Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act Of 2009

Floor Speech

SERVICE MEMBERS HOME OWNERSHIP TAX ACT OF 2009 -- (Senate - December 22, 2009)

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Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I wish to begin by congratulating Senator Landrieu and thanking her for all the hard work she has done on this bill--first of all for small business. I think we have significantly, with her leadership, improved this legislation for small business so that many of the small businesses in this country--many in my home State of New Hampshire--will now be able to get help as they try to cover their employees for health care. I also wish to congratulate her for all her good work to help children in the foster system. It is significant they will be able to get health insurance once they age out of the foster system and, of course, to help those, as she has pointed out, who have children who are in their early twenties and who are still trying to get settled in a profession.

My daughter was fortunate enough to have health insurance last year in her first job out of college. But now she is going to a new job that doesn't have health insurance, and so she will be able to be covered once this legislation is passed under our plan. As Senator Landrieu points out, it is going to make a real difference for families and for small business.

I am very pleased to be here today to support this legislation and also to try to dispel some of the myths we have heard from our colleagues on the other side of the aisle about what is actually in this legislation. Despite what many of our colleagues may want us to believe, passing this bill is the fiscally responsible thing to do. Our current health care system is a threat to the security of our families, our small businesses, and the entire economy of this Nation. The costs of health care in America make up almost 18 percent of our economy--our gross domestic product. That is more than any other industrialized country. Health care costs are rising three times faster than wages. The leading cause of about two-thirds of the bankruptcies in America is medical bills. Our current health care system is simply not sustainable.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act moves us in a new direction--a direction that is fiscally responsible because this bill is fully paid for. In fact, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act would reduce our Federal deficit by $132 billion over the next 10 years. In fact, this legislation represents one of the largest deficit-reduction measures we have seen certainly in many years and possibly ever.

Small businesses in my home State of New Hampshire and across this country are going to benefit from this legislation. We heard Senator Landrieu talk about many of the provisions she worked on--and many of which I cosponsored--to help improve the legislation for small business. The fact is, the steep annual increases in the cost of health insurance have been forcing more and more businesses to make the very difficult decision to either drop coverage for their workers or to increase their employees' contribution to the point that too many workers have had to decline coverage.

I have heard from a number of businesspeople in New Hampshire, and I wish to read what a couple of them have said.

A young woman named Adria Bagshaw testified this summer at a Small Business Committee field hearing we held in New Hampshire. Adria and her husband Aaron own the W.H. Bagshaw Company. It is a fifth-generation small manufacturing company in Nashua, NH. There aren't a lot of those fifth-generation companies left that are owned by the same family. They offer health insurance to their 18 employees and cover anywhere between 10 to 25 percent of their monthly premium. But now the premiums are $1,100 per month per family, and Adria is afraid she will have to cut back on the quality of their health insurance plan or the amount the company covers to make ends meet. The sad thing is that she says right now they are spending more on health insurance than they are for raw materials to make their products.

I also heard from a man named John Colony, who is a small business owner in the small, very picturesque town of Harrisville, NH. He e-mailed me saying:

The cost of health insurance is the biggest problem that our small business faces.

He has 24 employees. He went on to say:

The present system is expensive, inefficient and broken. I can't tell you how the 20 to 35 percent annual rate increases depress us all and there is no end in sight. Over the past five years, most of our employees have had to drop coverage because they simply can't afford to pay their share of the premium. I really believe that the time has come to put the existing system out of its misery.

Well, I am happy to tell John we are about to do that, because under this legislation, beginning next year, we provide significant tax credits for small businesses to help them pay for the cost of coverage for their workers. This bill contains a number of significant measures to rein in runaway health care costs--measures such as creating a new pathway for biologic drugs so we can get biologic generic drugs to the market and help lower costs for people. There are measures in this bill that will eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse--something that takes too big a chunk out of our health care dollar. There are also measures in here that will get rid of the subsidies the government pays to insurance companies for Medicare Advantage plans. These are all commonsense actions that will save the government and health care consumers money over time.

In addition, this bill makes significant improvements to our health care delivery system. That is the way we provide health care for people. It injects more competition into the health care marketplace. Controlling health care spending is critical to address the fiscal health of this Nation--no pun intended. This legislation takes a very important first step in slowing down the growth.

I am sure every Member of the Senate--Republican and Democratic alike--has heard heartbreaking stories from our constituents about health care--stories about being denied health insurance, about having to stay at a job they do not like because of the fear of losing coverage, about frustration over the lack of choice and who provides their health insurance or a lack of understanding about their plan's limits until it is too late and they are facing financial peril. Well, this bill will, I am happy to say, change that. Not only do we ensure coverage for an additional 31 million people----

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.

Mrs. SHAHEEN.--but we eliminate the abuses of the insurance companies.

I will be back to talk about some of these other areas.

I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

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