[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 172 (Thursday, November 19, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11819-S11824]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                           HEALTH CARE REFORM

  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I would like to take my time to talk about 
the critical issue of health care reform as this body stands at a 
historic crossroad on this national challenge.
  We have never seen anything like the issues facing our country right 
now. The line between private businesses and public government has 
never been so blurred. Just look at this chart I have in the Chamber. 
Government effectively owns several of our Nation's institutions: 
insurance companies, financial institutions, banks and automobile 
manufacturers. CEOs have been fired by government bureaucrats, and 
Washington is now in the business of dictating salaries in the private 
sector. With government takeovers on the rise, drastic labor law 
changes being pushed forward, and sweeping new corporate taxes circling 
overhead, we are truly moving toward a European-style government at a 
time when most European countries are moving away from it.
  I deliver these remarks with a heavy heart because what could have 
been a strong, bipartisan bill reflecting our collective and genuine 
desire for responsible health care reform on one-sixth of the American 
economy continues to be an extremely partisan exercise, pushing for 
more Federal spending, bigger government, and higher taxes as a flawed 
solution.
  At the outset, let me make one point as clearly as possible. We are 
all for reform, everybody on this floor. Every Republican colleague 
whom I have talked to wants to reform our current health care system. 
Ensuring access to affordable and quality health care for every 
American is not a Republican nor is it a Democrat issue or idea; it is 
an American issue. Our Nation expects us to solve this challenge in an 
open, honest, and responsible manner.
  Clearly, health care spending continues to grow too fast. This year 
will mark the largest ever 1-year jump in the health care share of our 
GDP--a full percentage point, to 17.6 percent. Growing health care 
costs translate directly into higher coverage costs.
  Since the last decade, the cost of health coverage has increased by 
120 percent--three times the growth of inflation and four times the 
growth of wages. Rising costs is the primary driver behind why we 
continue to see a rising number of uninsured in our country and why an 
increasing number of businesses find it hard to compete in a global 
market. Without addressing this central problem, we cannot have a real 
and sustainable health care reform bill.
  Unfortunately, the Senate health bill, according to the nonpartisan 
Congressional Budget Office, will actually increase Federal spending by 
$160 billion in the next 10 years instead of lowering it. Mr. 
President, you heard me right: It will increase spending.
  After the rushed stimulus bill, Americans are rightly concerned about 
what is being pushed through this Democratic Congress. The rush to pass 
something that will affect every American life and business has raised 
concerns all around our Nation. In a recent Gallup Poll, a majority of 
Americans believed their health care costs could actually get worse 
under the Democratic health care plans. So why are Americans so 
skeptical and concerned? Because they are being promised the 
impossible. They are being told that this trillion-dollar addition of 
taxpayer dollars to our health care system will actually preserve their 
current benefits, not raise their taxes, and it will reduce the Federal 
deficit. Even David Copperfield would be hard pressed to pull off this 
trick.
  Many Americans recently had a firsthand encounter with the efficiency 
of the Federal Government in administering the H1N1 vaccination around 
the country. Their experience consisted of standing in long lines for 
several hours in sterile government buildings, only to be told they 
were suddenly out of doses.
  Republicans in Congress agree with the majority of Americans who 
believe that just throwing more hard-earned taxpayer dollars at a 
problem will not deliver meaningful reform. Simply telling the American 
people that the solution for solving a $2 trillion health care system 
is to simply spend another $2.5 trillion just does not make sense.
