[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 175 (Wednesday, December 11, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8717-S8719]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
NOMINATION OF LANDYA B. McCAFFERTY TO BE UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE
FOR THE DISTRICT OF NEW HAMPSHIRE
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the nomination.
The assistant legislative clerk read the nomination of Landya B.
McCafferty, of New Hampshire, to be United States District Judge for
the District of New Hampshire.
The majority leader is recognized.
Mr. REID. On behalf of the majority, I yield back 57\1/2\ minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to the provisions of S. Res. 15 of
the 113th Congress, there will now be up to 2 hours of postcloture
consideration of the nomination equally divided in the usual form.
The Senator from New York.
Unanimous Consent Agreement--H.R. 3548
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, as if in legislative session, I ask
unanimous consent that if the Senate receives H.R. 3548 from the House
of Representatives and the bill is identical to S. 1689, as introduced,
then the bill be considered as having been read three times and passed;
and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the
table, with no intervening action or debate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? Without objection, it is
so ordered.
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I wish to thank my colleagues, in the
Christmas spirit, despite these contentious times, for letting this
bill move forward. Let me just briefly explain.
On Christmas Eve, 2012, nearly one year ago today, the 125-member
West Webster Volunteer Fire Association--a volunteer fire department
outside of Rochester--faced an unimaginable tragedy when four of their
brave members were wounded, two fatally, when they responded to a fire
but in instead faced an ambush of unspeakable proportions.
While many of our families across our Nation were waking up last
Christmas Eve morning preparing Christmas dinner, shopping, wrapping
presents or picking up family from the airport, four families in
Webster, NY, were instead confronting a heart-wrenching tragedy.
The call of a house on fire came in to the West Webster Fire
Department at 5:30 a.m. that morning, December 24. It was a cold, snowy
morning, still dark, but the everyday heroes from the West Webster Fire
Department courageously did what they volunteered to do on behalf of
their neighbors and on behalf of their hometowns. They left their homes
and their families to put out a fire.
Instead, this routine call turned into a tragedy which shocked this
community and people throughout the country and even the world. What
they didn't know was that the fire was intentionally set by the home's
owner in order to lure these innocent firefighters into a senseless
sniper ambush. The sniper was hiding behind a berm amid the chaos of
the fire and began shooting at the responding firefighters.
The firefighters were confused at first to hear popping sounds; they
thought it might be the fire, but Lieutenant Mike Chiapperini, who was
also a Webster police officer, knew better and shouted to his fellow
volunteers to take cover, but it was too late.
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Firefighter Hofstetter was shot in the pelvis while trying to alert
dispatchers on the radio to the situation.
Ted Scardino was shot in the shoulder, and 5 minutes later shot in
the leg. A 16-year volunteer lay there bleeding for an hour, enduring
the December cold while sustaining second-degree burns on his head.
Lieutenant Chiapperini and firefighter Kaczowka both died in the
ambush.
As news of this horrific senseless Christmas Eve tragedy spread, well
meaning people from Rochester, New York State, the Nation, and the
world reached out to the West Webster Fire Association to offer their
support and prayers.
Not realizing that collecting and distributing the funds to the
family would jeopardize the association's tax exempt status with the
IRS, the association accepted donations from generous people all around
the Nation wanting to help the poor families who suffered so on that
day. They collected these donations for the victims and their families.
They wanted to give these donations to the victims and their families.
It defies reason that they would be unable to do so because of a
technicality in the Tax Code.
Just as we did after 9/11 and again after a similar fire department
tragedy in California, it is our obligation to make sure the West
Webster Volunteer Firemen's Association can now distribute to these
families the contributions their neighbors and unknown countless
generous others wanted them to have. With the passage of this
legislation, that will happen.
I thank my colleagues, particularly on the other side of the aisle. I
know these are contentious times, and this was done truly in the
Christmas spirit, and I thank them.
