[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 18 (Monday, January 30, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1728-S1729]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                      MONTHLY REPORT TO THE SENATE

  Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, and my colleagues in the Senate. On 
November 14, I announced that I will not be a candidate for reelection 
to the Senate nor for any other office. I will be leaving with great 
respect for this body and with great appreciation to the people of 
Illinois who made it possible for me to serve here.
  The evening of my announcement, President Clinton called me from 
Djakarta, Indonesia, to wish me the best. He made a suggestion: Once a 
month I should report to the public on what is happening and what 
should happen in Congress. He indicated that since I will not be a 
candidate for reelection, my words might take on added significance and 
not be viewed as another partisan speech.
  I am making the first of my monthly comments today, the 113th 
anniversary of the birth of Franklin D. Roosevelt, a President who has 
been praised recently by both President Clinton and Speaker Newt 
Gingrich. FDR and Congress worked together on the huge problems the 
Nation then faced.
  A glance at the policy landscape provides these recent positive 
developments, from my perspective:
  First, a peaceful change in the majority party in both Houses of 
Congress. While I personally would have preferred retaining Democratic 
majorities in the House and Senate, I also recognize that for a free 
system to thrive, peaceful change must occur from time to time.
  Second, Congress has voted to place the laws and regulations that 
govern our private sector counterparts on itself, and the President has 
signed that measure. That will protect our employees better and make us 
more sensitive to the difficulties others face.
  Third, the Senate Judiciary Committee--and now the full House of 
Representatives--have approved a balanced budget amendment to the 
Constitution. The passage of the amendment first urged by Thomas 
Jefferson come none too soon as we careen down the fiscal hill toward 
the fate of far too many nations: monetizing the debt, meeting our 
obligations by printing more and more money that is worth less and 
less.
  There are negative developments also. I would include:
  First, excessive partisanship in Congress by both political parties 
as we adjust to the new status each has. That we will differ on issues 
is both natural and healthy; that we are sometime petty in our 
differences may be natural for all of us who have above-average egos, 
but it is not healthy.
  Second, a mean-spiritedness toward the poor surfaces in too much 
discussion of welfare reform, sometimes bordering on racism. We need 
genuine welfare reform. The danger is that we will move organizational 
boxes around on a chart and try to convince the public and ourselves 
that we have done something constructive. Even worse, there is talk of 
taking punitive action against poor people.
  Third, the two parties have entered into a bidding war on tax cuts. 
Many of the Republicans promised one in their Contract With America, 
and President Clinton pledged the same in altered form. Both sides are 
wrong. If I may personalize this, I face a choice of giving myself a 
small tax cut and imposing a further burden on my three grandchildren, 
or sacrificing a little and providing a better future for my 
grandchildren. I do not have a difficult time making that choice, and I 
do not believe most Americans do. We should pledge a reduction in the 
deficit instead of a tax cut.
  Others can provide additional pluses and minuses.
  But one issue that dominated the political landscape only a few 
months ago is almost absent: health care. Yes, the President--to his 
credit--mentioned it in his State of the Union Message, but little is 
said on the floors of the House and Senate about this massive problem. 
Television and radio news programs rarely mention it. What once was a 
dominant issue at town meetings in my State has almost staged a 
disappearing act.
  But it will not disappear, not as long as almost 40 million Americans 
remain unprotected, the only citizens of any modern industrial nation 
with that status. It will not disappear as long as Americans are added 
to the lists of uninsured at the rate of more than 91,000 every month, 
3,055 every day.
  Since the day President Clinton waved his pen at us in a joint 
session of Congress on January 25, 1994, 1.1 million more Americans 
have lost their health insurance coverage, bringing the total to 39.7 
million. And costs continue to escalate. Medicare spending, for 
example, will double in the next 7 years and will then consume 16 
percent of our total Federal spending. But we cannot tackle Medicare 
costs without tackling the health care costs in the rest of our 
economy. As we cut from Medicare, we shift the burden to the private 
sector--and every private-paying patient makes up the difference when 
Medicare underpays hospitals by about $13 billion every year, as it 
does now.
  Seven days ago marked 56 years since Franklin Roosevelt sent a 
message to Congress for a national health program. But early in 1931, 
as Governor of New York, he reported to the legislature of that State: 
``The success or failure of any government in the final analysis must 
be measured by the well-being of its citizens. Nothing can be more 
important [than] * * * the health of its people.'' Since then, Harry 
Truman and Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton have called upon us to 
protect our citizens better, and Congress has failed to respond.
  This issue will not go away. It is more than grim statistics. It is 
my former staff member, now a consultant with the Federal Government 
but without health insurance coverage because she is technically not an 
employee. At a dinner with two friends, she suddenly experienced chest 
pains, paleness, perspiration, and nausea--often symptoms of a heart 
attack. She refused to go to a hospital for fear of the cost. It turned 
out she has a problem with food poisoning that was not serious. But how 
many people have died who actually have had heart attacks in that 
situation? A woman in McHenry, IL, wrote to me about the health 
coverage horrors her daughter and son-in-law have gone through, facing 
the loss of their home and car. And then this woman who wrote to me 
added:

       I have had cancer, so I can never quit my job as no one 
     else will give me insurance. My husband has had ileitis and 
     two types of diabetes so no one will give him insurance. We 
     are trapped in our jobs and could not afford to pay for our 
     own insurance if we ever got permanently laid off or had to 
     switch jobs. We are 48 and 53 years old and this is a scary 
     thought.

