[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 166 (Tuesday, October 30, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S13534-S13536]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                 SCHIP

  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I want to comment on an issue about which 
I have spoken frequently over the last 10 years, but one which I feel 
immensely strongly about, that will be before the Senate and on the 
national agenda in these next several hours. I will draw attention to 
its importance to the future of our Nation and particularly to the 
children of this Nation.
  I know there has been a good debate and a good discussion. I have 
spoken frequently about it, but I welcome the chance to once more, as 
Americans are beginning once again to refocus on this issue. It takes 
time. There are so many different issues that are before the Senate, 
and it does take time. We have to repeat and come back to these issues. 
It does not surprise me. We have seen it other times.
  I was here in 1964 when we failed to pass the Medicare Program. I can 
remember the whole stream of our colleagues going down to the radio and 
television gallery issuing their press releases about their opposition 
to Medicare. And then, about 8 months later--I think it was about 8 
months later--the Senate revisited the Medicare Program, and it passed 
overwhelmingly.
  The one great difference, in that period of time, was the election of 
1964, when American people gave focus and attention to the issue of 
Medicare and made the judgment and decision we ought to go and move 
ahead. I have heard all those arguments, ``socialized medicine,'' 
``Government-controlled program.'' We heard that when this program was 
initially introduced.
  Senator Hatch, myself, and others, we have heard those echoes time in 
and time out. But it was under the leadership of Senator Hatch, the 
judgment and decision, in terms of providing the help and assistance to 
these children would not be replication of the Medicaid Program but 
would be a program that would be basically run by the States, with an 
outline by the Congress about what would be included in terms of 
services.
  It was a program that was built upon the private companies in these 
various States. It was a program also that did not quite match the 
range of different services that were in the Medicaid Program but, 
nonetheless, has been invaluable in terms of these children.
  I come to the Senate floor today to speak about the health insurance, 
not the health insurance available to Senators or Members of the House 
or the President and his Cabinet. As I was reminded again during my 
recent experience, we have access to excellent insurance to pay the 
cost of whatever care we need. Our health coverage is never in 
question.
  I speak of those who do not work in marbled halls or beneath vaulted 
ceilings but of those who work at the local bakery or the repair shop 
or make their living stocking shelves or cleaning offices. This debate 
is about our commitment to millions of American men and women who work 
hard every day, pay taxes, care for their children but who stay awake 
at night worrying because they cannot afford the costs of sudden 
illness.
  It used to be when we debated this issue, 10, 15, 20 years ago, we 
would talk about the cost of an emergency room visit being $250 and 
wondering whether a child was $250 sick. That is the cost of going to 
an emergency room. And we used to debate about how do you measure the 
pain, the anxiety, the anguish that parent has, wondering whether their 
child is $250 sick; whether they will get better tomorrow, whether that 
earache will expand or be an indicator of a more serious illness or 
that throat ailment may be the same or whether that child would get 
better.
  Now it is a $475 average across this country. That is what this 
children's health insurance debate is all about: Healthy lives for 
children, peace of mind for parents, Congress acting for the common 
good.
  CHIP is not a Republican idea or a Democratic idea, it is not a State 
program or a Federal initiative, it is not public sector or private 
sector, it is all of those things and more. CHIP is an American success 
story.
  Mr. President, how much time do I have remaining?
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator has 18\1/2\ minutes 
remaining.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Over the past decade, since it was first enacted, we 
have seen what it can do to transform young lives. Since then the 
percentage of uninsured children has dropped from almost 23 percent in 
1997 to 14 percent in 2005. This is a clear indication of what this 
program is about, from just below 25 percent uninsured for children--
this is 1997--look where it is now, 13 percent.
  What we see in other charts, if you talk about what has been the 
growth to uninsured adults, it would be the opposite. It would be going 
the other way. This is a success story.
  There is an old saying familiar to every first-year law student:

       If the law is against you, you pound the facts. If the 
     facts are against you, pound the law. If the law and the 
     facts are against you, you pound the table.

