[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 157 (Wednesday, October 17, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H11720-H11726]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             THE STATE CHILDREN'S HEALTH INSURANCE PROGRAM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is recognized for 
60 minutes.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Once again, Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the privilege 
of being recognized to address you here on the floor of the United 
States Congress.
  And as I have listened to some of the dialogue that has been rolled 
out here before me, I think it's imperative that someone come to the 
floor to bring another voice and another opinion and another viewpoint 
to this subject matter, particularly of SCHIP.
  The first point that I would make, Mr. Speaker, is that the SCHIP 
issue that has been kicked around this Congress now into its third week 
that perhaps comes before the floor tomorrow in an effort to override 
the President's very prudent and well-reasoned veto has been turned 
into a political issue rather than a policy issue.
  SCHIP, State Children's Health Insurance Program, now, one could read 
that acronym and perhaps get a little better idea of what it stands for 
by reading the poster, Mr. Speaker. And I have heard presenter after 
presenter here this evening over on the other side of the aisle address 
this issue as children's health care and the allegation that the people 
that are guarding the taxpayers' dollars and seeking to get the 
resources that are here for the SCHIP program into the benefit of 
children, those who want a responsible program, those that don't want 
to chase people off of their own private health insurance but those 
that want to encourage parents, responsible parents, those who can 
afford it, to provide the health insurance for their children, those 
who want to encourage employers to provide health insurance as part of 
the employment package and keep in that package the insurance of the 
children, those of us who don't want to grow government, that want more 
personal responsibility, those of us who respect and appreciate the 
best health care system in the world, those of us who recognize that if 
there is a private sector investment, if people are responsible for 
their own health care, if parents take responsibility for their 
children's health insurance that this invisible hand that Adam Smith 
wrote about, this consumer's guide to how the health care in America 
will be developed, how it will evolve, how the research will be done, 
how the development will be done, how we will be marketing health 
insurance and how we will be providing services, this best system we 
have in the world is something we want to preserve.
  And I can't think of a single thing we could do to destroy the best 
health care system in the world rather than to institutionalize it and 
federalize it and make it a socialized medicine program. Now, how do 
you do that?
  Well, here on the floor, Mr. Speaker, of the United States Congress, 
September 22, 1993, President Clinton asked for a joint session of 
Congress. It's unusual for a President to ask to come speak to the 
House and the Senate in a joint session aside from the State of the 
Union address, but he did that on September 22, 1993, I think because 
Hillary actually advised him to, myself. And I have read the speech, 
and it is about a dozen pages long. And in that speech is component 
after component of a nationalized, socialized medicine program that was 
rolled out by the new Clinton administration in the fall of 1993.
  And America looked at that. And, Mr. Speaker, I still have that 
poster, and I have it in the collection of my archives that shows 
``Hillary Care.'' It shows a laminated poster about that wide and about 
that high, and if you look at it in its fine print, it's the flow chart 
for all the government agencies and all of the price limiting and price 
control and all the eventual, one can only conclude, health care 
rationing as well.
  That whole flow chart is there on that laminated chart. That 
laminated chart is something that was put up before Americans in 
magazine after magazine, newspaper after newspaper, and published by 
good organizations so we could understand what it was that the Clinton 
administration wanted to impose upon Americans in September of 1993.
  And as he laid out this case here from just in front of where you 
are, Mr. Speaker, he began to make a compelling case because he's a 
good salesman. But the American people sat and watched their 
television, and they reached down and pinched themselves: Do I really 
believe what I hear? What is coming out of the mouth of this President 
that sounds so good? Well, on that night the American people thought it 
sounded all right. They heard the message that you don't have to be 
responsible for the bills and you don't have to make any more health 
care decisions. The government will do that for you. The government 
will take the money out of the pockets of the people that are more 
wealthy than you are and put it into the pockets of the people that are 
of your income and less and take over some of that responsibility that 
you have, and somehow the world will be a better place.
  Well, that was the marketing technique of that dozen-page speech 
September 22, 1993, Mr. Speaker. But when the sun came up on the 
morning of September 23, 1993, the Americans that had pinched 
themselves when they listened to the speech had slept upon the policy, 
and they began to take it apart piece by piece, one component of the 
flow chart, another component of the flow chart; and we ended up with 
an educated American populace that, after having listened to some 
people like ``Harry and Louise,'' after having listened to Senator Phil 
Gramm over in the Senate say ``We are going to have national health 
care in America over my cold, dead political body,'' which was a 
statement that Phil Gramm of Texas made on the floor of the United 
States Senate back during those years more than a decade ago, Mr. 
Speaker, the American people one at a time, sometimes by the dozens, 
sometimes by the hundreds, and, in fact, by the thousands rose up and 
said, no, we don't want national health care. We don't want that.
  But a component that we did support, a component that was brought 
forth from this Congress in about 1997, by my recollection, and I could 
be off a year or so, Mr. Speaker, so I qualify that, was this component 
that we call SCHIP, State Children's Health Insurance Program. SCHIP 
was something that came out of this Republican Congress that was 
designed to subsidize

