Tax Extenders Act Of 2009 - Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. I do not quarrel with the Senator from Alabama about our national debt and the threat that it possesses. I certainly understand we are borrowing a lot of money from countries overseas, and we want to see that come to an end.

That kind of indebtedness leads to a dependency which is not healthy for
our economy or our future or our children. I certainly would agree with the Senator from Alabama on that.

I was not here for his entire presentation, but there are several things I think should be made clear for the record. The point is, some 9 years ago, when President William Clinton left office, he left office with a national debt, total accumulated national debt throughout our history of about $5.7 trillion. But when he left office, we were in surplus. We were actually generating a surplus in the Federal Treasury, and the surplus was being used to extend the life of the Social Security trust fund. We were adding more and more years of solvency to Social Security because we were generating a surplus.

It is hard to imagine that this was the case only 9 years ago, and yet it was. The government was then handed over to President George W. Bush, a new administration, an administration that ran on a platform of fiscal conservatism and dealing with overspending and the national debt.

What happened at the end of 8 years? At the end of 8 years, the national debt had grown from $5.7 trillion, on the last day that William Jefferson Clinton was in office, to almost $13 trillion when President George W. Bush left office 8 years later. It more than doubled in that period of time.

What happened? First, the situation beyond President Bush's control: 9/11, devastating to our economy. We know what happened. People stopped purchasing, people stopped traveling. There was a general concern about the safety of our country and the certainty of our future, and that took its toll on our economy. There is no question about that. I am not going to go into any suggestion that President Bush was culpable in that regard. He was a victim as we were as a nation on 9/11. But conscious decisions were then made by this administration after 9/11: For instance, the decision to invade Iraq was a decision I did not share. I was one of 23 Senators who voted against the invasion of Iraq. I happen to think that was the right decision to stay out of that war.

But, as a nation, we deciding to go forward. Congress voted that way. President Bush said: We are going to wage this war, but we will not pay for it. We will take the cost of this war and add it to our national debt.

If you look back at history, World War II, for example, most of us remember either reading about or seeing some evidence of war bonds--borrowing from the American people to pay for war. Yet we incurred a massive debt at the same time. Wars are costly.

President Bush initiated this war in Iraq and Afghanistan and paid for neither one. That added to our national debt. He also did something that had never been done in the history of the United States. In the midst of a war, President Bush said we are going to cut taxes. It is counterintuitive.

We know that in a war we need more money, not just for the ordinary course of expenses of government but also because of war costs. Instead, the President cut taxes on the wealthiest Americans, adding to our national debt.

Then came a proposal to modify the Medicare Program for prescription drugs. I thought it was a positive thing. We could have saved a lot of money if we would have built into it competition for the pharmaceutical companies. But the pharmaceutical companies did not want that. They prevailed. We ended up passing the Medicare Pharmaceutical Program, and it cost us about $400 billion, added to the deficit.

Start adding those things up and we realize that at the end of 8 years, a President who had promised to be a fiscal conservative left us with twice the national debt that he had inherited and the weakest economy America had seen since the Great Depression.

When President Obama took the oath of office a little over a year ago, he inherited this weak economy and two wars. He inherited another $1 trillion in debt that came out of this weak economy as soon as he walked into the office. So when my Republican colleagues come to the floor of the Senate and talk about how insensitive Democrats are to our national debt, I have to remind them when they were in control and their President was in control we more than doubled the national debt. We had two wars, unpaid for; we cut taxes on the wealthiest people in America; we added a Medicare Program that was not paid for; we left the economy in shambles; and left the debt for the next President. It was not a welcome that most Presidents would like at the White House.

Now come the Republicans and say: Well, the thing we need to do at this moment in time, with all of our unemployed, is to cut government spending.

I have to say to them, I want to cut out wasteful spending. But if you ask any credible mainline economist, they will tell you that cutting government spending in general is exactly the wrong thing to do when the economy is in recession.

What we need to do is to infuse the economy with investments and spending that will keep aggregate demand growing for goods and services, keeping people in business, hiring people, who then pay their taxes and go on to buy products that help others. That is the nature of the kind of economic activity that brings us out of recession.

So when the Republicans argue to cut spending in the midst of a recession, they are going to dig the hole deeper. There will be less money spent in the economy. There will be less demand for goods and services. Fewer people will be working, fewer businesses surviving, and the recession will get worse instead of better.

So the bill before us is a bill that has several provisions in it, and one of them deals with providing unemployment insurance for those who have no work. Now, I will concede the fact that we never dreamed this recession would go on as long as it has. But for many people, some have been out of work for over a year, some 2 years. They are desperate. There are five unemployed people for every job in America. What we provide is about $1,100 or $1,200 a month--hardly a sum that one can live on comfortably for any length of time in most places in America. But that $1,200 a month keeps families together--barely.

