Floor Statements

Mr. President, I thank the chairman of the Finance Committee, on which I am proud to serve, for yielding time, as well as for the great work he has done. I wish to commend Senators Dodd and Harkin for the great work they have done in the HELP Committee and all the members of the HELP Committee, as well as the Finance Committee and, of course, Majority Leader Reid, who has been as solid as a rock and steadfast in his own quiet way. He is more responsible for this bill passing than just about anybody else. So I thank our leadership for that.

I rise today to talk about this historic accomplishment of health care reform. I congratulate all of my colleagues for their hard work and dedication. I congratulate the President. He, too, was like a rock. He never budged. The day after the Massachusetts election, when so many others were saying we can't get this done and to trim back, he was steadfast. I saw him and his steadfastness. His internal gyroscope got us over the goal line.

I wish to address where the future is in this bill in terms of average Americans. We all know the American people are still trying to digest the health care legislation we have just passed. That is understandable. It is a large and complex piece of legislation and, of course, there has been a tremendous

amount of misinformation out there about what it does and what it does not do. To tell the average American that this is truly historic legislation doesn't get to them. They want to know how it is going to affect them.

I fervently believe that the more the American people learn about this bill, the more they will like it. I believe this for two reasons. First: People very quickly come to see that the myths and lies that some have put forward about this bill will not come true, because they are not in reality, and now we are in reality--we are in health care reality--because the first part of the bill has passed, the major part, and we will pass the second.

Second: There are so many good things in this bill that people like and need. As people learn the truth as to what those things are, many of which will improve their lives--some immediately and some in a few years--I am confident they will not only like health care reform but embrace it. When the crime bill was passed in 1994, at first the same thing happened. There was a parade of horribles. But over the years, we saw that it reduced crime and made America a better place, and it became a very popular piece of legislation. I believe the same thing will occur with this health care bill.

So today I wish to take the rest of my time to describe to average Americans how this bill will affect them. The No. 1 group, the largest group of average Americans, is those who are covered by their employer plan. First, you will keep your coverage. For people who have been scared into thinking they might lose their health coverage or have the government telling them what to do or what treatments they could or could not receive, they are going to discover there is very little change for them. I had a firefighter employed by the city of New York on Long Island last week say to me: Don't pass the bill. I will lose my benefits. That firefighter will see his benefits will stay as good and as strong as they are now. In fact, it will get better for those folks who are already covered, because premiums to their employer won't go up and up and up, and their employer will not continue to ask them, as they have now, to pay so much more and to get so much less back.

We cannot claim premiums won't go up at all, but we know they will go up much less. The likelihood of the employer calling a person, the average person, a worker in their company and saying: Jim, Mary, you are a great worker. I love you. I want you to stay in my company, but I am eliminating your health care benefits or I am greatly cutting them back, will be greatly reduced over the years as this bill becomes law and works its way.

Beneficiaries, those on private health care, won't pay higher Medicare taxes. Their benefits will not change. Their choice of doctors will not change. They will be much better off, and they will learn that.

Second: To small business owners who are trying to do the right thing and provide health insurance coverage to their workers and now find that costs are increasing, which makes it more and more difficult every year to keep those employees on health care, they are going to find this year that there is a generous tax credit to make it more affordable to provide coverage for their employees. The average small businessperson is going to like this bill because the average small business owner wants their employees to have good health care coverage, but they can't do it alone. Now they are going to get some help.

What about to the small business owner who aches because he or she can't supply insurance because the employee has a preexisting condition or just because it is too expensive? They are going to find they will now be able to provide insurance for those folks.

What about all of those families with kids who are now in college and they worry, once the kid gets out of college, they are not going to have health care? They are going to find that they are covered up until their 26th birthday on their parents' plan. They have to be. That is going to start this year. What a relief to millions of American families and millions of American students. I know this personally. My daughter is graduating from law school. When the bill passed at 1 a.m., she called me. She was watching when the House bill passed and said: Dad, I have been worried what I am going to do about health insurance next year. She is out in the job market. Now I don't have to worry. That phone call will be repeated by hundreds of thousands and millions of students to their parents in the next while. So it is great for them.

