Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act Of 2009
Floor Speech
SERVICE MEMBERS HOME OWNERSHIP TAX ACT OF 2009 -- (Senate - December 21, 2009)
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Mr. THUNE. Madam President, the Senator from Wyoming is correct. Of course, we would like to offer amendments. I know the Senator from Wyoming has deep experience in this field, being a practicing physician, someone who brings great knowledge and background to the debate and obviously has great insight about how this 2,100-page bill could be improved upon. What we have here is the 2,100 pages that we started with, and this represents one-sixth of our entire economy. We are talking about reordering one-sixth of the entire economy. Saturday we received an amendment, a 400-page amendment which nobody up until Saturday had seen. In fact, many of the Democrats hadn't seen it either, including members of the Democratic leadership. There was a discussion on the floor last week between Senator McCain and Senator Durbin in which Senator McCain said: They are writing this amendment behind closed doors. We don't have any idea what is in it. The Senator from Illinois, the No. 2 person in the Democratic leadership, said: I am in the dark just like you are. You had a handful of people who were adding 400 pages of content to the 2,100 pages we already have.
In addition, there is another amendment that adds another 300. We are talking about 2,700 pages that will reorder and restructure literally one-sixth of the entire American economy. Right now what we are being told is that we are not going to be allowed to offer amendments to that humongous piece of legislation. When you get this much legislation coming at you and receiving this on Saturday, not having the opportunity to read it for the first time, is why we have been saying we need to push this back and not try to jam it through before the Christmas holiday. You find all kinds of things in these bills. Sometimes people take credit for those being there. Sometimes they don't. We have had a debate about some of the provisions that benefit specifically Nebraska. You have this Medicaid provision that requires the taxpayers of the other 49 States to subsidize and pay the Medicaid matching share for the State of Nebraska which will cost millions and millions of dollars. The Senator from Arizona mentioned this late add, a $100 million item for construction of a university hospital which, again, is being reported as being inserted by the Senator from Connecticut. You have all these sorts of deals that get made to try and get that elusive sixtieth vote that are now coming to light. The American people have a right to know it. Frankly, Members of the Senate who have to vote on this have a right to know what is in these volumes of pages, 2,700 pages, that will spend $2.5 trillion. The original 2,100-page bill spent $1.2 billion per page, $6.8 million per word. It creates 70 new government programs. This is a massive overhaul of health care delivery.
What it ought to be about is driving down the cost of health care for people. In fact, we have heard a lot of discussion from the other side about how this drives down the cost of health care. This bends the cost curve down. They can say that, but the experts we rely on, the referees or the umpires, say otherwise. In fact, what the CBO has said is that the cost curve would be bent up by this bill. The blue line on this chart represents the increasing health care costs year over year if we do nothing. The blue line represents what we would be looking at if we continue on the current course which everybody here acknowledges is unacceptable. We all want to see the cost curve go down and see overall health care costs go down. But the ironic thing is, according to the CBO, the red line represents what happens if the bill proposed by the Democratic majority actually becomes law. The cost curve is bent up. We will actually spend more on health care than we are spending today, even the year-by-year twice the rate of inflation increases in health care premiums today.
The Senator from Wyoming is absolutely right to be offering amendments to address the issue of premiums. This bill does not do anything to reduce premiums for most Americans. About 10 percent of Americans, because of the subsidies in the bill, would get their premium costs reduced, but 90 percent--we are told by the CBO--would see their premiums stay the same or go up. When I say stay the same, it means go up at the current rate of twice the rate of inflation. Worst-case scenario, if you are buying your insurance in the individual marketplace, you will see your insurance premiums go up above and beyond this by 10 to 13 percent. Health care costs for 90 percent of Americans, the best they can hope for, is the status quo which is year-over-year increases that are twice the rate of inflation. If you are one of the unlucky who buys their insurance in the individual marketplace, your premiums go up by another 10 to 13 percent. This ought to be about driving down health care costs and getting premiums under control.