[[Page H11721]]

health insurance premiums for the children in families that were low 
income but not low enough income to qualify for Medicaid. That's the 
policy that was put in place in the mid-1990s, Mr. Speaker, and that is 
the policy that in 1998 went into law, as ratified in the Iowa 
legislature as I was a State senator there. We called it ``Hawk-I.'' We 
did that to give it a State moniker. And the policy that was put in 
place in Iowa and across this country at the time was 200 percent of 
the poverty level.
  If you are a family of four, let's say Mom, Pa, and a couple of kids, 
and you are making something less than 200 percent of the poverty 
level, then you would qualify for a Federal subsidy for the health 
insurance program. And there were matching funds there. So it was a 
pretty good deal for the State to draw down Federal dollars to set up 
the SCHIP program, and every other State that I know of and the Hawk-I 
program in Iowa, as we called it, SCHIP, 200 percent of poverty.
  Well, some might look at the charts today and dial it up on their Web 
page, and I think I have one here from Iowa. But the number it has, it 
shows about $41,000 for a family of four. And that family of four, 
though, has an exemption, and the exemption is 20 percent. So as I look 
at the number, Mr. Speaker, it comes together like this:
  If you are a family of four, an income limit at 200 percent of 
poverty in the State of Iowa, $41,300, but you get a 20 percent 
discount. And 20 percent of your income is not included because, 
presumably, that's some of the waivers that have been granted. And 20 
percent of your income is not included because you use that for living 
expenses. I actually think a far higher percentage of that income is 
used for living expenses especially in lower-income people. But 200 
percent of poverty, $41,000 and change, 20 percent not included. So it 
really works out to be that you take the $41,000 and divide it by .8, 
and what qualifies in Iowa today under this SCHIP program, current law, 
not the one that passed the House of Representatives here that was 
negotiated down in the Senate, but what is current law today that I've 
defended, that I've supported, that I've voted for, and that 
Republicans have appropriated funds to for about a decade, the current 
law in Iowa is if you are a family of Mom, Dad, two kids, you qualify 
for SCHIP funding, which is Federal subsidy for your health insurance, 
at $51,625.

                              {time}  2200

  Now, the debate should be, not about the allegation that there's 
somebody here that hates kids. I don't know anybody that hates kids. 
Most of us have children. We all love our kids; we love our grandkids. 
To make those kinds of allegations should be beneath the dignity of the 
people over there on that side, or either side. We know that's false 
and that specious, and it's myopic to believe that. And somehow they 
think you, and I speak to that in general terms, Mr. Speaker, as the 
voters, will buy the idea of the allegations that they make.
  But we set this up for low-income families. Low-income families are 
someplace, I think, below $51,625 for a family of four, but that's what 
qualifies today. This Pelosi Congress passed an SCHIP program that 
granted Federal subsidies for health insurance premiums at 400 percent 
of poverty; 400 percent.
  So could we still, under the House plan, the ``Pelosi plan,'' could 
we ever claim that this is a program for poor kids at 400 percent of 
poverty? Well, what does that mean to the average American, Mr. 
Speaker? I don't know. But I live in Middle America, and we're pretty 
much an average State for income and an average State for population. 
And we have got a few things that are above average, I have to confess. 
If pressed, I can give you a long list, but 400 percent of poverty 
promoted and passed off this floor by the Pelosi Congress is $103,250 
for a family of four. That's what this Congress was determined to put 
out here to the American people. That's what this Congress passed over 
to the Senate and said it's for the kids. It's for the poor kids. In 
fact, it was for the poor kids up to $103,250 in income for a family of 
four.
  Now, this debate hasn't been about for the kids; I mean, this 
subject, this policy isn't about for the kids, and it isn't really any 
longer about the poor kids. It's about the argument that they're not 
saying, which is, are we going to lay the cornerstone for socialized 
medicine or are we not? Are we going to go along with the idea that we 
want to take away the incentive to be personally responsible as a 
family, a working family, maybe a two-income working family, maybe mom 
making $50,000 a year and pa making $50,000 a year and coming in there 
at $100,000 for a family of four and then saying, but taxpayer, let me 
have a little bit of money to fund the health insurance for my kids.
  Even if the employer is providing that policy and it's part of the 
employment package, this program that was pushed by the majority in 
this Congress would take two million kids off of their own private 
health insurance that was funded by the labor of their parents, whether 
it's a direct check written to purchase the health insurance or whether 
it is the employment package that's there, two million kids off of that 
list and put them on the government-funded health insurance.
  Now, why would anybody want to do that? Why would anybody that 
believed in this great gift of freedom that we have, why would anybody 
step in here and say, I don't want you to have that kind of personal 
responsibility. We don't need that kind of independence in America. We 
don't need that kind of character. We don't need that kind of work 
ethic. We want to take that away from you. We want you to be dependent 
upon these other taxpayers over here because somehow the nanny state 
can do a better job than you can do at taking care of your own kids, 
your own family, your own well-being. That's the psychology. And it has 
a certain amount of contempt for those working people that have the 
pride and the dignity to take care of themselves.
  We, on this side, respect that labor and appreciate that. And many of 
us have pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps, paid for the health 
insurance for our children, taken care of our own, and paid the taxes 
besides that went to the people that were truly needy, those people 
that were on Medicaid, those people that were lower income. And some of 
us came up out of low-income, and actually, there have been years when 
I had no income when I got done figuring out my income for a bad year 
for a small businessman; sometimes it's in the red.
  We carried our own share of this load and paid our share of taxes and 
took care of our own kids, and now we come along here and say, well, 
you don't know how to do that. We can find a better way because 
somebody out there is paying some taxes, and we can take their money 
and we're going to stick it back in here and create a program that 
takes the burden off of you.
  And so what are we willing to do? If we listen to the majority, if we 
listen to this San Francisco policy that has been coming forth here for 
the last 60 minutes, if we would accept the idea that, unless you're 
making over $103,250 a year, at least in Iowa, for a family of four, 
you shouldn't have to pay for your own health insurance for your kids, 
the government can do it. Well, that's the cornerstone of socialized 
medicine, Mr. Speaker. And the argument otherwise just doesn't sustain 
itself against the facts.
  And the constant argument that comes up that this is about children's 
health care is another misnomer. They start out with the wrong 
foundation in their argument. This is not about children's health care. 
This is the same kind of argument of rolling together the argument of 
illegal immigrants and legal immigrants, packaging them all up into one 
and using the term ``immigration,'' and then saying that because we're 
opposed to illegal immigrants, we're also opposed to legal immigrants.
  Well, the same argument is what they're trying to apply here. If one 
is opposed to providing health insurance subsidies from hardworking 
taxpayers to people making over $100,000 a year, they interpret that to 
mean that you're against health care for kids.
  You know, we are still a rational society. We still have people that 
can deductively reason. We have people that can add up two plus two is 
four and be able to reason that when the allegation is made on the 
other side of the aisle that somehow anybody is against

