Department Of Defense Appropriations Act, 2010

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, before the Senate now is an issue of funding our military, the Department of Defense appropriations bill. This is a bill that is critically important because it provides the funding our men and women in uniform now risking their lives while we meet in the safety of our businesses and offices and homes in America, it funds their needs to make sure they will be safe to perform their missions effectively and come home. Without fail, every year this bill comes before the Senate and is a consensus bipartisan bill.

Regardless of our debates over foreign policy, we all want the men and women in uniform to know we stand behind them. As a consequence, this bill usually passes with an overwhelming number. I asked how this bill fared in the House of Representatives when it was considered yesterday. The vote was 395 to 34. There were 164 Republicans who voted yes on this bill. It was clearly an overwhelmingly positive bipartisan vote. There is no reason it would not be the same in the Senate.

But there is a problem. The problem is this: Tomorrow the funding for our troops runs out. It is the end of our continuing resolution in funding. We are not going to leave them high and dry, but we are going to leave them uncertain if we don't act decisively and quickly. Why would we do this to them?

Military families across America, as we go into the holiday season, I am sure, are saddened by the absence of their loved ones who may be in Iraq or Afghanistan, saddened by a separation from children and other loved ones they would like to avoid in their lifetime but they have offered it up for this great country. With this kind of uncertainty and sadness and emotion, why would we be uncertain when it comes to funding our troops?

Here is where we are: We offered this yesterday. We said: Let's vote for it. Let's vote for our troops and get this behind us so the Department of Defense appropriations bill was clear.

The other side of the aisle said: No. We want you to go through all of the hurdles that you have to go through under the procedures of the Senate for the most controversial bills. We want you to file a cloture motion which would put an end to a filibuster. We want you to fill the tree with amendments so that this bill isn't assaulted.

Believe me, the terminology would lose most people, including many Senators, but the bottom line is this: Instead of just doing what we know needs to be done and what should be done, Republicans have insisted we delay this process for at least 2 days.

Why? Why would we want to delay funding our troops in the middle of a war? Why would we want to say to our troops that the military pay raise they were counting on so their families can get by back home, and for those stationed in the United States, make sure that they have what they need, why would we say to them that we are going to raise a question as to whether we are going to put $29.2 billion into the defense health program, the health program for our military members and their families?

Why would the Republicans insist on delaying a vote for $472 million for family advocacy programs for military families who are separated, many of whom are going through extraordinary stress because of the separation? Why would they want to delay a pay raise for the military? Why would they want to delay $154 billion for equipment and training for our military?

I don't understand it. It would seem to me that we ought to come together by noon today and say: Let's do this. Let's not waste another minute in terms of helping our troops and showing them we stand behind them. But, no, the decision has been made on the other side of the aisle that we are going to delay this matter until tomorrow.

They say in politics, for every decision there is a real reason and a good reason. There may be some good reason they are giving on the other side of the aisle for delaying funding our troops, but the real reason is their hope that they can stop health care reform in the Senate. That is what is behind this. The lengths to which those on the other side of the aisle will go was demonstrated yesterday.

We had a defining moment when the leadership on the Senate Republican side insisted, through Senator Coburn of Oklahoma, that an 800-page amendment be read by the clerk. It is the right of a Senator to ask for that. It is an archaic right because people don't sit here hanging on every word to understand an amendment. That never happens. It didn't happen yesterday. But the clerk started reading.

Almost 2 hours into it, it was pretty clear that it would take 10 hours to finish this 800-page amendment, despite the best efforts of the clerk's office. Why did the Senate Republican leadership want to take 10 hours out of a day for something that was meaningless--the reading, word by word, line by line, page by page, of an 800-page amendment? To stop debate on health care reform.

During that period, no one could debate it. No one could amend it. The Republicans have conceded that they are finished with the debate and amendment phase of health care reform. They have decided now that the only thing they could possibly do is to delay everything the Senate can consider in the hopes that maybe we get tangled up with our desire personally to be home with our families during the holidays and would not do our duty here.

They are wrong. We are determined to do this. We are determined because health care reform for this country is so absolutely essential. The Presiding Officer has an awesome assignment, succeeding the late Senator Ted Kennedy whom he counted as a close friend and served as a member of his staff.