  The President and his supporters in Congress have been pounding the 
table hard and often on this issue in recent months. It is time to set 
the record straight. They have pounded the table about all the families 
making $83,000 a year who are supposedly eligible for CHIP. Let me tell 
you how many families making $83,000 a year are enrolled in CHIP: None.
  None in Massachusetts, none in New York, none in New Jersey, none in 
California, nowhere, zero, not a single child in a family making 
$83,000 is eligible for CHIP.
  The new bill approved by the House last Thursday goes even further 
than current law. It makes it illegal to cover anyone in families 
making over $62,000 a year, or 300 percent of the poverty level.
  There it is, in big black letters, on page 75 of the bill:

       Denial of Payments for Children with Effective Family 
     Income that Exceeds 300 Percent of the Poverty Line.

  Now, according to the Congressional Research Service, 91 percent of 
the children covered by CHIP are in families with incomes below 200 
percent of the poverty level, or $41,000 a year for a family of four. 
Almost all of the 9 percent of families above this level pay premiums 
to defray the cost of coverage for their children. That was a key part 
of the CHIP program.
  States will have a right to make judgments and decisions, to be able 
to vary the premiums, the deductibles, and the copays. We let the 
States do that for those who would benefit from the program at this 
particular level.
  The need for genuine outreach to more of the low-income children is a 
serious problem. But it is a foolish solution to address it by denying 
CHIP to children who also need it.
  Facts are stubborn things, and all the table pounding in the world 
cannot change them. The basic fact of CHIP is it began as a principled, 
bipartisan

[[Page S13535]]

compromise, and it remains so even now.
  Nevertheless, the White House has called upon the supporters of CHIP 
to compromise and compromise and compromise. We have. But this much is 
clear: We will not compromise the future of a generation of American 
children because they come from the working poor. Surely, they are more 
important than multimillion-dollar tax breaks for the wealthiest 
individuals or the largest corporations. They are more important than 
the subsidies for the big oil companies. They are more important than 
preserving the obscene tax breaks for so-called carried interest.

  These are America's deserving children and Democrats in Congress will 
stand up for them every time and courageous Republicans will too. We 
have been more than willing to work with Republicans in Congress on 
reasonable and realistic compromises that still meet our obligations to 
these children.
  Many of us initially called for a much larger bill to properly serve 
the needs of the Nation's children, but we accepted a less costly bill 
in order to obtain broad bipartisan support. Year after year, the 
administration has granted waivers to cover adults under CHIP.
  As of February of this year, the administration had granted waivers 
to 14 States to cover adults through CHIP. In August of 2002, they said 
yes to covering 40,000 adults in New Mexico. In October 2002, they said 
yes to over 334,000 in Oregon. In January of 2003, they said yes to 
12,000 more adults in New Jersey. In May of this year, amid statements 
from the President that CHIP should put kids first, his administration 
said yes to 39,000 adults in Wisconsin.
  But now they want to say no. The White House is now shocked, shocked 
to discover adults are covered under CHIP. It actually cites the 
consequences of their own decisions as a failing of our proposal.
  The legislation the Senate approved last month reversed this policy 
by moving adults out of the program over the next 2 years. The bill now 
before us goes one step further. It removes childless adults from the 
program by the end of next year.
  But that is still not enough. Still not enough. The requirement that 
children produce onerous documentation, listen to this, to prove their 
citizenship has been shown to be a barrier to care for American 
children because they often had great difficulty meeting the burdensome 
requirements of the policy.
  These high barriers were imposed because of a fallacy, the myth that 
they prevented children in America illegally from using these services.
  Now, a recent letter from the Congressional Budget Office, not the 
Democratic one, not the Republican office but the Congressional Budget 
Office, refutes that claim saying:

       Available evidence, based on State reports and other 
     information provided by State officials, suggests that 
     virtually all of those who have been unable to provide the 
     required documentation are U.S. citizens.