Now the Republicans come to the floor and say this is a serious mistake. Providing unemployment insurance, according to the Senate Republican whip, Senator Kyl, creates a disincentive for people to look for work.

Well, I would challenge him. I have talked to the people who are out of work and have yet to find any who believe they are basking in the glow of unemployment insurance. It is barely enough to get by, and most people are exhausting their savings.

Second, this bill is going to provide for additional help to pay for health insurance for the unemployed. If you lose your job, the first casualty is your health insurance. So the President said, we need to have our government pick up 65 percent of the health insurance premiums for the unemployed.

How much do they run? It is $1,200 or $1,300 a month in my State, the average for a family, health insurance plan. So it would eat up virtually every penny of unemployment just to keep your health insurance plan. So we pick up two-thirds of the cost, and the people try to hang on, paying about $400 a month so they can keep their health insurance.

What difference does it make if they lose their health insurance? Well, two things are going to happen if they lose their health insurance. They may qualify for Medicaid, which is a government health insurance plan, which we will ultimately pay for as taxpayers. They will certainly lose their continuation of coverage, so that if someone in their family has a preexisting condition, they may find it difficult to ever qualify for insurance again until they find that job and get into a group policy. If they have a child who is asthmatic or who has a serious illness, they may find that child uninsurable because they have lost their health insurance.

So when Members of the Senate come before us and say they are going to vote against unemployment benefits and health insurance, they are literally voting against millions of Americans who are flat out of luck and have no place to turn and are merely trying to make it and trying to get by.

Part of this measure is paid for in offsets and sources of revenue. I certainly applaud that.

I thank the Senator from Montana, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. But then come the Republicans and say: Well, let's put more
money into this for all of the things included and take it out of the stimulus package.

Remember, the stimulus package was the President's way of trying to keep this economy moving with tax cuts for working families, a safety net for those out of work, money for local units of government that have seen a downturn in revenues, and investments in America's future.

Now, I have seen some of those investments, and I will just say that I think those are investments that will pay off in jobs today and in assets in America and that will serve us for a long time to come.

Two weeks ago I was up on the west side of Chicago, in Austin, where they opened a new family care health center. It is a primary care clinic for those who do not have health insurance or do not have much money, where they can see a doctor. It is going to be the nicest building on the block. It is beautiful. One-fourth of the money came from the President's stimulus package. It put a lot of people to work building it and now has created an asset that will serve that neighborhood and that city for a long time to come.

Two days ago, I was down in Caseyville, IL, 300 miles away from Chicago. I saw another project with about $1.6 million of stimulus money that is going to build a community retirement home in this area. I saw the people out working on the jobs now just this week.

Ultimately, beyond the hundreds who will build this project, some 50 will be full-time employees. We are investing back in the community, in high-speed rail, in highways and bridges, in basic infrastructure, and in things that will serve us for a long time to come.

The Senator from Alabama says: Let's stop doing that. Let's stop putting that money into those investments.

I think that is shortsighted. I think what we need to do is to follow the President's lead and to make the investments in our economy today to get it chugging and moving forward. That, to me, is the first step in reducing our long-term deficit. Until we get out of this recession, get people back to work, paying taxes, the deficit will continue to grow.

What is the second thing we can do to deal with our deficit? Health care costs. Health care costs are going through the roof. I have said before that the mayor of Kankakee, IL, told me last week that she just got the health insurance bill for 2,900 city employees for next year, and the premiums are going up 83 percent. She is going to cut back on coverage, more copays, more deductibles, and hope to get it down to a 50-percent increase. It will mean that in a city that is hard-pressed to meet basic needs, there will be an additional million dollars in health insurance premium costs next year for even less coverage. That story is being repeated over and over across the United States.

On Sunday, at a press conference in Chicago with four small businesses, each one told the same story, that they had reached a point where they couldn't afford health insurance for themselves as owners or for their employees. They told of terrible situations where some of them had children who were literally dropped from coverage because they couldn't continue to pay the high premiums that went through the roof.

The Republican side of the aisle has told us: Stop this debate on health care reform. Let's stop and start over. As the President said the other day, the health insurance companies are not starting over. The health insurance companies are continuing to do what they know how to do, and that is to raise prices.

Goldman Sachs is a firm with which most people are familiar. They put out a report very recently about what they considered the best thing for the health insurance industry. Goldman Sachs said, in this article that was published in the Huffington Post:

What the firm sees as the best path forward for the private insurance industry's bottom line is, to be blunt, inaction.

