Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2007 - Motion to Proceed
Floor Speech
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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, to quote Yogi Berra: It feels like deja vu all over again.
Here we are again debating the State children's health insurance bill, or SCHIP as we all know it by. I know colleagues are tired of this issue and frustrated by the process.
I do think, though, we have an opportunity to move forward and to bring this issue to closure. I think my colleagues should be aware of many of the improvements that have been made to the bill that has passed the Senate twice. These improvements were negotiated in a bipartisan manner with the Senate and the House in order to help persuade Members who have indicated a willingness to support the SCHIP bill.
A lot has been said about who is or is not negotiating the bill. Some have been critical because they have not been part of those discussions. To them I would say: Stop trying to kill the bill if you want to be a part of the negotiations. It makes no sense to negotiate with Members who have said they are never going to vote for the bill.
So we have been trying to figure out a way to make the bill better. Here is where we are so far:
There is more of an emphasis upon poor kids. Everybody has been saying: We ought to emphasize getting kids under 200 percent of poverty into the program. We have rewritten the bill to make that more certain. It is probably still not satisfactory to some people so far, but we will continue to work on that.
Then there is the whole New York $83,000 red herring issue, and that was in the President's veto address. But remember, it was not in our bill. But somehow somebody told the President it was in the bill, and then the President, in his veto message, referred to a reason for vetoing the bill was the $83,000 issue with New York. That has been in the law for 10 years. What we did--so the President could not say that anymore--is we made clear this was not going to happen in any State.
Then we took care of the childless adult issue. In the original bill, you remember, we phased out childless adults covered by the SCHIP legislation, and we phased them out in that bill over a 2-year period of time. We now have that down to a 1-year period of time.
Premium assistance is strengthened. A technical clarification to the citizenship documentation provision in the bill has been made. That is not all. More work yet this morning--with Senator Baucus and me and some House Members--more work is underway trying to work with those who are sincerely wanting to vote for a children's health insurance bill.
We are working on a potential amendment to this bill that will go further to address putting kids under 200 percent of poverty first, strengthening the private coverage options, and further clarifying that no illegals can get onto the program.
Now, you understand, all these things are what our intention is. But somehow, through statutory language, we have not been able to make it clear enough. So we are going back and trying to make it more clear as a practical matter, maybe doing in a real way what we intended to do that maybe when we wrote the language unintentionally was not accomplished.
Now, to the point of illegals, Members who are working to kill this bill have tried to make it seem like this bill opens the floodgates to people who are in our country illegally getting onto the health programs. To keep asserting this is as responsible as yelling ``fire'' in a crowded movie theater.
The latest assault is being leveled at the provision based on a bill authored by no other than Senator Lugar. It is a provision called ExpressLane, which allows States the option--just the option--to establish income eligibility based on eligibility for other means-tested programs.
``ExpressLane'' is the new poster child now for those who scream ``illegals'' as a way to kill the bill.
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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, the ``ExpressLane'' option in the bill clearly requires a State to confirm the citizenship of applicants. I want to make that clear. The ``ExpressLane'' makes sure you have to be a citizen of the United States.
Since some Members clearly are not reading the bill, let me read from those provisions:
Verification of citizenship or Nationality status: The State shall satisfy the requirements of section 1902(a) (460)(B) or section 2105(c)(10), as applicable for verifications of citizenship or nationality status.
I don't know how much more clear it can be, and I hope it puts to rest a very sad mischaracterization of the bill.
To sum up, the bill before us now is an improvement on the bill that passed the Senate. It strengthens the number of provisions that Republicans have been concerned about. I hope with the amendment I am working on with Chairman Baucus, Senator Hatch, Senator Rockefeller, and Members of both parties from the House of Representatives, that we will be able to increase the number of Republicans who vote to support this bill here in the Senate.
I support cloture in the vote just coming up and I ask my colleagues to do it so we can proceed on this bill. I urge my colleagues to vote the same way.
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