Transportation, Housing And Urban Development, And Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010--Conference Report

Floor Speech

TRANSPORTATION, HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2010--CONFERENCE REPORT -- (Senate - December 10, 2009)

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Mr. BENNETT. Last night, I held a telephone townhall meeting. As usual, because we get over 10,000 people on the telephone townhall talking to us, I said: This is a meeting that is open to any subject you can talk about.

Overwhelmingly, they all wanted to talk about health care. I had one call where the fellow said he liked this health care bill. He was a small businessman. He said: This will help me as a small businessman, and why are you opposed to it?

I said to him: I have been a small businessman, and I would like to point out to you that NFIB, the organization that helps small business, is opposed to it. And I went through some of the reasons. Then I told him of other small- or medium-size businessmen in Utah who have said to me: If this bill passes, we are out of here. We could do our manufacturing overseas. We could send our product to South America and have it made there. We have stayed in Utah more out of patriotism than money. But if this bill passes, the impact on us in small business will be sufficiently great that we will leave Utah. We will leave America. We will take all of these jobs and go overseas.

That was that one discussion with the one caller. Every other caller talked about the health care bill and said: Don't pass it. Every other caller was opposed. There was only the one who made comments in favor of it, comments on which I think I was able to dissuade him.

Every other one came up: Do you want to talk about Afghanistan?

No, we want to talk about health care. We are opposed to this bill.

Do you want to talk about some other aspects of what is going on in Washington?

No, we want to talk about health care, and we are opposed to this bill.

Over and over, the only other subject that came up that I can recall with any regularity--there were several calls that talked about cap and trade and expressed their opposition to that. But, overwhelmingly, the entire hour was people who were saying: We are opposed to this bill.

I want to share with the Members some aspects of the reaction of Utahns to the campaigns that have been mounted by various groups in favor of this bill. Let's go to the campaign that has been mounted by the AARP. AARP is one of the strongest lobbying organizations in the country. Indeed, there are those who say it is the most powerful lobbying organization. AARP, in an effort to make sure this bill gets passed, has prepared preprinted petitions and sent them out to their members. Here is a copy of one. It is addressed directly to me and was sent to people in the State of Utah: ``Petition to Senator Robert F. Bennett. Dear Senator Robert F. Bennett, As one of your constituents ..... '' so on and so forth.

Then all the AARP member has to do is sign it and send it to me. This one was sent to me. But as we can see, he didn't just sign it, instead he wrote on it. This is what it says in handwriting:

Absolutely not! Please vote against current legislation being proposed by the current administration and endorsed by the AARP.

The ``not'' is underlined. He signed his name. I have taken it off this facsimile to protect the man's privacy, but he made it clear that he was not in favor of what the AARP was saying and doing in this situation. We have others who have said the same kind of thing.

Here is a letter I will quote from:

Senator Bennett, please do not vote to pass the health care bill that contains a public option. The present medical is broken and surely needs fixing. However, it should be done in ways that do not bankrupt the country, close hospitals and doctors offices.

Who is saying this? He says:

I will probably withdraw from AARP since they support the present health care proposals. Several of my doctor friends have withdrawn from the AMA due to its support of these proposals.

Then he signed his name, and his initials make it clear he, too, is a physician, a member of AARP who clearly wants to drop out of AARP, and a member of AMA who supports those who drop out of the AMA.

Let me quote from another physician who wrote a lengthier letter, more analytical. I will quote from parts of the letter. He starts out:

As a practicing Utah physician, I see and treat patients every day. I try to accurately diagnose what their troubles are and offer an incremental plan for their recovery. I am thorough, methodical and exacting in my plan, purposely first doing no harm, as my Hippocratic oath reads, not making the situation worse, not causing more pain or suffering. The Senate bill before you will make America more ill, with increased pain and suffering. I plead with you to first do no harm. Please do not make the situation worse as with the current bill. It is beyond repair. Please recognize that the Senate plan will add to America's ills.

Then he goes on later in the letter to make this comment:

Patients ask me why the AMA appears to support this bill. They sense that the AMA is not looking out for patients and doctors. I agree that the AMA is misdirected and explained that the AMA represents fewer than one in five U.S. doctors and has compromised its mission.

