[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 10]
[Senate]
[Pages 14730-14731]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       CONTINUING APPROPRIATIONS

  Ms. STABENOW. Madam President, let me speak for a moment about what 
we have happening. There is no reason for this happening, and there is 
absolutely no reason why, first of all, we could not have worked 
together to put a budget in place. We, months ago, passed a budget in 
the Senate and have been trying to go to a conference committee with 
the House so we could work it out and have a long-term budget that 
continues to bring down the debt. By the way, the deficit is coming 
down, which is very positive. But we know we need to continue to do 
more in a balanced way. That could be happening. It is not happening 
because the same people now who are putting us in a position where in a 
few hours there may very well be a government shutdown are the same 
ones who do not want to negotiate to get a budget for our country, 
which is very difficult to understand in terms of what the strategy is 
other than to just obstruct.
  We are now in a situation where we have agreed to a compromise that 
would allow the continuation of funding of public services, from safety 
to health research, to what we do around education, innovation, small 
business. We have a whole range of things for 6 weeks. So we are 
talking about 6 weeks.
  The compromise is that while we believe we ought to be reinvesting in 
education, in innovation, we ought to be creating jobs, rebuilding our 
roads and bridges and water and sewer systems, and doing a number of 
things that would strengthen our economy and create jobs, for this 6-
week period, we agree to continue the funding level at the lower level 
the Republicans want.
  So the continuing resolution we have sent to the House is a 
compromise by definition because we are willing for 6 weeks--while we 
negotiate a broader package on a full year's appropriation--to continue 
funding at the level the Republicans have asked to be the spending 
level. By definition, certainly for many of us who believe we will not 
have a middle class--that we cannot grow the economy without doing the 
right kinds of investments and that we certainly should not be cutting 
back on cancer research and cutting clinical trials for women with 
breast cancer or cutting back on other possible cures, and that is 
happening right now at this lower level--but for 6 weeks we have said 
we are willing to compromise with the House Republicans in order to 
continue funding the government while the larger issues are worked out.
  Instead of that happening, what we are seeing is a fight that, 
frankly, has been fought over and over. It was fought in the last 
election. It was very clear we had a President of the United States who 
ran on and who made a signature accomplishment of his first-term health 
care--access to affordable health insurance for all Americans--running 
against someone who said he would repeal that, and the President of the 
United States won with a substantial margin.
  In the Senate, we had Democrats running against Republicans, with 
Republicans saying: Elect me and I will repeal ObamaCare; Democrats 
saying: No. We need health reform. We need to create a better, more 
competitive way to bring down health insurance rates--like in 
Massachusetts, the home of our distinguished Presiding Officer. Our 
candidates--Democrats--won.
  So I would suggest that in many places, and certainly across the 
country, with the President of the United States, the people of America 
spoke pretty strongly.
  Now we are here. We all have seen the intensity of what is a minority 
opinion. I appreciate that. It is very intense. But it is a minority 
opinion in this country. So the minority of a minority is trying now to 
essentially slow down or stop the economy, hurt middle-class families, 
bring public services to a standstill because--even though they lost in 
the election, even though theirs is not the majority view--they have 
decided it does not matter--it does not matter--they are going to shut 
things down if they do not get their way.
  What we are going to see tomorrow when healthcare.gov comes online 
are more competitive, lower rates for many Americans, young Americans, 
families, and so on, people who maybe could not get insurance in the 
past at all, moms-to-be who could not find maternity care--8 million 
women in this country who have not been able to find insurance 
companies that will cover them for maternity care because somehow being 
a woman was a ``preexisting condition''--they are going to have a 
chance to do that, which means we will have more healthy moms, we will 
have more healthy babies, and this is good for our country.
  We are seeing now in health reform that has already taken effect 
hundreds of dollars a year more in the pockets of senior citizens that 
they used to pay out for prescription drugs. But they do not have to do 
it anymore because we are closing this gap in coverage from the 
Medicare prescription drug bill.
  As a caveat, let me say as somebody at the time 7 years ago who voted 
no on that Medicare prescription drug bill--because I believed and the 
majority on our side believed it was written way too much in favor of 
the drug companies as opposed to the seniors in terms of costs, not 
allowing Medicare to negotiate group rates and so on--when we lost that 
fight, we did not shut down the government, we did not try to stop 
funding the implementation of Medicare prescription drugs, we did not 
do all of the antics that have been done. We said: OK, we lost that 
fight, so let's make it work the best we can make it work, and we will 
fix it later.
  We did not stop the funding for the educational efforts for seniors. 
We did not spend hundreds of millions or--I do not know, maybe it is 
billions now--trying to scare people, confuse people. We said: Let's 
try to make it work. Even though in the May before the prescription 
drug bill took effect 21 percent of the public said they wanted it, 
they supported it, 7 years later, 90 percent of the public says they 
support it.
  In health reform we were able to fix one of the things that many of 
us were concerned about then. Rather than stopping the ability of 
seniors to get some help--even though it was not structured the way I 
would like to see it structured--rather than stopping that, we said: 
Let's make it work the best we can and look for opportunities to make 
it better.
  Under the Affordable Care Act, we have made it better. We have made 
it better by closing the gap in coverage, which has been dubbed the 
doughnut hole, so that gradually under health reform this goes away, 
which will mean literally thousands of dollars in the pockets of many 
seniors.
  I would suggest to our colleagues in the House and the minority of 
the minority here in the Senate who want to shut things down because 
they have not gotten their way on health reform that it would be so 
much better for the American people if they chose the path we did on 
Medicare prescription drugs, to try to make it work the best we can, 
and then to look for ways to make it better.
  So instead of doing that, what we have is a situation where we are 
being held hostage--public services are being held hostage to eliminate 
something that, frankly, a majority of people already voted to say they 
wanted to put into place. Fix it, yes. If there are problems, yes, fix 
it. But they certainly do not want to go back to hundreds of dollars a 
month for a family for a policy that covers almost nothing, which is 
what has happened all across Michigan and all across the country.
  This was a situation where women get discriminated against on the 
basis of gender, just because we are women or because we cannot find 
preventive care or we cannot find maternity care as women. We certainly 
do not want to go back to a situation where a family has a child who 
gets a serious illness and then suddenly finds, after spending hundreds 
of dollars a month on a policy that does not cover anything much, that 
there is a cap on how much care they can get for their child.
  So they end up with thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket expenses, 
maybe

