Tax on Bonuses Received from Certain TARP Recipients

Floor Speech

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Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, I have only been in the Senate about 3 years, but you don't have to be too quick around here to figure out that it is pretty easy to attack and to oppose and to try to stop things.

I am fairly amazed at the number of people I see--and I will share some letters of people from Ohio, from my home State, about this health care bill and about what this means personally to them. I will do that in a second, but just putting aside ideological arguments and political attacks, these attacks that there is nothing good in this bill, it is a government takeover, it is socialism, it is putting a government bureaucrat between you and your doctor--the same argument the John Birch Society used against Medicare we are hearing again. I hear those things, but I really never hear anything constructive.

They talk about the deals, forgetting about the deals they made when they were in the majority, which were huge giveaways to the drug companies and to the insurance companies and giveaways to the oil companies and to these big companies that outsource jobs to China. Whoever had their hand out, whoever the special interests were, they got what they wanted. Now I see my colleagues just shrink back and say how horrible all this is. Well, they have nothing to offer.

They say: Let's stop; let's work together; let's start with a blank sheet of paper and do this over. Well, they have no intention of doing that. We spent a year answering their objections, and we accepted 160 Republican amendments in the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, amendments from Senator McCain, Senator Alexander, Senator Enzi, Senator Burr, and Senator Coburn--from one Republican Senator after another, one hundred sixty Republican amendments. It is never enough. They continue to oppose. But in the 8 years when President Bush was here and in the several years when they were in the majority in both Houses, the only thing consequential they could do for health care to insure the uninsured, to do anything, was to give hundreds--not tens of billions but hundreds of billions of dollars of giveaways to the Nation's largest drug companies and insurance companies.

Then I hear my Senate colleagues talk about we are blowing a hole in the budget. The fact is, the Congressional Budget Office--and the Presiding Officer understands this, because we all know the Congressional Budget Office is not comprised of Democrats or Republicans; they are not on our side or their side; they are simply accountants and lawyers and actuarial people who play this straight--the CBO says this bill more than pays for itself.

I wonder, Mr. President, if this water we drink here causes amnesia for some of my colleagues because all of a sudden they are for balancing the budget. But in 2000, when President Bush took office, there was a budget surplus--a trillion-dollar budget surplus, year after year, as far as the eye could see--and we had tax cuts for the rich that they never even tried to pay for, and they never even tried to pay for the Iraq war. Even Senator Simpson, one of the most distinguished Senators of the Republican Party, who sat in this Chamber for 18 years, said in the paper yesterday: Never, to my knowledge, have we gone to war without paying for it. But they did that in those days, and I didn't hear my colleagues saying: Let's pay for this Iraq war, which cost us billions of dollars a month, month after month, year after year. When they did the Medicare privatization--the giveaway to the drug and insurance companies--they didn't try to pay for that either. But now they are saying we have to balance the budget. And I think we do, and I know the Presiding Officer and his constituents in Chesapeake and Arlington and Richmond think the same thing because we do need to balance the budget. But I find it curious, when the CBO says this actually creates a budget surplus--and they are not willing to believe them--that they were also not willing to pay for anything when they were in the majority.

But putting that aside, this bill is too important for that. It is too important to throw political accusations around. What is particularly important is what this bill means to individual Americans.

I hear my Republican friends talking about we are cutting Medicare. Yet this is the party that opposed Medicare, the party that tried to privatize Medicare. Yet they accuse us of cutting Medicare? I know nobody really believes that. They probably ought to quit saying it. It undercuts anything else they say because, as I say, nobody really believes that.

They say this bill was done behind closed doors. We had hearing after hearing, negotiation after negotiation, and floor debates. This has been going on, well, for 75 years, some would say, because Franklin Roosevelt tried to do it, Harry Truman tried to do it, John Kennedy tried to do it, Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson, who had some success between Kennedy and Nixon on Medicare.

Instead, my colleagues would rather talk about process and deals. In Washington, there is a buzz about process and deals, but in the country there isn't because people in the country know why we are here and why we are doing this. And as a result, Mr. President, let me take 5 or 10 minutes to read a handful of letters from constituents of mine because this is really why we are doing this. We are not doing it to score political points: This may help the Democrats or it may help Republicans win the election.

That doesn't really matter. It may help or it may hurt a reputation. None of that matters. What matters is this bill, and this matters to so many Americans.

I have read letters on the Senate floor for months now as we have debated this bill, and what is most common in these letters are two things. One of the most common things I hear from so many people is that a year or 2 years before they wrote these letters, they would have said: I am satisfied with my health insurance; it seems to work pretty well. Then something happened and they lost their job and then lost their insurance or they got sick and it was so expensive that the insurance company cut them off or they had a child born with a preexisting condition and they couldn't get insurance.

The insurance company model is why this is important, because of what it does individually for people. In a sort of macro way, think about how insurance companies operate. I have a lot of insurance companies in my State. I have no malice aimed toward them or their executives. I think their executives are paid too much. The CEOs in the average largest 10 insurance companies make $11 million a year. When they are cutting people off from their insurance, I think that is a bit of an overreach.

But I also think the insurance companies, because they compete with each other, in a for-profit model, do things they probably would rather they didn't have to do. Let me explain that for a moment. Insurance companies hire a whole bunch of bureaucrats to decide they do not want to insure potential customers. They look at all the new applicants, do tests, find out things about them, and these bureaucrats make the decision: We don't want to insure that person because that person has a preexisting condition and will get sick and it will be expensive. So they hire a bunch of bureaucrats to keep customers away. Then, on the other end, they hire a bunch of bureaucrats to deny claims of their customers when they get really sick sometimes.