I find that interesting. I didn't realize that the AMA membership had dropped so low. When I first became interested in politics, the AMA represented virtually every doctor in the country. Not anymore.

I tell my patients about the multitude of other medical organizations of which I am a member, state medical organizations, speciality groups, and the Coalition to Protect Patients Rights, representing thousands of doctors who actively oppose the Senate bill in its entirety and are fighting for patients and the right fixes for affordable, quality care.

Well, as I found out in my telephone town meeting, which covered the entire State--and with no filtering on the part of my staff as to who could get in and who could not--this is, indeed, very clearly the majority opinion for members of the State, seniors who presumably belong to AARP, and physicians who either used to belong to the AMA or understand the AMA.

Here is an e-mail from a doctor. I cannot pronounce the specialty he is in. He says:

As a constituent and practicing--and then he goes on to say whatever kind of ``ologist'' he is--I strongly urge you to oppose the passage of the current Senate healthcare reform legislation. ..... Although our nation would benefit from targeted healthcare reform, the proposed legislation is not the answer and will harm, not help, healthcare delivery in our nation. .....

As surgeons, we take pride in our work and strive to provide the best patient care possible. We will support reform efforts that truly preserve access to high qualify specialty care without jeopardizing the physician-patient relationship. As such, I oppose the ``Patient Protection and Affordable Healthcare Act'' as it has the potential to seriously compromise the delivery of healthcare in the United States by creating additional pressures on an already overburdened healthcare system.

Well, I have a number more. I will not go into all of them; I will just pick a few from the stack I brought with me.

Here is one:

I am a Surgeon who has been practicing for about 30 years. I am against the total overhaul of the health care system. All entitlement programs are not cost effective and all are in danger of bankrupting the U.S.

Here is one, who is a retiree, who says:

Please vote against these healthcare ``reforms'' that will limit options, cost us all more and reduce our freedoms. We need real change: portability, tort reform, and less government control.

Back to the doctors. He says:

Dear Mr. Bennett,

I am a pediatrician in Utah and met you at the hospital in Orem. Thank you for your opposition to the current process happening in Washington. We do not need to rush through and push the American people into government run health care and more red tape. Medicaid is already my biggest head ache in my practice.

And so on and so forth, as I say.

I want to make this other point with respect to all of these people who are so concerned that we will have an immediate bad impact if this bill passes. They do not realize--and I did my best to point this out to those who were on the telephone townhall meeting last night--that this bill will not fully take effect--indeed, most of the aspects of this bill will not take effect--until January of 2014. That is correct, January of 2014--4 years away.

Here we are meeting on weekends, coming in here on Sunday, driving to get this done by Christmas because it is so pressing that we have to do it, and, by the way, we are not going to start, really, any of these reforms for 4 years. So these people who are writing me, these doctors who are complaining about AMA's endorsement, these people who are complaining about AARP not representing them, are worried about an immediate impact.

Let me tell you what the immediate impact of this bill will be. The immediate impact of the bill will be financial. The taxes will take place immediately upon passage. The increase in premiums will begin to start on passage, as the pressure on the insurance companies, the pressure on manufacturers, the pressure on pharmaceutical companies will all begin with the passage of this bill. But all of the wonderful things we are being promised as benefits from this bill will be delayed for 4 years. Why? There is only one reason why: in order to use smoke and mirrors in the budgetary process to make it look as if this is cheaper than it really is. If you get the money coming in for 10 years but the expenses only going out for 6 years in your calculation, it looks as if it is a whole lot cheaper than it really is.

The only honest way to score this is to say the expenses start the same day the taxes start, the expenses going out start the same day the revenue coming in starts. Then you get an accurate description of how much this costs.

I cannot imagine any businessman going before his board of directors and saying: I have a new program I want to institute in this company, and it is going to cost X, and here is how I have calculated it is going to cost X. I am calculating the revenue from the sales of the product over a 10-year period, but the actual sales will only occur in the last 6 years.

His board of directors would take one look at him and say: There is no way we can make a strategic plan based on that kind of smoke and mirrors. What in the world is wrong with you to do accounting of that kind?