  That statement could not be clearer. It was American children, 
eligible for CHIP or Medicaid, who were denied services by these 
requirements, not the undocumented.
  The cost of this witch hunt has been high. According to a recent 
report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the six States 
that have examined this issue in detail spent $17 million to administer 
the requirement, have denied health insurance to tens of thousands of 
needy children and parents as a result, and have identified a grand 
total of eight--eight--undocumented aliens, individuals.
  The number of low-income children insured through Medicaid has 
dropped 11,000 in Virginia and 14,000 in Kansas due to the new 
requirements. Each State identified one applicant, one applicant who 
incorrectly claimed to be a citizen.
  Even now, we accepted a compromise by requiring the Social Security 
Administration to verify the citizenship of any child seeking coverage 
under CHIP. The time has come to stand up and be counted, to see who is 
for children's health insurance and who is against it.
  It's obvious to everyone that our bipartisan majority for an 
effective CHIP program has made compromise after compromise. The time 
has come to stand up and be counted to see who is for children's health 
insurance and who is against it.
  We need to know who is for families like the Vega family in 
Greenfield, MA. CHIP helps Flor Vega, a working mother, buy an extra 
inhaler for her 5-year-old daughter, so she could have one at school 
and the other at home. CHIP also helped her afford a nebulizer, the 
small, portable device that pumps the asthma medicine into the lungs 
when an inhaler isn't effective. That means her daughter doesn't face 
sudden dangerous attacks of asthma that require her to go to the 
emergency room.
  We need to know who is for families like the Lewis family in 
Springfield, MA. I met Dedra Lewis and her daughter Alexsiana when they 
came here to talk to me about the difference that CHIP has made in 
their lives. Alexsiana has a rare eye disease that requires expensive 
drops every hour of every day. To take care of her daughter, her mother 
had to cut back her hours at work, and she lost her insurance. Without 
CHIP, they would be choosing between paying the mortgage for their home 
or paying for medicine that Alexsiana needs to keep her vision.
  Family after family from coast to coast could tell similar stories. 
That's why families across America are calling on Congress to renew the 
promise of CHIP.
  The task has not been easy, but we will not be deterred or deflected.
  When Medicare was first proposed in the 1960s to allow the nation's 
senior citizens to live their retirement years in dignity, its 
supporters were attacked with much the same harsh rhetoric as we hear 
now about CHIP--it's ``Socialized medicine.'' It's a ``Government 
takeover.'' But Congress rejected that absurd rhetoric, and hundreds of 
millions of senior citizens have benefited immensely ever since.
  American families face real challenges--higher mortgages, soaring gas 
prices, the ever-increasing cost of health care, and many other 
burdens. They deserve real solutions, not empty slogans.
  Our opponents failed to stop Medicare, and they won't stop CHIP now. 
Medicare didn't pass on the first attempt, but its supporters came back 
again and again and again with the force of the American people behind 
them to ask--to demand--that Congress act. And the 1964 election made 
it happen.
  And that's just what we'll do with CHIP, even if it takes the 2008 
election to do it.
  We'll keep at it until the children of America get the health care 
that they deserve and that the American people are demanding.
  We know what the President's priorities are. He is calling yet again 
for more money, on top of more money, on top of yet more money to pay 
for the war in Iraq.
  The President has made his judgment. He has decided to pour even more 
of our national treasure into the sands of Iraq and to burden our 
economy with the immense costs of the war for years to come.
  Every day the war goes on, we spend what's needed to cover a quarter 
million children.
  We have a military surge to help the people of Iraq. I say we need a 
health care surge to help the children of America.
  This administration is quick to highlight their achievements on 
health care for the children of Iraq, but won't show the same 
commitment to the health of our own children.
  In Iraq, American money has renovated 52 primary care clinics and re-
equipped 600 others. But in America, children are denied essential 
medical services in the name of fiscal discipline.
  In Iraq, our citizens have paid for 30 million doses of children's 
vaccine. But in America, we are told we can't afford basic preventive 
care for 10 million children.
  The Web site of the U.S. Agency for International Development proudly 
notes a remarkable accomplishment, and I commend them for it. They have 
successfully vaccinated 98 percent of all Iraqi children against 
measles, mumps and rubella. If only we could do as well for our own 
children.
  According to the CDC, only 91 percent of American children had 
received the same vaccine by the recommended age. The administration 
should be as concerned that children growing up in

[[Page S13536]]

Boston or Birmingham get their recommended vaccines as they are about 
the children of Baghdad and Basra.
  That same Web site proudly notes that USAID has ``improved the health 
of vulnerable populations in Iraq by increasing access to high quality, 
community-based primary healthcare.'' That is just what we are trying 
to do for vulnerable populations in America.
  In Iraq, it is an accomplishment. In America, it is a veto.
  A bipartisan majority in Congress has made a judgment, too. Our 
judgment is that we must make room for decent health care for America's 
children. We must stand up to the empty rhetoric and hollow slogans of 
the White House, and give all children in America the healthy start in 
life they deserve.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Nebraska is 
recognized.

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