So their business model is to keep customers away who are too expensive, too costly, and to deny payments for those who actually get expensive. That is their business model. That business model serves their profitability, to be sure, but that business model doesn't serve the American people.

So while we will continue to use private insurance in this country for health care--many countries in the world do, although no country uses private for-profit insurance. Many countries use private insurance to run their health care systems, in whole or in part, but they are nonprofit insurance companies. We will continue to use for-profit insurance companies, but we are going to have a whole set of rules around what they do. No more denying care for a preexisting condition; no more putting a cap on coverage so that once you get sick and get expensive, you could lose your insurance; people will be allowed to stay on their parents' insurance until they are 26--a whole host of things. Eighty-five percent of the insurance premium dollar must go to health care, not to executive salaries and marketing and to hire all those bureaucrats that the insurance companies do.

So that is the one thing mentioned by people in most of these letters, people who were satisfied with their insurance a year or 2 years earlier but then found out it wasn't such good insurance.

The second thing in these letters--and a lot of this comes from people in their early sixties--is many of them say they simply just need to hang on until they reach 65 and become Medicare eligible because then they will have the security and stability of something they trust.

As Senator Cardin of Maryland knows, government really can provide health care, as it does with Medicare, as it does with Medicaid, as it does with TRICARE for all the Active military people in Maryland and Virginia and Ohio. Government knows how to do this and can do it very well. But this bill is not a government takeover. It uses the parts of government that run the insurance, that do the insurance now, but it is certainly not a government takeover.

Let me now share these three letters from constituents, and then I will turn it over to Senator Cardin.

This first letter is from Melanie, Erie County in northern Ohio, the county next to mine, along Lake Erie.

I have a health condition that requires me to be on thyroid hormone replacement the rest of my life. But before my condition was diagnosed, I had to undergo all kinds of tests. And instead of being able to afford a 6 month and 1 year prescription, I have to buy my pills monthly, depending if I can afford them or not. We need a health care system that doesn't let insurance companies decide whether I can afford the medicine I need.

When someone is sick, they want to put their efforts into, how do I get well, not into, how can I afford this? Do I have to cut the pills in half? Do I have to take the pill every other day and hope that works out right? How am I going to pay for it this month?

There is a mind-boggling statistic that a woman in this country with breast cancer, without insurance, is 40 percent more likely to die than a woman with breast cancer who has insurance. Part of the reason for that is the anxiety and the fear people have when they are sick and trying to get well but who have to worry about so many other things in their lives and, most importantly, how are they going to pay for their medical treatment and how is their family going to deal with this. This bill will obviously help with that.

Here is a letter from John from Hancock County, Findlay, OH, not too far south of Toledo.

I am a 44-year-old diabetic who has had this condition for 43 years. Most people who know me thought I would never make it past 25.

He was diagnosed with diabetes at the age of 1, which is pretty astounding.

What my insurance company has done to me may make bankruptcy my only option. In 2008, I needed a new insulin pump. I filled out all the paperwork that was required by my insurance company. I received my insulin pump via mail and thought everything was all right. I received a bill from my pump supply company for $8,500, along with the supplies to use the pump for an additional $5,500. That is a $14,000 bill that my insurance company said they would not pay because of preexisting condition.

What is the point of health insurance? What is the point of a system where a man diagnosed as an infant with diabetes is faced with charges such as this, when diabetes is a terrible affliction that an increasing number of Americans have? We know how to manage it pretty well so that people such as John can live a pretty long, productive life. Yet the insurance company puts him through that. What will that do to his diabetes and health generally, to have to worry about how he is possibly going to come up with the $14,000?

Here is the last letter. It comes from Hayden, a young woman who is a Peace Corps volunteer from Delaware County, outside Columbus. She e-mailed us from Thailand, but she is an Ohioan.

I am thousands of miles away from you. I am far away from family, friends, and my hometown of Sunbury, OH. I am a member of the U.S. Peace Corps in Thailand. I believe I help to provide for the common good. I am creative, courageous and compassionate, and I believe my abilities can make a difference. In 15 months I will return to the United States, and I would like nothing more than to continue to work in community development. But I might not be able to.

Unfortunately, my life depends on two pills, each no bigger than your smallest fingernail. Without insurance, the cost of these two small pills is often more than my rent. And I am unlikely to get insurance unless I go to work with a large company.

Too many of my friends are in the same situation. We are young and bright, products of an American school system that has taught us to think independently and pursue our dreams. We want to be entrepreneurs, researchers, and community activists.

We need the opportunity to start our own ventures, to take responsible risks, and to go out into our communities--

Work to start businesses such as the Presiding Officer has.

I work everyday to give voice to those who have none [in the Peace Corps]. But today I need you to be my voice. I need you to speak for my generation.

So please let me come home--

She writes, to Delaware, OH, now working in the Peace Corps in Thailand; she e-mails:

..... please let me come home to a system that is better than the one we have now. My future depends on it.

She is serving this great country, the United States, in the Peace Corps is doing the right thing with her life. When she comes back to the United States, I hope this bill is passed. I hope the President of the United States has signed this bill, and we can be a better country as a result.

I yield the floor.

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