[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 1]
[Senate]
[Pages 1103-1104]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              HEALTH CARE

  Mr. REID. Madam President, if the American people want to understand 
the difference between Democrats and Republicans, it is my suggestion 
that they pay attention to what is happening on the Senate floor this 
week. The two parties simply have different priorities. Democrats are 
fighting to modernize our Nation's air travel. Republicans are fighting 
to repeal the health care reform law, ignoring the 80 percent of 
Americans who want them to leave it alone. In other words, Democrats 
want to get passengers the rights they deserve. Republicans want to 
take away patients' rights that they already have, rights that are 
saving lives, saving money, and saving Medicare, just as we promised 
when we wrote this law.
  What Republicans refuse to understand, or at least what they hope the 
people do not realize, is that in America we give our citizens rights; 
we don't take them away. That principle comes first and inspired the 
country's founding and has directed our evolution and defines our 
promise.
  We as Senators have a choice. We can move forward or we can look 
backward; we can make progress or we can stage

[[Page 1104]]

a futile fight with the future. It is clear this week that while the 
American people and Senate Democrats are looking ahead, Senate 
Republicans are looking for a way to distract the American people. This 
is what moving forward looks like: Our bill to modernize our Nation's 
air travel will protect consumers. It is a passengers' bill of rights. 
We know delays happen when we fly from the airports around the country. 
We try to fly sometimes. When we do, we want to make sure passengers 
are treated right. We want to make sure passengers have the right to 
timely and accurate information about their flight. We want to make 
sure passengers have the right to food, water, and access to restrooms 
when they are forced to wait.
  We want to make sure passengers have the right to know that while 
they are sitting on an airplane that is on a tarmac--as I said here 
yesterday, 3\1/2\ hours in Dallas alone waiting for a gate--we want to 
make sure passengers know the airline they are flying has a contingency 
plan to get them where they need to go.
  This bill will also make flying safer and make it more efficient. It 
will help prevent accidents on the runways. It will finally introduce 
GPS technology to our Nation's air traffic control system. Mongolia has 
GPS. We don't. In most every country in the world, they determine where 
airplanes are with GPS. They do it in the air. We are still doing it on 
the ground. This bill will improve access to rural communities, which 
is important to Nevadans in rural cities such as Ely, NV, which is not 
near a big metropolitan area, and would reduce delays in the first 
place. That is what moving forward looks like, and that is why Senator 
Rockefeller has worked for years to get this bill passed.
  But there have been little side issues that have come up. The side 
issues are going to be debated on the floor and we will either pass 
them or get rid of them and get this bill on the road to the 
President's desk. So what I have talked about is what moving forward 
looks like. That is what we Democrats want to do.
  This is what moving backward would look like: Republicans' symbolic 
effort to repeal the rights in the health care reform bill would put us 
all at risk. I am going to only mention a few of the things, but it 
would let insurance companies, once again, stand in the way of a child 
and the medical care that child needs. It would take away that child's 
right to get health insurance and instead give insurance companies the 
right to use asthma or diabetes as the excuse to take away that care. 
It would kick kids off their parents' health insurance. It would take 
away seniors' rights to a free wellness check. It would force seniors 
to pay more for their prescriptions. It would raise taxes on small 
businesses and add $1.5 trillion to our deficit.
  That is what their amendment would do.
  This is how health insurance worked before reforms became the law of 
the land. We do not want to go back. Madam President, I am sure you 
have had parents come to you with tears in their eyes, saying: Now my 
child can get insurance. We don't want to have mothers say: What am I 
going to do? That is what they said in the past.
  There is one more difference between Democrats and Republicans. We 
are fighting for jobs this week. Along with all the advantages in the 
aviation modernization bill I mentioned a minute ago, it is also a jobs 
bill. It will create and protect at least 280,000 American jobs. That 
is why we are fighting so hard for this bill. This is a bipartisan 
bill. Let's get to passing it.
  While the health care reform law is making sick Americans healthier 
and better, it is also helping unemployed Americans find work. A 
healthier health care system is going to create hundreds of thousands 
of jobs a year for the next decade.
  I went to GW University Hospital--I wasn't sick--to visit somebody 
there. A woman--she must have been one of the administrators--said: Oh, 
I am so happy. She said: You know that health care bill you passed, we 
are going to hire 500 new physicians. I came back and told my staff 
that and they said you must have it mixed up. Five hundred? I said: 
Let's find out her name and you call her. They called her. I was right. 
That is what she told me, and she said that is because of the health 
care bill we passed.
  We are talking about this health care bill also helping unemployed 
Americans find work. A healthier health care system is going to create 
hundreds of thousands of jobs a year for the next decade. That is what 
they tell us. That is because when businesses do not have to spend much 
on premiums, they can spend more on people--and healthier workers are, 
of course, more productive workers and that helps our economy at every 
level.
  This is the difference between moving forward and moving backward. It 
is the difference between giving people rights and taking them away. In 
the late days of the health care reform debate, my colleagues on the 
other side asked us to stop everything and start over. It is nothing 
more than an excuse to keep insurance companies in charge of health 
care in this country. The minority is again asking us to turn back the 
clock on the progress we made, turn health care back to the insurance 
companies. They can dig in their heels, try to slam on the brakes as 
hard as they want, but the course of our country goes in only one 
direction. We move forward.
  Madam President, as I announced earlier, Senator Paul is going to 
give his maiden speech. I am sure his father is looking on through the 
magic of all of the new communications we have to listen to his son 
give a speech in the Senate. We are all anxious to hear him.
  Senator Paul.

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