In our cloakroom is a cover of Time magazine where Senator Kennedy is looking out with that smile on his face saying: We are almost there. It was an article he wrote before he died about health care reform. He, more than any person in the Senate, had the authority to speak to it. Senator Kirk told us in a meeting of our caucus the other day that it was 40 years ago when Senator Kennedy took to the floor as a young man and talked about the priority of health care reform. Forty years, when you think about it, 40 years of waiting for this moment to vote on health care reform. If he were here today--and I wish to God he were--he would be back there at that desk--that was Kennedy's spot--thundering in this Senate Chamber about this historic opportunity and how if it costs us Christmas Eve or costs us Christmas Day or even more, we cannot let down the people of this country.

I see the polls. This complicated issue of health care reform has a lot of people confused and even worried. They have heard some of the wild charges on the other side. At one point they were arguing about death panels; that ultimately the government was going to decide whether people would live or die. That was one of the cruelest distortions in this debate.

The actual issue was raised by Senator JOHNNY ISAKSON, who is a Republican of Georgia, whom I thought raised a serious and important consideration and one that all of us, though we might not want to, should reflect on. He said every person under Medicare ought to have a compensated, paid-for visit to a doctor if they want, voluntarily, to talk about end-of-life treatment. There is hardly a family in America who doesn't contemplate that possibility, doesn't have a husband say to a wife: Honey, I don't want any of that extraordinary stuff. Don't keep me on life support.

What Senator Isakson wanted to do was to give Medicare patients an opportunity to sit down with a doctor and say: What instruction should I leave? If this is what I believe, whom should I tell? That was a humane, thoughtful amendment. But the critics of health care reform twisted and distorted it into a death panel that was going to tell Grannie: We are going to pull the plug.

Sad. It was sad, when Senator Isakson offered such a good-faith amendment, to have it distorted. It is no wonder if the critics of health care reform would go to those extremes to try to defeat this bill, why other extreme things have been said about it. If you listened on the floor of the Senate over the last several weeks while we have debated health care reform and listened to the speeches from the other side of the aisle, you would believe that this bill is going to destroy Medicare. Many Republican Senators who historically did not support Medicare and wanted to privatize Medicare are now its most fervent champions. You might question their sincerity. We don't do that in the Senate because we don't question motives of people. But I will question their accuracy.

This bill, which is over 2,000 pages, knows the future of Medicare is important to all of us. If we do nothing today, Medicare will go broke in 8 years. We would not be bringing in enough money from payroll taxes to pay the Medicare services we promised in 8 years. That is a fact. But this bill is going to change it. This bill will add 10 years of solvency to Medicare. I wish it were more, but it is a step in the right direction to say to those receiving Medicare and those about to go into Medicare: This important program will be there when you need it; 10 years of added solvency in Medicare; Medicare on sound financial footing for 10 more years because of this bill.

There is something else it does. At the end of our conference between the House and Senate on health care reform, we are going to take care of a problem in Medicare. It is a serious problem. When we passed the Medicare prescription drug program, there wasn't enough money to fund it. They created this strange situation where if you were seriously ill under Medicare and receiving medication, this Medicare Part D plan would pay for prescription drugs up to a certain limit and then stop.

In the midst of a new calendar year, some could find several months into that year that Medicare Part D was not paying for any more prescription drugs. You would be responsible personally to pay for them. After you had paid a certain amount of money, the Part D coverage would kick in again. It was known euphemistically as the doughnut hole, that gap in coverage in Medicare Part D. When this is over, this health care reform is going to fill that gap, close that doughnut hole, give to 45 million Americans under Medicare the peace of mind of knowing that their prescription drugs will be paid for and they will not find themselves exhausting savings or going without it when it comes to basic medication.

That is why this bill is important. That is why some of the things that have been said in the debate are so misleading.

There is something else this bill does which we ought to take pride in as Senators. Most civilized and developed countries in the world have a health care system that protects their people. We are the only developed country on Earth where a person can die because they don't have health insurance. We are the only one.

