Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act Of 2009

Floor Speech

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, our goal is to cover 4 million kids, as was spoken by the majority whip. Our goal is to do it in a way so that we actually have the resources to cover children who do not have health insurance.

There are some aspects of the underlying bill before us that would lead families to drop private health insurance, and I am cognizant of what Senator Durbin said, that if you have a bad policy, maybe you ought to be on SCHIP. I don't dispute that. But we have found that when you crowd people out of private health insurance, it is more apt to happen at the highest income levels than at the levels he was talking about, where we ought to be helping people under $42,000.

Then there is another category where they want to help people that sponsors have already assumed the responsibility of making sure their health care would be covered. In that category, we find $1.3 billion being wasted that we can take and use on children who don't have coverage.

So there is no dispute about covering 4 million people. There is a dispute about whether we ought to encourage people who are of higher income to drop out of private policies and to go on the Children's Health Insurance Program. If you talk to people in the Congressional Budget Office--the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office--you will find that is a fact. Then when we have people sign a contractual relationship with the Federal Government that they are going to provide for the needs of the people they bring into this country, we feel--at least for a period of 5 years, and that is present law--that they should maintain that contractual relationship they have with the government; otherwise, those people would not be here in the first place. So we want to cover 4 million people. We want to cover people who don't have insurance. We don't want to encourage higher income people who do have insurance to go into the State health insurance program, and we want to make sure that people maintain their contractual obligations.

We are going to offer a series of amendments today and tomorrow to bring out these differences between the two approaches, but I am not going to stand by and let anybody on the other side of the aisle say there is a dispute about covering 4 million people. I will make the point on this side of the aisle that we want to make sure we put emphasis upon covering people who don't have insurance, where they are willing to look at encouraging people to leave private insurance and go into a State-run program or encouraging people to avoid their contractual obligations with the Federal Government. Using our approach, it seems to me, the goal then can be reached so we actually reach more people who don't have insurance.

AMENDMENT NO. 41 TO AMENDMENT NO. 39

Now, the first amendment I am going to offer deals with this issue I referred to as a contractual obligation. The amendment I am offering today is very simple. It increases the coverage of low-income American children currently eligible for Medicaid but who are uninsured relative to the bill before this Senate. My amendment does this by striking the Federal dollars for coverage of legal immigrants and uses those funds to cover more low-income American kids instead.

Let me make it very clear: Whichever bill passes, we are talking about 4 million more kids, but we are still talking about a lot of kids who still aren't going to have coverage that we ought to be concerned about. So this is all about priorities. The Congressional Budget Office has reviewed my amendment and it indeed does the job of covering more low-income American kids. In fact, my amendment will get as many or more low-income American kids health coverage than the majority's bill does with the coverage of legal immigrants.

Does that sound right? It is right. It does not reduce the number of kids covered. It covers as many low-income kids, and maybe even more. The difference is that the additional low-income kids who get health coverage with my amendment are U.S. citizens. It does a better job of enrolling these low-income children than the bill before the Senate. I thought that covering children who were eligible for Medicaid but who were insured was a bipartisan goal shared by my Democratic colleagues. This amendment does exactly that.

I want to get back to the background on the amendment. In other words, there are people who are legally in the country--no dispute about that, legally in the country--who have sponsors. Without the sponsors, they would not be here. Those sponsors have signed an agreement with the Federal Government for these people to come into this country, that they will take care of them for 5 years, that they will not become a public charge. So those sponsors promised for their needs so that they would not be on programs that come out of the Federal Treasury, or else they would not be here. That is a cost of $1.3 billion when you are going to let those people not honor their contractual relationships and allow them to go on the Children's Health Insurance Program. And are they any better off? No, because the people who brought them here promised they were going to fulfill those needs and not become a public charge. But we would take that $1.3 billion and spend it on people who were not promised any coverage but qualify for the Children's Health Insurance Program and cover more kids in the process.

Madam President, I am going to send my amendment to the desk, and I ask that it be read.

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