Wolford Confirmation
One more brief moment. We just confirmed to the U.S. district court
the first woman to serve on the Federal bench in the Western District
of New York, Elizabeth Wolford. She is going to be a great judge. Ms.
Wolford is right out of central casting for the role of a Federal
judge. Not only will the legal community of Western New York be well
served by her ascension on the bench, the entire community will benefit
from her leadership, wisdom, and judgment.
It is an honor to have nominated and to now confirm Elizabeth
Wolford, the first woman to represent the Western District of New York,
a very distinguished bench.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.
Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I wish to speak about where we are right
now. We are moving toward confirming a number of individuals with the
majority deciding that the majority could do that by themselves.
Apparently, they had the right to change the rules, which I guess means
there really are no rules and the majority can change the rules any day
they want.
What we are seeing now with the health care implementation is what
happens, frankly, when one side decides they don't want to make any
effort necessary to get even one other person from the other side to
agree with them on moving forward with something as big as the health
care legislation. That should have been an example to us, but
apparently the example was the example that they, the majority, can do
whatever the majority wants to do.
Let me share for a few minutes some of the things I am hearing in our
office from people who are contacting us to tell us the problems they
are having that they didn't anticipate.
This is a letter from Pam from Chesterfield, MO. She says: My husband
and I have always played by the rules and carried insurance. I had no
idea we were going to have to change plans and go to the exchange, but
our provider apparently doesn't want to have individual plans any
longer because it is too costly to figure out the complexities that
would apply to individual plans.
Then Pam says: At least for now, my husband and I are not getting
health insurance, and I guess we have to hope for the best. What a
mess, she says. So much for playing by the rules. I never expected the
two of us to be uninsured. But, now, she thinks that is what is likely
to happen.
Jennifer, a college student from St. Louis said that she initially
supported the Affordable Care Act. She worked part-time at a Home Goods
store where she had what she thought were great health benefits--or at
least the health benefits she wanted--and where she could work as many
hours as she wanted. But, she says, because of the health care plan,
her employer reduced the maximum number of hours she could work to 24
hours.
So, she says:
My name is Jennifer, a hard-working student from St. Louis,
MO, and I would like to share my emerging problems. At first
I was supportive of the Patient Protection and Affordable
Health Care Act. Insurance for everyone--that sounds so
appealing, but now that it has affected my life in a negative
way, I am not so sure I can be supportive anymore. I have
worked for my employer for almost 3 years while going to
school. It has been an excellent place to work until now, and
now not only do I not have the health care benefits I had
before, but I am not able to work as much as I was able to
work before.
Carla and her husband are farmers from Oreck, MO. They farm full-
time; neither of them is employed off the farm. They have two sons, one
just graduated from college and just went to work; another is a junior
in college. They have one full-time employee on the farm. Her family
provides their own insurance. In order for them to have insurance they
have had a health savings account through Humana. Their deductible is
$10,000, and they still pay a little over $500 a month or $6,057 a year
for their family insurance. But she tells me beginning January 1, 2014,
their deductible goes to $12,600. Their premium goes to $11,422, an 89-
percent increase in a family that provides their own insurance. By the
way, they provide insurance with dollars they earned and they pay taxes
on, so we can add another premium to that and find out how this family,
that has done all they could to have insurance for their family, now
has an 89-percent increase in their insurance and a deductible they
hope they never use. But if they do, it is a big problem if they use
that deductible. The deductible is going to be over $12,000.
If a family is paying $11,000 for premiums and then they develop
health care needs, they pay another $12,000 before their insurance
helps them, that is $23,000 a year before their insurance benefits them
in any way for a family that had insurance coverage that, until right
now, they thought was working for them while doing all they could to
have it.
