[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 26 (Thursday, March 10, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: March 10, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                        THE COSTS OF DISTRACTION

  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, conduct in Washington over the past 
few days reminds me of a biblical warning about straining out a gnat 
while swallowing a camel.
  This week we have heard a grinding tirade about a 16-year-old real 
estate transaction and precious few sentences about the perilous future 
of health care for millions of Americans.
  For too many years, Americans have flipped to C-SPAN and come face to 
face with congressional sniping but few solutions for the real life 
problems of real Americans. Debate has seemed more like political ping-
pong than serious discussions of issues with real and lasting impact on 
our people and on our Nation.
  It is not surprising that the people of America tune us out. For more 
than a decade we have seen campaigns waged with tactics of division and 
fear. Work in this Congress was subverted by debates about budget 
gimmicks and flag burning, all of this while family income stagnated, 
while millions lost health coverage, and more were shunted into HMO's 
while industry's competitive edge was worn away and our foreign 
competitors ate our economic lunch while a quarter of our children 
slipped into poverty and a quarter of the homeless each night are our 
children.
  Mr. President, in just 12 months President Clinton has started to 
turn around 12 years of inaction and neglect. He has pulled sound 
legislation from the mire here and gotten the Family Leave Act, the 
Motor Voter Act, and the National Service Program, which is fundamental 
to the rejuvenation of our spirit in America, and a deficit reduction 
package passed that all the pundits said could not be done, but he did 
it.
  He is the first President to finally get tough on trade with Japan. 
He understands lives filled with long days and constant struggles to 
make tomorrow a measure better than today. He talks about that often. 
He comes to this town penniless, and he will leave a poor man. He goes 
to work every day aching to make America work again. In my 30 years of 
public life, I have never seen so committed a public servant, so rich 
in talent, so prodigious in his desire to take on the really tough 
problems that vex this Nation.
  His wife Hillary has traveled this country trying to fill families 
touched by tragedy with a new sense of hope, as only she can, after 
their insurance has run out perhaps but their child's needs for 
medicine, of course, has not run out. She has worked herself to 
exhaustion, past exhaustion for doctors so worn down themselves by the 
system that they cannot remember why they went to medical school in the 
first place.
  She listened to fathers who worried about children graduating into 
jobs without benefits. She buried her own father and went straight back 
to work for families who labor every day caring for their own aging 
parents.
  She has worked countless hours on a plan to help parents who work 
knowing that, if they gave up and took welfare, they would get the 
benefits that they need; to help storeowners who lie awake wondering 
how they will tell trusted employees who they have known all their 
lives that their coverage will have to be cut.
  For all these people she has been a tireless educator and a tireless 
advocate. And her reward, Mr. President? Outside this Chamber she has 
been personally attacked by the same people committed to killing the 
health care reform which she has wrought.
  Mr. President, when Eleanor Roosevelt was in the White House, she was 
attacked, too, most vociferously in fact, when she championed an 
antilynching bill. That is right. When she spoke up against vicious mob 
violence, she was called a dangerous enemy to America.
  Now, a new generation of self-appointed judges want to tear down this 
First Lady and her good work. They deserve the same contempt that we 
heaped upon past defenders of lynching.
  Right now, President Clinton and the First Lady are working 
tirelessly to pass the most important piece of social legislation in 
the history of this Congress. That is what is at stake here, and that 
is what some in this city do not want our Nation to hear about.
  Recently the pattern of deliberate distraction has returned. One day 
it is whipping up a haze of confusion claiming there is no health care 
crisis in America. The next day it is rolling out a fog of nonsense 
that the President's health care reform plan is dead while in the 
meantime, of course, offering absolutely no alternative at all, and 
then a day later it is churning up a sandstorm over a 16-year-old real 
estate development--anything, anything to avoid knuckling down to our 
real work what we are hired on here to do. What flimsy excuse is next, 
Mr. President? What will they bring next? The Sun was in our eyes. Our 
shoe laces were untied. The dog ate the health care bill.
  It is pathetic. It is absolutely pathetic. Some here will always 
reach for one more excuse because good policy is hard work and it does 
take time and it takes patience, by the way, and it takes political 
courage.
  Some others upstairs in the press gallery will always want to write 
about the petty conflict, not the dry policy, because it is not 
exciting, it does not have entertainment value, it does not make for a 
good picture, it does not make for hard copy.
  Yesterday, a writer for a national publication known by everybody in 
this Chamber told me that his editors did not want him to write 
anything positive about the Clintons, not this week, not with blood in 
the water.
  Mr. President, we must get past the distractions and the obsessions 
and the excuse-a-day mentality that we seem so rich in. The facts are 
plain regarding the latest diversion. There is no evidence of any 
wrongdoing, and I might say recent staff meetings were approved in 
advance by ethics officers. The President and the White House are 
answering every single question and providing every single scrap of 
paper and posted note. The special investigator has been empowered to 
pursue every avenue, and we fervently hope that Mr. Fiske will 
thoroughly answer all the questions of the press and of the public.
  I expect the sensationalists will eventually tire of this, Mr. 
President, the same way they tired of chasing Tanya and Nancy around 
Norway. Remember them? They were a big deal for quite awhile until we 
discovered they were not. Maybe they will find another irrelevant gnat 
to pursue, or maybe, just maybe, they will turn finally to the 
consequences of inaction around here, the costs of distraction, and 
maybe they will turn to the promise of reform--just maybe.
  Make no mistake, America. Make no mistake, America. Whoever wins the 
latest political brawl, one thing is certain. You could lose. You, 
America, could lose. You could lose welfare reform. You could lose new 
crime-fighting initiatives. You could lose guaranteed health coverage. 
You could lose all kinds of things because of the way we operate in 
this town and our own glorious, sanctimonious nature.
  We must not let this important opportunity for health reform slip 
past, Mr. President. The benchmark has been set.
  The President's plan guarantees every American private insurance that 
can never be taken away from them for the course of their lives for any 
reason whatsoever. It ensures that you, not your boss or your insurance 
company, will choose your own doctor and your own health plan. It 
outlaws unfair insurance practices that jack up your rates if you get 
sick. It makes sure that seniors can count on Medicare. And it does all 
of this by building on the system that most Americans rely on now--
insurance through their workplace.
  If we fail, if we are fooled by the diversions, if we deliver less 
than the President has proposed, then make no mistake, there will be no 
places to point and put the blame but here on our own heads. But, if we 
could rise above the noise, if we can pass this reform and provide a 
measure of health security to our families, our neighbors, our friends, 
our parents, and our children, then, in a lifetime of public service, 
we will count no greater contribution.
  Yes, Mr. President, it can be done--insurance every American can 
count on, no matter what. Do not settle for less. Do not let us deliver 
less.
  I thank the Chair and I yield the floor.
  Mr. BOND addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri [Mr. Bond], is 
recognized.
  Mr. BOND. Thank you very much, Mr. President.
  I ask unanimous consent that I may be permitted to speak as if in 
morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Hearing no objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BOND. I thank the Chair.

                          ____________________