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

Floor Speech

DEPARTMENTS OF COMMERCE, JUSTICE, SCIENCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008 -- (Senate - October 15, 2007)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

SCHIP

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, the Senate is just returning from a week home. I spent the week in my home State of Illinois traveling from far southern Illinois to Chicago and most points in between. It was a busy week. I met with a lot of people and continue to be amazed that there is such a disconnect between the real world of America and the world of Capitol Hill.

In about 48 hours, the U.S. House of Representatives is going to have a historic vote. It is about children's health insurance. Here we are, the wealthiest Nation on Earth, with the best doctors, the best hospitals, the best technology, amazing medical research. Yet when it comes down to basic health care protection, America falls short. We spent more money per capita than any nation on Earth on health care, but our outcomes do not show it. Countries that spend a lot less get a lot more. Other countries around the world have made a dedicated effort to make sure every citizen in their nation has the protection of basic health care.

But not America. Forty-seven million Americans have no health insurance. We tried to address that with the Children's Health Insurance Program 10 years ago. We looked at the 40 million uninsured Americans and said: 15 million are kids; let's start there. Let's cover these children. Let's make sure they have health insurance, not through a government plan but through private health insurance. We will take money, grants and money, send it to the States, work with the Governors, share the expense, and bring these kids under hospitalization coverage. In 10 years it worked. From 15 million uninsured, we were able to insure 6.6 million children in America; 300,000 in my home State of Illinois.

Well, with the new Congress and the expiration of this program, we took another look at it and said: Can we do better? Can we extend this beyond 6.6 million kids to more of the 15 million targeted group of children? We found a way to do it. We did it in a bipartisan way, a cooperative effort with the Republican side of the aisle, an effort that involves Senator CHUCK GRASSLEY of Iowa, Senator ORRIN HATCH of Utah, well-known, conservative Republicans who sat down with Senators MAX BAUCUS and TED KENNEDY and hammered out the details--Thirty-five billion dollars more in spending over the next 5 years.

Now, the first reaction, of course, is that most people say: Great, you dreamed up an expansion of a program that costs us $35 billion. Thanks a lot. Our kids will pay for it.

Wrong. We insisted that it be paid for. How is it paid for? By increasing the Federal tax on tobacco products. That is it. I am not going to beat around the bush and tell you there is some secret way to do it. That is how we did it. We raised the Federal tax on tobacco products, cigarettes and cigars. You can sign me up, incidentally, any day of the week. I am one Senator. I am sure there are many like me who have lost a loved one to cancer brought on by tobacco. Most people in America have been touched by tobacco disease and illness.

I believe one of the best things we can do is to keep tobacco products out of the hands of our kids. When you raise the price by raising the tax, children are discouraged from buying the product. Good. If kids do not get addicted early and stick around until they are about 18 to make the choice, they will decide it is a pretty dumb idea. But if they start smoking at 14, 15, 16, an addiction gets started. So we raised the tobacco tax to come up with the $35 billion. Over the next 5 years we will expand the health insurance coverage from 6.6 million children to 10 million children in America--still not 15 but clearly moving in the right direction.

We passed the bill over here with an amazing vote. In a time when we have these death-defying votes of 1 vote here, 1 vote here, 69 Senators voted for the bipartisan approach to expand children's health insurance.

We sent the bill over to the House. They were disappointed because they wanted more. I want more. I would like to see all 15 million kids covered, to be honest with you. I would like to see all Americans covered. I will get to that point in a moment. But they passed it, and we sent it to President Bush.

Now, President Bush is in his seventh year as President of the United States. He has used his veto pen four times--four times--once to veto a plan passed by Congress on a bipartisan basis to change the policy in Iraq and start bringing our troops home; President Bush vetoed it; next, he had two opportunities and used his pen twice to veto the expansion of medical research using stem cells. You will recall the President stopped this research at the Federal level. States are now doing it, private companies are doing it, and foreign governments are doing it. But the Bush administration will not allow our National Institutes of Health, through Federal funding, to do this. Well, the President used his veto pen twice to stop this promising research to find cures for diseases and causes of death.

His fourth use of the veto pen was to kill the Children's Health Insurance Program. What did they say about it? Why did the President veto this bipartisan bill that came out of the Senate and the House? Well, they said, first, it was socialized medicine--socialized medicine. You know that is a cliche that was probably born in the 1960s, maybe before, on the notion that the Government would provide all the health insurance for America.