  With nearly a half trillion dollars in new taxes, this big stack of 
papers is a textbook example of the liberal tax-and-spend philosophy. 
Now compare that with the Constitution of the United States. This 
little booklet contains the whole Constitution of the United States. 
Yet we have a health care bill that is 2,024 pages long. Come on. That 
is an example of the liberal tax-and-spend philosophy we see around 
here.
  Here are some of the highlights of this piece--this piece of 
equipment, this bill, this massive, massive bill; I can hardly lift the 
darn thing--$28 billion in new taxes on employers through a mandate 
that will disproportionately affect low-income Americans, and all at a 
time when our unemployment rate stands at an unacceptable 10.2 percent; 
$8 billion in new taxes on Americans who fail to buy a Washington-
defined level of health care coverage; $372 billion in new taxes on 
everything from insurance premiums, to prescription drugs, to hearing 
devices and wheelchairs--all of which are going to be passed on to the 
consumers, most all of whom are earning less than $200,000 a year. As I 
said, there is no such thing as a free lunch, especially when 
Washington is inviting you over.
  Representatives from both the Congressional Budget Office, CBO, and 
the Joint Committee on Taxation, JCT, have testified before the Finance 
Committee that these taxes will be passed on to the consumers. That is 
you and me. That is you and me and every other constituent in this 
country. So even though the bill tries to hide these costs as indirect 
taxes, average Americans who purchase health plans, use prescription 
drugs, and buy medical devices--everything from hearing aids to 
crutches--will end up footing the bill.
  By the way, we all know when this bill is fully implemented it will 
cost significantly more. Every time Washington tells you something will 
cost $1, you can count on it costing $10. History is prologue. Medicare 
started off with a $65 million--that is with an ``m''--a year budget 
and now it has a $400 billion budget. So look for these taxes only to 
go up in the future, as we have just given the Federal Government a 
whole new checkbook, if we pass this bill.
  Let me also talk a little bit about the myth of this health care 
reform proposal actually reducing the deficit. Here is the harsh 
reality: The Congressional Budget Office recently reported that our 
national deficit for fiscal year 2009 alone was a shocking $1.4 
trillion.
  Let me put this in perspective. We have exploding deficits. In 2008, 
it was $459 billion--the last year of the Bush administration. In the 
first year of the Obama administration, it is $1.4 trillion. It is more 
than three times our deficit from last year and almost 10 percent of 
the entire economy. This is the largest yearly deficit since 1945. This 
should send shivers down the spine of every American out there. We are 
literally drowning this Nation and the future of this Nation in a sea 
of red ink.
  The biggest bait-and-switch on the American people about the bill's 
impact on the deficit is a simple math trick. If something is expensive 
to do for a full 10-year period, just do it for 5 years and call it 10 
years. Most of the major spending provisions of the bill do not go into 
effect until 2014 or even later--coincidentally, after the 2012 
Presidential elections. So what we are seeing is not a full 10-year 
score but, rather, a 5- to 6-year score.
  Now chart 3: This is the real cost of the Senate plan. The CBO 
score--because it only scores, really, basically 5 or 6 years because 
major provisions of the bill are not implemented until 2014, in some 
respects up to 2015--they claim, is only $849 billion, or less than $1 
trillion. But the full 10-year score, according to the Senate Budget 
Committee, fully implemented, if you do it for 10 years, is $2.5 
trillion. The House bill is even at a more astonishing level of $3 
trillion.
  Let me go to chart 4, because in our current fiscal environment, 
where the government will have to borrow nearly 43 cents of every $1 it 
spends this year, let's think hard about what we are doing to our 
country and our future generations.
  For months, I have been pushing for a fiscally responsible and step-
by-step proposal that recognizes our current need for spending 
restraints while starting us on a path to sustainable health care 
reform. There are several areas of consensus that can form the