[[Page H11722]]

health care for kids when every kid in America has access to health 
care, every kid in America that's in a family, I will say every legal 
kid in America that's in a family that meets those low guidelines for 
Medicaid has 100 percent of their health care taken care of.
  And those between Medicare qualifications and on up to that 
threshold, Iowa is an example, of $51,625, those kids have their health 
insurance premiums subsidized by the Federal taxpayer. That's current 
law. This Congress wanted to take it to $103,250; and when it went over 
to the Senate, it got negotiated down to 300 percent of poverty. That 
is still, in my State, $77,437. I say that's no longer middle income.
  We want to take care of those people that are having a hard time 
making it, but we do not want to create a dependency society, unless, 
of course, you come from that side of the aisle, Mr. Speaker, and 
you're politically dependent upon a dependency society. And that's 
what's going on. That's what this argument is about. This is about 
creating a dependent society that will constantly come forth and 
support policies that make them dependent upon those people that are 
currently in the majority.
  And how does the vitality of this Nation succeed if we're going to 
continue to dial down the vitality of Americans? Don't we know the 
difference, couldn't we figure this out? We saw socialism come crashing 
down November 9, 1989, when the Wall started coming down in East 
Germany, in East Berlin. That should have been the definite answer on a 
managed economy.
  But I continually hear the argument come up over and over again, 
people over here, they get elected to the United States Congress that 
don't believe in the free enterprise system, that don't believe in the 
incentive program, that don't understand the invisible hand, that think 
somehow the free market economy is built to take advantage of people 
that don't have as much as anybody else. They don't seem to understand 
that we have people that start out with nothing that get wealthy in 
America, and that's realizing and living the American Dream. Even 
though they have some of those Members in their own caucus over there 
who have succeeded by these free market standards, they don't believe 
in the free enterprise system. They believe in a managed state, they 
believe in a nanny state. And so they want to be a nanny to all the 
kids, because if they do that, then those families become dependent 
upon them for the largess that's dipped out of the pockets of the 
working people in America to the point where this policy, this SCHIP 
policy that passed off the floor of this House of Representatives, 
would have not only funded kids and families up over $103,000 a year, 
families of four, but 70,000 of those families that would qualify for 
SCHIP, 70,000 families, not 70,000 kids, but 70,000 families also would 
have obligated to pay for the alternative minimum tax, the tax on the 
rich that was created years ago.
  Now, tell me how you argue that's not socialized medicine when you've 
got to subsidize the health care of families so they can afford to pay 
the alternative minimum tax. That's the strategy. If you start on one 
end and you start on the other, you have people that are well off, 
paying more and more taxes, that's called ``progressive taxes.'' Those 
progressive taxes go higher and higher and higher. They come in from 
this way. And then you subsidize over on this side and you take care of 
things like heat subsidy and rent subsidy and health insurance premiums 
and Medicaid. And you come in from this way, you fund people's families 
this way, and you tax the wealthy this way, and then when they meet in 
the middle, you have socialism. When you have taken from the rich and 
given to everybody else and you have done this great class leveler, if 
everybody has the same income, now you've reached socialism.
  But this goes even further, this SCHIP program. It crosses the line, 
Mr. Speaker. And so those paying the alternative minimum tax are pulled 
down here. Those that are receiving the SCHIP program subsidy up to 400 
percent of poverty, the first passage out of this House, we're over 
here, 70,000 families in the middle. We've come all the way.
  This policy closes the entire gap on the question of whether the 
people on this side of the aisle are truly Socialists, whether they 
believe in a free market system or whether they believe in a dependency 
society. Well, it's a dependency society that they believe in, Mr. 
Speaker.
  And I will add, there are Presidential politics involved in this 
agenda. Now, simply, if the majority cared about the policy, we would 
be sitting down negotiating what it is we can agree on and trying to 
come up with the votes to put a policy together there. But, instead, 
they allege that there are all these kids that are not going to get 
their health care. Never true, always false, always a false statement.
  In fact, when those statements were being made, we had passed off of 
this floor a continuing resolution that guarantees current SCHIP policy 
all the way to November 16th of this year. We did that so we would make 
sure there was no gap for any kid in America. And by the way, if we 
didn't care about SCHIP, wouldn't we have maybe not funded it, or 
underfunded it, or let it expire, or voted it out sometime when 
Republicans were in the majority?
  How can one think that the allegation from Democrats today, when 
they've got the gavel, that now all of a sudden the people on this side 
that created SCHIP and funded SCHIP and nurtured it and protected it 
for a decade now have changed their mind? It's a ridiculous assumption, 
and it's false, Mr. Speaker. And this is about whether we're going to 
lay the cornerstone for socialized medicine. So political and 
Presidential politics play right into this.
  We have these debates going on all over the country. They are 
concentrated in Iowa, and they are concentrated in New Hampshire. I 
will concede that, Mr. Speaker. And so every single Democrat 
Presidential candidate is for expanding this SCHIP as far as they can 
get it. I haven't heard a single one of them say, that's a bit too 
much, I think we've gone too far. I think we might have come so far 
from the left that we crossed over and tapped into those alternative 
minimum tax payers, that was maybe too much. Not one. Not a voice of 
fiscal responsibility, not a peep out of the advocates that says that 
they would ever draw the line anywhere. Because, truthfully, Mr. 
Speaker, they wouldn't draw the line anywhere. They simply would keep 
spending tax dollars, keep creating more government programs until 
there is no free market system left.
  This is the cornerstone of socialized medicine. This does have to do 
with the Presidential politics. That is one of the reasons why it's 
been raised up to this level. When the President correctly and 
appropriately vetoed this bill, this $35 billion expansion, he had on 
the table $5.8 billion in increase, I support that. I support an 
extension of this, and I'm an original cosponsor of the legislation 
that carries this SCHIP funding out another 18 months to get us past 
the silly season of the Presidential and congressional elections, and 
perhaps we can have a serious debate then about the policy.
  Meanwhile, I haven't heard a lot of noise about deficiencies in the 
program we have today. We have so many discrepancies in this program, 
Mr. Speaker, that we haven't really had the time to weigh them all in 
here on the floor of the United States Congress. But I want to make 
sure that I lay out what this really is about, SCHIP. Here's what it 
really stands for, SCHIP, ``Socialized Clinton-style Hillary Care for 
Illegals and Their Parents.'' That's SCHIP. I'll say it again. 
``Socialized Clinton-style Hillary Care for Illegals and Their 
Parents.''
  Well, I didn't address the illegal part of this. And there has been 
significant discourse across the country, but who has got the facts 
right on whether this legislation enables and enacts funding for health 
insurance premium subsidies, and in this case, also health care for 
those who are eligible for deportation?