The overall cost of health care in this country represents about one-sixth of our entire economy. If this bill passes, according to the Congressional Budget Office, according to the Actuary of CMS, health care spending will no longer be one-sixth of the economy; it will be more than one-fifth. Because if this bill passes, health care spending will go up to about 21 percent of our gross domestic product.
Tell me, what does this bill do then to get costs under control? If we are driving up the cost of health care for individuals in the form of higher premiums, if we are driving up the overall cost of health care as a percentage of our economy, why would we be jamming this thing through before the Christmas holiday, these 2,700 pages, spending $2.5 trillion of taxpayer money, raising taxes on small businesses, which obviously have weighed in on this, and the National Federation of Independent Business, which represents a lot of small businesses around the country, has said, if enacted, this bill would cost us 1.6 million jobs because of all the new taxes it imposes--you are raising taxes, when fully implemented, by about $1 trillion, cutting Medicare by about $1 trillion. After all that, what do you have? You have the same or worse insurance premiums for 90 percent of Americans. I argue that is a bad deal for the American people.
Coming back to the special deals, this is not the way to legislate. To carve out deals, to go and try and find or buy or however you want to characterize it that sixtieth vote is essentially what we are talking about. These are special goodies packed into this bill essentially because the majority decided that rather than trying to include Republicans and pass it with Republican votes, they had to pass it with all Democrats which meant that every one of the Democrats had tremendous leverage. Clearly, they decided to use it. There are lots of carve-outs, lots of special deals in this that cost the American taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in additional spending simply because they wanted to get this done by an artificial deadline and wanted to do it with all Democratic votes.
I say to my colleagues, this process itself, when the American people find out about particularly this latest deal, smells. I don't think they are going to like it. I don't think they are going to like the end product when they find out it will raise insurance premiums.
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Mr. THUNE. If the Senator will yield on that suggestion of small business health plans, doesn't that enjoy wide support among small businesses in this country?
Mr. ALEXANDER. It clearly does. It enjoys widespread support everywhere, except the Senate. When Senator Enzi brought it up, it was rejected by our friends on the other side.
Mr. THUNE. If I might continue, the one thing that strikes me about this proposal that, as I said before, now is, in totality, 2,700 pages, is that it does not enjoy any support from any small business organization that I know of. Maybe there are some out there I cannot speak to. But I do know the organizations that represent small businesses that we are all well acquainted with--National Federation of Independent Business, the Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, the National Association of Wholesalers and Distributors, builders and contractors, electric contractors, franchise associations--I can go right down the list--all say this does nothing to lower their costs. In fact, it increases the cost of doing business, increases the cost of doing health care.
What they have argued repeatedly is one of the suggestions the Senator from Tennessee mentioned, that small business health plans would drive their health care costs down, which is why they have been such strong advocates for this over the years.
I guess the other question I would ask of my colleague from Tennessee is, would an approach, a suggestion like small business health plans require tax increases that would hit small businesses?
Incidentally, the latest version with the managers' amendment, which we just received Saturday, increases the tax increases in the bill that were previously $493 billion and are now $518 billion. As the Senator mentioned, with the tax credit businesses get, they up that a little bit but not enough to help most small businesses in light of the $518 billion in tax increases in the first 10 years, and when it is fully implemented it will be about $1 trillion. But the payroll tax that is going to hit a lot of small businesses was increased dramatically in the managers' amendment. The individual mandate was almost doubled in the managers' amendment. So the taxes in the bill go up with this proposal.
I guess my question is, with all these tax increases that are going to have a crushing impact on small businesses, does a suggestion such as the one made by the Senator from Tennessee for small business health plans require tax increases or Medicare cuts, which is what is going to be necessary to finance this 2,700-page behemoth?
Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Senator from South Dakota. The answer is no. The difficulty with a big, comprehensive plan is it sounds good but has lots of unintended consequences. If our real concern right now is reducing costs in health care, then the idea of a small business health care plan that has no new taxes and no new mandates but creates opportunities for small businesses to pool their resources and offer more insurance at a lower cost to their employees would seem a logical place to start.