[[Page S11820]]

basis for a sustainable, fiscally responsible, and bipartisan reform. 
These include reforming the health insurance market for every American 
by making sure no American is denied coverage simply based on a 
preexisting condition; protecting the coverage for almost 85 percent of 
Americans who already have coverage they like by making it more 
affordable--this means reducing costs by rewarding quality and 
coordinated care, by giving families more information on the cost and 
choices of their coverage and treatment options, by discouraging 
frivolous lawsuits, and by promoting prevention and wellness measures.

  We should give States flexibility to design their own unique 
approaches to health care reform in accordance with their own 
demographics. Utah is not New York and New York is not Utah. Actually, 
what works in New York will most likely not work in New York, let alone 
Utah. As we move forward on health care reform, it is important to 
recognize that every State has its own unique mix of demographics and 
each State has developed its own institutions to address its 
challenges. And each has its own successes.
  There is an enormous reservoir of expertise, experience, and field-
tested reform out there. We should take advantage of that by placing 
States at the center of health care reform efforts so they can use 
approaches that best reflect their needs and challenges. We should 
utilize the principle of federalism by having 50 State laboratories 
where we can look at the other States and see what works and what does 
not. Utah is a State where we have a tremendous health care system. It 
is rated one of the top three in this Nation. Wouldn't other States be 
benefited by looking at the Utah system, or Minnesota? The Minnesota 
system is a very good system, according to what they tell me. We could 
learn from them. You could learn from all 50 States what to do and what 
not to do. Utah has taken important and aggressive steps toward 
sustainable health care reform. The current efforts to introduce a 
defined contribution health benefits system and implement the Utah 
Health Exchange are laudable accomplishments.
  Just like you, I strongly believe a one-size-fits-all Washington 
solution is not the right approach. We should empower small businesses 
and self-employed entrepreneurs--the job-creating engines and lifeblood 
of our economy--to buy affordable coverage by giving them the same 
purchasing advantages as the large companies.
  Unfortunately, the path we are taking in Washington right now is 
simply spend another $2.5 trillion of taxpayer money to further expand 
the role of the Federal Government. Republicans want to sit down and 
write a bill together to achieve sustainable reform that we can all 
afford. We do not believe in the ``our way or the highway'' approach on 
an issue that will affect every American life and every American 
business.
  Republicans have put forth ideas, both comprehensive and incremental, 
through this health care reform debate, especially during committee 
considerations.
  These ideas were either summarily rejected on party line votes or 
simply stripped out in the dark of the night before the final version 
was released. And this version is no exception. This version was done 
in the back rooms of the Capitol with the White House and very few 
Senators cobbling together what they thought would be a compromise 
between the HELP bill and the Finance Committee bill, and maybe even 
with some consideration to the House bill. There was no real bipartisan 
work on this bill. There was no real attempt to try and bring people 
together. It was strictly a partisan bill, as have been the HELP 
Committee bill, primarily the Finance Committee bill, and above all, 
the House bill.
  I am especially disappointed that the President and the Democratic 
leadership in the House and the Senate have chosen to pursue the 
creation of a new government-run plan--one of the most divisive issues 
in health care reform--rather than focusing on broad areas of 
compromise that can lead us toward bipartisan health care reform 
legislation. At a time when major government programs such as Medicare 
and Medicaid are already on a path to fiscal insolvency, creating a 
brandnew government program will only worsen our long term financial 
outlook. To put this in perspective, as of this year, Medicare has a 
liability of almost $38 trillion, which, in turn, translates into a 
financial burden of more than $300,000 per American family over time.
  So what is the Washington solution to address this crisis? We will 
take up to $500 billion out of this bankrupt program and use it to 
expand another bankrupt program--Medicaid--and create a brandnew 
Washington-run plan, a Washington government-run plan. I am not an 
economist, but I know that taking money out of one bankrupt program to 
create another is not a good idea. We should be reforming Medicare and 
Medicaid for our people, but instead we keep spending, and to take $500 
billion out of Medicare which has a $38 trillion unfunded liability to 
create another government run program I think is immoral. It is 
certainly not very economically sound. I could keep going, but the 
point here is simple: Washington is not the answer.
  The impact of a new government program on families who currently have 
private insurance of their choice is also alarming. A recent study 
estimated that cost shifting from government payers already costs 
families with private insurance nearly $1,800 more per year. This is 
nothing more than another hidden government tax. Do you all get that? 
Because Medicare pays doctors 20 percent less and pays hospitals 30 
percent less, and other providers even less, those who have private 
health insurance have to pick up the cost, and it averages $1,800 per 
family. Think about that. That is because government has been running 
those programs. Creating another government plan will further increase 
these costs on our families in Utah and across this country.
  Let me take a couple of minutes to talk about process. The Democratic 
leadership spent almost--well, they took 6 weeks behind closed doors to 
write this bill. It is only fair to expect that we will at least have 
72 hours to review these--I said 2,024 but it is 2,074--pages. This 
thing right here. This is the bill. My gosh, 2,074 pages. Tolstoy's 
``War and Peace'' was about a little more than 1400 pages. This is a 
bill--we ought to have at least 72 hours to review these 2,074 pages 
before beginning any Senate floor action.
  We are going to vote on Saturday at 8 o'clock on whether we should 
proceed, but it won't be proceeding to this bill, it is going to be 
proceeding to a shell bill. If they are able to proceed, then they will 
bring up a substitute bill which will be the bill they have worked on 
for 6 weeks in closed rooms. It will be a shell bill that will get it 
going. It is a shell game, between you and me, one that is done right 
here in Washington by people who believe the Federal Government is the 
last answer to everything.
  As a bill that affects every American life and every American 
business, 2,074 pages is too big and it is too important not to have 
full public review. In fact, I think 72 hours is not enough. We need a 
lot more time. We are talking about one-sixth of the American economy.
  To enact true health care reform, we have to come together as one to 
write a responsible bill for the American families who are faced with 
rising unemployment and out-of-control health care costs.
  Our national debt is ready to double in the next 5 years. Look at 
that. The red lines are the projected national debt under the current 
administration. That debt is projected to double in the next 5 years 
and triple in the next 10 years. Let me tell you who catches onto this. 
It is our friends over in China to whom we owe $800 billion. Think 
about it. They are concerned about the devaluation of the American 
dollar because they see us being profligate here in Washington.
  Let's slow down and think about what we are doing to our future 
generations. I think there is still time to press the reset button and 
write a bill together that every one of us can support and be proud of. 
Right now, Republicans aren't just standing in the way. We actually 
believe we can do a bipartisan bill if we had a chance, if we had a 
real, good faith effort by both sides. The HELP Committee bill wasn't 
done that way. We did have a markup in the HELP Committee and almost 
every substantive amendment was voted down on a party line vote. The 
same thing basically happened in the Finance Committee, although I have 
to