                              {time}  2215

  Let me say this, Mr. Speaker, if ICE, if Immigration Customs 
Enforcement were required to deliver the voucher for SCHIP, as designed 
by the Democrat majority here in Congress, if they delivered those 
vouchers, Mr. Speaker, they would be compelled to bring a lot of those 
folks and deliver them back to their home country. That is the fact of

[[Page H11723]]

this, because they have reduced the standards, the standards under 
Medicaid more so than SCHIP, the standards under Medicaid that are 
current law today, see, you have to qualify as a citizen of the United 
States in order to qualify for the benefit. If you want to come over 
here on a visitor's visa, or a student visa, or a green card, we have 
already, long ago, made the agreement that we don't think that the 
taxpayers should subsidize those folks who come here to America for the 
first 5 years. So we set the standard, demonstrate your citizenship. 
There's a whole list of ways to do that. The primary two are a birth 
certificate with supporting documents or a passport, which has already 
required the supporting documents. That is the standard that is in 
current law, Mr. Speaker.
  This legislation that was promoted here by the Pelosi Congress and 
sent to the Senate and passed off the floor of the Senate, and 
thankfully vetoed by the President, has lowered those standards so that 
now presentation of a legitimate Social Security number is all that is 
required to demonstrate your lawful presence in the United States and 
your eligibility, for now, in this particular case, it also includes 
Medicaid, as well as SCHIP. The result is that we know that we have 
millions of people employed in the United States illegally who have 
presented a Social Security number that may or may not have been a 
legitimate one, but all they need to do is identify a legitimate Social 
Security number, present it to their employer, their employer sent that 
number off to the Social Security Administration. That was all that was 
required. There might be 1,000 people with the same number. Well, they 
all get paid every Friday and the benefits all get stacked up on that, 
and it is called the no match list in a way. Some of it is duplicates. 
There is also the no match list. Then there is the nonwork Social 
Security numbers that are given to people that aren't eligible to work 
here but they needed the number for another reason while they were here 
as a visitor. There are millions of nonwork Social Security numbers.
  Well, all of those that are legitimate or valid may not identify an 
American citizen, and the Social Security Administration has put out a 
statement that it is inadequate to take a Social Security number and 
use that to verify citizenship. But that, under the new standards by 
this majority in Congress, would be all that is required now to qualify 
for Medicaid benefits and, Mr. Speaker, to qualify for SCHIP benefits. 
In Iowa that's Hawk-I.
  The Congressional Budget Office has concluded that the net cost to 
taxpayers, and now I have to do the math on this, is $3.7 billion in 
extra funding by lowering those citizenship standards. Much of that 
will go to illegals, people that are unlawfully in the United States, 
people that if ICE delivered the check, delivered the voucher, if they 
are going to follow through on the law, they would have to pick them up 
and take them home.
  There is another $2.8 billion that is the States' share of that 
obligation. So the net cost for opening up, the standards that allow 
people who are unlawfully present in the United States and ineligible 
for Medicaid benefits and SCHIP benefits to open up those standards, 
the net cost to the taxpayers directed by the Congressional Budget 
Office is $6.5 billion.
  Yet, Mr. Speaker, I have highly positioned people here in the House 
of Representatives and over in the other body that say, that's not 
true. Well, if that is the case, Mr. Speaker, let them roll the 
language out. Show me where that loophole is closed. I have read the 
language. I am saying the loophole doesn't exist. I believe that this 
is, as I said earlier, SCHIP, Socialized Clinton-style Hillary-care for 
Illegals and Their Parents. That will be the result. That is the 
cornerstone of socialized medicine, the weakened citizenship 
requirements.
  I will make another point, and that is when my State gets finished 
paying the increase in tobacco tax, the 61 cents a pack that is added 
on to the current Federal 39 cents, that is a 156 percent increase of 
tobacco tax on cigarettes. Now, I am not here to plead for the smokers 
except I will plead with you all, Mr. Speaker, if you are smokers, 
please quit. We all know it is not good for you. Read the side of the 
pack. That is where you get all the information you need to know to 
make that decision. But when you increase the tax, we have a lot of 
middle- and low-income people are smokers. They will pay a 
disproportionate share of that tax. But when they pay that tax in my 
State, of course, there will be an increased revenue on tobacco tax in 
all States. That money, that 61 cents a pack additional that brings the 
tax up to $1 a pack, flows here to Washington, D.C. and then we sit 
here and make the decisions on flowing it back to the States. We know, 
according to the Centers For Disease Control on this particular 
statistic, we know that in my State, we pay additional taxes, and then 
money comes back in under SCHIP, and the net loss to my Iowa taxpayers 
is $226 million. $226 million is our net loss for this program. Why 
would we want to be for a program that is going to cost everybody in 
Iowa more money and you get less back? This brilliant plan, and I will 
get that to a chart here to illustrate it a little bit better, but this 
brilliant plan also presumes that there is going to be a whole lot more 
smokers that will be recruited in order to fund the extra cost of this 
SCHIP program. That number is over the years of this program an 
additional 22.4 million new smokers.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, I am having a little trouble with the math on this. 
How does this work? How does this work that you increase the tax on 
tobacco and you kick that tobacco tax up from 39 cents, add 61 cents, 
now you are a buck a pack. Now that cigarettes got 61 cents more 
expensive, we are going to have 22.4 million more new smokers. It 
defies any kind of logic or any kind of rationale. That is typical for 
Washington, some will say. But I think we have a strong record of being 
for the kids. We have a strong record of providing for their health 
care. No one could bring a child out here on a poster or to the floor 
or before a press conference and say this kid didn't have access to 
health care. In fact, the examples that have been used by the majority 
on the other side, Mr. Speaker, are examples of kids that already 
qualify. And if they do not, I would like to have them point out the 
exceptions.
  So at this point in this opportunity that I have, I see that my good 
friend from New Jersey (Mr. Garrett) who has been a strong and vigilant 
voice for the taxpayers of America and prudent policy that produces the 
right result has arrived on the floor.
  I would be happy to yield him such time as he may consume.
  Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. I thank the gentleman from Iowa for coming 
to the floor and speaking on SCHIP. I was on the floor earlier this 
evening, as you may know, with Dr. Gingrey. We were speaking about 
earmarks. After us, the other side of the aisle began their talk about 
SCHIP. I was hoping to interject when they were on the floor but that 
was not possible. So I'm glad you bring this issue up.

