[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 161 (Wednesday, October 18, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S15272-S15273]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 OBJECTION TO FINANCE COMMITTEE MEETING

  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. I thank the distinguished presiding officer and the 
distinguished Senator from North Dakota.
  Mr. President, crowds are gathering to watch a train wreck. It is 
going to be a budget wreck. And it is going to be a horrible, horrible 
pileup. Maybe that ghoulish fascination about what is ahead is, in 
fact, distracting us, diverting us from the daily bashing that 
vulnerable Americans are taking every single day in the actions of this 
Congress.
  But today, weeks before that big crash, I have seen enough. Speaking 
for this Senator, the junior Senator from West Virginia, I have seen 
enough. I have been fighting, offering amendments, voting no, but today 
I object. I object to all of it, to taking one more step, to letting 
the latest injury go unanswered.
  I have put in an objection to the Senate Finance Committee's meeting. 
And as a result of my objection, they cannot meet after the hour of 2. 
And I will do that every day, and I will do that all the way through 
the reconciliation process until a particular part involving old coal 
miners is removed from the bill the Senate Finance Committee is now 
working on.
  This new Republican leadership will go to any length to seize the 
crown jewel of their contract. And that is to ring out $245 billion in 
new tax breaks for a privileged few. But at what cost? At whose 
expense? Every day their answer becomes more savage. Pilfering school 
lunch moneys, turning 4-year-olds away from Head Start classes, 
eliminating standards for screening and testing for childhood diseases.
  Where does it end? Not there. Brick by brick, they are tearing down 
the Medicare Program, the efficient, effective, popular insurance 
program that protects senior citizens from poverty, which they once 
knew, and pain, turning their backs on the elderly and in nursing 
homes, allowing again, as we cut out almost 10 years ago, patients in 
nursing homes who were considered to be disruptive to be tethered down, 
tied down, or drugged into passivity. That will now be legal. And it 
will be done. Doubling the cost of health insurance for the most 
fragile amongst us. Had enough?
  Sticking students with higher loan fees, squeezing out job training 
opportunities, cutting the number of college loans, opening a loophole 
to drop the disabled from health coverage. Senator Chafee and I did 
that. It passed the Senate Finance Committee 17 to 3. Pregnant women, 
children 12 years and younger, and the disabled. And unilaterally it 
was dropped. And then at the last moment, because some of us came to 
the floor of the U.S. Senate to expose that ruse, it was put back in, 
sort of, by saying, ``Let the States set the standards.''
  Charging families more to care for their mentally ill or retarded 
children. Closing the doors on more than half of our special ed 
classrooms. How much more could they want? Mugging the working poor 
with a $43 billion tax hike.
  What do I mean by that? The earned-income tax credit being cut by $43 
billion. Those are people who are living out America's dream, working 
without health insurance, all of them virtually, but working, refusing 
to go on welfare, many of them making less money than if they were on 
welfare, and their kids not getting Medicaid, health care coverage to 
boot. But they are doing it because they want to work.
  So we talk about honoring work in America. And then we turn around 
and cut those who are at the very bottom edge of the working poor, a 
$43 billion tax increase for them, money which they earned which they 
will now not get to keep because we are changing the rules on them.
  We are turning off the heat, Mr. President. We are turning off the 
heat, quite literally, taking away money from remedial reading and 
writing for poor children. Are they done yet? No. Not quite.
  Today a new provision to unravel the health benefits for retired coal 
miners and their widows has been added to this long list of atrocities. 
It is a small group, Mr. President, only 92,000 individuals in all 50 
States. A small group, I admit that; the average age, 76 years old. 
Most worked in the mines for decades back in the 1940's, 1950's, and 
1960's.
  They had to work in 3-foot crawl spaces in ice water. They did the 
hard work, pick and shovel. And now we want to take away their health 
insurance. It is being done in the Senate Finance Committee. These were 
the people that fueled the economic growth and the prosperity of our 
country. These days I meet these miners that I am talking about in 
their homes in West Virginia. Many struggle to walk.
  Mr. President, if I could only describe to you what it is for an 
older miner, attached to oxygen, with black lung, with all kinds of 
problems of breathing, taking a fistful of pills a day. Just a simple 
act, to watch that miner try to get up out of his chair and then to 
walk very, very slowly across the room to the television set to change 
the channel or to turn the set on or off, and then very slowly come 
back, fall back into that chair--almost a day's journey is the physical 
impact of that.

  These are the people we are talking about. Old people, ravaged by the 
only work that they possibly could have done, because of where they 
grew up and what work was available. Pills for blood pressure, for 
constant joint pain. They do not have much. They never earned a lot. 
There are no big pensions.
  But these miners, Mr. President, traded wages every year. They traded 
wages that they got for digging coal to get health insurance security, 
because 

[[Page S 15273]]
to the miner, health insurance is more significant in the long term 
than the wages of the pension. But they wanted the health insurance in 
their old age, to earn coverage for their wives, too often widowed too 
early. They sacrificed for the guarantee of coverage, a guarantee that 
was sealed by this Government in law and which was promised to them by 
President Harry S. Truman, the U.S. Government, and which we, in a 
bipartisan way, passed into law in something called the Coal Act back 
in 1952, which is in the process of being repealed by the Republican 
majority.
  These benefits, Mr. President, were guaranteed by a promise made by 
that President 50 years ago. So what is a contract worth? They ask; I 
ask. These coal miners escaped floods, they escaped roof falls, they 
escaped explosions, they escaped the ravages of black lung. They still 
survive, a few of them, across this country, 92,000. But they may not 
survive this Republican Congress, and I am sad to say there is probably 
more to come.
  But for me, I have seen enough. I have seen enough. Every person has 
a line, a line in the sand. Every one of my colleagues has a line. For 
me, the line is these old miners. I cannot, I will not, go back to West 
Virginia without knowing that I did everything--everything--to stop 
this cruelty.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. I ask unanimous consent for 1 more minute.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, no amount of procedural pain or 
legislative suffering that I, as a Senator, rightfully can impose--and 
will--could possibly offset the pain and the suffering being imposed on 
so many fragile people by the measures being rammed through the Senate 
Finance Committee and this Congress.
  I recognize that the powerful interests who will benefit from these 
harsh measures will probably win and these coal miners will probably be 
cut off. But I want to make it hard, and I have the right to make it 
hard, and I have the moral obligation to make it hard for anybody to do 
that. I only wish I could make it as hard for them as they intend to 
make it--we in the Congress, that is--for the children and the seniors 
and the students and the disabled and the poor working families and 
those old coal miners. That is my line in the sand. I fully object to 
what this Congress is doing.
  I thank the Chair. I thank the Senator from North Dakota.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from 
Illinois, Senator Simon.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from 
Illinois.

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