[[Page S11821]]

say that the distinguished Senator from Montana, the chairman of the 
Finance Committee, made every effort to try and bring people together. 
I give him a lot of credit for it. But he was so severely restricted by 
his side that there was no way people could support it. I was a member 
of the Gang of 7, but I began to realize what the final bill was going 
to be. I couldn't support it, so I thought the honorable thing to do, 
instead of coming out of every one of our meetings and finding fault 
with what they were talking about, was to leave the Gang of 7, and I 
did that. I felt bad doing it because I wanted to help work on a 
bipartisan bill. But the distinguished chairman was so restricted by 
his side that there was no way we could have a bipartisan bill out of 
that committee. It is disappointing to me, as somebody who has worked 
on so many health care matters over the years--everything from Hatch-
Waxman to the orphan drug bill to the CHIP bill--you can name it--that 
we didn't have the guts or the ability to sit down and work this thing 
out together.
  Now we are going to get sold a bill of goods here that doesn't make 
sense. This is a travesty. It is a travesty. It is hard to believe they 
think they can pawn this off on the American people. My gosh. I know 
some of the folks who have done this are well intentioned, but not for 
this stuff. I was going to say something else, but I want to be very 
kind here.
  The Constitution--this is the whole Constitution, the most important 
document, political document in the history of the world. Plus it has a 
lot of interesting material in the back, plus an index and so forth, 
but that is it, right there. Here is what one-sixth of the American 
economy is going to be if we allow it to go forward. I personally 
believe we ought to kill this bill and then we ought to sit down and 
work it out together. If there were a real bona fide attempt to do 
that, I have no doubt we could do it. We have done it in the past.
  One of the things I found most disappointing is that the polls show 
that 85 percent of the people who have insurance are relatively happy 
with it. Yes, they would like premiums to go down, they would like to 
be able to have it be even better, but they are basically happy with 
their health care coverage. If you deduct the 6 million people who work 
for businesses that provide health insurance but they don't take it--
they would rather have the money--and you deduct the 11 million people 
who qualify for CHIP, the child health care program, which is a Hatch-
Kennedy bill, by the way; or they qualified for Medicaid--if you deduct 
those 11 million people, and then you deduct the 9 million people who 
earn over $75,000 a year and can afford their own health insurance, and 
then you take away the illegal aliens, it comes down to 7 million to 12 
million people who need health insurance. Think about that. We are 
going to throw out the whole system of health care that 85 percent of 
the people basically believe is worthwhile over, 7 to 12 million people 
whom we could help in a way that would be reasonable; and we are going 
to change our health care system from State-run systems and bring it 
right here to Washington where a bunch of Federal bureaucrats who are 
far removed from people in the States will determine every aspect of 
health care in our lives, and run our health care system into the 
ground even further, as they have Medicare and Medicaid, without the 
appropriate reforms that would keep those programs that could be great 
programs and are great programs in some ways, going. They will say, 
well, aren't those government programs? Yes, they are government 
programs, and they are both deeply in debt. Medicare goes into 
insolvency by 2017. Medicaid is also going bankrupt. What are we going 
to do, saddle our young people for the rest of their lives with untold 
expenses? We are going to saddle them with this huge stack of paper? My 
gosh. No wonder we are in such deep financial difficulties in this 
country.
  If we are going to rely on the Federal Government to solve our 
problems, we are making the most tragic mistake we possibly can. The 
Federal Government could participate, but let me tell you, if we work 
on a bipartisan bill--let me make one last point. If you have a bill 
that affects one-sixth of the American economy--and whatever passes 
here, if it does, will be a bill that will be concerned with one-sixth 
of our American economy--if you have a bill that is that important and 
you can't get 75 or 80 votes in the Senate, you know that is a lousy 
bill, and you know it is a partisan bill, and you know it hasn't been 
well thought out, and you know it is one sided, and you know it is 
going to cause an uproar throughout this country that has never been 
seen before--it already is--and you know it won't work, yet we are 
going to saddle this country with this monstrosity. I have to tell you, 
I can hardly believe it. I can hardly lift it. I am not exactly weak. 
All I can say is that it is a huge monstrosity.
  Think of the Constitution. There is the whole Constitution right 
there, yet we have a health care bill this big. I am concerned about 
it, as you can see, and I am worked up about it, because there are some 
of us who would like to work together and do a bipartisan bill, but we 
have to be honest about it, there hasn't been any chance to do it. This 
bill in particular has been worked on in the back rooms between the 
White House and very few Senators, and without any input from our side 
at all, frankly, ignoring many of the good things that have been 
expressed on our side.
  I hope we will think this through and I hope we won't pass this. I 
hope we can then sit down and do a bill that will work, that will not 
burden our future generations.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas is recognized.
  Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I am glad to follow my colleague from 
Utah. I have great admiration and affection for him. He has done a lot 
of good, bipartisan legislation. I hope my colleagues will heed his 
word. He is good to his word, and he would be willing to do a 
bipartisan bill.
  On top of that, if the Democratic leadership would back up and do a 
bipartisan bill, the American people would cheer. They would think this 
was extraordinary, and we could get something substantive done and not 
this monster.
  I am ranking member of the Joint Economic Committee, and we had 
Secretary Geithner in to testify today. I disagree with a number of 
things he has done. He is a bright and energetic man with a lot of 
experience. I noted to him--and he knows this is the case--that we are 
$12 trillion in the hole. We are hemorrhaging money at the Federal 
level. Why on Earth we would do the fiscally insane thing of adding a 
multitrillion dollar entitlement program, when we are $12 trillion in 
the hole and hemorrhaging Federal money, and you have the President 
just back from seeing the bankers in China, who have nearly a trillion 
dollars of our debt? As a Senator and as an American, I don't like that 
we are dependent upon the Chinese for that much money. I don't think 
the American people like that. Why on Earth would we do this? He said 
that people are mad out there. We talked ahead of time, and he said 
that people are upset across the country. I said, yes, they are, and it 
is because of this. They are mad and they are scared. Neither of those 
is a situation where you ought to try to force something through on 
people who are mad and scared about it. They are mad about things being 
rammed through, and they are scared about the level of debt and 
deficit, and they are adding this scale of entitlement on top of an 
already broken fiscal situation.
  The rest of the world is yelling at the United States to get your 
fiscal house in order, and we are going to add a multitrillion dollar 
entitlement program, when we all know we ought to get our fiscal house 
in order. Then the way it is paid for is to raise taxes $\1/2\ trillion 
in a weak economy. That is going to hurt the economic expansion and job 
creation we need. Then you are supposedly going to save $400 billion 
out of Medicare, which I noted to him. That song has been tried in the 
past. We had these fixes that we were going to reduce payments to 
providers, to the physician community. For 4 years now in a row we have 
changed and said we were going to do this provider cut--a minor 
provider cut--and then Congress said that is too much, we are not going 
to do that. We will fill that back up. For three or four of those, I 
have voted for that.

