Tax on Bonuses Received from Certain TARP Recipients--Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. THUNE. I say to the Senator from Utah that he has made, over the course of the last year, many compelling arguments about the substance of this legislation and just now summarized what some of those are. The reason the American people have rejected this legislation is because they understand the substance of it. As the Senator pointed out, it has tax increases, Medicare cuts, and premium increases for most Americans. They figured that out a long time ago. That is why, if you look at the public opinion surveys that have been done with regard to the bill itself and to the process by which it got where it is, the American people reject it.

The reconciliation process, which has been talked about as a way in which to ultimately pass this through the House and then through the Senate, there have been polls that have asked the American public what they think of using reconciliation to enact health care reform.

The Gallup poll from February 25: 52 percent of Americans oppose the use of reconciliation. Last week's Rasmussen Report poll shows that 53 percent of Americans are opposed to the health care plan. Perhaps the most telling poll is a CNN poll from February 24--if you can believe this--that says 48 percent of Americans want Congress to start working on a new bill, and 25 percent of Americans want Congress to stop working on health care. Added together, that is 73 percent of the American public that wants Congress to either stop working on health care altogether or start over.

I am not among those who think we ought to stop working on this. This is a big, important issue to the American people. They want us to do it. But they want us to get it right. What is being proposed by our colleagues on the other side and what so far has been rammed through on a very partisan basis is a $2.5 trillion expansion of the Federal Government that expands the health care entitlement but does very little to reform health care in this county or to address the underlying drivers of health care costs in this country.

So the Senator from Utah is absolutely right in describing why the American people are so opposed to this legislation; that is, because they understand it. They know what it does. They are concerned about the cost of their health care insurance in this country. They are concerned as well about those who do not have health care, and we have come up with solutions we think make sense to cover those who do not have coverage. But I think it is pretty clear where the American people come down on this issue.

Incidentally, I think that is also what many of these elections we have had recently are about. If you look at what happened in Virginia, New Jersey, and most recently in Massachusetts, many of those elections were referendums, if you go inside the numbers, on the health care issue. I think it is a clear message to Washington that these health care proposals are not acceptable to the American people. Yet it does not seem that those of us in Washington, DC--or at least some of us--are listening to that message. Frankly, I believe, I say to my colleague from Utah, this is a bad bill. It has been rejected by the American people, part of it because of the substance of it; part of it because the normal process has not been followed. We all know what was done to get that extra vote to try and pass this bill through the Senate, to get that 60th vote--all these backroom deals that were put together at the last minute. We have heard the ``Cornhusker kickback'' chronicled, we have heard the ``Louisiana purchase'' chronicled many times over the last several months.

But I think the point, very simply, I say to my friend from Utah, is that, one, the American people understand this will lead to higher costs for most Americans, it is going to increase their cost of health insurance in this country; two, they want to see a bill that is put together in a way that elicits bipartisan support.

The Senator from Utah has been here since 1977. He has been involved in a whole series of important bipartisan debates, where important legislation was acted on in the Senate, but it was done in a way that had support from both Republicans and Democrats. I think that is what the American people expect of this process. They also expect us to conduct ourselves in a way that is transparent.

Doing legislation, 2,700-page bills behind closed doors, adding last-minute backroom deals to try and get that illusive 60th vote to pass it, and now using reconciliation--something that clearly was not designed for this process--is another issue that is even worsening the American public's opinion not only of the substance of this legislation but also the process.

I wish to ask my colleague about reconciliation. But before I do that, I wish to mention one thing because many of us--you and I both and others on our side--have talked a lot during the course of this debate about the cost and what we ought to be doing to address health care. If we wish to address health care in this country for most Americans--or reform health care--it means getting costs under control.

We have been arguing for some time that most Americans--and I think the Congressional Budget Office has validated this, the Actuary for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has validated this--that if you are buying in the individual market, you are going to see your insurance premiums go up above what they would normally go up, 10 percent to 13 percent, and if you are someone who buys in the large employer or small employer market, you are still going to see your health insurance premiums go up; they are going to be going up at the rate they are today or maybe slightly higher, but the rate they are going up today is twice the rate of inflation.

Yesterday, the Senator from Illinois, the distinguished whip in the majority, the Democratic whip, said on the floor of the Senate:

Anyone who would stand before you and say, well, if you pass health care reform, next year's health care premiums are going down, I don't think is telling the truth. I think it is likely they would go up, but what we're trying to do is slow the rate of increase.

So there you have it. We have been saying this all along--an acknowledgment by folks on the other side who are finally saying or reiterating what we have been saying all along; that is, health premiums are going to go up.

I think if you are someone who, as I said, buys in the individual marketplace or who is in the large or small employer market, you are going to see your premiums go up. The question is How much? I think for most Americans, they would go up significantly.

But I say to my colleague--and I would ask him because he has been here since reconciliation almost was put in place; you have to go back to 1974 and the Budget Act--but I am told it has been used 18 or 19 times since then. Since the Senator came here in 1977, I think every time reconciliation has been used, the Senator has been part of that process, has had to vote on that. There probably is not anybody in this Chamber who is more experienced on the issue of reconciliation--what it was designed to do, what it can do--than the Senator from Utah.

So I would ask the Senator if he could explain to those of us who have not been here as long exactly what reconciliation was designed to be used for, how it is designed to function, and why it is not applicable to the case of trying to restructure or reorder literally one-sixth of the American economy, which is what health care represents in this country.