Catherine from Springfield, MO, says a few weeks ago she was informed
she was going to lose her health coverage because of the President's
health care plan. She has been concerned that she might not be able to
sign up because the Web site wasn't working. Whether the insurance
costs more or not wasn't as big of a concern to her as having
insurance. She says: The nightmare that is ObamaCare is going to affect
us in a major way, and the stress of what is coming is affecting many
people. Not only are we losing health insurance plans we liked, and
possibly the doctors we trust, but the new coverage is not as good and
it costs us more. This is--to paraphrase the Vice President, ``a big
deal'', she says.
Ken writes:
Dear Senator Blunt. I am writing to inform you of my recent
experience with health insurance and the ACA. My wife and I
make a decent income but are far from wealthy. On September
30 I received a notice that due to the ACA, my employer-
sponsored health insurance plan would no longer be available.
Yesterday--after worrying about this since September 30,
apparently--yesterday, he continues--I discovered that my
employer was able to renegotiate an early renewal and our
monthly premium will only increase by 12.5 percent. However--
by the way, 12.5 percent is a pretty good increase by my
books except the ones that compare what is happening right
now. However,
he continues,
I have been made aware that next year my plan premiums will
increase by a minimum of 39 percent.
So it increased 12.5 percent this year, and they have already
notified this family that their increase will be a minimum of 39
percent next year, and his deductible, according to him, will double.
So reading his letter further, he says: So I guess I will not be able
to keep my insurance and my costs will not decrease as the President
said they would.
Carol from Republic, MO, says her monthly premiums have gone from
$600
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to $800, and the part-time jobs she and her husband both had at the
local community college have actually gone down because they are not
able to teach as much as they were able to teach before, because the
community college has decided they can't let any of their part-time
faculty work more than 30 hours. So their income went down, their
expenses went up, in both cases because of the President's decisions on
health care and the legislative decisions on health care in both cases.
We know this has impacted the workplace, part-time workers, people
holding their workforce down so they wouldn't be covered, holding their
worker hours down so they wouldn't have to pay the penalty if they
didn't offer insurance or offer the insurance for the first time at
levels they hadn't had before.
Now we are also seeing--not only did the hours of work go down, but
the cost of health insurance goes up. Surely, we can come up with a
better plan than that.
Christian from St. Peter's, MO, just learned that his wife's employer
will start excluding him from their family coverage and that he now has
to receive insurance in some different way. It looks like he is going
to be able to do that with his employer for $1,300 more per year. This
is actually the best story I have told so far--only $1,300 that this
family used to have to spend for something else, and they are now
spending for health care. He says: I am not sure who ObamaCare
benefits, but it sure isn't my family.
These stories are just examples of some of the things we are hearing.
Last weekend I noticed that one of the architects of the President's
health care bill, Dr. Zeke Emanuel, on Fox News to Chris Wallace, said
that what the President really should have said--and this is his exact
quote: ``If you want to pay more for your insurance company that covers
your doctor, you can do that.''
I don't know what he is looking at, and some may be able to find
their doctor for more money, but in our State some of the health care
providers aren't on the exchange.
I read the other day that more than half of the hospitals in New
Hampshire aren't on the exchange. So if your doctor happened to work
for more than half of the hospitals in New Hampshire, there is no
amount of money you can pay on the exchange and keep your doctor,
because your doctor is no longer available through the way that you are
told by the health care act that you can get insurance as an
individual.
The President promised that. He said: My plan begins by covering
every American. If you already like your health insurance, the only
thing that will change for you under this part is the amount of money
you will spend on premiums, and that will be less.
I think we are going to quickly see not only are people losing
insurance, but for most people the premiums are not going to be less
and the deductibles are going to be higher, not lower.
This is going to be a story that is going to affect American families
as nothing the Federal Government has done in a long time, and maybe
nothing the Federal Government has done ever.
If you truly want to impact the lives of families, impact their
health care. Somebody told me one time: When everybody in your family
is well, you have lots of problems. When somebody in your family is
sick, you have one problem.
We are dealing with the one focusing problem for American families:
their access to health care that they can afford with decisions they
like.
I yield back.
______