  [[Page S1729]] Or listen to this man from Oak Lawn, IL:

       I am a Republican and will continue to vote Republican. 
     However * * * during some lean times I had to let my health 
     insurance lapse. It was not, as some politicans and demagogs 
     so smugly suggest, because I spent the money on recreation. I 
     spent the money on food, rent, and bills. But I was forced to 
     stay in the hospital a while. Now I am completely financially 
     ruined. I'm 41 years old and I'm ruined.

  Or the mother in Ottawa, IL, injured in
   an automobile accident, whose husband suffered injury in a work-
related accident and must find different work. She writes

       My husband and I and three children ages 18, 12, and 10 are 
     now without health benefits. Due to our disabilities and 
     unfair treatment by insurance companies our financial 
     situation is dire.

  The stories go on and on.
  Those stories will multiply if we do not act. And other changes in 
health care delivery are emerging. Each week fewer and fewer Americans 
have an independent choice of physician. Each week, for-profit 
corporations are taking over not-for-profit hospitals, reducing the 
number of nurses on duty and requiring resident physicians to see more 
patients in less time, diminishing the quality of health delivery. At 
least one physician in Illinois has decided to give up the practice 
rather than provide care that uses mass production techniques.
  And Medicaid patients--poor people-- routinely are given the cold 
shoulder for nonemergency care by many hospitals who prefer patients 
with insurance coverage.
  The United States is the wealthiest nation but not the healthiest 
nation. Twenty-one nations have lower infant mortality rates than we 
do, and 23 industrialized nations have fewer low-birthweights babies. 
Yet these countries spend far less on health care then we do, and many 
have a longer average lifespan. That is not because of an act of God 
but because of flawed policy. Our poor health record did not come as 
some divine edict from above but emerged from the indifference of men 
and women in this very room.
  Why? Part of the reason was complexity and delay on the part of those 
of us who supported a health coverage program. But that is only a part 
of the picture. What primarily caused the confusion and opposition was 
the greed on the part of those who profit from their cut in this 
trillion-dollar business. Newsweek reported that opponents spend $400 
million, more than twice what the two major Presidential candidates 
spend in the last two elections combined. When CEO's who are engaged in 
the present system pocket as much as $10 million in 1 year, do you 
think they will be anxious to alter the present procedures which help 
them and hurt millions of Americans? The Wall Street Journal recently 
stated that Health Systems International of Colorado has $475 million 
in cash, and the amount is growing by $500,000 a day, and the Journal 
reports they are ``hunting for new ways to park the money.'' Do they 
want to change the system? The same article quotes Margo Vignola of 
Salomon Brothers saying that the top nine HMO's have $9.5 billion in 
cash, ``way beyond what HMO's need.'' Do they want to change the 
system? Pfizer, the pharmaceutical company, gave $221,235 to the 
Republican national committees in soft money before the election. Did 
they do that because they want to change the system?
  The common assumption is that with a Democratic President and a 
Republican Congress, no significant progress in health care can be 
made. I challenge that assumption.
  The greatest contribution of Harry Truman's Presidency--one of many 
significant contributions he made--was the creation of the Marshall 
plan. To many it seemed doomed when offered. The first Gallup Poll 
after its proposal showed only 14 percent of the American people 
supported it. On top of that, after the 1946 election, President Truman 
had to work with a Republican Congress. But one man, Senator Arthur 
Vandenberg of Michigan, a key Republican, stood up strongly and 
supported the Marshall plan and helped to save Western Europe. The 
Republicans in the Senate have designated as their new leader on
 health care Senator Robert Bennett of Utah, one of the more thoughtful 
Members of this body. Is it possible that he, together with the new 
chair of the Finance Committee, Bob Packwood, can be the Arthur 
Vandenbergs of our generation?

  It is politically understandable that Republican Senators might have 
been reluctant to work with Democrats on health care reform in the 103d 
Congress, for fear that they would hand Democrats a legislative 
victory. But now, that is behind us. With Republicans in control of 
both Chambers of Congress, there is no question that bipartisan 
agreement on health care will be of benefit to the broad public and not 
simply a political victory for one party at the expense of the other.
  Could we, for example, at least provide coverage for all pregnant 
women and children age 6 and under? Do we have the courage to stand up 
to the profiteers to at least do that?
  Let me add that it is not enough for Senators to stand up. They are 
not likely to do it in splendid isolation. Business and labor leaders, 
professional people and those who have been abused by this system must 
join in a chorus for action. Their voices will not be as strong as the 
decibel level of those who speak from greed, but Senators and House 
Members should know that there are at least some Americans who know and 
understand the dimensions and the importance of the issue.
  There are occasions when we, in the Senate, must ask ourselves: Why 
are we here? Let us look in the faces of 39 million Americans without 
health care coverage and ask ourselves that question. Let us look at 
the millions more who will lose their coverage if they lose their jobs 
or change jobs. Let us not be silent and unresponsive to their pleas 
for help. Let us not be so eager to hold public office that we violate 
the public trust, not by disobeying the law, but by following the 
shifting winds of public opinion and the pressures of big campaign 
donors.
  There are no Americans who today look to their forebears and say with 
pride, ``He or she voted against creating Social Security.'' There are 
no Americans who look to their grandparents or great-grandparents and 
say with pride, ``He or she voted against Medicare.''
  We are not here in the Senate simply to assume an exalted title and 
let the media message our egos. We are here to create a better future 
for our people and for generations to come. In the last session, the 
Senate did not even vote on health care. That will not happen again. 
But we should do more than give ourselves an opportunity to vote. We 
should, in a fiscally prudent, pay-as-you-go way, give all Americans 
what we as legislators and Federal employees have: health care 
protection. We should give future generations the ability to look back 
upon us with pride and say, ``They were the first political leaders to 
guarantee health care coverage for all our citizens.''
  Mr. THOMAS addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming is recognized.

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