[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 102 (Friday, July 29, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: July 29, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                 HEALTH CARE REFORM BEHIND CLOSED DOORS

  Mr. COVERDELL. Mr. President, I wish to address my remarks to the 
health care debate and several issues regarding that debate that are, 
in my judgment, exceedingly alarming. And if the American public were 
aware of the process in which we are engaged at the moment, I think we 
would find the Nation in revolution.
  I spent almost 17 years in the general assembly in the good State of 
Georgia, and if I had engaged in the activities of the process by which 
we have been managing the health care bills I would be before an ethics 
commission. I would be in violation of Georgia law, or worse.
  What do I mean? The discovery that the principal legislation passed 
out of the Senate Finance Committee was nothing more than a concept, I 
do not think the folks in Peoria, IL, or Enid, OK, or Hahira, GA, could 
fathom such a process. In Georgia, when you say, Mr. President, I ask 
for the passage of Senate bill 5, as amended, and it passes, a citizen 
may immediately pick up what Senate bill 5 is and read it and make some 
determination about what that is going to mean to that person or their 
family or their business or their community.
  Since this measure was passed, I believe July 2, no one has been able 
to get a copy of the legislation. You can get a summary. You can get a 
press release. But there is no legislation. No citizen in this country 
today can read anything about these proposals.
  That is alarming in and of itself, but it is made doubly egregious 
when we are told that we will act on these thousands of pages of 
legislation when they suddenly appear in a matter of weeks or days or 
hours, at best.
  Everybody reads the polls and they understand that Congress is not 
particularly held in the highest regard these days. That is too bad. 
But this is why. No one can understand that you would pass something 
that is not language, and then you would revert to going in, unknown 
people, to unknown places, doing unknown things about health care. 
While the committee, which did nothing more than pass a concept, was in 
the full view of the media and C-SPAN, there is no media where the 
actual legislation is being written.
  There is no citizen at the table. There is no one recording what the 
transactions are. What does that suggest? That suggests that, in the 
cloak of darkness and secrecy, special deals are being made. That is 
exactly what is happening. Transactions about, ``Well, what will it 
take to make you be for the bill?'' You cannot do that in any State 
legislature in the United States. And it is reprehensible that it would 
occur in the most hallowed halls of democracy, that the substance of 15 
percent of the American economy is being negotiated in private and in 
secret, out of the eye of the American public. I cannot imagine that 
would happen in the halls of the U.S. Congress. But it is. And it is 
wrong. It is wrong on this debate. It ought to be stopped in the 
future.
  But it is particularly damaging here. We are not talking about ABC 
construction drivers as opposed to ABC environmental groups. We are 
talking about legislation that will affect every living soul in this 
country.
  Mr. President, the President and First Lady brought to the Nation a 
health care reform proposal. They should be complimented that they have 
made us all much more knowledgeable on the subject. But we have been 
looking at that matter for 9 months. They have been in every corner of 
the country, and those that have had differences with it have been in 
every corner of the country. There has been a raging debate about 
whether the Government ought to manage medicine or whether we ought to 
strengthen the current system.
  The American people have come to a conclusion. I do not know who the 
emissary was who came out of the White House that told the President, 
``Mr. President, due to voter preference and the votes in the Congress, 
we are going to have to set your bill aside and start over.''
  The American public came to a conclusion in a vigorous and open 
debate. I compliment the President for that. Now it is the Congress' 
turn. Our suggestion is we take something of the same magnitude, just 
as many thousands of pages, just as many personal and consequential 
events, and we are going to manage it in 3 days. That is about like 
taking a group of people and saying, ``Look, I want you to rewrite the 
economy of Great Britain, Sweden, and Denmark and do it by next 
weekend.'' You would be laughed out of town. This is bigger. This is 
more complicated. This is more difficult. And to suggest that all the 
language would ultimately be changed, that no one has seen it, no 
family, no grocery store operator, no filling station attendant, no 
church, no mayor, no municipal official, but we are going to sit up 
here in the quiet halls and in the bowels of this great building, and 
we are going to tinker and move all the blocks around. We have even had 
a Member of this body say, ``We are going to pass this thing no matter 
what the American people think.'' What in the world have we come to?
  The good Senator from West Virginia made an eloquent statement, and 
he is dead right. Mr. President, the Senator from West Virginia, who is 
one of the most distinguished, most senior Members of this body, most 
knowing of the Senate and its process, most knowing of this Senate's 
responsibilities to this great democracy, said, and I am paraphrasing 
it: We had better go slow here. We had better be careful. We had better 
make sure we do not do something wrong. We had better not get in a 
hurry. We had better fulfill our responsibilities to this great Nation.
  He is absolutely, unalterably correct.
  Mr. President, the only way to properly deal with this important 
subject is for all of these bills to surface from their private rooms, 
and then for the American people--the people; not our staff, not the 
various members of the committee--the American people need an 
appropriate period of time to see how that is going to affect them, 
their families, their businesses, their communities, their Nation.
  One of my good friends, the minority leader, Senator Dole, has 
suggested we at least need a week. I even take issue with him. A week? 
A week? We have just spent 9 months trying to unravel the last 1,300 
pages. We are dealing with the largest decision we will have made in a 
quarter century. A week? Three days? The American people need a solid 
month, in my judgment-- that is cutting it short--to unravel all the 
devils in all the details.
  Those of us engaged in this debate should take our ideas to the 
American people, should take the language and take it to industry, take 
it to communities, take it to small business and big business. Let us 
all look at it and see where we come out. This should not be 
railroaded. This should not happen in speed. The risk of damage to our 
Nation is enormous.
  Mr. President, I have not been here very long. Maybe that is good. I 
can still remember what folks at home think and feel. And you could not 
get 1 person in 10 anywhere in this country that would see what we are 
doing and the way in which we legislate that would not be astounded and 
embarrassed. I have watched their jaws drop when you tell them that it 
is not a bill that they passed out; it was a bunch of ideas. And now it 
is someone else who is writing the bill.
  Mr. President, I am going to conclude by saying this is the most 
important decision in a quarter century. And every American, no matter 
who they are or what their views are or what their party, needs to have 
a chance to understand what is being proposed. And then, only then, do 
we come back and thrash it out in the halls of Congress.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. MITCHELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The majority leader is recognized.

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