Recognition of the Minority Leader

Floor Speech

RECOGNITION OF THE MINORITY LEADER -- (Senate - December 05, 2009)

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Mr. BENNETT. I say to the Senator from Arizona and others who have commented, home health care is not the only way seniors will be hurt by this. I am quoting from an article by Tom Scully, one of the designers of the Medicare Part D benefit, on the impact of this bill on Medicare Part D for seniors. Let me quote the key points of the article. I ask unanimous consent to have the entire article printed in the Record.

There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:

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Mr. BENNETT. He says:

There is a little-noticed provision buried deep in both the House and Senate health care reform bills that is intended to save billions of dollars--but instead will hurt millions of seniors, impose new costs on taxpayers, and charge employers millions in new taxes.

Here is the core of it:

This fall, congressional staff, looking for a new revenue source to pay for health reform, proposed eliminating the tax deductibility of the subsidy to employers. The supposed savings were estimated by congressional staff to be as much as $5 billion over the next decade.

It sounds smart--except that nobody asked how many employers will drop retiree drug coverage. Clearly, many will. The result is that, instead of saving money, the proposed revenue raiser will force Medicare Part D costs to skyrocket as employers drop retirees into the program.

He concludes with this comment:

There are many reasons to pass health care reform. There is no reason to hurt seniors, employers and taxpayers in the process. Businesses are struggling and the Medicare trust funds have plenty of problems as it is. It makes no sense to make these problems worse.

So not only are the programs going to be cut, but the drug costs are going to be dumped into the program, with an increased number of people involved. You are going to see tremendous financial distortions as a result of the passage of this bill.

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Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Arizona.

My mind goes back to a personal experience I had that I would like to share with my friends on the left. It was an entirely different bill--No Child Left Behind. We were all for it on this side of the aisle because our President had proposed it. My staffer said to me, listening to the debate: You know, Senator, if President Clinton had proposed this, you would vote against it because you would think it was too heavyhanded with government interference. I said: You know, you are right. I have to do the right thing. I was one of the few Senators who voted against it.

If we had proposed what the Democrats had proposed, every argument we are currently hearing from the right side of the aisle would be coming with great roars and insistent statements on the other side of the aisle. But because it is their President who proposed it, they are somehow keeping their consciences under control. I hope they will recognize the irony of that and that at least one Senator--that is all we need in order to stop this bill--would recognize that conscience ought to prevail and this bill ought to be stopped.

Let's be clear. If this bill is stopped, health care reform will not die as a cause. Indeed, health care reform will be reborn in a bipartisan sense of, let's solve the problem, rather than in a partisan sense of, let's jam something down somebody's throat.

I hope that is what will happen, that conscience will prevail somewhere and one member of the Democratic Party who feels in his or her heart that this is a dumb idea will let his or her conscience prevail.

I see the Republican leader.

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Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I have enjoyed this colloquy. I have enjoyed the enthusiasm that is here. I noticed that the sense of passion to get something done properly for the American people is on this side of the aisle. A great of sense of defensiveness is on the other side of the aisle.

We all have an been caught one time or another in the struggle between support for a leadership position or a Presidential position and our own sense of what is the right thing to do. I join with my leader from Kentucky in saying that the people of Utah have never been more worked up about any issue than this one. I have never seen any circumstance where they have been more firm and unanimous in their demand that this bill be stopped.

The Senator from Kentucky said if there is somebody in Kentucky who is for this bill, he has not met him. I have met some people in Utah who are for this bill. They have spoken to me about it, as I pass through airports or I walk down the street in the hearing of other people from Utah. As soon as anybody hears someone tell me, Vote for this bill, there is a chorus of voices that spontaneously come up around that and say: Don't listen to him; listen to us. This is a terrible bill. This is a terrible circumstance.

I have been proud in the debate to point out that in Utah, the Dartmouth study says we have the best health care available in the United States, and if everybody got their health care there, it would not only be the best, it would be one-third cheaper than the national average.

I have spent a lot of time talking with the people who provided that result. Unanimously they tell me this bill would damage that result. It would damage the quality, and it would raise the price. Why in the world would we want to do those two things?

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