The study's authors [at Goldman Sachs] advise that if no reform is passed, earnings per share would grow an estimated ten percent from 2010 to 2019, and the value of the stock would rise an estimated 59 percent. The next best thing for the insurance industry would be if the legislation passed by the Senate Finance Committee is watered down significantly.

This says that the best way to reach higher profitability for health insurance is for us to do nothing. The second best way is to do very little. That is what we are being asked to do by the Republican side of the aisle, either do nothing or do very little, take baby steps, don't really deal with the issue. That is not going to solve the problem.

If we are going to provide competition and choice for small businesses and people buying health insurance, we should offer them what we have as Members of Congress. If it is good enough for us, wouldn't it be good enough for the rest of America? Our plan is pretty good. It is called the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. Eight million Federal employees and their families are in there. It has been in existence for 40 years.

My wife and I each year have an open enrollment period to choose from nine different private insurance plans in my State of Illinois. These are plans that have to meet the basic requirements of Illinois so that they are not plans that are worthless and they are plans that we pick based on our state in life. My wife and I are at a point where we buy the biggest plan, the high-option plan. The Federal Government pays a share of the premium cost; we pay the rest. We would pay less if we had less coverage. But if we don't like the plan, next year we have open enrollment again. We can pick another one. What a great idea for consumers, to be able to pick and choose, go shopping just like one would for an automobile, to pick the one that is right for your family, the one you can afford, the one that gives you the coverage you need.

If that is good enough for Republican and Democratic Members of Congress, Senate and House, why isn't it good enough for America? Why don't we have exchanges just like that available for businesses and individuals to choose from, the best private health insurance plan that meets their pocketbook needs and their health needs? That is what our bill does. Many on the Republican side have condemned it as socialism. The government administers it, at least sets up the plans on the insurance exchange. Guess what. Every Senator's health insurance plan would be socialistic by that definition. I don't see them rushing down to the Secretary of the Senate to cancel their coverage. They love it. I do too. It is the best health insurance you could ask for. To require minimum requirements in terms of what coverage it will have, that is what our plans do. When we say, do that in the bill, they say, there it is, government-run health insurance. It is not. It is private health insurance plans.

There are 50 million Americans without insurance. We provide coverage for 30 million. Those are people who, when they get sick, go to the hospital, get taken care of, and the cost of their care is passed on to everybody else who has health insurance. That is not fair. It costs us a lot of money as individuals. We pay $1,000 a year in extra premiums for the uninsured. Our idea is to bring people under coverage so that when they go to the hospital, their care is paid for, not by us but, in this case, either by private health insurance or by Medicaid, the government health insurance plan.

When we asked the Republicans, if we cover 30 million in our approach, how many do you cover of 50 million uninsured, their answer is 3 million. That is not much of an effort, when you think about it. I can understand why we need to do more.

There are two last points I wish to make. One is that if we are going to deal with health insurance in an honest way, we need to at least tell the health insurance companies that the party is over. First, their antitrust exemption, which they have had for 65 years, has to come to an end. Should they be allowed to collude and conspire on prices and divide up the market at the expense of consumers? We ought to put an end to it. The House voted to do that. Secondly, we have to put an end to the awful practice by many health insurance companies to deny coverage to individuals because of preexisting conditions, for example, or to say, if you get really sick, they will just cut you off in terms of how much they will pay. Those things are gross abuses. They need to change. The Republicans have yet to offer a plan that deals with those gross insurance abuses. Their baby steps don't even deal with the serious issues.

Finally, when it comes to Medicare, 40 million Americans count on it, those who are seniors and disabled. It only has about 9 years of solvency left. Our bill doubles the life of Medicare, another 9 or 10 years of longevity. That is good for seniors and for all of us. We want to cut out the waste, and there is waste. We want to provide basic quality care. But doing nothing, as many Republicans counsel us to do on health care reform, means Medicare will go broke in 9 years. I don't want to be around to see that happen. I want to be part of the solution.

My final point is this: We started off talking about the deficit and debt. If we don't deal with health care costs and bringing them down, we can't raise enough money in taxes to keep up with this skyrocketing cost. State governments, local governments, and the Federal Government will all be faced with this kind of increased bill and increased debt and increased deficit each year. That is the reality of doing nothing on health care reform when it comes to deficit and debt.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a New York Times piece relative to the health care insurance industry, as well as this analysis of managed care by Goldman Sachs and several articles which outline exactly what is going to happen. The health care insurance industry is praying that we do nothing because their profits will continue to skyrocket. That is not fair to the families across America.

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

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