  Let me touch on one point you are talking about. That is the 
cigarette tax. You made a generalized statement. Let me give you an 
actual number here. The SCHIP program, of course, is intended to 
benefit the low-income and the indigent children. The question is how 
is this being funded? You had correctly stated it is going to be funded 
by a cigarette tax. You generalized the statement that the cigarette 
tax generally falls disproportionately on the poor. And that actually 
is correct.
  A study was done in 1990. It said that people who made under $10,000 
per year paid almost twice as much in cigarette taxes as those who made 
$50,000 and above. So there is the irony. We are trying to provide a 
health care program for the poor. And on whose back is it going to be 
placed? It is going to be placed and paid for by those very same poor 
people who are paying a substantially higher cigarette tax.
  The study goes on to say that there are other adverse impacts to 
raising the cigarette tax. One of them you wouldn't necessarily think 
of. But when you raise the taxes that high, much higher, a higher 
Federal cigarette tax, the study says, will lead to more violent crime. 
The foundation's chief economist has documented that higher cigarette 
taxes fuel black-market activity, including truck hijackings and other 
armed robberies. In 2003 he said, for example, 200 cases of cigarettes 
in a modest-sized transport truck would have a retail value in New York 
City of around $1 million and

[[Page H11724]]

would be a tempting market for thieves. So these are the side issues 
you don't hear about when you hear the bumper sticker rhetoric from the 
other side.
  The other thing that you don't hear from, and I will yield back at 
any moment if the gentleman has a point to make here I see with his 
signs or charts. Another interesting point is the need for the overall 
program. I don't want to get bogged down in numbers and you are better 
facilitated with the charts there. But let's take a look at where we 
have been over the last 20 years when we talk about children in need. 
In 1987, now look at 1997 and 2002. In 1987, child poverty rate in this 
country was 18.7 percent. The eligible children who were eligible for 
programs, at that time, 20.3 percent. So just about the same numbers 
who were eligible for some sort of a government program such as 
Medicaid were at the same approximate number who were in the child 
poverty rate. In 1996, you go ahead about 10 years, those numbers now 
are about 20 percent in the poverty level, 28 percent eligibility, that 
means we have now reached a point where more kids were eligible for 
government assistance than were actually classified as childhood 
poverty. Flash ahead now to 2002, the rate now of overall childhood 
poverty rate, 16.7 percent, eligibility though for government 
assistance and Medicaid and the like, government health insurance, 47.1 
percent. We have gotten to the point where almost half of the kids in 
this country are now entitled to welfare payments.
  You had on your other chart when I came in here a neat little acronym 
for what SCHIP was. We have to call it what it really is. H.R. 976, 
SCHIP expansion, Socialized Clinton-style Hillary-care for Illegals and 
Their Parents, SCHIP. Well, that's true. And another way of calling it 
is welfare. We have gotten to the point where almost half the kids in 
this country are now eligible for Hillary-care, welfare, whereas the 
poverty rate for these children has actually decreased during that 
period of time to around 16.7 percent.
  We have gone in the right direction in this country as far as 
reducing the number of all kids who are in poverty, but we have vastly 
exceeded what the actual need is.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from New Jersey. While you 
are here, a question arises in my mind and perhaps you are more astute 
in the nuances of history, and neither of us were here during the 
nineties when the welfare to work, the welfare reform program was put 
into place. I pose this question. There is a part in my recollection I 
am not certain about, but it seems that one of the criticisms to 
welfare reform, getting people off of welfare and putting them on work, 
``workfare'' we often called it, and there was significant success in 
some of the States. Wisconsin got a lot of publicity, I think, that 
launched Governor Tommy Thompson on a pretty successful path. Also, in 
my State we did a very good job and very successful working in 
conjunction with the policy established here out of Congress.
  But it is my recollection that a component in the master plan to 
succeed in welfare reform was that if you took people off welfare and 
they couldn't afford health insurance for their children, they would be 
more likely to stay on welfare and less likely to work. So that was one 
of the components of the psychology in creating the SCHIP program in 
the first place, dialed in at 200 percent of poverty.
  I would ask the gentleman from New Jersey if that is consistent with 
your recollection.
  Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. That is absolutely consistent with my 
recollection.
  Another aspect of it was at the time that the master plan as you 
described it at that time was to be more, was to be broader than what 
eventually transpired, and that was to include the block grant type 
arrangement for Medicaid, as well. Had we done that, we would not be in 
this budgetary crisis that we find right now where Medicaid has 
continued to have gone up, and the States actually would have been in a 
better situation than they are right now. Just as with Medicare, just 
as with the welfare reform movement, when the States were issued a 
block grant and given the significant flexibility that they had with 
the set dollar amount, the States were able to use the ingenuity of 
their States to actually decrease the enrollment of their welfare 
recipients and at the same time actually since the dollar limit 
remained the same, the per capita number per recipient actually went 
up. So those individuals who had the most need, if you will, had the 
most difficulty climbing out of their condition and their plight that 
they were in, you had a larger dollar value that you are able to apply 
to their particular condition.