Well, it did not work then. We created Medicare, and thank goodness we did, for millions of Americans who have had peace of mind at age 65 because of it. Socialized medicine. What the President failed to say was if he gets sick tomorrow, God forbid, he will go to a military hospital. The doctors will be members of the military. The nurses who answer his call will be members of the military. He will be protected by Government health services as President of the United States.

Is that socialism? I think I will leave it to the President to decide. But I think it is troublesome that we have reached a point that we dismiss a program of such value to so many children and call it socialized medicine. What was even more galling was someone in the White House along the way argued the point that this plan would cover individuals who make up to three times the poverty level in the United States.

Let me translate that into terms Americans can understand. If you make up to $60,000, you get help under this plan. And the argument the White House made was, people making $60,000 a year--or ``well off'' in their terms--do not need this help.

Really? Well, let's think about that for a second. Sixty thousand dollars a year is gross pay. Now, let's take about 40 percent of that for all of the taxes that are taken out and all of the deductions that are taken out. That leaves us somewhere in the range of $36,000 a year, about $3,000 a month in take-home pay.

Now, go out and look for health insurance for a sick child. I will tell you what you will find. You will be lucky to get by with $1,000 a month for health insurance for your family if you have a sick child. If you have a healthy family, it may still cost $600 or $800.

So out of a take-home pay of $3,000, they say you are well enough off that you do not need help to pay $1,000 a month for health insurance. Who is kidding whom? The reality is that families are crippled by these costs. Many of them cannot afford insurance, and they need the help of this program. It is a reasonable thing to do.

Those people in the White House who just want to call this socialism, or whatever the word of the day may be, or dismiss families making $60,000 as not needing a helping hand with health insurance for children, they are so out of touch they do not understand the drama that these families go through every single month for lack of health insurance.

There is a story closer to home for the Members of the Senate. It does not relate to the Children's Health Insurance Program, but I think it is a story worth telling. It is a story about a member of the Senate family, someone whom most of us have seen many times. Many may not know his name, but he is someone who has gone through a life-changing experience because of no health insurance in his family.

Forty-seven million Americans have no health insurance. We who are privileged in the Senate probably do not lie awake at night worrying about it because a bad diagnosis is not going to lead to bankruptcy for us. We are lucky. We are part of the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. We have got the best coverage in America. Eight million Federal employees, Members of Congress, we get an open enrollment period every year. You do not like your company, change it. It is like shopping for a car. There are so many choices out there. You want a big plan, you pay more. You have more money taken out of your check. You want less coverage, pay less. You have less money taken out of your check. It has been around for decades.

Members of Congress benefit from it, and we have a peace of mind that comes with it. But we do not have to look far to see families who are struggling and facing terrible decisions because of the high cost of health insurance. They are everywhere. They are in every town, every county, every State, all across our Nation, and they are right here in the family. There is a young man who works just a few feet away from where I am standing. He is an elevator operator. His name is Sergio Olaya. He has worked here off and on as an intern and has been an elevator operator since last May. He always has a big smile on his face, great young fellow, says hello, and most of us, of course, see him and greet him and head off on our business.

He is 21 years old, a bright young man, happy disposition, a great future ahead of him. But a few months ago, Sergio, who works right outside this door, had a tragedy strike his family. His mother died of an aggressive form of brain cancer. She was 61 years old, a single mom. Sergio was her only child. Doctors think she may have had the tumor for a long time, but the symptoms didn't show up until 2 months ago, and then she died. Before that, she had suffered a stroke which left her paralyzed on her right side. She was an authority on health and nutrition and worked for organizations, including the Centers for Disease Control, USAID, UNICEF, and the Organization of American States, but she had been unemployed and uninsured for 5 months when she got sick. Even COBRA, which is the way to purchase health insurance when one is not working, was too expensive for someone with a limited income such as Sergio's mother. As a result, when she died from an aggressive form of brain cancer, she left $255,000 in unpaid hospital and doctor bills--a quarter of a million dollars.

The hospital first threatened to sue her son for payment. A lawyer who is helping him pro bono negotiated the hospital charges down, first to $216,000, then to $95,000. With another $40,000 in doctors bills, Sergio, a member of the Senate staff, still owes $135,000 in medical bills for his mom. How is he dealing with this? He is selling his home in Bethesda where he and his mom have lived for the last 8 years. It is the only home they have ever owned. The proceeds will go for the payment of these medical bills.

Sergio said when his mom got sick she had been waiting to hear about a possible new job with the Federal Government, and it would have had health insurance. When the job offer finally came, his mother had just suffered a stroke and couldn't get out of bed to answer the phone. Two months and $255,000 in medical bills later, she passed away at the age of 61. In another week or month, she might have had health coverage with a new job. In another 4 years, she would have been eligible for Medicare. Instead, she had the bad luck and bad timing to fall through one of the gaping holes in America's unravelling health care safety net. Now her only child, her son, is paying the price.