What about retirees who are not yet eligible for Medicare, the person who fears that because they don't have their job or they are retiring at age 60 or 62, 61, what are they going to do? This bill will provide more assistance to bring down premiums. It will provide more choices to these retirees who right now have either no health insurance or a policy that is so expensive they can't afford it.

What about average Americans who worry because say they have early stages of diabetes and their health care doesn't cover prevention? Average American families--and I see the Senator from Iowa is here, who has been a leader in the fight for prevention--will now get prevention in their benefits. For the average American who has recently gotten sick or who might in the future, they don't have to worry that their insurance company will take away their benefits. They will not be able to do that the way they do now. We won't have to hear stories anymore of health insurers looking for any excuse to cut sick people off from their insurance.

What about those tens of millions on Medicare who, again, have been scared and worried that Medicare will change? Yes, Medicare will change. It will get stronger and still preserve the exact same benefit to every person on Medicare.

Before this bill was signed into law, Medicare was going to go broke in 7 years. It has been given an extra decade. That should be a huge load off the shoulders of people who worry about Medicare.

In addition, the doughnut hole will be closed, so all those Medicare recipients on prescription drugs will get relief--more relief.

For the average senior citizen, as they learn about this bill, they are going to like this bill. They are going to say this was a great thing. It kept Medicare as is, surviving much longer than previously predicted. If we had done nothing and Medicare was about to go broke, guess who would have paid the price. Those senior citizens on it.

What about young women looking for health insurance? Health reform means she will not be charged a premium 150 percent more than a young man's. Health reform ends that gender discrimination.

Mr. President, in conclusion, I will just say this: In November, this bill will be a positive--a strong positive for those who supported it. Those who were in favor of it will benefit. Those who opposed it will come to regret their opposition as America learns about what is in and what is not in this bill. It is not just a triumph for history; it is a triumph for the average American.

May I ask the Senator from Alabama a question. How much time does he intend to use?

Mr. President, I make a unanimous consent that immediately after the Senator from Alabama speaks, I be recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. President, I would like to start by saying how much I admire the family members of the victims of Colgan Air Flight 3407. They are an amazing group of people. They have advocated tirelessly for a year, making numerous trips to Capitol Hill, all in honor of the beloved loved ones who tragically lost their lives on a Buffalo-bound flight from Newark airport.

They have done this with intelligence, with focus, and, given their overwhelming grief--at least as far as I witnessed--no anger, which was amazing to me. I am sure when they go home at night there is a hole in their

hearts, and it would be quite human for many of them to be angry, but they have channeled all of that into an amazingly well-focused attempt that now is on the edge of success: to make our commuter flights safer.

We all remember the night over a year ago now when flight 3407 crashed in Clarence, NY, and claimed 50 lives. It is a tragic reminder that our Nation's aviation industry is not immune to tragic accidents. Last month the NTSB issued its final conclusion on the cause of the flight failure. The conclusion, though not surprising, based on the reports we have heard for almost a year now, is still heartbreaking.

The NTSB determined the probable cause of the accident was ``the captain's inappropriate response to the activation of the stick shaker, which led to an aerodynamic stall from which the plane did not recover.''

That is a heart-wrenching conclusion to hear because it means the accident was entirely avoidable.

The Senate Commerce Committee has included numerous important provisions, safety provisions, in the FAA bill. I am especially grateful to all the members of the committee, particularly the chair, Senator Rockefeller, and the subcommittee chair, Senator Dorgan, for helping us obtain an amendment that I authored that will require all flight crewmembers to have more flying experience before they can be hired by an airline such as Colgan Air. The copilot can currently be hired by a regional carrier with as little as 250 flight hours. That is unacceptable.

The amendment will require the FAA to require that copilots have at least 800 hours of flying experience, and that experience will have to be performed in adverse flying conditions like those that flight 3407 met over a year ago on a cold, icy night outside of Buffalo.

Senator Dorgan, as I mentioned, was instrumental in helping to make the safety goals of flight 3407 family members a reality. I thank him and Senator Rockefeller and their staffs for their hard work and leadership, not only on the crewmembers' experience but on the FAA bill as a whole. I would also like to thank all the cosponsors of the original bill for their support--Senators Gillibrand, Lieberman, Leahy, Casey, Collins, Snowe, Kerry, Wyden, Scott Brown, Risch, Burris, and Merkley.