                              {time}  2230

  Had we done the same thing as this Republican Congress at the time 
intended to, but we were stopped, as you recall; President Clinton put 
up the roadblock to it. We could have done the exact same thing with 
Medicaid, done it in a flexible block grant arrangement to the 50 
States. The Governors of those States would have no strings attached to 
it whatsoever. They could have decided who and how they were going to 
get into it. You could have had an SCHIP-type arrangement where you 
allowed them to go into privatized health insurance programs. The 
benefit there would of course be, just as a side issue, that you would 
not be squeezing out the private sector marketplace. You would be 
opening up and creating greater competition and you would not be having 
this dilemma that we are facing right now. That was all the 
possibilities we had back in 1996. We lost it at that time because of 
President Clinton and what he was trying to do.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman.
  Mr. Speaker, I put this poster up. This shows the different levels in 
the maximum income levels for qualifications in Iowa income today, 
which I think is representative across the country. This is the number 
that I spoke about earlier. This is current law as it is applied in 
Iowa today, a family of four qualifying for the State Children's Health 
Insurance Program subsidy dollars making $51,625 a year. We also have 
significant number of kids that qualify, not just in Iowa, but across 
the country, that are not recruited, they are not signed up under this 
program.
  Now, I am going to operate under the theory that if the family has 
sufficient income or if they have the health insurance that's provided 
through their employers, they may well not want to complicate their 
plan and they may be a lot happier taking care of their own health 
insurance premiums. I am happy if they are.
  Mr. Speaker, it isn't my job to come here to this United States 
Congress and ask people to be more dependent upon the tax dollars that 
we are squeezing out of the working people in America. That is all the 
taxpayers in America have to contribute to this. So we want to take 
care of the poor people, take care of those at that threshold of 
Medicaid, but we chose that number to be at 200 percent, and because of 
waivers, we are at $51,625 for that family of four in Iowa.
  This is what the Pelosi Congress passed; the first pass off the floor 
that went to the Senate, which set Iowa at $103,250 for a family of 
four. Who in the world thinks that that is poverty, a six-figure income 
for a family of four, that is a poverty level where you can't sustain 
your own income or you can't sustain your own responsibilities for 
health insurance. By the way, who's making that kind of money that 
doesn't have some kind of arrangements for health insurance?
  Well, there is an answer to that, Mr. Speaker. In one of those 
posters, I think it's this handy poster behind here. Before I go to the 
next poster, I want to ask the gentleman from New Jersey, at this 400 
percent of poverty here, the 300 percent, for 200 here, what kind of 
creativity does New Jersey have and what one might expect on a chart if 
one had this set-up for the New Jersey residents.
  Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. Well, New Jersey, as you may know, has not 
gone up to the 400. New York is, I think, the only State that as of 
current law, not the bill just approved by the House, under current 
law, New York has attempted to go up to 400 percent. New Jersey is at 
350 percent, which puts us at around, for a family of four, $72,000. 
Now the median income is around $61,000 or $62,000 for the State of New 
Jersey, which means you're at the average.

