[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 151 (Tuesday, September 23, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9227-S9228]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  UNANIMOUS-CONSENT REQUEST--H.R. 507

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, this is the Vision Care for Kids Act. What 
this would do is ensure that children get the vision care they need to 
succeed in school.
  I think most everybody knows I was born in a little town and raised 
in a little town--no doctors, no hospital. I was born in a house, not 
in a hospital.
  When I went away to high school, which is also a fairly small high 
school, I was a baseball catcher on the baseball team. When we would 
move inside to the gym when the weather was very bad, which was not 
very often in Nevada, and I would be catching, I had trouble picking up 
the ball. But I thought it was that way for everybody. I thought other 
people had trouble seeing the ball. It was not until I was a freshman 
in college that somebody said: You must not be able to see very well. 
And so as a freshman in college I got a pair of glasses. I will never 
forget it. I came back to my dormitory; I had never seen green on the 
hills. I did not know things looked that way. But with my glasses, I 
could see it was green now. Now I know why I could not see the ball.
  That is what this is all about, so kids like me have an opportunity 
maybe to be able to see with glasses or whatever it takes to improve 
their eyesight. Is this bill going to solve all of those problems? No, 
but it certainly would help. It would establish a program through the 
Centers for Disease Control to complement and encourage existing State 
efforts to improve children's vision care.
  I am not suggesting to anyone that I was blind. I just didn't see 
very well, and I didn't know that. I thought everybody was like me. But 
can you imagine how--I can imagine. I was there. I know. I came home, 
and I could not believe it. I called my friends: Look, it is green over 
there.
  I ask unanimous consent that the HELP Committee be discharged from 
further consideration of H.R. 507 and the Senate proceed to its 
immediate consideration; that the bill be read a third time, passed, 
and the motion to reconsider be laid on the table, with no intervening 
action or debate.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Is there objection?
  Mr. COBURN. This bill has never been before the HELP Committee. It

[[Page S9228]]

has never had a hearing in the Senate. There has been no discharge of 
this from the committee. We have never even voted on this bill. With 
that, I plan on objecting until I see exactly what has been offered by 
the majority leader later today.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, this exact language passed the House. This 
is a Republican bill, Senator Bond. My friend is right, it did not go 
through the committee. I think Senator Bond is right by being the chief 
advocate over here. Maybe he can help us with Senator Coburn. But the 
same thing we had before, it passed overwhelmingly. Maybe after he 
looks at it, he will allow it to pass later on.

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