I wonder how many Senators have been in the elevator with Sergio, talked to him, shared a smile with him, but had no idea of the terrible burden he and his mother were carrying as a result of the cost of health care and the cost of being uninsured in America today. How many more families will have to sell their homes? How many more bright, talented young people will have to drop out of college so their family can pay medical bills before we finally come up with a real plan to make health care more affordable for all Americans? The truth is, almost every family is at risk because of a fraying and failing health care safety net. Almost all of us could be one pink slip, one election, one bad diagnosis, or one serious accident away from a health and economic disaster for our family.

This affects Sergio, our Senate family. It affects all families. We need to
deal with it. We need to find a way or a combination of ways to give every American access to affordable health coverage. We can't help Sergio pay these bills, but we can sure look to the possibility of 3.4 million children across America and their moms and dads finally having the peace of mind of knowing that their kids are covered. It is a small step for a big nation, but isn't it the kind of step we want to take together in a bipartisan way? President Bush says no. He vetoed the bill. He sent it back to the House of Representatives, and on Wednesday they will take a vote. Fifteen Republican Congressmen who voted against the plan have to change their votes to override his veto. Overall, 62 Republican Senators and Congressmen voted for this plan, so it is bipartisan. I hope the 15 who are thinking about it now will think about the vulnerability of a lot of people such as Sergio, people we don't know who every single day have to wrestle with this terrible challenge in our great Nation.

Mr. DORGAN. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. DURBIN. I am happy to yield.

Mr. DORGAN. The Senator from Illinois has raised the issue of the override of the President's veto that will occur in the House this week. When the President vetoed the bipartisan legislation that would expand opportunities for health coverage for America's children--another 3.8 million kids who don't have health coverage now would have it under that bill--the President referred to it as some kind of socialized medicine, some sort of big-government solution. Then he talked about the prospect of families with $83,000 in income.

Isn't it the case that most States--my State included--receive a block grant and use the block grant to provide coverage by buying the coverage from BlueCross BlueShield? In other words, it is a block grant the States use to purchase coverage for children. Is that what the President was referring to as big government? If so, isn't the President misrepresenting what this bill does?

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, that is the case in almost every State. This isn't a matter of the State of Illinois health insurance plan; it is a matter of our State or the State of North Dakota taking the Federal funds and buying private health insurance, which is something these families currently cannot afford. It strikes me as reasonable for us to give them a helping hand. It is not socialism, whatever that definition may be. It is not a big-government plan.

The President argued that he thought it was unfair to the health insurance industry. I don't understand that. If these 15 million children have not had health insurance for years, that industry has had plenty of chances to sell it. The fact is, it is too expensive for these families.

Mr. DORGAN. If the Senator will yield further for a question, the President, when vetoing the legislation, referred to some families with $83,000 who will be getting this largess so that their children can get subsidized health insurance coverage. My State, as an example, covers children at 140 percent of poverty, most States at around 200 percent of poverty, which I believe is around $44,000 gross income, and the $83,000 to which the President referred does not exist. It was a request from the State of New York which was not granted. In any event, all those requests that have been granted for above the 200 percent have been approved willingly and in a way that allowed this administration to boast that they had approved them. Now the President objects to the very thing they had approved.

The other point is, didn't this President actually campaign in the year 2004 saying he supports expansion of this very program? I ask the question about the $83,000. That clearly must be a misrepresentation. Is that the judgment of the Senator from Illinois as well?

Mr. DURBIN. The State of New York said: We want to cover families up to $83,000; it is more expensive to live in New York than it might be in some other State. But ultimately it was a decision to be made by the President. The President had to give them permission, and he denied it. Under this bill, the President still has that authority to deny States permission to go beyond $62,000 a year. So he still has that authority. Arguing $83,000 makes no sense. He turned it down. We didn't change that in this bill. The President still has the authority to stop any program that would expand in that direction.

In my State and others, I concede, we have been trying to find every way we can to insure people. Our Governor, the general assembly, and other people have tried to find ways to work with the Federal Government to cover people who don't have health insurance.

