[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 80 (Wednesday, May 16, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2712-S2713]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            CHIP RESCISSION

  Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, the second topic I wish to touch on today 
is a subject that is apparently misunderstood, and it is certainly 
wildly mischaracterized. It is the subject of rescissions. It has 
become a topic of conversation since the President--the 
administration--has proposed a rescission. A rescission relates to our 
budget process. It is when money originally authorized by Congress to 
be spent on a program but actually is not spent--that authorization is 
revoked, it is rescinded, but it is with respect to money that was 
never spent.
  Now, specifically, I want to discuss how this relates to the 
Children's Health Insurance Program, which is often referred to by the 
acronym CHIP--the CHIP program. So if you follow recent media reports 
and comments by some of our colleagues, and even some industry 
stakeholders, boy, it sure seems like there is a lot of confusion.
  Let me state an unequivocal fact. Since 2011, there have been 
rescissions from CHIP every single year. This is not new. It has 
happened every single year since 2011.
  Now, is that because Congress decides during the course of each year 
that they don't really like the CHIP program or they don't like 
children or they don't want kids to get health insurance? No, that is 
not why it happens. The reason it happens each and every year is 
because Congress systematically, intentionally, and willfully 
authorizes far more money for the CHIP program than it is ever going to 
actually spend.
  We have a chart that illustrates this. We can see the vertical 
columns. The red bars show how much money Congress has authorized in 
the years to the left of the dotted line. Those are historical years. 
To the right of the dotted line is the projected future years. So the 
red bars are how much money Congress has authorized for the CHIP 
program. The green line shows how much of that money actually gets 
spent on the program. We can see that in each and every year the red 
bar is way above the green line. It has been going on back to 2009; it 
is every single year, and if we continue on our current path, that will 
continue to be the case as far as we can see going into the future.
  Now, take a particular year; for example, this year, 2018. We expect 
the Federal Government is going to spend $16 billion on the program. 
Now, because of the nature of the way this program works and certain 
features, it is possible we will spend $16.1 billion. It is possible it 
will end up being $15.99 billion, but we know $16 billion is enough to 
provide the Federal share of funding for the children enrolled by their 
States, but, as I say, we don't know it with precise precision right to 
the last dollar.
  So knowing it is going to be about $16 billion, how much money do we 
think Congress authorized for this program that is going to cost $16 
billion? The answer is $25 billion. So $25 billion, when we know for a 
fact--everybody, including our Democratic colleagues, knows we are not 
going to spend anything close to that amount of money. As I say, this 
overfunding is not unique to 2018; it happens each and every year, and 
it will continue well into the future.
  Now, within that $25 billion, I should point out a subset. There is 
something called the Child Enrollment Contingency Fund. In 2018, $4.3 
billion of the $25 billion is designated for this Child Enrollment 
Contingency Fund. The word ``contingency'' is there because it is 
meant, theoretically, to be a backstop in case the demand--the 
utilization--for this program is so great that the allocated money 
isn't enough, so there will be this contingency fund. That raises a 
question: Is that a sensible number, $4.3 billion?
  Well, let's look at this. Since 2009, there has been a total of $11.4 
billion made available in this very category, this contingency fund. 
That is represented by the blue circle on the chart. How much has 
actually been needed? The answer is $100 million--one-tenth of $1 
billion. Nine-tenths of 1 percent of the amount of money that has been 
made available has actually been used for this purpose, and $11.4 
billion was authorized in the decades since this contingency fund was 
invented.
  During that period of time, all 50 States and the District of 
Columbia, if they ever needed it, would have been able to access this. 
That 50, plus 1, over the course of 9 years, is 460 opportunities for a 
State or the District to come to the Federal Government and say: We 
need some of that money from the contingency fund--460 times. How many 
times has it actually occurred over the course of those 9 years? The 
answer is three, and the amount of money is less than 1 percent of what 
has been authorized: $108 million used out of $11 billion that has been 
authorized.
  Well, next year, according to State law, despite the fact that no 
State is even close to consuming the full amount of the main fund, we 
are going to allow another $4.5 billion to be deposited in this 
account, when the sum total of all the States' usage for the last 9 
years was $100 million, one-tenth of $1 billion.

  Look at it another way. If you look at all the CHIP-related 
accounts--all the Federal money that has been designated for this 
children's health program since 2009--Congress has willfully and 
systematically authorized so much in excess of what is needed that 
actually only 58 percent of the money has gone to the CHIP program 
because that is all the demand there was for this program.
  So this, obviously, raises a question: Why is it that year after year 
after year, including this year, Congress intentionally authorizes so 
much more funding than we are ever going to spend on this category, on 
this program, on the children's health program? I will tell my 
colleagues why. It is a big budget gimmick. It creates a big 
opportunity for Congress to lie to the American people and spend more 
money on other programs under the guise of putting it toward the 
children's health program.
  How does this work? Every year, as I mentioned at the beginning of my 
comments, after knowingly authorizing way more money than is needed, 
Congress comes back and says: Oh, you know what, let's do a rescission, 
but we will take this money out of CHIP, and we will spend it on 
something else. It could be spent on anything else, whatever the 
politically favorite cause is of the moment, but buried somewhere in a 
1,000-page appropriations bill every