We firmly believe everyone flying a plane, both pilot and copilot, should have proper training and experience to handle adverse flying conditions.

NTSB concluded that the pilot and copilot's poor training was evident from the start of the flight when they incorrectly entered airspeeds in the aircraft's computer system. When the Q400 airspeed dipped to a dangerously low level, their reactions were of shock and confusion, not of problem solving. When the stick-pusher activated so the pilot could coax the aircraft out of a stall, he pulled back instead of pushing forward. His copilot did not recognize or correct any of his mistakes.

It is unacceptable that a passenger on a regional carrier should fly in less capable hands than a passenger on a larger commercial carrier, where hiring standards are considerably higher. That is why passage of the FAA bill is of utmost importance in the Senate. We need to bring all commercial air travel to the same level of safety.

I have said this before. It bears repeating. The families of flight 3407's victims have been almost saintly, and I do not say it lightly. They have taken this tragedy and turned it into this moment, a moment where we are on the verge of making critical reforms in airline safety that are long overdue.

If we pass this bill, we will make changes in airline safety that will impact the country for decades to come. The journey that these families have traveled has been too long and too hard to stop now.

In conclusion, I can never say enough about how humbled I am by the work of all flight 3407 family members. It is a tribute to their loved ones' lives that they continue to come to Washington to advocate for aviation safety, and I am honored to help in their cause.

Mr. President, I rise in support of the legislation before us and the motion to waive the point of order.

This is a good day for American workers, for Congress is focusing on what they have asked us to focus on. Congress is focusing on what the American people want us to focus on, which is jobs, jobs, jobs, and Congress will act in a bipartisan way. So this is a break, in several ways, from the past. One, we are focusing on jobs and the economy. That is what we should be doing. Second, we are doing it in a bipartisan way.

The bill before us focuses on private sector jobs. It has four pieces. Each is lean. Each is directed at private sector jobs. Each will give the economy a certain lift. Last quarter, we had growth of 5.9 percent. That sounds great, but that 5.9 percent growth resulted in no new jobs being created. In fact, it resulted in a continued loss of jobs, admittedly less of a loss than in the past.

Our job is to take that growth and translate it into jobs for the American people, plain and simple, and that is what we are doing with this HIRE Act. At the center of it is a bipartisan piece of legislation: a payroll tax holiday for 1 year for any new worker hired who has been unemployed for 60 days, authored by the Senator from Utah, Mr. Hatch, and myself. It is the bipartisan glue which hopefully will stick with us as we move forward on our jobs agenda because this is just the first--certainly not the last--piece of legislation we will put forward in relation to jobs. If we don't create jobs, the economy will not move forward. If we don't create jobs, the American people, American business, and American labor could lose the optimism that has been part of this country since its founding. When you lose that optimism, you lose dollars and cents economically because businesses don't spend, workers don't prepare for the future, people get disconsolate.

So this legislation is admittedly modest and focused and will go far beyond what the specific legislation does because it will show the American people, it will show American business, large and small, it will show American workers Congress is focused on what they want us to focus on and that we will continue to work on our jobs agenda until jobs start growing, until people are being paid decent wages, until the economy roars back on a long and stable trajectory, which can only be done if employment goes up and underemployment goes down.

I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, I will support the motion to waive the point of order. I believe I have 1 minute left.

The world is topsy-turvy. My Republican colleagues are opposing a tax cut to businesses, large and small, that hire people. This is exactly what we should do. We don't want to be saying to workers we can't help them find a job. There are shades of Herbert Hoover in what my colleague is saying, and I don't think many of my colleagues on either side of the aisle would support that.

Let me say this about the budget point of order. The Joint Tax Committee, which we all respect, says these provisions are budget neutral.

We have found a way to hire workers, help businesses with tax cuts to hire them, and keep it budget neutral. Yet there is still opposition. When will it end? When will the bipartisan kind of feeling in this body return? This is a bipartisan measure that lives by many of the tenets the party on the other side has stood for, for decades.

Mr. President, is there any time remaining?