Mr. THUNE. I appreciate the Senator for his work on that issue. It is a view I share, a proposal I have been a big advocate of going back to my days in the House of Representatives and one which, as the Senator from Tennessee noted, has tremendous support among small businesses across the country. About the only place it does not have majority support is here in the U.S. Congress because maybe it makes too much sense.
But it seems to me there are suggestions and solutions out there which do not require $ 1/2 trillion of tax increases on small businesses, which every small business organization has come out and said: It is going to drive up our cost of doing business, and at the end of the day, it is going to raise our health care costs--and does not require these steep Medicare cuts that the Senator from Wyoming has alluded to over and over again and the impacts those will have on the delivery of health care to seniors across this country but, rather, it would bend the cost curve down without tax increases and Medicare cuts.
Another example of that, I would argue, would be allowing for interstate competition, allowing people to buy their insurance across State lines, which is a suggestion we have made over and over on our side of the aisle. According to the Congressional Budget Office, both small business health plans and buying insurance across State lines actually would reduce health care costs and would do it without raising taxes or cutting Medicare, which, to me, would make a lot of sense, especially when you have an economy in recession, 10-percent unemployment, a $1.5 trillion deficit last year and another $1.5 trillion deficit this coming year, and when you are talking about a $2.5 trillion cost in the growth of government here in Washington, DC, to implement these 2,700 pages.
Some suggestions along the lines of the one mentioned by the Senator from Tennessee and some of these others would make a lot of sense, and I think they would enjoy tremendous support among small businesses, which create the jobs in this country, as well as among the American public.
So I thank the Senator from Tennessee for pointing out one of the many things Republicans are for and which we have tried to get in the debate.
I know the Senator from Wyoming has advocated for many of these same types of initiatives and solutions. As he mentioned earlier, he was prepared to offer an amendment to address the issue of premiums, but it looks as if we are going to be prevented from doing that.
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Mr. THUNE. If the Senator from Wyoming would yield on that point, that is why I think day after day after day--and I have said--there is a pattern emerging here in the Senate where the majority comes down and establishes the need for health care reform, which we all acknowledge, and illustrates examples of those who have fallen through the cracks, which we all know examples exist--all of us have dealt with those in our individual States--and then proceeds to attack Republicans for not having their own ideas, which we have just mentioned there are lots of good Republican ideas which do not raise taxes, which do not cut Medicare, and actually do something to reduce premiums. But that seems to be the strategy employed and the pattern that emerges in the rhetoric day after day down here from the other side.
The one thing I do not hear is them coming down here and talking about what this 2,700-page bill is going to do to reduce health care costs, because if we all submit to the experts on this--which, as I said earlier, the Congressional Budget Office is sort of the referee. They do not have a political agenda, or at least they are not supposed to. The Actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services does not have a political agenda, or at least they are not supposed to. They are sort of considered to be an umpire on this. The Joint Committee on Taxation, which looks at the distributional impacts of tax policy, is a referee and is not supposed to have a political agenda in all this. They all come to the same conclusions with regard to premium increases in this bill.
So if the overall objective is to reduce the cost of health care, and if, in fact, your legislation, according to all the referees, all the umpires, all the experts, not only increases premiums for most Americans but increases the overall cost of health care, which is what they all conclude, it is pretty hard to come down and defend this product. That is why I think day after day they try to create distractions and counterattacks as opposed to actually coming down and talking about the substance of the bill because the substance of the bill does not accomplish the stated objective, which is to reduce the overall cost of health care and get premiums under control for families and small businesses in this country.
It is also hard, I would argue, because of the $518 billion of tax increases that are in here and the unified opposition of the entire small business community, which creates 70 percent of the jobs in this country, to talk about how this can be anything but detrimental to job creation. This is going to cost us jobs. I think every business organization has made that abundantly clear. And all the analysis of this legislation that has been done comes to the same conclusion.
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