Health Care Reform
Floor Speech
HEALTH CARE REFORM -- (Senate - December 14, 2009)
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Mr. WICKER. Yes, and I appreciate so many of our colleagues being here today because I am glad we are getting into the Medicaid aspect of this bill. There has sort of been a feeling around this building the last couple of days that if we could only take care of the Medicare buy-in and the government-run option this bill would be OK. So I think today we are bursting that myth and pointing out the huge unfunded mandate the Medicaid portion would put on almost all the States.
Every State in red as shown on this chart would be required under this bill to increase their Medicaid spending. Only Vermont and Massachusetts would not have to be mandated by us in Washington to do this additional spending. Of course, with the unfunded mandate, what the Federal Government is saying is, We think this is a great idea. We think people should be covered with additional Medicaid Programs and, by the way, you folks at the State level should come up with the funds to pay for it. That is the very nature of an unfunded mandate.
I am not a Governor nor have I been a Chief of Staff of a Governor, but I have a letter from my Governor, Gov. Haley Barbour, who says:
If the current bill, which would expand Medicaid up to 133 percent, were enacted into law, the number of Mississippians on Medicaid would increase to 1,037,000, or one in three of our citizens. Over 10 years this bill would cost Mississippi's taxpayers $1.3 billion--
The generosity of this Congress would be to tell the legislators and taxpayers of my State of Mississippi: Congratulations. We get more coverage and, by the way, you have to pay an additional $1.3 billion--necessarily requiring Mississippi to raise taxes in order to continue vital programs such as education and public safety.
As has been pointed out, our State governments don't have a printing press. They have to balance the budget and make the numbers come out at the end of every year. We are putting a new burden, if we pass this legislation unamended, a tremendous burden on our Governors.
One other comment. There has been mention of the Governor of Tennessee who is a two-term, respected Democrat who knows a little something about health care. I think the actual quote last summer from Gov. Phil Bredesen was that he feared ``Congress was about to bestow the mother of all unfunded mandates on the State of Tennessee.''
I have here in my hand--and we don't have time because we have so many
people who want to speak--I have 13 quotes, not from Republican Governors such as Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi, but Democratic Governors all across this Nation, including the newly elected Democratic Governor's Association chairman, Gov. Jack Markell, and 12 others saying, we cannot afford, we cannot accept, we cannot bear at the State level this unfunded mandate upon this number of States.
Mr. CORKER. I thank the Senator. That was very good. I am hearing some comments about there being a wink and a nod process taking place which is sort of what we have happening right now with the bill. We don't know what is in it, but I understand there may have been a tilt by leaders of the Democratic Party to say to Governors: If you won't raise much Cain here, we are going to take care of you down the road on this issue. I don't know if I would trust something like that to happen in this body but----
Mr. WICKER. Here is the problem there. If they take care of the Governors down the road by saying we are going to send the money from Washington to cover this, then all of this talk about the program cutting costs at the Federal level goes out the window. Something is going to have to pay for it. Either we are going to have to gin up the printing press here, borrow some more money from China and send it to the States, which I guess is what the Senator was referring to, or we are going to pass the unfunded mandate on to the taxpayers of 48 of our States.
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