Small Business Tax Relief Act of 2007

Floor Speech

SMALL BUSINESS TAX RELIEF ACT OF 2007 -- (Senate - July 31, 2007)

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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, this debate is not just about extending health care to our children. It is about our national priorities. It is about who we are as a nation. It is about which side we are on.

For the last 6 years, we have had a President who has insisted, as one of his major priorities, on more and more tax breaks for the very wealthiest people in our country. People who are worth millions of dollars and people who are worth billions of dollars have, collectively, received hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks. But when it comes to those people most in need, those people who are most vulnerable, including the children of our country--the kids who are 2 or 3 years of age--who have health care needs, this President, tragically and embarrassingly, has not been there. If you are wealthy and powerful, he is there. If you are a child and vulnerable, AWOL--he is not listening. In fact, he has been in opposition.

It is no secret to the American people that our current health care system is disintegrating. Today, 46 million Americans, including over 9 million children, have no health insurance whatsoever, and tens of millions more are underinsured, with high premiums and copayments. Costs are soaring every single year, and small businesses in my State of Vermont and throughout this country are no longer, in many cases, able to offer any health insurance. Throughout the country today workers are being asked to pay a higher and higher percentage of the cost of their health insurance, and many of them cannot afford to do that because health insurance premiums have been rising four times faster than workers' earnings since the year 2000.

In the midst of all of that--more and more uninsured, costs soaring--we end up spending twice as much per capita on health care as any other country and remain--we remain--the only Nation in the industrialized world that does not guarantee health care to all our people as a right of citizenship. Today, we are debating about whether we should expand the SCHIP program to 3 million more children. But all over the industrialized world, every child in those countries has health care as a right of citizenship.

Despite the over $2 trillion--$2 trillion--we now spend on health care--money which, to a significant degree, goes to enrich the insurance companies and the drug companies--our health status measures, including infant mortality and life expectancy, rank among the lowest of developed countries. We spend twice as much as other countries per person on health care--with over 9 million children who have no health insurance--and yet health status measures are lower than many of our allies around the world.

There is no question but that in the face of rising costs and a broken health care system, we need to make fundamental changes in the way we do health care in this country. We need to develop a cost-effective national health care program which guarantees health care to all our people, and study after study suggests we can do that without spending any more than we currently spend on our wasteful and bureaucratic nonsystem. That is what we have to do, and that is what I will fight for as long as I am in the Senate.

Today, we are discussing, despite what some may say, what is, in fact, a modest proposal--a modest proposal. We are discussing an expansion of the SCHIP program, which would expand health care to some 3 million more children. Over 9 million American children today are uninsured, and all we are doing today is saying: Let's expand health insurance to one-third of those children. If this bill were passed in 5 minutes, two-thirds of the uninsured children would remain uninsured, and in the United States of America we can do a lot better than that.

As Chairman Baucus has said, as Senator OLYMPIA SNOWE said last night, investing in the health insurance of our children is a good investment. It is cost effective. Today throughout this country there are children who are unseen by medical professionals. They are developing illnesses which are undetected. Those illnesses become worse as they get older. They end up in the hospital. It costs significant sums of money to treat these young people, as they age, in hospitals, when we could have eased their suffering and saved money by getting to their illnesses when they were young, if they had the opportunity to see a doctor.

As Chairman Baucus also mentioned, there is the issue of dental care in this country. In my own State of Vermont and throughout this country, there are millions and millions of young people who simply cannot gain access to a dentist who have teeth rotting in their mouths in the United States of America, in the year 2007. That is not acceptable to me, and I hope it is not acceptable to my colleagues in the Senate.

Given this sorry state of affairs regarding health care in this country in general, and the needs of our kids in particular, I find it ironic we are having any debate about increasing health insurance coverage for children under the SCHIP program.

Let me be very clear, in terms of providing health insurance to our kids, I would go--and will go--a lot further than this legislation. I have, in fact, recently introduced S. 1564, the All Healthy Children Act of 2007, which would provide health insurance to every child in America. That is where I think we should be going.

Some people, including the President of the United States, are saying: My goodness, this bill will cost $35 billion over a 5-year period; we can't afford that.

But I find it ironic that many of those same people, including the President of the United States, believe, among other things--among many other things--that we can afford to repeal entirely the estate tax, which would benefit only the top three-tenths of 1 percent of the American people. The very richest people in this country would, if the President had his way, receive $1 trillion in tax breaks over 20 years. That is $1 trillion in tax breaks over 20 years going to the wealthiest three-tenths of 1 percent of the American people. That we can afford. But when it comes to spending $35 billion over a 5-year period for the children of our country, we do not have the money.

I find it ironic, if we repealed the inheritance tax, one family, the Walton family who owns Wal-Mart, would receive $32 billion in tax breaks. Yet we are trying to insure 3 million children today for $35 billion. So $32 billion for one family; $35 billion for 3 million children.

To my mind, what this debate is about is getting our priorities right as a nation. I am getting a little bit tired of hearing many of my colleagues, and hearing this President, talk about family values, when we have almost 10 million children in this country uninsured. If you are interested in family values, you are interested in the future of this country, you are interested in the children of this country.

This is a modest proposal. It is a first-step proposal, and it should be passed and passed immediately.

Thank you very much.

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