[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 149 (Thursday, October 15, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10465-S10467]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               COMMERCE, JUSTICE, SCIENCE APPROPRIATIONS

  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I join in support of the Vitter 
amendment, which would preclude any funding in the CJS appropriations 
bill being used for the 2010 census, if the census does not include a 
citizenship question. Under current law, the census does not even ask 
the question about whether individuals in the United States are 
citizens or not. They ask people how many bathrooms and children they 
have, all kinds of things, but they don't ask a citizenship 
question. Congressional apportionment in the U.S. House of 
Representatives is based on that total population count, including 
people illegally in this country. I think representation in Congress 
should be based on the number of legal residents, and it should not be 
increased because persons here illegally, not eligible to vote, happen 
to be in that State. That is a matter I hear a lot about from my 
constituents. They ask how this is possible. They are shocked that is 
what might be happening. The truth is, it does happen.

  So I think Senator Vitter is raising a good question, and I believe 
his amendment is valid. Our next census will determine the 
reapportionment of the House of Representatives and Electoral College 
votes each State has.
  The 2010 census form lacks the simple question: Are you a citizen of 
the United States of America? How accurate can we in Congress expect to 
be about the composition of our population if we do not ask that 
question, especially when some estimate there may be as many as 12 
million people illegally in the country? Indeed, I think that probably 
is an accurate figure, so it has an impact. Calculations using some of 
the interim census data estimates are pretty dramatic and point out the 
real impacts of this policy.
  Using the American Community Survey of the Census Bureau, their 
estimates for State population, including noncitizen and citizen 
populations, is instructive. The discrepancy in numbers for 
reapportionment using those different figures is significant. For 
example, States that might otherwise expect to gain or expect not to 
lose population, lose congressional seats, would do so if these numbers 
are counted. For example, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina, 
Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Louisiana--all of those would 
be expected to stay the same or gain. And if illegals are counted, they 
will either not gain or lose seats.
  So I think that is a pretty important issue. It is not something with 
which my State is directly involved. But having dealt with the 
immigration issue over some period of time, and trying to be informed 
about it, I hear a lot of people raising this fundamental question. I 
think it would be simple to fix constitutionally. We would simply say: 
Ask how many people are here legally and use that to be the basis of 
the apportionment of congressional seats, and not using people who are 
not here legally. It does not threaten people. It does not mean they 
will be arrested or anything like that or to be subject to deportation. 
It simply means when the numbers are all in, we will know how many U.S. 
residents exist in the various States, and from that number we will be 
able to apportion our House of Representatives and the Electoral 
College for the next Presidential election.
  I think that is the right thing to do. We need to get away from this 
other process and urge the support of the Vitter amendment.
  I thank the Chair and yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey.


                           HEALTH CARE REFORM

  Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, I rise to make some comments about the 
health care bill we are all anxious to see and discuss.
  Everyone knows a principal focus of our attention now in the Senate 
is on the health care reform bill, and we expect a major debate on the 
precise structure of that bill over the next few weeks. But I want to, 
in that connection, start my remarks with a quotation from a statement 
given by the Senator from South Carolina. He said, on June 17, 2009:

       If we're able to stop Obama on this, it will be his 
     Waterloo. It will break him.

  That is the Republican dominant view on health care reform. The 
mission is not to do better for the American people but, rather, to 
destroy the Presidency of Barack Obama. It is an unpleasant scene to 
witness.
  Almost all Americans want to see us fix our health care system. I say 
``almost'' because there is a group of people here who love the status 
quo: health insurance companies and their lobbyists and CEOs.
  Everyone knows health care costs have skyrocketed, and that means 
everybody pays more. But when working people are under assault to pay 
more, it could cause a catastrophic confrontation with funds, with 
money for food and education and other ordinary but essential expenses 
for living.
  America's small businesses are struggling to provide health care for 
their employees, and more people are less able to afford health care 
coverage. And while enormous pressure is placed on middle-income 
families, the largest health insurers are seeing massive profit growth.

[[Page S10466]]