[[Page H11725]]

  Mr. Speaker, so what are we saying here? We are saying that even 
those who are above average in income are now going to eligible for 
socialized welfare payments. Once a month they will get a welfare 
payment. It won't be in the form of a check, like a normal welfare 
payment coming to you to cash. Instead, it will be delivered directly 
to the insurance company, or other method.
  What that means is this. For every ten people that you wish to enroll 
under the plan under the Pelosi method, approximately six those people 
will already have insurance. So in that last chart you would say up in 
the $103,000 range. Every ten new children that you bring into the 
program, these six over here already had insurance. You're only adding 
these four children over here. But you're doing it at a tremendous 
cost. You're using taxpayers' dollars now to pay for those children who 
maybe their parents are making $103,000.
  Wouldn't it be so much better if those tax dollars were going to try 
to find a way to make sure that these four kids had all the, not only 
insurance, but also the actual health care, which is a question that I 
think you were bringing up before, because at the end of the day that 
is really what we should be focused on, making sure those kids have 
health care. Because it does those four kid absolutely no good just to 
make sure that they have insurance if they can't find a doctor to treat 
them.
  How many people do you know of, senior citizens who have Medicare and 
go out and try to find a doctor to accept their Medicare payments, and 
they find out there's no Medicare doctors receiving Medicare 
recipients. How many people do you know that are on Medicaid right now, 
which is an insurance policy, and try to go out and find a doctor who 
says they are still taking Medicaid patients, and they are not taking 
them.
  Mr. Speaker, we have done nothing if we simply have insured four new 
children under this SCHIP program if it's set up in such a manner that 
there is nothing else to facilitate more doctors to be out there to 
actually get care. We have done nothing to improve the health care 
coverage, all we've done is a sound bite for the Democrats, saying we 
improved insurance coverage.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman.
  Mr. Speaker, as you spoke, I put up this chart that tells us about 
what level of health insurance is there for kids. As you go up the 
chart here, and I will draw the line at 300 percent of poverty, 77 
percent have health insurance; at 400 percent, 89 percent. Then 
actually up to 400 percent, 89 percent do. Once you reach the level 
that was passed off here by the majority in this Congress, there are 
only five percent of the kids that don't have health insurance.
  So what were we trying to fix that covered 95 percent of those kids? 
What was it that had a greater value to this society than people being 
able to make their own decisions with their own money. I will argue 
again, this lays the cornerstone for socialized medicine and it pushes 
kids off of their own private health insurance.
  The CBO has some numbers that shows for everyone that would be picked 
up and put on health insurance, there is another one that has their own 
health insurance that they will be leveraged off of it. A one-to-one 
ratio. In that number are 2 million kids that are currently insured by 
this current program, the bill that will come up again tomorrow, where 
we will sustain the President's veto. Should we fail to do that, there 
will be 2 million kids in America that will lose their own private 
health insurance because their decision will be made let the government 
pay for it instead.
  I call that irresponsible. I call that poor policy. If you believe in 
socialized medicine, if you believe in a managed economy, if you 
believe in a managed society, if you believe in less freedom and more 
dependency, then make the argument, make the argument, Democrats. If 
that is your vision, stand up and say so. But instead they say no, it 
is not about socialized health care. This is about kids.
  Well, I care about my kids. I care about their future, Mr. Speaker. I 
care about my grandchildren and their future. And when I hear my 
colleagues over on this side of the aisle talk about the legacy that we 
are shaping here on the floor of the United States Congress, they are 
thinking about the legacy that has been handed to us, down from God 
through the hands of our Founding Fathers, on to that document where 
they pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor, which 
is the Declaration, and on to the Constitution, this great legacy that 
has flowed to us, God's gift of freedom, is being diminished day by day 
on the floor of the United States Congress, trading off our freedom for 
dependency, trading off our freedom for, even today with the FISA 
debate, less security.
  What is the vision here on the other side of the aisle? I want to 
hang onto those gifts that we have. I want my children to have more 
opportunities than I had, not less. I don't want to diminish those 
opportunities by taking away from them their freedoms, taking away 
their decisionmaking, making them so dependent that they lose their 
vitality, that they forget that they have to go out and work, earn, 
save and invest and plan for and manage their own future.
  Even Jimmy Carter said back in about 1976 that people that work 
should live better than those who don't. Too bad he didn't follow 
through on that philosophy. But that was a memorable quote that I 
thought was a memorable one that he made when he was campaigning for 
President back in Iowa back then, that people that work hard and plan 
have to have some reward, and if you take their reward away, the hard-
earned sweat from their brow, and you require them to pay the 
Alternative Minimum Tax, because you say you made too much money and 
the tax rates we made aren't good enough to get all the money we want 
out of you, so we will add this extra Alternative Minimum Tax on here, 
and 70,000 of those families have to have the health insurance for 
their children subsidized because you set up a policy that is closed 
and cross the loop from independents, from progressive tax, to 
socialism, then we are here to say, Mr. Speaker, that is wrong.
  I take that stand and I draw that bright line. That is wrong. I want 
freedom. I want personal responsibility. I want to reward the people 
that make their own decisions. They need to have the freedom that comes 
with the dollars that they earn to the maximum extent possible.
  I will be happy to yield to the gentleman from New Jersey.
  Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. Just one point on this issue of freedom 
and the opportunities that come from it and therefore the incentives 
that also lead to it.
  We spoke just a moment ago with regard to the 1996 welfare reform 
package. Back when that was done, one thing that did impact the 
Medicaid program was a change to who was entitled to benefits. So in 
the 1996 Medicaid reform, they eliminated Medicaid benefits for 
noncitizen immigrants. Noncitizen immigrants. That means someone in the 
country legally, not illegal immigrants, but people in this country 
legally, so they are non-citizens and immigrants, they were eliminated 
from getting Medicaid coverage.
  Now, the critics of the proposal you may recall at that time said 
wait, wait, wait. If we are going to take this class of people who are 
otherwise eligible economically income-wise out of the pool that are 
eligible for Medicaid, we know what is going to happen. Their health 
condition is going to deteriorate, and, as importantly, their coverage 
level is going to go down.
  But you know what? For just the point you were saying, the increase 
in freedom, that did not occur. There was now a new incentive. Since 
they were not eligible to get Medicaid anymore, there was an incentive 
to do just what you say, to go out work, either get a job that had 
health insurance provided for it, or, if not, get a job that paid 
enough that they were able to buy insurance or do something to the 
health insurance.
  So the result of that group being excluded from Medicaid coverage at 
that time, from 1996 forward, was an increase in insurance coverage for 
that class of individuals.
  That is what we learned from expanding freedom, expanding 
opportunity, providing an incentive, as opposed to what is in the 
socialized Clinton-style health care for illegals and their parents 
SCHIP plan, is a disincentive and

