FAA Air Transportation Modernization and Safety Improvement Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I rise in strong, vehement opposition to the amendment offered by the minority leader, Senator McConnell, to repeal the health care reform law.

First, I would say to my good friend from Nevada, yes, we would like to work together to further reduce costs, but this bill does reduce costs significantly. The CBO has said in no uncertain terms that repeal would balloon the deficit by $230 billion in the first decade and more than $1 trillion in the second decade. That is because the law smokes out a good deal of the waste, the inefficiency, and the duplication that we all know is part of our system.

That is the place where we have to continue to work together. Our country delivers the best health care in the world, but it is also the most inefficient. We spend 17 percent of our GDP on health care. The next highest spending country is only 10 percent. Under the reformed law, we will begin the first large step in keeping quality care but getting costs under control.

If my colleagues on the other side of the aisle said: You know, you are right; we have to reduce costs, we have a better way and they offered a bill on the floor, well, then, maybe we would take a look at it. But they are silent. It is very easy to sit there and say repeal, but what would they put in its place?

The reason this amendment will be so easily defeated today is because a budget point of order says if you are going to raise the deficit $230 billion in the first decade and $1 trillion in the second, you better find out where that money is coming from. The other side is silent, not a peep about where that money would come from. So that makes one feel this is sort of for show. Let's wave the flag for some of our hard-core supporters who definitely want repeal, but there is nothing in its place.

The old mantra the other side seemed to have--some of them--of repeal and replace is gone. It is now repeal and we have nothing to replace it with. That does not meet with the favor of the American people. In fact, the number who are against repeal is growing. Only about one-fifth of those who say they want to see the law changed want full repeal. Only 20 percent of the public wants full repeal. If those numbers are correct, and I believe they are, that means almost certainly that a majority of Republican voters don't want full repeal.

The bottom line, Mr. President, and particularly in this area of health care, is that talking about deficit reduction is a lot easier than doing it. That fact is evidenced by the amendment my friend, the leader from Kentucky, will offer. That is why a budget point of order is the appropriate response, and that is why this will be defeated rather handily.

In later days maybe my colleagues will come up with parts of the bill they wish to change. We will be open to it. Today Senator Stabenow is offering an amendment to change the 1099 section of the law. She has worked with people on both sides of the aisle. I know Senator Johanns has been a leader, the Republican from Nebraska. We are going to pass that today. So the idea that we are unwilling to change any part of this law is belied by what we are doing on the Senate floor.

We want to work together. But somehow, when we get a repeal amendment--repeal the whole thing, no substitute, no answer to how to deal with the debt--one wonders what this repeal is all about.

Furthermore, why is the American public becoming more favorable to this law as we go through this debate? That is what the polling data has shown. Well, I would give two reasons. First, many of the horrors that were bandied about as the law was being put together are proving not to be true.

I will never forget that last summer someone came to me, a gentleman from Long Island, and he said: Senator Schumer, I am a Democrat. I have voted for you in every election, but I am not going to vote for you again.

I said: Why?

He said: I hate the health care law.

I said: What do you hate about it?

He said: I am going to lose my health care benefits on Labor Day.

I said: What is your profession?

He said: I am a New York City firefighter. He lived on Long Island, but he was a New York City firefighter.

Well, anyone who knows even a little about the health care bill knows that a New York City firefighter will not lose their benefits on Labor Day or any other time under this provision. But this poor man had listened to some talk radio and they had convinced him he was going to lose his benefits.

But that is all fading. I haven't spoken to the gentleman since. I don't know his name. I just met him at a summer street fair. But he has found his benefits are just as good today as they were on the day before Labor Day, so it is pretty logical to suppose he would have said repeal the law a year ago but wouldn't say so today.

But there is another reason, and probably an even more important reason, this law is gaining support as people learn about it, and we owe some thanks to our Republican colleagues because they have given us a second chance to make a first impression. Most who looked last year said the messaging--rightly or wrongly, falsely or truly--was done better by the opponents than by the proponents of the law. But now, as people look at the law, they are learning about the many good things in the bill.

I daresay that most of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle want to keep those good things. I would be quite certain that the vast majority of Americans would want to keep those things, and the polling data backs that up.

So when you say repeal, when you just use a hatchet and not a scalpel, you lose all the good things, many of which are in effect today. So I would ask my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who support repeal: Do you support increasing prescription drug costs for our Nation's seniors? Thanks to this law, the so-called doughnut hole--which was created in the prescription drug plan of 2003 under George Bush--will be fixed. Seniors who fall into this doughnut hole--which says when they pay about $2,500 for drugs, the government will help them no longer--will now get a 50-percent discount on their medications. This first year that will amount to a savings of $550 for the average senior.

When you are a senior on a fixed income, $550 is a nice amount of change, and that will help a whole lot of people. The discount keeps increasing every year until the last crumb of the doughnut hole is gone.

I will admit that is a mixed metaphor because a doughnut hole, by definition, has no crumbs. But good try, staff. Excellent work, in any case. It sounded very good to me too.

But in these times, these savings aren't exactly chicken feed. They will make a huge difference for seniors. The average senior, when the doughnut hole is fully eliminated--crumbs and all--will save more than $2,000 a year.

How about the provision that helps young people? Every one of us knows of instances where young men and women get out of college or get out of high school and they go into the job market. Oftentimes those new jobs they are seeking do not provide health care. That happens quite often. It is a new job, it is a low-paying job, they are just starting out. I know--I have spoken to many young people like this, and their parents--there is a lot of anguish. Does that young person who maybe has a job that pays $25,000 or $30,000 a year pay $1,000 a month for health care for himself or herself? They cannot afford that.

