Providing for Consideration of H.R. 3963, Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2007
Floor Speech
PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF H.R. 3963, CHILDREN'S HEALTH INSURANCE PROGRAM REAUTHORIZATION ACT OF 2007 -- (House of Representatives - October 25, 2007)
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Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong opposition to this 40th completely closed rule to be reported by the Rules Committee in the first session of the 110th Congress, a rule that fails even to provide the minority with a substitute amendment and to the underlying legislation that the minority did not receive until 7:30 p.m. last night.
Might I also add, perhaps the American public is sold on this, but there is not one cosponsor of this bill in this body. And when the bill was presented to the Rules Committee last night, no one even took credit for it. Those that brought the bill forward said, ``Not my bill, this is the Senate bill.'' An interesting twist of fate.
Mr. Speaker, once again, for the third time in as many months, I oppose the way this legislation has been brought to the floor without a single legislative markup. I oppose the fact that despite Speaker Pelosi's promise to run the most honest, open and transparent House in history, today we are being provided with a process and a product that is none of the above.
Mr. Speaker, what we do have is a bill that neither the Republican leadership nor the Republican members on the Energy and Commerce Committee nor the administration had any opportunity to participate in crafting.
What we do have is a process that has been politicized and mischaracterized over and over again by the new Democrat majority in the hopes if the same skewed numbers and faulty facts are repeated enough times, then somehow they must be true.
Last night in the Rules Committee, we learned that when it comes to playing by their own PAYGO rules, the Democrat majority wants to have things both ways. We learned that this majority only agrees with the facts presented by the Congressional Budget Office when it suits their needs. When the CBO estimates that the bill raises taxes enough to pay for the additional $35 billion in spending that it creates, they would be for it. However, when confronted by the fact that CBO estimates that this legislation falls 26 percent short of the often-repeated claim of covering 10 million children, all of a sudden the CBO's calculator is broken and their ability to estimate anything accurately is certainly put at dispute.
The CBO also estimates, as my good friend and colleague from Texas, Dr. Michael Burgess, points out in his testimony late last night in the Rules Committee, this legislation will move 2 million children who are already being covered by private health insurance into a Washington-based system that deliberately undercompensates physicians for their services by approximately 40 percent, creating a net loss for the overall quality of patient care.
What we do have is a process that for the third consecutive time still increases government spending and dislocates the private marketplace, diverting much-needed funds away from helping our Nation's poorest children.
One new bit of information which has been represented about this legislation is that it finally prevents undocumented workers and adults from receiving those funds intended to pay for the medical cost of children of the working poor.
Since we got this 293-page bill just a few hours ago, I will have to take the Democrats at their word. But if this is the case, it means that despite all of their protests to the contrary, and consistent with now-vindicated Republican criticisms, the first two SCHIP bills passed by the House did cover undocumented workers and adults.
I would like to congratulate Speaker Pelosi and the rest of the new Democrat leadership team for finally agreeing with what Republicans have been saying all along, because we all began at the same point, and that is, you can't have a fix if there's no problem to begin with. We knew there was a problem, and they finally admitted it in this new bill.
Mr. Speaker, I'm not here to oppose the idea of SCHIP. It was a Republican-controlled Congress that created SCHIP; and I support its original, true mission statement. But H.R. 3963 is yet another thinly camouflaged attempt at slowly siphoning Americans from insurance plans in the private market into a Washington-based, government-run, single-payer health care system.
Mr. Speaker, today we have failed to address one of the most serious issues facing our Nation, how to make the health insurance system more affordable and accessible for all Americans. So, most of all, I rise to oppose the Democrat leadership playing political games with children's health in order to score electoral points.
It is a well-known and often-cited axiom that ``success has a thousand fathers, but failure is an orphan.'' That statement is no more true than in Washington, D.C. today, where everyone clamors to be associated with success but sets new land-speed records in distancing themselves from responsibility.
You see, last night in the Rules Committee, we were told time and time again that the bill being brought forward by this rule is not a House product; it is a Senate compromise that we all just have to support. The chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, my good friend Mr. Dingell, reiterated the point over and over again to the committee in his testimony.
In fact, despite asking for one, I'm still unable to find one House Democrat willing to take responsibility for all the shortcomings of this bill. And if we can't find one Member of the House, much less a thousand, willing to take credit for this bill, then I guess if we're simply judging the bill a success or a failure, it's pretty obvious which category this falls into.
Mr. Speaker, I ask all of my colleagues to oppose this completely closed rule that breaks every promise made in Speaker Pelosi's ``New Direction for America,'' and this politically motivated and ill-conceived legislation.
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Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, the Republican Party does support SCHIP. We do not support taking 2 million children that today are in private health insurance programs and moving them to the government, Washington-based/run health care program. That is where we offer our differences today on the bill.
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Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, I would remind my wonderful friends on the other side that if they are serious about this bill maybe they would start by trying to negotiate with the administration, or by reaching across just 9 feet, as the gentleman from Texas said, Mr. Barton. Why not try? It's amazing what you would maybe get, maybe some bipartisan help.
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Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, just so that the Members of Congress that are around understand this, that 10 million figure cannot be substantiated. As a matter of fact, the last bill had 7-some million. This new bill, 7.4. So for the Members that want to talk about 10 million, that's not truthful. That is just not true. CBO says it will serve 7.4 million people; about 10 percent will be adults, and 2 million children will go from private insurance into government-run Washington, D.C.-based health care.
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Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, I will be asking Members to oppose the previous question so that I may amend the rule to have Speaker Pelosi, in consultation, that's called bipartisanship, with Republican Leader Boehner immediately appoint conferees to H.R. 2642, the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs appropriations bill for 2008.
The American Legion and the VFW already have, along with multiple requests from Republican Members, including this Member of the House, urged both Speaker Pelosi and Democrat Senate Majority Leader Reid to end their PR campaign and begin conference work on the Veterans appropriations bill. Unfortunately, it appears as though all these commonsense requests have fallen on deaf ears, and our Nation's veterans are being forced to pay the price for continued Democrat partisanship and lack of leadership on this issue.
I ask all of my colleagues to support this motion to defeat the previous question so that we can put the partisanship aside and move this very important legislation forward.
I ask unanimous consent to have the text of the amendment and extraneous material appear in the Record just prior to the vote on the previous question.
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