You might say: Senator Durbin, aren't you getting a little carried away? Well, 45,000 people a year do. Let me give you an illustration: What if you had a $5,000 copay on your health insurance and you didn't have $5,000 and the doctor says: I am a little bit worried about some of the things you tell me, Senator. I think you need a colonoscopy.

That is something I can understand because my mother had colon cancer. I am very careful about this. I have a history in my family.

But if you had a policy that said the first $5,000 you have to pay for and went out and asked how much a colonoscopy cost, you would find in many places it is $3,000. There have been cases--a man from Illinois wrote me. He said: I didn't have the $3,000 so I skipped the colonoscopy.

Without health insurance, without coverage, without enough money to pay for that basic test, this individual is running the risk of developing a serious cancer that could claim his life or at least cost a fortune to take care of.

That is what inadequate health insurance does to you. That is what no health insurance does to you.

At the end of the day, this bill will say, for the first time in the history of this great Nation, 94 percent of the people will have health insurance. Thirty million people today who have no health insurance will have it when it is over. Fifteen million will go into Medicaid because they are in low-income categories.

I met one of those people when I was back in my home State of Illinois. Her name is Judie. She works at a motel in Marion, IL. She is a hostess in the morning for their free continental breakfast--a sweet lady with a big smile on her face, in her early sixties.

She came up to me and said: Senator, I am not sure this health care reform is good for me.

I said: Judie, do you have health insurance?

She said: No, I've never had health insurance, and I'm a few years away from Medicare.

I said: If you don't mind telling me, how much money do you make?

She said: Well, they've cut our hours here at the motel because of the economy. I work about 30 hours a week now, and I make about $8 an hour. And she said: There isn't a person here you're looking at, working on this motel staff, who has health insurance.

I said: So does that mean your income each year is about $12,000?

She said: Well, I guess. It's the only job I have. I get by on it.

I cannot imagine how.

She said: I get by on it.

I checked into it, and I saw her the next morning before I checked out, and I said: Judie, under this bill we have, because you make less than $14,000 a year as an individual, you will qualify for Medicaid. For the first time in your life, you will have health insurance under an Illinois State Medicaid Program that you won't have to pay for because you are in a low-income category.

Well, she said: That's great because I have diabetes.

Think about that: age 60, no health insurance, low income, no doctor regularly available to her.

And she said: And I've had a few lumps I would like to get checked out too.

I thought: This poor lady. She is a classic illustration of what we are talking about in this bill. She is not lazy. She is a hard-working person. She gets up every day at the crack of dawn to be there to make sure people feel right at home at that motel, and she has no health insurance.

Ninety-four percent of the people in this country will have health insurance--people like Judie, who, for the first time in her life, will have health insurance. Is that worth something? Is it worth something in America for us to take pride in the fact that we are expanding the peace of mind which some of us take for granted of having health insurance coverage?

I think it is worth a lot. I think it is important for us and the critics to step up and acknowledge they have never come forward with a single proposal to deal with that issue--not one. We have never heard from the Republican side of the aisle how they would cover 94 percent of the people in America. They have never put together a comprehensive health insurance plan. They have never talked about submitting it to the Congressional Budget Office to make sure it does as promised, as we have.

They come to the floor with criticisms of what we are trying to do. It is their right as Senators to do that. But it is also our right to ask them the basic question: Does the fact that you do not have a Republican health care reform bill mean that you like the current system, that you do not want to change it? That is one conclusion.

The other conclusion is: This is hard work. Writing a bill that does this takes a lot of time and effort, and they have not put in that hard work. So they come emptyhanded to the floor with good speeches and good graphs and good press releases, but without good amendments to take care of the basic problems.

There is one other element in this health care reform bill too. How many times have you met somebody in your family or at work or through a friend who told you about a battle they had with a health insurance company when somebody got sick in their family? I have run into it a lot. A few years back, when I was a Congressman, in Springfield, they had a unique program where the Sangamon County State Medical Society would invite Members of Congress to accompany doctors on their rounds in a hospital.

The first time I was invited to do that, I called back and said: You've got to be wrong. You don't want me walking into a patient's room where you are talking about their private health situation.

They said: No, no, we ask permission. And it is interesting, people are bored in the hospital, and they are amused by politicians. So would you please come?