Mr. President, pursuant to section 904 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, the waiver provisions of applicable budget resolutions, and section (4)(g)(3) of the Statutory Pay-As-You- Go Act of 2010, I move to waive all applicable sections of those acts and applicable budget resolutions for purposes of the pending amendment, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Will the majority leader yield?

Is it not true, Mr. Leader, by the rules of the Senate, that the minority could spend time talking about health care tonight, without holding up the jobs bill; that they could let the jobs bill go forward and then talk about health care all they wanted?

That is true.

Would the leader yield for a question?

Again, first, there are four provisions in this bill: One is the highway bill, which as I understand it hires private sector people to build highways; is that correct?

Second is Build America Bonds, which allows the States and cities to hire private people; is that correct?

Third is the depreciation for small businesses, which is obviously for the private sector.

Four is the provision Senator Hatch and I put forward, which gives directly to small businesses a payroll tax deduction if they hire; is that correct?

Let me ask one other question because my friend, the minority leader, talked about the $48 billion not paid for. Isn't it correct this bill is fully paid for?

I thank the Senator.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that upon disposition of the amendments in order this morning, the Senate then proceed to a period for the transaction of morning business until 12:30 p.m., with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each, and that at 12:30 p.m., the Senate stand in recess until 2:15 p.m.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on March 9, 2010, at 9 a.m.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on March 9, at 10 a.m., in room SD-366 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on March 9, 2010, at 9:30 a.m., in room 215 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``U.S. Preference Programs: Options for Reform.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be authorized to meet, during the session of the Senate, to conduct a hearing entitled ``ESEA Reauthorization: The Importance of World-Class K-12 Education for Our Economic Success'' on March 9, 2010. The hearing will commence at 2:30 p.m. in room 430 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Veterans' Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on March 9, 2010. The Committee will meet in room SDG-50 in the Dirksen Senate Office Building beginning at 9:30 a.m.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on March 9, 2010 at 2:30 p.m.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Superfund, Toxics, and Environmental Health of the Committee on Environment and Public Works be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on March 9, 2010, at 10 a.m. in room 406 of the Dirksen Office Building.

Will the leader yield for a brief statement?

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded; I ask unanimous consent that we reserve the Republican time and that I be able to speak for 2 minutes.

Madam President, I want to speak about the unemployment situation in my home State of New York. By mid-March, 54,000 people will lose their benefits if we don't move forward with the short-term extension of unemployment insurance. That is tragic. It is virtually inhumane.

I have been around my State meeting with people who are looking for work. You look into their eyes and you feel their pain. Many of them are middle-class people who have had very good-paying jobs. Many of them have lost their jobs. Many lost their jobs more than a year ago and they have spent every day, 7 days a week, looking. I met a woman in Rochester. She was No. 2 in human resources for a big company. Her job was her life. She has been looking for 2 years and can't find a job. I plead with my colleague from Kentucky and all of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle--while we are debating a larger bill to extend unemployment benefits, we must allow this to go forward.

We must allow this short-term extension to go forward for the sake of those people who lost their jobs, through no fault of their own, and they are desperately looking for work, but in this awful economy they can't find it.

According to The Hill newspaper, New York is affected No. 1 by this. It is vital, vital, vital that we move this forward. I plead with my friend from Kentucky to reconsider and let the short-term extension move forward. We have done it before under the same conditions we have asked for this time.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum and ask that the time during the quorum call not go against the morning business time of either side. I ask that the time now being used in morning business be equally divided.

Will the Senator yield?

I am just trying to equally divide the quorum call. I asked unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak for 2 minutes.

And we go back and everyone get their full allocation of morning business, and that was granted. There was no intention of a quorum call to be taken between either side.

I understand.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 429, which was submitted earlier today.

I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday, March 3; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and the Senate resume consideration of H.R. 4213.

Madam President, tomorrow, we will resume consideration of the tax extenders legislation. Currently, we have three amendments pending to the bill--the Thune amendment, the Sessions amendment, and the Landrieu amendment. Earlier today, we were able to reach agreement on the next four amendments in order. Senators Murray and Sanders will offer the next two Democratic amendments and Senator Bunning will offer the next two Republican amendments. Rollcall votes are expected to occur throughout the day.