Gregg and all of those who have joined us from the other side of the aisle by being willing to search for common ground around the proposition of getting everybody covered.

But Democrats have also been willing to look at new approaches to make sure we could address this issue in a bipartisan way. Senator Stabenow has said the Healthy Americans Act focuses on a private delivery system, a private delivery system which is, of course, what we enjoy. When we all go home, we go home to Montana or Michigan, and everyone says: We would like coverage like you people have back in the Congress.

Well, we have private coverage. I have a Blue Cross card in my pocket. A couple of Wyden twins in a few weeks are going to get their health care through that Blue Cross card. Nancy is at home in Oregon, and we are going to have those kids in a few weeks. They are going to be covered with private health insurance.

So we want to make sure everyone in this country has private choices like Members of Congress have. As Senator Stabenow has mentioned, Democrats who might have said, well, we ought to be looking at a Government program, are willing to reach out and work with Republicans to say: If we can cover everybody, if we can get everybody in America good, quality, affordable coverage, we are willing to make sure there are private choices, which is something our colleagues on the Republican side have talked about as well. We also have responsible ways to pay for this program that covers all Americans.

As the Lewin Group has indicated--and the report is on our Web site so folks can see it--by redirecting the money in the Tax Code, which now disproportionately favors the most affluent and rewards inefficiency, you get substantial funds in order to pay for the transition to a program that covers everybody.

Why in the world would we want to continue to say, if you are a high-flying CEO, you can go out and get a designer smile put on our face and write the cost of that off your taxes, while a woman of modest means at the neighborhood furniture store, with no employer coverage, gets virtually nothing out of the Tax Code. So Senator Stabenow and Senator Grassley and Senator Bennett and the other co-sponsors and I are going to work to redirect that Tax Code money to the people in the middle-income brackets and the lower middle-income brackets so we make better use of that money, which now is well over $200 billion.

We are also going to create, in our effort, significant administrative savings. We are going to get some, as Senators Stabenow and Whitehouse and others have talked about, through better use of health information technology. I support that. We are also going to get the savings, as the Lewin Group reported in looking at our legislation, by making sure that after you sign up once under the Healthy Americans Act, you are not going to have to go through a sign-up ever again if you wish.

From that point on, everything will work through the world of electronic transfers. And all of those folks who are low income, on Medicaid, who have to dive through all of these different boxes in order to be eligible, they will get choices like Members of Congress have. And once they sign up, they are done. No more dehumanizing, wasteful kinds of programs where you have to sign up again and again and again. And you waste money and take dollars that ought to go, as Senator Stabenow has talked about, to make sure that every poor person does not fall between the cracks of the American health care system.

Our coalition is going to be talking a fair amount about this effort on the floor of the Senate in the days ahead. We now have nine Senators as part of this effort. We are going to be talking about the ways this proposal modernizes the health system and how we make the changes from what we have today to what we will have in the future.

One other area that I would like to just touch on briefly is that I think under the Healthy Americans Act we can respond to something that Americans are talking about all over this country; that is, making the health care system portable. Right now, so many folks are pretty much locked in their jobs and just hoping that their employer is not going to find health coverage unaffordable in the days ahead.

I cannot tell you how many times people in their late fifties have come to me and said: Ron, I just hope my employer can hang on until I am 65 and I will be eligible for Medicare. We ought to make coverage portable so that if you change your job, in Michigan or Montana or anywhere else, your health care coverage goes with you.

Andy Stern, the President of the Service Employees Union, points out that the typical worker today changes jobs about eight times by the time they are 35. Let's come up with a system that ensures coverage is portable, and that even if you fall on hard times, even if you lose your job, even if your company goes down, you are in a position to take good, quality, affordable coverage--with choices like we have in Congress--with you.

I see a number of colleagues on the Senate floor. I think I would just like to wrap up by expressing my appreciation to Senator Stabenow for coming today. She has appropriately singled out Senator Grassley as well. I want to thank all of the members of our coalition. Health reform is a top issue. Everybody remembers what happened in 1993 and all of the ads and the shrill rhetoric.

It seemed every time you turned around in 1993, the decibel level went up and up. Now what we are seeing, as Senator Stabenow touched on, is a group of Senators coming together on a bipartisan basis who want to roll up their sleeves, take out a sharp pencil, and go to work. This is going to be a lot of work. If Senator Stabenow and I got 100 Members of the Senate to be cosponsors of the Healthy Americans Act today, it would still be a lot of work because we are going to have to look at a variety of issues and walk the country through all of these choices, through hearings and town meetings and forums, so we can pick up on all of the wisdom and suggestions that are out there across this land. But we are making a very important start. We have received a huge boost this week with the four additional Senators who have joined us.

To my friend from Michigan, for all her knowledge and passion and years of effort, I want her to know how much I am looking forward to teaming up with her on this issue in the Finance Committee.

I yield the floor.

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