So I accompanied a doctor on his rounds. He was examining a nice lady in my hometown of Springfield, IL, who was suffering from vertigo, who had come to the hospital, and as a result of an x-ray, they discovered she had a tumor--a brain tumor--that needed to be removed. She lived by herself. She was falling down at home. He wanted to operate on her on Monday. This was a Friday. He wanted to keep her in the hospital because he was afraid if she went home she might fall, hurt herself, and he wanted her ready for surgery on Monday.

But before he could say to her: Be prepared to stay over the weekend, he had to call her health insurance company. I stood next to this doctor at the nurses station in St. John's Hospital in Springfield, IL, as this doctor was arguing with a clerk at a health insurance company somewhere in a distant location about why this woman needed to stay in the hospital, and the clerk was saying: No, we are not going to pay for it. Send her home. Bring her back on Monday for the surgery.

He said: I'm not going to do that.

The clerk said: Well, we're not paying for it.

He hung up the phone and turned to me and said: She's staying in the hospital. We'll fight this out later on.

Fight it out--those battles, those fights take place every day across America.

I have told the story on the floor here about a friend of mine--a great friend of mine--whom I have known since he was a young man. He is a baseball coach at Southern Illinois University. His name is Danny Callahan. Danny has been battling cancer for years. Danny is a young guy. He has a young family and a good wife, and he is a terrific guy from a great family. He has been battling cancer--chemo, radiation, even surgery, removing part of his jaw and trying to stop this advance of cancer.

His oncologist came up with a drug that is working. It is called Avastin. This drug is experimental. It works on some cancers. It is certified to work on them. But they found it works on others in an off-label application. The oncologist wrote to the health insurance company and said: This is working. We have stopped the spread of his cancer. We want to keep using this drug. And they said: No. It costs $12,000 a month, and we won't pay for it.

What is he going to do? You do not make a fortune as a baseball coach at Southern Illinois University. His family pitched in, borrowed some money to cover a month of treatment. He is going to have a trial in St. Louis at Barnes Hospital, connected with Washington University there. He is trying his best to keep this going, but he is battling this insurance company that said no.

This bill gives people whom I have described a fighting chance. It gives them a chance to fight against the discriminatory, wrong decisions of health insurance companies. Is that worth anything? Is it worth it? I have yet to see an amendment from the other side of the aisle that does this.

We used to call this a Patients' Bill of Rights, and it used to be a bipartisan issue. Senator JOHN MCCAIN joined with Senator Kennedy and the two of them worked on this, saying that patients in America should have the right to
fight insurance companies that turn them down because of preexisting conditions, that turn them down because the cost of care is so high, that turn them down because they have lost their job or turn them down because their child reaches the age of 24. This bill provides protections for those people.

So when people say: I heard Governor Dean--I like him; Howard is a friend of mine; former Governor of Vermont; former head of the Democratic National Committee--wrote a big article in the Washington Post this morning and said: Vote against this bill. It is not everything I want it to be.

Well, Governor Dean, it is not everything I want it to be either. But how could we in good conscience explain to 30 million Americans who would have health insurance for the first time in their life--such as Judie down in Marion, IL--``Judie, I am sorry, we won't be able to get you health insurance this time around. We couldn't get everything we wanted.'' That is not a very compelling argument, from my point of view.

How do we say to people who want to have a fighting chance against insurance companies that say no--and will have the legal right to do that--``I am sorry, you are just going to have to continue to do your best fighting these clerks at health insurance companies who say no because this bill does not have everything in it that we want.''

You learn in this business of life and politics that concessions and compromise are critical parts of achieving a goal. Within the Democratic Caucus there are conservative and liberal or progressive members, and we have to find that sweet spot, that middle ground, where they come together. I think we have, and I am sorry we do not have any Republican support for this.

It is a fact, though, we have spent an entire year debating health care reform on Capitol Hill, and the sum total of Republican support for health care reform by vote comes down to two. One Republican Congressman from the State of Louisiana voted for the House bill, and one Republican Senator, Ms. Snowe of Maine, voted for a version of health care reform in the Senate Finance Committee. Not a single vote beyond those two in support of health care reform.