[[Page 14731]]

going bankrupt, maybe losing their house, because even though they were 
paying for insurance, it did not cover what they needed. Then there is 
a limit on the number of treatments they can get. Oh, by the way, now 
that their child has a serious chronic illness, they cannot get 
insurance any more because the child has a preexisting condition.
  This is the world in which tens of millions of families have been 
operating for way too long. We do not want to go back to that. I am 
certainly not going to be a party to going back to that. So we have 
said no. Negotiate on the budget. Be responsible. Focus on jobs. Move 
forward, yes. Take us back to a time of bankruptcy for families when 
there is an illness in the family? No. Take us back to a time when 
women were charged more than men just because we are women? No. Take us 
back to a time when seniors are paying more out of pocket for 
prescription drugs because of this gap in coverage? No.
  We could go on and on. When we look at this whole approach, I do have 
to say given the fact that--we as women gain so much under health 
reform in terms of protection about unfair rates, getting preventive 
care without out-of-pocket expenses, access to maternity care, many 
women for the first time, so many other things.
  A majority of those on Medicare are women. There are so many ways in 
which we benefit. We now see the House over and over sending us 
something that would delay or end health reform. Then today, on top of 
everything else, they have decided not only do what they want to stop 
the next stage of health reform, but they want to repeal what already 
is the law of the land now on preventive care for women, on family 
planning services, on mammograms, and all of the other preventive 
services that we know save lives.
  The amendment that all of the Democratic women Senators offered under 
our leader, Senator Barbara Mikulski, which made sure that going 
forward, preventive care would be available and affordable, no out-of-
pocket costs, that was repealed in what was sent to us today. It is 
also interesting that preventive services for men were not repealed. 
Only preventive services for women, without out-of-pocket expenses.
  We find ourselves now in a situation where we are waiting for the 
House to send back something else again that will chip away at health 
care and put in jeopardy the ability for the Federal Government in the 
greatest country in the world to be able to provide services tomorrow, 
whether it is safety, whether it is health, whether it is education, 
whether it is the basics, like traveling with your family and needing a 
passport or visiting one of our national parks or any number of other 
things that affect us, protecting the air and the water, and what we do 
to support our farmers and so on.
  So that is where we are. We will once again indicate that we are 
willing to compromise on the budget issues. This is a budget issue. We 
will support the level of funding that the House says they want, not 
what we want, because it underfunds critical investments in services 
and hurts the middle class. But for 6 weeks, as a compromise, we are 
willing to operate the government at the level that they want. But we 
will not take the next step which is to take away the ability of 
millions of Americans to have access to basic health care.
  Tomorrow is an important day for so many reasons. But one of them is 
that for the first time, citizens across the country are going to be 
able to begin to get the information they need from healthcare.gov 
about what is available for them and for their families in terms of new 
health care options.
  From what we have seen so far, the rates are not only competitive but 
lower than was estimated they would be. In fact, for most families and 
most individuals, they are going to be able to get much more care. They 
are actually going to get something they are paying for. They are going 
to be able to receive that at much less cost than they currently can. 
So tomorrow is an important day, where as they say in Michigan ``the 
rubber meets the road.''
  People will begin to find out for themselves, despite all of the 
stuff that has gone on for the last 3 years, all of the misinformation, 
the scare tactics, the millions of dollars in horrible ads that have 
been run, tomorrow, people will be able to judge for themselves.
  We certainly expect it will take a while, just as it did for Medicare 
prescription drugs, for it to fully take effect. People will have 6 
months the first time around to figure out what they want to do to be 
able to sign up for next year. If we find that there are things that 
need to be improved on, then we need to come together and do that. We 
are more than willing to do it. But we are not willing to go back to 
the day where families could not find any care for themselves or their 
families or could not afford it.
  We, in fact, are the greatest country in the world, and health care 
is pretty basic for each and every one of us. We need to have a system, 
which begins tomorrow through private sector insurance and competition, 
to have a way to be able to lower costs for families while making sure 
they are actually getting the care that they are paying for. That is 
starting tomorrow.
  I hope tomorrow, in addition to that starting, we are going to see a 
continuation of critical public services in our country and that we 
will send a message around the world that America really can get its 
act together, that this Congress can really work together and be 
responsible and not see the kind of incredible partisan games that have 
gone on, not by everyone but by a minority of the minority who are 
right now holding things hostage in this Congress. We can do better 
than that. I am looking forward to having the opportunity to work with 
colleagues on both sides of the aisle, in fact, to do that.
  I am hopeful that the Speaker will just very simply put a continuing 
resolution on funding the government before the full body of the House 
of Representatives and let them vote. We have heard from many House 
colleagues today, Republican colleagues, saying that if they have an 
opportunity to vote on continuing the operations of government, they 
will do that, a clean CR, a continuing resolution that would allow the 
continuing functioning of services that the public depends on, and 
those who are providing as well are depending on.
  The Speaker just simply needs to allow an up-or-down vote. Just allow 
a vote this evening. I believe if he does that, he will see a 
bipartisan vote in the House of Representatives that will be 
responsible and do the right thing.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. STABENOW. Madam 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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