  Wendell Potter, an executive at CIGNA and some other health insurance 
companies over the last 20 years, has put it this way. He testified 
before the Senate Commerce Committee earlier this year, and he said the 
health insurance companies--and I quote him--``confuse their customers 
and dump the sick--all so they can satisfy their Wall Street 
investors.''
  That single-minded drive for profits is clear from the numbers. Here 
is a chart I have in the Chamber showing part of the outrage. This 
chart demonstrates the massive profit increases at some of our largest 
health insurance companies. Just look at them. The years for comparison 
are the year 2000 and 2008.
  In 2000, the company called WellPoint earned $226 million worth of 
profit. That $226 million had grown to $2.5 billion at the end of 
2008--an increase of 1,000 percent.
  Aetna, one of the biggest: In 2000, they made $127 million worth of 
profit. Eight years later, the $127 million grew to $1.4 billion--an 
increase of 990 percent.
  Humana: In 2000, they earned $90 million; in 2008, $647 million--a 
modest gain, only 619 percent.
  United Health--one of the largest--earned, in 2000, $736 million; in 
2008, $3 billion, an increase of 304 percent.
  Mr. President, we all know who paid the price for those profits: 
working-class Americans. This condition tells you what we have to be on 
the lookout for as we develop our plan.
  Just as the health insurance industry profits have risen, obviously, 
so has the CEO compensation. If we look at what has taken place over a 
3-year period for the five largest health care companies, the CEO pay 
has grown steadily, while workers' pay has barely moved. The average 
health care CEO, over the last 3 years, in these five companies, earned 
$14.8 million. That was his--in this case--all his compensation. And 
the average worker's salary was $44,200. Look at that comparison: $14.8 
million, while the average working person earned $44,000. There is an 
injustice there that I think is quite obvious.
  So we look at that and say: Well, what is happening here? A single 
health insurance CEO earns approximately 335 times that of the average 
worker in this country. It is absolutely ridiculous. It is scandalous--
scandalous--when we think about the struggle people go through to keep 
their families healthy and, at the same time, take care of the bare 
needs for existence.
  In New Jersey, for example, the largest health care insurer is 
Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield. Last year, the CEO of that nonprofit, 
Mr. William Marino, made $5.4 million--a nonprofit company. Although it 
is a company without profit, it certainly was pretty darn profitable 
for Mr. Marino.
  Let me be clear. While health insurers and CEOs have made out like 
bandits, the industry has been increasing premiums relentlessly. 
According to a new report from the Kaiser Family Foundation, insurance 
premiums for American families more than doubled during the last 10 
years. We see it: three times faster than wages over the last 10 years. 
That is what has happened with health care.
  Premiums, which now average more than $13,000 a year, are the highest 
cost on record. The chart shows it very clearly, that this expanding 
premium cost has gone way beyond the average family to be able to 
afford to pay the rate.
  If today's CEOs cared as much about the public's health as their own 
financial wealth, our system would not look this way. We are stuffing 
the greedy and starving the needy. That is the situation we are in.
  It is time to reshape health care in this country once and for all. 
It is time to make the insurance industry accountable so that health 
insurance works for the people in our country. It is time to lift the 
curtain of despair so those without insurance can get it, and those who 
are in dread fear of losing it can stop worrying. It is time to say 
that in the richest Nation in the world, decent health care belongs to 
everyone in our country.
  The reality is, we spend 1\1/2\ times more per person on health care 
than any other country, and yet even as we pour more and more money 
into health care, Americans' health has not improved.
  Just take infant mortality. The infant mortality rate in the United 
States is a telling marker of how well a society delivers health care. 
Infant death rates in our country have been going up for the last 40 
years. Now the United States has a higher infant mortality rate than 40 
other countries in the world, including Cuba, Sweden, Taiwan, and most 
of Europe. By any metric, we are not delivering health care in our 
country fairly, fully, or efficiently, and the time for change is upon 
us.

  Many in this Chamber have been working for decades to reform our 
system so children, the working poor, and the sick get the care they 
deserve. No one worked harder than my former seatmate and dear friend, 
Senator Edward M. Kennedy. Today we are on the verge of a sweeping 
overhaul. We are proud of Senator Kennedy for all the years he labored 
so hard.
  This Senate and the President and the House must do the right thing 
for the health of America's working families. Surely these families and 
their children are as critical with their contributions to America's 
well-being as those profiteering from their sweat and toil.
  This debate is about our commitment to the millions of Americans who 
work hard every day, pay taxes, care for their kids, but risk the 
chance of losing everything because of a single illness. We declare 
here and now that we will not allow exaggerated profits to breach the 
primary obligation we have to all of our people to protect them from 
assault, whether from terror, natural disaster, or from the scourge of 
disease. In the wealthiest country in the world, no one should be left 
out and left behind because government won't respond to their cries for 
help.
  I close with a reminder to those in this Chamber that our obligation 
far exceeds the attention it has gotten over the years; far exceeds any 
stretch of decency that we can muster; that we do something about it, 
that we show part of the shame we all feel when we look at millions of 
people who have no health insurance in this country while we see the 
compensation and the growth of these companies. I am a corporate 
person. I come from having run a very large corporation, one of the 
largest and one of the best in the country called ADP. It has over 
240,000 employees. A couple of other fellows and I started that 
company. I took a look at the fellow who is now running that company. 
The company made over $1.5 billion last year and his salary was $1 
million. He does a good job.
  Some people here, largely on the other side--almost exclusively on 
the other side, except for one courageous Senator who stood up and said 
she is not going to let this go by without trying to do something 
serious about it--want to take the role of doctors and they want to 
write a prescription to do nothing but obstruct and say no. They want 
to say no to those looking to government for help and no to those 
desperately in need of health care. All they say is no, no, no. I 
summarize the Republican view and their health care mission. Theirs is 
a missile gone astray. Kill the Obama presidency with this Waterloo, 
regardless of the number of casualties among the citizenry. Their 
victory will be won with the political destruction of the Obama 
mission.
  I say ``no'' is not the answer. It is time for us to act. I hope our 
colleagues in this Senate will look in the mirror and see how they 
would feel if a child suddenly comes up with a condition that is long 
lasting and that is hard to deal with. I have a granddaughter with 
diabetes. I have a grandson with asthma. Fortunately, they have good 
health care. I am able to afford to pay it. But there are lots of 
people in this country who can't. I would like one of these people on 
the other side to stand up with them face to face and say, no, I don't 
think we ought to help you. I don't think we can afford to help you. I 
don't think my colleagues with whom I have an industry connection would 
like it if I helped you.
  Too bad. Too bad, I say. I hope we gain some sense and some 
visibility in this debate over the next several weeks.
  With that, I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.

[[Page S10467]]

  Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that 
the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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