Expressing Sorrow To West Virginia And Poland

Floor Speech

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I join my colleagues in expressing my sorrow to the families of West Virginia for the coal miners who were lost in that disaster. Illinois is a coal mining State. Throughout our history we have had terrible mine disasters and the loss of life. I hope we can not only bring them consolation but that we can learn from this disaster. When we find that only a small portion of the fines that have been imposed on coal companies for safety violations have been paid, it clearly calls for a much more aggressive approach by our Federal Government and the agencies that are entrusted with the responsibility of protecting the safety of these coal miners. We can do better.

One of the saddest comments, but I am afraid true comments, came from my colleague Senator Jay Rockefeller, who said these tragedies are likely to occur again no matter how much we do.

Congressman Nick Rahall said: unfortunately, reform, when it comes to coal mine safety, is written in the blood of dead coal miners. But let us use their lives as an inspiration to do a better job of writing the laws and enforcing the laws so that the men and women who work in this perilous trade have the protection of their government.

Second, I will be speaking at length at a later time, but I want to join with those who expressed their sorrow over the death of the President and First Lady of Poland and so many of the government leaders. It is said there are more Polish Americans living in Chicago, IL, than in any other city than Warsaw, Poland. We have a proud, strong Polish population in and around the city of Chicago. They have been through much in their lives. Many of them came to this country to escape the horrors of World War II. They have built their families, their neighborhoods, their churches, their parishes--they have built our city, the city of Chicago, and many others in my State. They were in grief and mourning as they gathered over the weekend at a Polish cemetery to express their sorrow for the loss of their President and First Lady.

The people of Poland have been inspired by faith and family in times of adversity. They will be again. I will have more remarks to make on that subject at a later point.

HEALTH CARE REFORM

The minority leader, Senator McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, before we left, said, wait until you go home and listen to people about health care reform.

So I did. I went all across Illinois, and I spent 2 weeks. I went right into the teeth of the most conservative parts of Illinois, held meetings, answered questions, and by and large people had some impressions of what the bill did but did not know the details on what it was going to do and how it was going to change their lives.

I talked to them about the fact that there are literally people working today in our State of Illinois--1.4 million of them--without health insurance. Many times, these people and their children have lived a whole life without health insurance.

On the Senate floor, I spoke of a lady I met in a Hampton Inn in Marion, IL. Her name is Judy. What a sweetheart. She is there every morning cleaning off the tables, greeting everyone with a smile. She has become my buddy because we stop there, and we talk about southern Illinois and what is going on. On the last trip there, I talked to her about health care reform. She was worried about it.

What is it going to do to me? Is it going to mandate that I buy health insurance? I do not make a lot of money, Senator.

I said: Do you have health insurance?

She said: Senator, come on. I have never had health insurance in my life. I am a waitress.

Never had health insurance in her life.

How old are you, Judy?

Fifty-nine.

Never had health insurance.

Never, she said. When you saved up enough money, you went to the doctor and you had to make do.

Well, how is your health, I asked her.

She said: Well, I have high blood sugar.

I said: How high?

She said: I do not know. I cannot get to the doctor regularly, but when it gets very bad, I get checked out. He says: I have to do something about it.

That is what she told me on the last trip. When I saw her on this trip, I almost did not recognize her. She had dropped 25 pounds, and she looked pretty weak. But she came to me and she said: Well, my blood sugar is acting up again. I have lost 25 pounds. But I never missed a day of work. I came in here every day.

Judy would be covered by this health care reform bill. She will have health insurance for the first time in her life, under Medicaid. She will be able to be taken care of. She will have a doctor looking at her blood sugar to make sure she does not go blind or lose a limb. That is what this health care reform bill does.

Before we left town, I had one of my staff call a local doctor and ask him, as a personal favor, to see her. He said he would. I thanked him so much for doing that. I hope he can help her along.

As we left town, though, I went by Carbondale, IL, home of Southern Illinois University. There is a baseball coach there named Danny Callahan. I have known him since he was 6 years old. He is a great guy; probably in his forties now; two or three kids. He was diagnosed with melanoma 6 or 8 years ago from a sunburn he got as a baseball player, and it had spread. He has been battling cancer ever since. He has had tumors removed, his lower jaw removed, and he is trying to hang on. His doctor came up with a therapy for him, a cancer therapy for him, that works, that slows down the progress of the cancer. When they turned in the bill for the cancer therapy, the health insurance company said: No, we do not cover that. Well, it cost $14,000 a month. Danny cannot afford that. He has been in court in a battle with this health insurance company to get the drugs his doctor wants to give him to save his life. Sadly, that battle still goes on.