As a reminder--I know the Senator from North Dakota is well aware--the poorest children in America are covered by Medicaid. The poorest children have health insurance. The children who are fortunate enough to have parents with health insurance aren't the ones we are talking about. We are talking about the group of children who belong to families who go to work every single day and have no health insurance. That is a lot of Americans and a lot of kids. I have had several press conferences during the break at hospitals with doctors and nurses. They tell the story of these children. These children don't have a regular physician, regular checkups, a regular place to go. So an earache turns into a substantial infection. Asthma at an early stage becomes a serious challenge. Diabetes goes undetected because these kids are not brought into our health care system until they have reached such a grievous situation that they end up in emergency rooms, and we all pay for it.

This really is an ounce of prevention that we would have health insurance for more of these kids to be covered, the children of working families who go to work every single day and don't have health insurance. The President vetoed the bill.

Mr. DORGAN. If the Senator will yield for one additional question, the Senator from Illinois is on the Appropriations Committee with me. My understanding is the President is going to be sending down a second supplemental request within days. I understand the White House might not want to send it down before the override issue on the SCHIP program. But the SCHIP program would spend $7 billion a year for 5 years. That is $35 billion. All of it is paid for. None of it is contributing one penny to the debt. The result of that spending? The 3.8 million children who at this point have no health insurance coverage would now be fully covered with health insurance. The President seemed to, when he vetoed the legislation, be saying: I am going to be the guardian of the Federal Treasury and the taxpayers' checkbook. This is big-government bureaucracy--socialized medicine, in fact.

This is fully paid for, $7 billion a year. Isn't it the case that the President has requested two things of us? One is already here, and the other will come next week. One is $145 billion in emergency funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not a penny of it paid for all this year, and on top of that, we believe another roughly $44 billion supplemental. So that will be a $189 billion emergency supplemental this year. In other words, $7 billion for kids is too much; $189 billion, which will bring us somewhere close to two-thirds of a trillion dollars, the President has requested we spend, not a penny of it paid for. The implication of all that is, let's send soldiers to fight. When they come back, they can pay for the debt we have incurred because we don't intend to pay for any of it.

Isn't it the case that the very same President who says $7 billion a year which is fully paid for and which will result in children's health insurance for 3.8 million children is the President who is sending us a $189 billion additional request for 1 year, none of it paid for?

Mr. DURBIN. The math is right. This President has funded this war in Iraq and Afghanistan borrowing money from future generations. He has not paid for a single day of this war by imposing a tax or cutting spending in some other area. He is the first President in the history of the United States, in the entire history of our Nation, to cut taxes in the midst of war.

I am sure the Senator from North Dakota joined a lot of us in watching the Ken Burns documentary ``The War.'' It has been on for the last couple weeks on public television. One of our great friends and heroes in the Senate, Danny Inouye of Hawaii, was featured in it, as he should have been. A Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, he told the story of his life that led to his service to our country. You couldn't help but feel that America was at war. It wasn't just our soldiers and sailors and marines and airmen; America was at war. We were all involved.

This war which has claimed 3,821 American lives, this war which has injured more than 30,000 of our fighting men and women, this war which has left 10,000 grievously injured with amputations and serious burns, this war has been waged in a much different way.

When America was going to wage this war on terrorism, the President said: We are going to invade Iraq. And America, you can help: go shopping.

That isn't what they said in World War II. They said: We can all pitch in together and get behind this effort.

Then he said: We have to sacrifice. We have to give tax cuts to people at the wealthiest levels.

So we end up with a debt, a debt that continues to grow because the President does not pay for a penny of this war. The Senator from North Dakota is right. It will be close to $750 billion by the end of next year. We are spending $12 to $15 billion a month on this war in Iraq, none of it is paid for, none of it is generated by taxes, and none of it is paid for by compensating cuts in other spending. It is added to our debt.

The President who proclaims himself a fiscal conservative when it comes to vetoing a children's health insurance program within the next several days will send us a massive spending bill of $190 or $200 billion for the next year of this war. The $7 billion for health insurance for children is paid for; the President says it is wasted Federal funds. But $200 billion for a war with no end in sight he considers to be appropriate. I don't understand this. I understand we have to stand behind our men and women in uniform. But a strong America begins at home. It begins with our families and our communities and our parishes and church groups and neighborhoods. It begins with the peace of mind of knowing that you have health insurance.

For literally 3.8 million children, the President's veto means no help to buy private health insurance so these families have a chance to have that peace of mind.

I sincerely hope those who feel this is an important program will contact their Members of Congress--both House and Senate--in the next 48 hours. This is a critical moment in our history. We have to decide once and for all whether we are going to start taking important steps forward to bring the peace of mind of health insurance to every family in America. That is a worthy American goal. President Bush's veto should not stand in its way. I certainly hope the House of Representatives, when it votes on Wednesday, will override this Presidential veto.

I yield the floor.

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