SCHIP
Floor Speech
SCHIP -- (House of Representatives - October 30, 2007)
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Mrs. BLACKBURN. I thank the gentleman from Arizona for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, I am so pleased to be able to stand here and talk for a few moments about the SCHIP proposals, or I should say the health care proposal, the expansion of health care that has been brought under the name of SCHIP. It is, indeed, unfortunate that a fine program that is there to help underprivileged children has been hijacked, if you will. And on its back, on the backs of our Nation's children, on the backs of the children of the working poor has been placed this expansion of health care. It truly shows a level of disrespect toward the children of this country.
I appreciate the leadership that the gentleman from Arizona shows, not only on this issue, but the leadership he brings to our Republican Study Committee. And those of us who are speaking on the issue tonight are members of the Republican Study Committee.
Mr. Speaker, on the topic of this SCHIP, you know, one of the things that the American people said was, we want to change the way things are being done in Washington. We want smaller government, we want government to spend less money. So, we saw some changes take place last November. And the new majority went into control in January and they've authorized nearly $1 trillion in new spending since the time that they took over. And, of course, we are hearing that there are tax increases. One of the chairmen of Ways and Means calls it the ``mother of all tax increases.'' I take a little bit of offense to that, being female. And also, when you talk about the mother of something, you worry about what the offspring are going to look like, Mr. Speaker. And so we are worried about what that tax bill will look like.
But on SCHIP, as I said, unfortunately for America's children, the liberal leadership of this House decided that they were going to put on their back the burden of carrying this enormous expansion of health care and changing a block grant program into an entitlement. That's not the kind of change the American people voted for. Just like the American people didn't vote to have the single largest tax increase in history take place.
Now, one of the interesting things about all of this is the SCHIP proposals that have come out include allowing illegal immigrants to get health care. And I know we hear from the majority, oh, that's not going to happen. We have eligibility requirements. But, Mr. Speaker, I would direct my colleagues to either section 211 or section 605 of the bill where it plainly states, and you can read it for yourself, anyone watching could read that for themselves. They can look up H.R. 3963 or H.R. 976 and see what is contained in that bill.
We know that this would result in $3.7 billion in new spending over a 10-year period of time if the new liberal majority had its way. You can go into the allocation section, section 102 of the bill, and you can look at what is going to take place when you get mid-year 2012. Do you know what happens, Mr. Speaker? All of a sudden, no money. So what are you going to do, throw 80 percent of the people off the bill? We all know that is not going to happen.
But, Mr. Speaker, my question is why would anybody support a bill, support a program, that they are setting up to fail. Why would they have that level of disrespect for this program, that they would pass legislation that would plan for it to fail. Then, as my colleague has said, we have the problems with spending more, insuring less children, and not making available to the children truly that are eligible for the program the opportunity to have that access to affordable health care.
We could go on and on with the problems with this bill. I just find it so unfortunate that in this day and in this age that we would have the new majority and the new leadership take a block grant program that is working well, that the States like and change it to an entitlement program that is put on auto pilot when we know some of the greatest pressures we have on our budgeting process are on our entitlement spending.
I thank the gentleman from Arizona for yielding. I appreciate his leadership on the health care issues. I appreciate his concern for how our constituents continue to access health care in this country.
Mr. SHADEGG. Reclaiming my time, I would like to just bring out a couple of the points that the gentlewoman from Tennessee mentioned and drive them home a little bit. I think the key one you mentioned was coverage of illegal aliens. As I understand it, the way the bill is written, it, in fact, appears to prohibit illegal aliens from being covered under the bill, but the authors of the bill have conscientiously, intentionally chosen vague language that would require virtually no proof of citizenship. Is that not correct? Would you explain that?
Mrs. BLACKBURN. Yes. If the gentleman will yield, and indeed that is correct. What you see is a play on words and how unfortunate that we have this disingenuous approach to this issue, have a play on words with the eligibility requirements and allowing, putting something in words and then allowing a loophole. As I said, the two sections, sections 211 and 605, with that we can look at the income disregards.
Now, Mr. Speaker, how many people have ever said let's have the income disregards when they are trying to decide who goes on to a program? Well, I had one of my constituents in my district come up, and they said, Tell me what is an income disregard? I said, Do you know what, an income disregard is when you do not consider the income. And they said, How can that be for the sake of considering SCHIP which is to be for children of the working poor? And I said, Because you don't want the income to matter. And if you don't want the income to matter and you want to make it available to what the IRS calls ``high-income earners,'' you establish that doubletalk with income disregards.
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