[[Page S11822]]

  Then there is the idea that we are going to cut $400 billion out of 
Medicare, which is already on a fiscally irresponsible track and going 
broke. We are going to take $400 billion out of that. That is not going 
to happen. If it did happen, it would wreck Medicare. This is a bad 
idea at a bad time. We should not do this. We should not do it this 
way.
  I want to focus more of my comments on a narrower piece of this, 
which has gotten a lot of focus in the House and should get focus in 
the Senate. It is the radical expansion of Federal funding of abortions 
that is in this bill. Let's put it on its bottom line. They should put 
the Stupak language in the Senate bill, and instead the Capps language 
is in the bill. The Capps language will expand Federal financing of 
abortion--Federal taxpayer funding of abortion. The Stupak language is 
something we have supported here for 30 years. It is the Hyde 
language--the language that 64 Democrats voted for in the House. 
Instead, in this bill you have Federal taxpayer funding of abortions, 
something we have not done for 30 years. They are going to build it 
into this bill. The President has said that he wants--he has said 
multiple times it is one of his goals to lower the incidence of 
abortion. This bill, if we pass it, will provide, for the first time in 
30 years, taxpayer funding of abortion and will expand abortions--
counter to what the President has said multiple times.
  Nobody who is pro-life should vote for this bill. This is a radical 
expansion of abortion funding. It is a radical expansion of abortion. I 
was and remain very disappointed that the Senate leadership and my 
Democratic colleagues have attempted to insert radical abortion policy 
through the Democratic health care bill. Abortion is not health care. 
Any Senator who votes on the motion to proceed to this health care bill 
is voting in favor of abortion and the expansion of abortion and 
against life.
  This is the biggest pro-life vote in the Senate in years. This will 
have more impact on abortions in the United States--an expansion of 
it--than anything we have seen in years. We have been on a downward 
trajectory on abortion because both sides have agreed; Democrats have 
said abortions should be safe, legal, and rare. Former President 
Clinton and others have said this will make taxpayer funding of 
abortion--this will expand it. And there is nothing rare about it.
  Relevant abortion language in the health care bill to which I am 
referring could be found on pages 116 to 124. The National Right to 
Life Committee described the language and said it is completely 
unacceptable. The Democratic health care bill would explicitly 
authorize abortion to be covered under the government option, and there 
must be abortion coverage in every insurance market in the country. The 
abortion language included in the bill is a radical departure from over 
30 years of bipartisan Federal policy prohibiting Federal taxpayer 
dollars from paying for elective abortions. The language in the bill 
explicitly authorizes the Secretary of Health and Human Services to 
include abortion in the public option and permits government subsidies 
in plans that pay for abortion. We have had a long dispute in Congress 
and in this body about abortion. We have not had a dispute to near that 
degree--some, but not near the level of dispute on the taxpayer funding 
of abortion, because most people are opposed to that--most people in 
America. They may say, OK, I am all right with abortion, but I don't 
support Federal taxpayer funding of it. That has been a broad, 
bipartisan support here for some time. It is explicitly in this bill. 
It is the Capps language. It is commonly referred to as that. It is in 
the Senate bill and contains a clever accounting gimmick that 
proponents say separates private and public funds for abortion 
coverage.
  However, it has been proven that the Capps measure would include both 
abortion coverage and funding in the government-run public option, as 
well as for those plans in the insurance exchange.
  The only acceptable abortion language is the Stupak-Pitts amendment 
that passed the House this fall with a quarter of the Democrat caucus 
voting for it--64 Democrats voted for the Stupak-Pitts compromise 
language. Representative Bart Stupak, the Democratic author, tailored 
the true compromise amendment on abortion with the principles set forth 
in the Hyde amendment, which has been the longstanding position of the 
Congress.
  The Hyde amendment simply says we will not use Federal funds for 
abortion, which is what a vast majority of Americans support. The Hyde 
amendment has always enjoyed bipartisan support since its inception in 
1977, over three decades ago.
  What we should have in the health bill is language that applies the 
Hyde amendment as it already applies to all other federally funded 
health care programs, including SCHIP, Medicare, Medicaid, Indian 
health services, veterans health, military health care programs, and 
the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. That is what should be 
in this.
  Representative Stupak explained the issue very clearly in an op-ed. 
He wrote yesterday:

       The Capps amendment [which is the basis of the Senate 
     language] departed from Hyde in several important and 
     troubling ways: by mandating that at least one plan in the 
     health insurance exchange provide abortion coverage, by 
     requiring a minimum $1 monthly charge for all covered 
     individuals that would go toward paying for abortions and by 
     allowing individuals receiving federal affordability 
     credits to purchase health insurance plans that cover 
     abortion . . . Hyde currently prohibits direct federal 
     funding of abortion . . . The Stupak amendment is a 
     continuation of this policy--nothing more, nothing less.

  I commend Representative Stupak for his hard work and ability to 
reach across the aisle to engage his Democratic and Republican 
colleagues on this issue. A quarter of the Democrats found the Stupak-
Pitts compromise worthy of support. But a majority of the American 
people support keeping the Hyde principles in the Senate health care 
bill.
  I hope we can convince our colleagues in the Senate to follow Mr. 
Stupak's lead and do the right thing and vote against the motion to 
proceed. Voting for the motion to proceed is to endorse the Capps 
language, which is an expansion of Federal taxpayer funding of 
abortion.
  The American people agree with the Stupak compromise, not the phony 
language in the Senate bill that would federally fund abortions.
  The American people agree it is wrong to smuggle radical abortion 
policy into this health care bill. The American people agree we should 
not allow funds to flow from a U.S. Treasury account to reimburse for 
abortion services.
  A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll showed that more than 6 in 10 
Americans favor the Stupak-Pitts prohibition on the use of Federal 
funds for abortion. A recent study conducted by International 
Communications Research found that more than two-thirds of Americans 
are opposed to using Federal dollars to fund abortion. The American 
people feel this way because they know that forcing taxpayers to fund 
abortions is fiscally irresponsible and morally indefensible.
  Beyond the funding issue, the Senate bill also does not include the 
codification of the Hyde-Weldon conscience provision. Instead, it 
replaces real conscience protections with language that violates the 
human dignity and religious freedom of organizations and religious 
institutions that have moral objections to participating in abortion.
  A provision on page 123 reads:

       No individual health care provider or health care facility 
     may be discriminated against because of a willingness or 
     unwillingness, if doing so is contrary to the religious or 
     moral beliefs of the provider or facility, to provide, pay 
     for, provide coverage of, or refer for abortion.