[[Page H11726]]

a phasing out and pushing out for the opportunities for individuals.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from New Jersey, and I take 
you north of the border. We started to hear in the news in the last 
week or so something that has been brought to our attention here in 
this Congress where we have some Interparliamentary exchange, and I 
have sat down with the Canadians perhaps 3 years ago.
  They pressed the case that we need to do a better job of controlling 
our borders because we had people pouring into the United States, 
coming here illegally, and once they got established here, they 
realized there were welfare benefits to be had in Canada. And they were 
having thousands, at that time, about 3 years ago, they had about 
50,000 illegal immigrants that they said had poured through the United 
States and into Canada and they were putting too much pressure on their 
welfare system.
  So I asked the question in that meeting, what percentage of those 
that arrive sign up and qualify for welfare? Their answer was, Mr. 
Speaker, virtually 100 percent of them, because that is how the 
Canadian laws are set up as a magnet.
  If you saw in the news this past week, there is a community there not 
too far north of the border into Canada that has started to raise an 
issue, and they said they are enclaves that are being created here with 
illegal immigrants that have been illegal in the United States that 
have gone on into Canada because the welfare benefits are better.
  They interviewed some of them on the street where they laughed and 
smiled about how it was that their welfare check came on time, there 
weren't so many snags and snafus in the welfare system in Canada, and 
they were glad to be there despite of the winters.
  That was the message I got, Mr. Speaker. And I think that study in 
sociology that the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Garrett) has laid out 
speaks to that, that people will follow a path, and if you grant them a 
safety net, that is fine. It fits the standards I think of the American 
people. But when you crank that safety net up, at some level the safety 
net becomes a hammock. Then they rest back in the hammock and they lose 
their desire to produce, there is not a reason any longer. So the merit 
that comes from having to produce, of having that responsibility, is 
part of what gives us a vitality in this country.
  As I started this discussion out in the beginning, I talked briefly 
about the defeat of communism, the defeat of socialism, the collapse of 
the Soviet empire, because they found out that a managed economy and 
socialism didn't work. That when you let people earn, save, work, 
invest, and they decide when they make their purchases and they decide 
how they go about doing that, that creates opportunities in a free 
market system.

                              {time}  2245

  You simply cannot manage an economy without it. It manages itself 
under the free market system, and people have an incentive to go to 
work because there is a reward for that work. If you take that reward 
away and you do the great leveler and you make the argument like is 
being made in this Socialized Clinton-style Hillary-care for Illegals 
and their Parents, if you make the argument that you make too much 
money, we are going to take it. And, by the way, we are going to take 
all of that that comes down someplace in the middle, and then we are 
going to subsidize your expenses on up to that point, and in fact we 
are going to cross them to where we are going to tax you on the 
alternative minimum tax and provide health insurance for your kids, 
that is the definition of the nanny state. That is a definition of 
socialism, and that is a definition for a nation losing its vitality, 
its confidence, its ambition. And the sum total of the individual 
productivity in America under this plan, Mr. Speaker, goes down. 
American people will not work as hard. They will not be as prudent and 
as responsible under this program that they have brought off this floor 
in this Pelosi Congress, and that diminishes all of us.
  We need to be about raising the average individual productivity of 
all of our people and the quality of our life and raising our own 
personal responsibility. It is not just economic, Mr. Speaker, it is 
cultural. It is the work ethic. We used to call it the Protestant work 
ethic until we figured out that the Catholics got with that program 
pretty good, too.
  But we went to work and we raised our families. We understand that is 
our first responsibility, then our neighborhood and our community. Also 
our schools and our churches and our States and our country. God, then 
country, make this a better place than it was when you came. That is 
the charge that has been handed to us because we are such grateful 
beneficiaries of this American Dream that has been passed to us. And we 
squander it under this program.
  We diminish all of us when we increase the dependency, especially 
when we can't make an honest argument, an argument that speaks to the 
issue, an argument that says over there, if they just stand up and say 
``I am for socialized medicine,'' at least the Presidential candidates, 
the Democrats, have done that.
  They haven't quite done that over there yet. They want to change the 
subject matter. They are for socialized medicine. We are for freedom. 
We are for the kids.
  I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I should point out that the 
dependency and the loss of freedom is not only for the individual, it 
is for the State, too. What CHIP does is create an incentive for States 
to add more people onto the program since there is a 3 to 1 ratio as 
far as the dollars. The State spends $1, and they get basically a 3 to 
1 ratio in dollars from the Federal Government.
  That means that the State is no longer incentivized to do other 
creative things to actually improve the health of the kids in the 
State, just so they can turn around and say we are getting Federal 
dollars to put the kids on health insurance. So not only do we 
disincentivize or take away incentives from individuals, we take away 
incentives from the States to do the right things for themselves. We 
see it in New Jersey. I am sure you see it in your State.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. One other point. This isn't all just about kids on 
SCHIP. You have States like Minnesota, 87 percent of the beneficiaries 
are adults, not kids. We need to take these resources and push them 
down to where they go to the kids that are the reason for this program. 
We need to provide and maintain this personal responsibility. Two 
hundred percent of poverty has been a good target for more than 10 
years. Four hundred percent of poverty is taking the path to socialism. 
Three hundred percent is too much. But this program that is before us 
today is Socialized Clinton-style Hillary-care for Illegals and their 
Parents.
  Mr. Speaker, I will let that be the last word.

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