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Mr. THUNE. Well, I would say to my friend from Utah, it is interesting how the semantics and terminology changes in Washington depending upon what point you are trying to make. But many of our colleagues who have weighed in heavily against the use of reconciliation on a range of subjects--more specifically now health care reform--are now referring to it as simply a simple majority: All we are asking for is a simple majority vote, which does represent a spin and misdirection.

Because, as the Senator from Utah has noted, reconciliation, as a procedure, has a fairly special place in the history of the Senate, going back to 1974, when it was created. It is to be used for specific purposes: to reconcile spending, revenues, tax increases, tax cuts--primarily to accomplish deficit reduction.

As the Senator from Utah has pointed out, when it is used to enact significant legislation, generally it has broad bipartisan support. The Senator mentioned welfare reform. It had 78 votes for it. That is the most frequently cited example of the use of reconciliation for something that was policy oriented. But, remember, that had 78 votes in the Senate. A huge and decisive majority of Senators decided to vote for its use in that case.

You also have, as I said, other examples where it was done to accomplish reducing taxes, increasing taxes. Those are all arguably legitimate uses under the procedure of reconciliation.

But now what you are finding is legislation that literally would restructure and reorder one-sixth of the American economy that would have profound consequences and a profound impact on the American people for not only the near term but the long term. We are talking about using this ``go your own way,'' ``go it alone'' process of reconciliation simply because using regular order cannot accomplish the objective that is desired by the Democratic majority. So they have fallen back on the use of reconciliation for something that is unprecedented.

It is interesting to me, if you look historically at what some of our colleagues have said, there are not many people who have more experience with this issue or more experience in the Senate than the Senator from Utah, but the Senator from West Virginia, a member of the Democratic majority, has been here even longer and is cited most often as being the author of the current budget process that we have, which includes this reconciliation procedure.

He wrote a letter a year ago which I wish to submit for the Record, and I wish to quote the first paragraph from that letter of a year ago in April. He said:

Dear colleague:

I oppose using the budget reconciliation process to pass health care reform and climate change legislation. Such a proposal would violate the intent and spirit of the budget process and do serious injury to the constitutional role of the Senate.

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

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Mr. THUNE. That is what the author of reconciliation said a year ago about trying to do health care reform through this process that the majority has decided to use.

There are lots of other examples of our colleagues in the Senate on the other side of the aisle--and I could go on and on. The majority leader, Senator Reid, in November of 2009 said: ``I am not using reconciliation.''

Senator Conrad, the chairman of the Budget Committee, said in March 2009 on the Senate floor:

I don't believe reconciliation was ever intended for the purpose of writing this kind of substantive reform legislation such as health care reform.

Even the President, when he was a Senator at that time, and now President said reconciliation is a bad idea.

So we could go on and on and we can find these statements of our colleagues on the other side who, in the past, have expressed opposition, and not just timid, tepid opposition but, I would argue, very aggressive opposition to the use of reconciliation for something this consequential and are now sort of falling back.

I have 18 Democrats on the record who have said they oppose reconciliation and are now saying they think this could be used for this purpose and now is being referred to as a simple majority.

So, again, I would say to my colleague from Utah that I think the spin that is going on now to try to confuse the American people about what is happening is something we need to end. We need to be transparent and clear with the American people about what is being done here.

I would simply ask my colleague from Utah whether he thinks the process of using reconciliation, the process that has led us to this point, or, for that matter, the underlying substance of this bill, is something the American people would be proud of and would want to see us pass in the Senate.

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Mr. THUNE. I think it is an important one point. I hear articulated by our colleagues on the other side the whole process by which the House is acting on this legislation. I served for three terms in the House of Representatives. I still have colleagues and friends over there, and I know they have a way, through the rules process, of doing a lot of things that aren't allowed in the Senate.

The Senate was designed by our Founders to be more free flowing, to slow things down, and to be more deliberative. The Rules Committee allows them to put together what is called a self-enacting, self-executing rule and, as you said, to ``deem as passed'' the Senate bill without a rollcall vote or without a recorded vote on it, which tells us right there that there are a lot of House Members who don't want to vote on the Senate-passed bill. They don't want to go on the record.

The only way that bill can pass in the House of Representatives is with an accompanying reconciliation vehicle that makes the fixes that most of those House Members want to make.

My point simply is this: Health care reform cannot pass absent this reconciliation process that is being promised on the House side, and also being promised to House Members is that if they vote for it over there, the Senate will follow suit. With all the points of order that will lie against this legislation when it comes to the Senate, in all likelihood the House Members are being asked to take an incredible leap of faith that the Senate is going to be able to maintain many of the provisions they added to the reconciliation bill in the House.

The point--and I come back to the dialog the Senator from Utah had with the Senator from West Virginia because I think it is an interesting point of discussion and one criticism I heard from our colleagues on the other side--but, frankly, the House of Representatives could not pass health care reform absent this reconciliation vehicle. It is about one-sixth of our economy. It is about reordering, restructuring, literally, something that is personal and important to every American. When you are talking about doing issues of that consequence and that impact, it ought to be done, as the Senator from Utah has mentioned, as has been done in the past, in a bipartisan way that elicits the best suggestions and ideas of both sides and gets a broad bipartisan vote in the Senate.

I thank the Senator from Utah for his leadership.

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Mr. THUNE. I think they have figured it out, which is why the last survey I quoted was the CNN survey which said 48 percent of the people want us to start over and 25 percent want Congress to quit working on the issue altogether. That is literally three-quarters of Americans who have rejected the substance of this legislation--higher taxes, expanded government, Medicare cuts, higher premiums for most Americans--and some who flatout do not want anything done, which, as I said, is not the view to which I subscribe. Three-quarters of Americans understand what this bill is about. They know how it was put together, and they reject both.

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