  One other objection for the pro-life community is that there is 
nothing in the bill that would prevent school-based health clinics from 
referring for abortion or helping minors make arrangements for 
abortions without parental knowledge.
  The administrators running the Medicaid Program from 1973 to 1976 
funded as many as 300,000 abortions per year, until the Hyde amendment 
was enacted in 1976. In the past, in that period from 1973 to 1977, 
when there was Federal funding of abortions, the Federal government--
the taxpayers--funded as many as 300,000 abortions per year with 
taxpayer dollars. That was until the Hyde amendment was enacted in 
1976, because the American people despise

[[Page S11823]]

doing this. They disagree with that. Whether they are pro-choice or 
pro-life, they don't want taxpayer dollars to go for this. If they are 
pro-life, they are saying those are my taxpayer dollars and I am 
funding this, which I so disagree with doing. This is a beautiful, 
dignified human life, and my dollars are being used to kill it.
  When the Commonwealth of Massachusetts recently passed its State-
mandated insurance, Commonwealth Care, without an explicit exclusion of 
abortion, abortions there were also funded immediately. In fact, 
according to the Commonwealth Care Web site, abortion is considered 
covered ``outpatient medical care.'' The Federal Government should not 
go down this road.
  As stated earlier, the President has stated on multiple occasions 
that it is his goal to lower the incidence of abortion. If that is what 
he wants to do, if we want to do more than pay lipservice to that 
reality, we should consider the fact that when Federal funding is not 
available, fewer abortions occur, or when Federal funding is available, 
as we have seen in the past, many thousands more occur.
  Only the Stupak amendment would lower the incidence of abortion. The 
current language of the Senate bill would accomplish the opposite and 
increase abortions. If you are a pro-life Senator, you cannot vote for 
this bill. This is an expansion. You cannot vote for the procedural 
vote to go to the bill for the expansion that this will do.
  In summary, I will make it clear that the Stupak language is what we 
need to fix the shell game that would allow public funds to pay for the 
destruction of innocent human life in the Senate health bill. 
Unfortunately, language currently within the health bill is a 
nonstarter and is wrong. It doesn't apply to the longstanding 
principles of the Hyde amendment. Let's maintain the status quo and not 
get into the business of publicly funding abortions in America.
  I urge my colleagues to think seriously about the precedent being 
lined out in the health bill if the Senate decides it is going to force 
the American public to pay for abortions, whether they agree or not.
  I urge my colleagues to vote against the motion to proceed to this 
health care bill. This is not just a procedural vote. It is an 
enormously important vote because it is the one opportunity for the 
Senate to stand for life and against taxpayer funding of abortions. 
Voting in favor of this motion to proceed is a vote against life.
  I remind my colleagues, this is the biggest vote on abortion in the 
Senate in years. Let's not change our current Federal policy to force 
the American public to pay for government-subsidized abortions, please.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I rise in this great Chamber of 
debate, this greatest deliberative body, to speak about the upcoming 
debate on health care on which, thanks to the extraordinary work of our 
leader, Senator Harry Reid, we are about to embark. I am here to urge 
that we in the Senate lift the tone and direction of our national 
debate.
  Let me start by saying I appreciate and enjoy vigorous debate. 
Senator Byrd gave an eloquent eulogy for Senator Kennedy, noting that 
our beloved, late colleague saw politics as a contact sport. There is 
nothing wrong with a clean hit in the public arena. Nobody here needs 
to tiptoe around. A well-marshaled argument, buttressed by the facts, 
is a beautiful thing, even when delivered hot. Dynamic and vigorous 
debate is how a democracy sorts through the thorny issues we face. What 
an ideal time now would be for strong, reasoned arguments about health 
care reform in the Senate in the coming weeks.
  Contrast what we have heard for months on the airwaves and in 
townhall meetings: charged buzzwords such as ``death panels,'' 
``socialized medicine,'' ``benefits for illegal immigrants,'' and 
``rationing of care''--words that inflame passions and ignite fear 
rather than making a reasoned case for advancing an alternative.
  Worse, these messages have been delivered with a crudeness and a 
venom; for example, the President portrayed with a Hitler mustache. 
That is unprecedented in my experience in government. Many of us felt 
President Bush was less than truthful, but for 8 years, no one yelled 
out in a State of the Union Address: ``You lie.'' Yet this September, 
179 Republicans in the House of Representatives of the Congress of the 
United States voted to support their heckler comrade.
  The media, so often in our history a check on the use of falsehood 
and distortion by powerful interests, has too often been a part of the 
problem, not part of the solution. For significant parts of the media, 
facts do not need to be true to be repeated, conclusions do not need to 
be logical to be reached, and spin is the order of the day.
  FOX News the other day launched an attack on President Obama for 
having too many so-called czars. Let's set aside that George Bush had 
more. FOX showed a graphic of 30 officials whom, it said, ``didn't have 
to be confirmed,'' 9 of whom actually had been confirmed by this 
Senate. My young niece did a better fact-checking job at her summer job 
for a literary magazine than that.
  Recently, FOX used footage from a different event to make attendance 
at a Republican rally look bigger. A constituent sent me a letter 
expressing concern that she heard on the Glenn Beck show that President 
Obama was planning a national civilian security force that would report 
only to him, akin to the Nazi SS. What did I think of that, she asked. 
This was a well-meaning Rhode Islander.
  We checked, and it turned out the President had given a speech about 
expanding the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, the Foreign Service, and other 
government service programs. I ask you, Mr. President, in what fevered 
and distorted imagination does national service to AmeriCorps, to the 
Peace Corps or in the Foreign Service become an SS-type militia? Yet 
Mr. Beck actually said that.
  Another rightwing piece on President Obama's support for AmeriCorps 
suggested a parallel with Hitler Youth.
  Its author said:

       If I need to make my point, I'm going to make it in a 
     provocative manner, because that's how it attracts attention.

