Mr. President, I was happy to ask unanimous consent to pass the bill that we just passed to ensure that the troops will be paid. But I do disagree with the remarks of my Republican colleagues and much of what they said in the last few…
Mr. President, I was happy to ask unanimous consent to pass the bill that we just passed to ensure that the troops will be paid. But I do disagree with the remarks of my Republican colleagues and much of what they said in the last few minutes.
Let's talk about what was in this amendment that they sent us, this message they sent to us. Among other things, here is what it had in it: A provision--this is hard to comprehend, but listen to this--that would allow any employer, insurance plan or individual to refuse to cover any of the women's health preventative services that were included by Senator Mikulski in her women's health amendment, things like contraception, for virtually any reason during the 1-year delay.
That was in their amendment. It was spoken of clearly--I will talk about it a little later--by a cancer survivor in the House of Representatives, Debbie Wasserman Schultz. It would have an adverse effect on cancer survivors, on women. That is one thing they did. There has been a lot of talk here about the medical devices revenue issue. This is something that we will take a look at. We need to do that. But remember this magnanimous offer to get rid of this by the Republicans in the House and in the Senate would run up the debt by $30 billion. How do you like that? $30 billion. No offset. No pay-go. What does it matter? They are fixated on ObamaCare. I mean fixated on it.
My friend from Texas referred to it as a bill. It is not a bill. It is the law. It has been for 4 years. My friend from Tennessee said he thinks that this should be resolved by having a Republican President. Less than a year ago, the American people took a look at that. The No. 1 issue in the campaign: ObamaCare. That was the No. 1 issue.
Overwhelmingly, the American people said: We reject the Republicans' efforts to get rid of it. Republicans always oppose big things. They opposed Social Security. They opposed Medicare. I have carried with me for 25 years--I have it in my wallet here, and it is getting old and frayed. But here is what it says:
I was there fighting the fight, one of 12 voting against
Medicare because we knew it would not work in 1965.
Senator Dole.
Now, we did not get rid of it in round one because we do
not think it's politically smart. But we believe Medicare is
going to wither on the vine.
Newt Gingrich.
Medicare has no place in a free world. Social Security is a
rotten trick. I think we are going to have to bite the bullet
on Social Security and phase it out over time.
Former leader in the House Dick Armey.
They opposed Social Security and they opposed Medicare. But even though they opposed it, Social Security is popular with Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. Medicare is popular. Why is it popular? My first elected job was on a big hospital district in Nevada. It was an indigent hospital, in some frame of reference.
But 40 percent of the people that were senior citizens that were admitted to that hospital had no health insurance. We made sure that somebody vouched for their hospital bill: father, mother, son, brother, neighbor. If they did not pay, we went after them. We had a big collection agency in the hospital.
The reason they like Medicare is because today virtually 100 percent of seniors that come into a hospital have Medicare. That is why they like it.
ObamaCare. Tomorrow in Nevada 600,000 people will have the opportunity to sign up on the exchanges. By the way, the exchanges were established by a Republican Governor, Brian Sandoval. People there can buy--some people can buy health insurance for $100, people who have nothing. Just give this ObamaCare a little time, and it will be looked back at as Social Security and Medicare. Right now, people love what they are able to get off this. I will go through some of that stuff.
Let's review where we are. This weekend Republicans in the House of Representatives did what we all feared they would do; they voted to shut down the government. Republicans knew their empty political stunt would fall on its face in the Senate. It did. Yet they voted to hold the government hostage until Democrats agree to return to the days when insurance companies put profits before patient care. That is the way it was.
Their vote was strikingly irresponsible and stunningly callous. Republicans do not seem to understand that stripping health insurance from millions of Americans would literally cost lives. Maybe none of those Republicans have received a doctor's bill that they could not pay. Maybe none of those Republicans spent a night awake worrying about whether a heart attack or a car accident would drive them into bankruptcy or what they would do with their mom or their dad, their brother or sister who has no health insurance and who is sick.
Millions of Americans have experienced the fears I just described. For a glimpse of just how little regard Republicans have for struggling American families, look no further than the chief Senate rabble rouser, Senator Ted Cruz. Listen to this. He told David Gregory of Meet the Press how easy it is for the average American to get health insurance, even during these difficult times. Here is what he said: ``If you want people to get health insurance, the best way for them to get health insurance is to get a job.'' That is what he said. I am not making this up.
His comment comes at a time when more than 11 million Americans are still struggling to find work and when millions more who already have jobs still lack health insurance. That is why we passed ObamaCare in the first place, to ensure access to quality, affordable health insurance for all Americans.