The health reform bill we passed will give Danny and his family and others like him a fighting chance against health insurance companies. So when I hear the Republican leader come to the floor and tell us we are going to catch this firestorm of opposition, I think of these cases, of those people, and how, if we did nothing, their lives could not be as good. In fact, some of them may suffer as a result of the current system and the law.

We are going to have a vote this afternoon, for those who follow the Senate. It is a vote about unemployment benefits. You see, many of us believe we are in an economic emergency in this country with about 8 million people unemployed, another 6 million under long-term unemployment--almost 15 million Americans unemployed, looking for work. For some of them, we have been extending unemployment benefits so they can get by. It is about $300 a week. For families who have been going through this for a long time, with unemployment that has lasted over a year, we know what they have been through. They have lost their life savings, and they have nowhere to turn. So on an emergency basis, we have been extending unemployment benefits and health insurance coverage for the unemployed in this country. We tried to do it again before we left for this 2-week Easter break, and there was an objection from the Republican side of the aisle. Senator Coburn of Oklahoma has objected. What it means is that as of 1 week ago, we started cutting people off from coverage for unemployment benefits in America because of the objection of one Senator. How many people? Over 200,000 lost their unemployment benefits across America in the first week; another 200,000 will lose their benefits this week; and by the end of the month, 1 million Americans will lose their unemployment benefits because 1 Senator objected and they do not want to bring this to a vote.

If you want to know why a Senator who is, like myself, drawing a paycheck and living a pretty comfortable life would want to cut off unemployment benefits for those who are struggling, the argument was mentioned earlier by the Republican leader: It is time to fight the deficit. Let's fight the deficit when it comes to unemployment benefits in America. That is the stand they are taking. It is interesting to me that many of these same Senators thought nothing of an $800 billion bailout for the banks when they were in trouble. That was not paid for. Mr. President, $800 billion for banks--oh, we have to do that--but when it comes to helping the unemployed in this country, oh, that is going to break the bank. When are we ever going to learn?

I am getting a little tired of being preached to by the other said of the aisle about fiscal conservatism. It was their President, the last President, who more than doubled the national debt in this country, from $5 trillion to $12 trillion. It was under their watch that we engaged in two wars and did not pay for any of it, added it to the national debt. It was under their watch that they called for tax breaks for the wealthiest people in America in the midst of a war and added it directly to the debt. Now when we come to the floor and say, for goodness' sake, give the unemployed in this country the basics of life to get by, they say we cannot afford it; we have this deficit. When it came to the bank bailout, we did not hear a word about the deficit. When it came to paying for these wars, which we did not do, we did not hear these deficit hawks. When it came to a prescription drug benefit that cost $400 billion, they did not pay for it. The list goes on.

I look at my State and think, 16,000 people in Illinois lost their health insurance because 1 Republican Senator objected; 2,600 from his home State of Oklahoma. And the number grows by the week. What are we going to do about this? They want to pay for this by taking the money out of programs we are going to use to put people to work, taking the money away from projects that are going to be built across America to put construction workers back to work. Construction trades have one of the highest unemployment rates in America, over 25 percent. They are talking about cutting the money from the projects to pay for unemployment benefits. That is not going to bring us out of the recession; it is going to create more unemployment in the process. That is what this debate is all about.

There are ways we can address this deficit, and should. There is a Presidential commission which I am going to serve on with a number of Republicans and Democrats. It will not be easy. But why in the world do we want to fight this battle today on the backs of those who are unemployed and losing their benefits? It literally means that thousands across America are going to have to do without.

What do you do when you have exhausted your savings, you have no job, you are about to lose your home, and it is a real question about whether you can keep going down to the food pantry or the soup kitchen? If you don't think that is happening, check out your hometown. That is exactly what is happening. The Republican answer is, cut off the benefits and tell them we have to cut the projects to build the roads, to build the bridges, and make more unemployment in the construction trade sector in order to pay for this. That, to me, is not a good approach. It is not a humane approach. If we can just get as much compassion from the other side of the aisle for unemployed workers as we had for bank bailouts, we would have a chance of feeding those people and keeping their families together during one of the worst economic turns we have seen in America.

The vote later on today--we will need 60 votes in order to continue to move forward on unemployment benefits. We do not have those votes on this side of the aisle. We will need Republican votes. The last time we dealt with this a month or so ago, a number of Republicans stepped forward and helped. I hope we do the same this afternoon.

I yield the floor.

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