  The truth should provide terrets through which arguments must run--
but not now. As a very well-regarded Philadelphia columnist wrote of 
the Republican right, ``if they can get some mileage . . . nothing else 
matters.''
  He went on to decry the ``conservative paranoia'' and ``lunacy'' 
afoot in our national debate.
  The editor of the Manchester Journal Inquirer editorial page wrote of 
the GOP, which he called this ``once great and now mostly shameful 
party,'' that it ``has gone crazy,'' that it is ``more and more 
dominated by the lunatic fringe,'' and that it has ``poisoned itself 
with hate.''
  He concluded:

       They no longer want to govern. They want to emote.

  The respected Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, in her column 
eulogizing her friend, the late William Safire, lamented the ``vile and 
vitriol of today's howling pack of conservative pundits.''
  Even the staid, old U.S. Chamber of Commerce has descended into such 
irresponsible advocacy that Apple, PG&E, Levi Strauss & Company, PNM 
Resources, Nike, and Exelon have distanced themselves from it, PNM 
citing the Chamber's ``recent theatrics.''
  There comes a point when debate unhinges from reality. When that 
happens, you leave the sunlit fields of argument and deliberation and 
you enter a shadowy realm of sloganeering, fear mongering, and 
propaganda. In these dark and twisted Halls, democracy suffers as 
debate seeks to scare people or deceive them rather than informing or 
explaining. It is so easy if you want to go there.
  Of course, you can get seniors up in arms by telling them their final 
years will be subject to the whims of death panels. Of course, you can 
inflame the passions of people without health insurance by telling them 
their tax dollars will go to provide health insurance to illegal 
immigrants. Of course, you can provoke people's attention by telling 
them reform will keep them from

[[Page S11824]]

their doctors. But none of these claims is true.
  The respected head of the Mayo Clinic recently described the health 
care antics we have witnessed as ``mud'' and ``scare tactics.''
  A well-regarded Washington Post writer with a quarter century of 
experience, married to a Bush administration official, noted about the 
House health care bill: ``The appalling amount of misinformation being 
peddled by its opponents.'' She called it a ``flood of sheer factual 
misstatements about the health-care bill'' and noted of the House 
Republicans that ``[t}he falsehood-peddling began at the top. . . .''
  Her ultimate question was this:
       Are the Republican arguments against the bill so weak that 
     they have to resort to these misrepresentations and 
     distortions?

  Where does this lead? The ill-informed, the gullible, those already 
on the razor's edge of anger about the very election of this President 
may well be tipped by all this poisonous propaganda into actions we 
would all regret--I hope we would all regret. When do anger and 
frustration fomented in this debate begin to spill over into dangerous 
or violent acts? When does some havoc occur, such that we all look back 
with sorrow and wish we had better leashed our dogs of rhetorical war? 
Where do we restore civility and reason to the health care debate 
before it gets too late?
  I say history's charge to the Senate is to rise above the poison of 
our recent public debate. This greatest deliberative body is intended 
to set an example for public argument, not get swept into its downward 
spiral. We may find agreement; we may not. At the end of the day, some 
of us may be happy and others of us not. Some may lose and some may 
win. But the Senate will go on.
  After the health care debate has raged through this great Chamber, 
other debates will follow, and ultimately what will matter more than 
the outcome of those debates is whether our proud American democracy 
has come through them with its head held high.
  When debate and our democracy lose its footing in the facts, when 
things are said for public effect without regard to whether they are 
true, when the din of strife blots out the voice of reason, something 
of great and lasting value to America is sacrificed.
  Democracy does not prosper on a diet of propaganda and fear. The 
current tone of much of our debate is, frankly, unworthy of us. Most in 
America agree something must be done to fix our health care system. If 
we can agree something must be done, it should not be difficult to 
debate our differences as to what must be done in a civil, thoughtful, 
and factual manner. Let the Senate be the place where we take a stand, 
rejecting the incivility and falsehood that has surrounded us on our 
public airwaves. Through history, that is what this Chamber, at its 
best, has always achieved and needs now to achieve again.

                          ____________________