[[Page S2713]]

year there has been a rescission, and the money has been shifted to 
something else. Basically, it becomes a slush fund to be used in the 
appropriations process and to allow the appropriations to exceed the 
cap on spending that we all agreed upon.
  So that is what happens. Congress willfully creates a number way 
above what we are going to spend, comes back a little later and says: 
Oh, my goodness, look at all this leftover money. Well, let's just take 
it and spend it somewhere else.
  It is completely dishonest. It completely misrepresents the CHIP 
program. It completely misrepresents--in fact, it blatantly violates 
the spending caps we have established, and it is not trivial. It is not 
a trivial amount of money. Over the last 8 years, the amount of these 
rescissions, so it can be spent elsewhere, has added up to 45 billion 
taxpayer dollars--entirely a gimmick, a device that just allows 
Congress to lie to the American people about what they are spending.
  So that brings us up to last week. The administration comes along and 
says they have a suggestion for Congress. First of all, let's fully 
fund the CHIP program. Let's make sure the CHIP program is fully 
funded. There will be no shortage whatsoever, but let's stop the lying. 
Let's remove the deception. Let's provide a reasonable amount of excess 
funding, because I acknowledge at the beginning we don't know right 
down to the last dollar exactly how much we are going to spend, but 
let's take aside all of this wild excess.
  Let's be honest. Let's rescind now most of the excess funding, which 
has been going on each and every year separately; let's leave more than 
enough in the contingency fund. Even though it is extremely unlikely 
that any of it will be tapped, the administration has proposed $500 
million to be left in the contingency fund. Remember, that is the fund 
that has been used to the tune of $108 million over the last 9 years, 
but they are saying let's leave $500 million--five times as much as has 
been spent cumulatively over the last 9 years--and basically send all 
of this huge, excessive amount back to the Treasury so it is not just 
spent willy-nilly and irresponsibly.
  Now, for some reason, despite the fact that not a single dollar that 
would have actually been spent on the CHIP program will be spent 
differently, will not be spent; despite the fact that the CHIP program 
will not lose a single dollar of actual funding; despite the fact that 
Congress has been doing this every single year since 2011, as long as 
it can spend it on something else; despite the fact that 65 Senators, 
including 40 of my Democratic colleagues, voted to rescind $6.8 billion 
from CHIP--how long ago? In March of this year, a few weeks ago, 
including $3.1 billion from the contingency fund. So the vast majority 
of my Democratic colleagues voted to rescind money from CHIP just 
earlier this year. Despite that, now we have people up in high dudgeon, 
wailing and gnashing of the teeth, about how what we are doing would 
tear CHIP apart--even after what they did in March, by the way--that it 
is somehow a betrayal, immoral, appalling; it hurts low- and middle-
class families.
  It would be too generous to suggest this is merely a lapse of memory. 
Everybody knows what is going on. This is ridiculous.
  So I fully support the President's proposal that we fully fund CHIP 
but stop with the dishonesty in our budgeting. Stop throwing a bunch of 
money under this category, knowing we are going to go back later and 
spend it somewhere else. This program shouldn't be pillaged this way to 
spend money on unrelated things that just allow us to bust the budget 
cap.
  I would go a step further. What the administration has proposed, to 
their credit, fixes this terrible flaw this year. I would like us to 
permanently fix it. I have suggested to my colleagues, rather than 
specifying a dollar amount, since we don't know the precise dollar 
amount, I would be OK with a provision that says: such sums as will be 
needed. That would guarantee it would be fully funded, but it would not 
create this big excess that gets wasted on who knows what.
  If the only concern people have is to ensure that the CHIP program 
will be fully and properly funded, how can they object to that? It 
would specify, codified in language, that would be exactly what would 
happen. It would be fully funded, but we have gotten this resistance to 
that. How could that possibly be? Unless it is that people want to 
continue this gimmickry, this deception that has been going on for all 
of these years.
  Well, I hope we will be able to work out a long-term solution. I hope 
we will bring an end to this. I understand my colleagues on the other 
side want to spend more money. Let's just admit it--admit it, and let's 
debate it. We have agreed-upon spending caps. I think they are too 
high, but that is what we agreed upon. We shouldn't be lying to the 
American people and going through this gimmick yet again.
  So I want to state my unequivocal support for the administration's 
proposal for a rescission package. I would prefer if there were actual 
spending being cut. This is indirectly going to help reduce excessive 
spending because it is going after these unobligated funds, it is going 
after these excessive accounts. It happens in other accounts, but CHIP 
is the most noteworthy. To me, this is a modest step in the direction 
of honest budgeting and protecting the taxpayers.
  I hope we will be able to have a permanent solution to this soon, but 
in the meantime, I hope my colleagues will support the administration's 
rescission package.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.

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