In fact, some take great pride in the fact that they are never going to vote for health care reform until it comes down exactly as they want it. We have invited them into conversation. In fact, my friend, the Senator from Iowa, who is on the floor here today, was part of a conversation with Senator Baucus and four other Members of the Senate that went on, I am told, for weeks, if not months, in an effort to find bipartisan, common ground, and they could not. I am sorry they did not. It would have been a better day if we had a real bipartisan effort before us. But I thank the Senator from Iowa for his genuine heartfelt efforts in trying.

But we come here today without a Republican alternative to health care reform. We come here today facing the reality that if we fail this time, we will not address health care reform, I am afraid, in my political lifetime or in the lifetime of many people following this debate. It took 16 years since President Clinton last offered an effort to try. If we wait another 16 or 20 years, I cannot imagine what is going to happen.

We know what is going to happen to health insurance premiums. Ten years ago, for a family of four, the average cost of their family health insurance premium was $6,000 a year--$500 a month. Pretty steep, right? The average cost today, for a family of four, for their family health insurance premium: $12,000 a year. It has doubled in a 10-year period of time, and it is going up so fast that it will double in the next 7 or 8 years to $24,000 a year.

Imagine working and earning $2,000 a month just to pay for your health insurance premium. That is it. Imagine how meager that coverage is going be because each year you know what happens. The cost goes up and coverage goes down. What will it be 10 years from now? If you talk to people who are negotiating for contracts, such as labor unions, all they talk about is health insurance. They do not talk about wage increases. They talk about health insurance. Those are the issues that break down the negotiations and end up in work stoppages and strikes, it has become that contentious and that difficult.

Are we going to accept that? Is that the best we can do in America? I do not think so. Are we going to accept a strategy which says: We are going to slow down the business of the Senate to a crawl, or stop it, as they tried yesterday, in an effort to defeat even having a vote on health care reform?

Don't we owe the people of this country, at the end of this debate, a vote on health care reform? Shouldn't it be in a timely fashion?

Shouldn't we first pass this bill that funds our troops that is sitting on the floor here that passed the House 395 to 34? Why would we delay that funding of our troops in the midst of a war? Why don't we do that today before we break for lunch and say to our troops: ``We took care of you.''

I might add, in here there is a provision that extends unemployment benefits. Is there any doubt on the other side of the aisle that they will vote to extend unemployment benefits in the midst of a recession? The last vote we had was 97 to 0 on the floor of the Senate to extend unemployment benefits, and that was a few weeks back. I assume Republican Senators feel as Democratic Senators do, that in the midst of a recession, in the midst of the holiday season, we owe it to these families to try to help them out.

How could we in good conscience go home and celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah or whatever our holiday might be and say we want to be in the comfort and love of our families, to sit and have a glorious Christmas morning before the tree, and enjoy the blessings of this great Nation and the blessings of life, and then turn down the unemployed when it comes to their benefits? We could not do that in good conscience.

Why don't we do that today? Why do we wait until tomorrow? Why don't we say: Regardless of what your strategy is on health care reform, let's not shortchange the troops. Let's not leave them with any uncertainty. Let's not leave those unemployed with uncertainty as to whether they are going to get benefits they come to expect and deserve. I hope we can.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a recent article published in the New York Times relating to the trauma of joblessness in the United States.

There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the RECORD

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I am going to close by saying that for those who wonder if it makes any difference whether we move forward on the issue of helping the unemployed, they should read this article I have put in the Record. People across this country are not only worried about getting a job and taking care of their families, it has reached a point where it is dramatic. Some of them are making critical life decisions, spending their savings, with no health insurance to cover themselves or their kids.

I will ask the Republicans, who will follow me: Please, regardless of how long you want to talk today, agree with us that we should move quickly to fund our troops, send the money for those members of the military and their families to give them peace of mind we stand behind them. Do not make them part of any political delay and strategy that leaves uncertainty. Let's do it today. Let's not wait until the money runs out tomorrow.

Let's fund our unemployment benefits too.

Let's give these families, who through no fault of their own are out of work, the peace of mind of knowing that as we go home for Christmas, they will at least have a Christmas which has, even if it is small, an unemployment check.

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