On the other hand, to go without health care insurance--yes, they are young and healthy but God forbid they have an accident, go to the hospital, come up with some unusual and rare and expensive disease. What are they going to do? This keeps lots of young people and their parents up at night. This new bill solves that problem because you can stay on your parents' health care insurance, should they have it, until you are 26. By then you are in the labor force a little bit longer and the likelihood of your employer giving you health care is somewhat greater. Do my colleagues on the other side of the aisle want to take that away? If so, what are you going to put in its place? What are you going to tell the young people, 22 and 23 and 24 and 25 and 26, to do?

Then there is another provision that I think is worth keeping--preventive medicine. We all know one of the big problems with our health care system as opposed to some of the others in some of the other western countries is we do not do enough prevention. So instead of a disease being nipped in the bud, making the patient healthier and costing the system a whole lot less, it waits and waits. Those of us who put this health care bill together realized that and said early detection saves not only lives but billions of dollars. In this health care bill Medicare will provide a free wellness checkup once a year for every senior citizen. If there is a little bit of illness, they can nip it in the bud.

We all know the earlier you detect cancer or heart disease or diabetes or emphysema, the better chance of curing it and the less expensive to cure it. This is going to save billions of dollars. Just giving certain tests at these wellness checkups will save people themselves money but, more importantly, save the Medicare system money, a lot of money. It is important for the people to save their money too, of course. This makes a great deal of sense.

A mammography can find breast cancer before it metastasizes. A simple blood test can find prostate cancer before it spreads. What are my colleagues on the other side of the aisle going to say to seniors? What are they going to say to the Medicare system, which is trying to get more effective by getting involved in early detection and prevention? Forget it? That is what you are doing when you vote for repeal. You have nothing in its place.

How about the small business tax credit? My dad was a small businessman. He had a little exterminating business. I know how small businessmen struggle. My father truly never became happy until he left the business. Now, praise God, he is 87 and he is a much happier guy than he was, even at 60, struggling in that business. One of the dilemmas that small business people face is the high cost of medical care for their employees. They want to provide it, A, because they want their employees to be healthy, B, because they like most of their employees, and C, because they want to keep the employees from going somewhere else if they are good--but it costs so darned much. Here is what is in the bill. If you are a small business that makes less than $1.2 million and you have 25 or fewer employees, you get a 35-percent credit, going up to 50 percent in 2014. That is a huge help to small businesses that are already providing health care for their workers, and a great incentive for small businesses that are not already to do so. Hundreds of thousands of small businesses in my State alone will benefit from this. What, my friends on the other side of the aisle, are you saying to those small businesses? What are you saying to their workers? Go at it alone? Because you want to repeal it but you have nothing--nothing--to replace it.

There is one more provision I want to speak of. There are so many good things in this bill. No matter how much you don't like some of the bad provisions--and I know that is genuinely held by some of my colleagues--to just repeal it and get rid of the good stuff makes no sense, in my judgment. We have all heard the horror stories of insurance companies--when you go to them after you, your spouse, your kid has an illness and you say: Thank God, I have insurance--the insurance company deliberately, or maybe not but anyway they say: Mr. Smith, you did not check off that little box on page 17. You did not dot that I or cross that t. You are not covered.

We all know the intent was to cover it. We all know the insurance company was happy to take the premiums even without that dotted I or crossed t or checked box when the family was healthy and money was coming in. But now all of a sudden they say bye-bye. This bill does not allow that to happen.

The kinds of rescission I talked about are banned. What are we saying, not just to the families who have experienced this but to every American family with insurance who worries about this? What are we saying to them? Again, you have nothing in its place because you are repealing, not replacing, even though people said early on that is not what they are doing.

I have one more point before I conclude. We are willing to work with you. The Stabenow amendment on the floor of the Senate shows that. I would have drafted it a different way and there will be a Levin amendment that I would prefer. But either way we are going to address the 1099 issue. Many people on your side of the aisle, many people on our side recognize that was a mistake. Not every bill is perfect. We are not digging in and saying we have to have the bill exactly as written and exactly as drafted. But you are doing the inverse--you are saying we have to have no part of this bill because if you wanted to retain parts of it you would have had an amendment on the floor saying take these parts out and keep these parts in. But you are not. Why? Your guess is as good as mine. But it is a lot easier to tear down than create, as we learned when we did the health care bill. But you have an obligation, unless you believe there should not be a health care system or we ought to go back to the system without any changes in the law that we have, which nobody liked. It is not fair.

In conclusion, No. 1, this bill reduces the deficit. The repeal increases the deficit and there is no money there to make up for those funds that the bill would bring in by cost cutting and by fees. No. 2, there are lots of good things in the bill that probably my colleagues would support but they get rid of them with no replacement--nothing. Nothing for the seniors, nothing for the 21- to 26-year-olds, nothing for the people who are treated poorly by their insurance companies. And, No. 3, we want to work with you. There are some changes we could work together on in the bill, not only 1099 but walking farther down the road of reducing the inefficiencies in the system, the high cost, the waste, by still preserving good care for the people who get it. That is something that would lend itself, particularly in these times of high deficits, to bipartisan support and working together.

Today, simple repeal, again, it may feed some red meat to the minority in this country. It is a small minority, if you believe the polling, who say repeal it. But the responsible job of a legislator, whether you agree with this bill or disagree with this bill, is not to repeal but to improve. That is not happening today.

I yield the floor.

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