He will say: That is the kind of accounting I learned from the U.S. Senate--start counting the revenues immediately, but don't count the expenses until 4 years later.

Well, let's look at the impact of that 4-year gap and tie it to the messages I am receiving from my constituents, and I think we will see something very interesting happen. Between now and the time the benefits of this bill begin to take hold, there will be three or four open seasons of people who will look at their health care plan and be allowed to make changes in it. They will see the costs go up, and they will say: Wait a minute, what is happening here? The costs are going up, but there are no changes coming from this bill the Senate passed back in 2009--or 2010, if we push it until next year. What is happening?

Well, your costs are going up in anticipation of the costs of this bill that will take hold in January of 2014.

At that point, the anger we are seeing from constituents now will get worse. The anger we are seeing in the e-mails and letters I am receiving now will get more intense, and people will start to say: You mean I am being forced to pay extra premiums in 2010 because the government needs to accumulate cash against the time when these great changes hit us in 2014? When they start writing me that kind of complaint, I will say: That is exactly what I mean. The government is going to start taxing you in 2010, but they are not going to do this program until 2014--at which point, the outcry from constituents will be: Well, let's stop the taxes and let's kill the effective date of 2014.

I am not sure I can predict that with certainty, but I can go back in history and remember the catastrophic bill that was passed with respect to Medicare, and the senior citizens suddenly discovered how much it was costing them. The outcry was so overwhelming that the Congress, within a matter of 6 months of the passage of the bill, repealed the bill. I remember the pictures that appeared in national magazines of Congressmen Rostenkowski, who was at the time the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, being accosted physically when he went home to Chicago by seniors who would stand in front of his car and not allow him to move, who would sit on the hood of his car to block his way in every conceivable way. The outcry was enormous when they saw this increased cost for something where they did not see a corresponding benefit, and Congress responded to that outcry and repealed that bill.

In this case, there will be a 4-year period for the outcry to build before they start to see the benefits, if, indeed, the bill does confer benefits. There will be a 4-year period with that many open seasons for people to look at their programs and see their premiums go up and see their plans change and see the adjustments made in preparation for this, adjustments they will not want; 4 years in which they will see the statement of the President of the United States, that ``if you like your plan, you don't have to lose it,'' prove not to be the case.

In that 4-year period, it is entirely possible that the outcry from constituents, like the ones who are complaining now, will have tremendously more impact and more force. I hope that is, indeed, the case, if we pass this bill. I hope that in that 4-year period, before we start to see the wonderful things we are being promised from the other side of the aisle come to pass--the increased premiums, the increased taxes, and the increased costs will be with us--the people of this country will rise up and say: We want this bill repealed. They have 4 years in which to do it, 4 years in which to think about it, 4 years in which to experience it.

Why are we rushing to get this done before Christmas when we have 4 years before the thing finally kicks in? Let's take the time to do it right. Let's take the time to listen to our constituents. Let's take the time to listen to the American people who are examining this bill and, by ever-increasing margins, telling us again and again that they do not like it.

We have heard from many people the reactions of the polls. The Quinnipiac Poll made the comment: It is a good thing the Senate is not letting the American people vote on this bill because the American people are against it. We have seen the Gallup Poll show a tremendous swing, as their people are against it. The more they know about it, the less they like it. Yet we are trying to rush it through in the holiday season to get it done before Christmas even though it is 4 years away before all of the wonderful things that are being promised will surface.

Mr. President, I think my constituents have it right. I think those people who belong to AARP who are saying they are going to drop out because of AARP's endorsement are right. I think those physicians who say they are either not members of the AMA or they are going to drop out from the AMA because of the AMA's position are right. And I think if we cram this thing through in a sense of urgency, even though it is 4 years from implementation, we will see an outcry in the intervening 4 years from the American people that will cause Members of the Senate to wish they had taken more time to examine it all, to do it right, and not to panic over pressure from various special interest groups that see ways in which they can profit from this.

The American people, the American physicians, the American patients all see ways in which they will be hurt, and I speak for them, as they say: Slow this down. Do this thing right. Do not panic under pressure of an artificial time deadline.

I yield the floor.

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