To Republicans, ObamaCare is a punch line to rile up their base. But for American families, ObamaCare is not a punch line, it is a lifeline. For millions of Americans, the Affordable Care Act is the only option to access quality health care at an affordable price. I have indicated that 600,000 uninsured Nevadans who are eligible to purchase insurance from Nevada's Health Link beginning tomorrow.
ObamaCare means access to affordable doctors and hospital stays, prescription drugs, and more. Uninsured Nevadans will have access to good insurance plans that cost as little as $100 a month. In fact, many Nevadans will get quality coverage for less than they pay for their monthly cell phone bill. Republicans would rip that lifeline away.
Republicans want to return to the days when insurance companies could discriminate against women. Why? Because they are women. I am not making that up. That is the way it was. That is how it was before ObamaCare.
Republicans want to return to the days when insurance companies could deny care because of preexisting conditions, like diabetes, epilepsy, and breast cancer. Even acne was a preexisting condition. Again, I am not making this up. That is the way it was before ObamaCare.
Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, she is a breast cancer survivor. Sunday, I saw her say on the House floor that Republicans are trying to ``make sure that every single day . . . each of us who survived cancer or another life-threatening illness . . . stay living in fear for an insurance company to boot you off your insurance.''
That is what it would do. I am not making this up. That is the way it was before ObamaCare. They want to return to the days when even children could be denied lifesaving coverage because they were born with a heart murmur or some other disability. Again, I am not making this up. That was the way it was before ObamaCare.
They want to return to the days when insurance companies could overcharge you when you were well and drop your policy when you were sick. That is the way it was. I am not making it up. That is the way it was before ObamaCare.
Because of the Affordable Care Act, millions of seniors are saving money on prescription drugs. No one can dispute that. The doughnut hole is being filled. That is all because of the Affordable Care Act. Millions of seniors are saving money on prescription drugs and many other things. Seniors today at no cost can go get a wellness check. They could never do that before.
Millions of young people are staying on their parents' insurance. Does the presiding officer know how important that is? I will tell you how important it is. In the little town of Searchlight where I am from, a woman who was assistant postmaster retired and her husband retired. They have a son Jeff. He is going to school. He was going to school at a community college. He had to go off his parents' insurance when he turned 23.
Within a few weeks of his turning 23, he was sick. He did not know what was wrong. But he went to the doctor. He had testicular cancer. He had to interrupt his education. He had three surgeries, and his parents struggled to pay for that. They are not people of means. One doctor friend of mine did one of the surgeries for nothing. But other people did not have the benefit of my being able to help them or parents like his who struggled to take care of their son. That is why more of that will not happen. Again, the Jeff Hill story, I am not making it up. That is the way it was before ObamaCare.
Because of the Affordable Care Act millions of seniors are saving money. That is the way it is. I have said that. Millions of young people are staying on their parents' insurance, and hundreds of thousands of businesses that already offer their employees health insurance are getting tax credits for doing the right thing.
But the Republicans want to turn back the clock on all of these benefits and more. They want to force more than 25 million families to once again rely on crowded, expensive emergency rooms or go without the lifesaving care they need. Many of them go without that care.
That is how it was before ObamaCare. Unless Democrats agree to all of their demands, unless we agree to strip tens of millions of Americans of their health insurance and force tens of millions more to live in fear, they will shut down the government. That is where we are headed. Why do you think the Republicans came over here thinking by some reason we would not agree to fund the troops? They know that Boehner is going to shut down the government. The House of Representatives could have voted yesterday--they could vote today--to keep the government running.
But they are going to vote, I am sure, to shut it down. Many House Republicans have admitted that Speaker Boehner has the votes to pass a clean bill to keep the government open and functioning. Here is what Republican Raul Labrador from Idaho said. He said this on Meet the Press:
I am not willing to vote for a clean continuing resolution.
But I think there are enough votes in the Republican party
who are willing to do that. I think that is what you are
going to see.
Republican Congressman Charlie Dent from Pennsylvania, here is what he said: ``I am prepared to vote for a clean resolution tomorrow. . . .''
That is today. He said that yesterday.
It is time to govern. I don't intend to support the fool's errand-- and it is a fool's errand. That is what he called it and that is what it is.
These reasonable Republicans are correct. The House easily could and should pass a clean continuing resolution today. All Speaker Boehner has to do is let every Member of the House of Representatives, Democrats and Republicans, all 435 of them vote on a clean CR, and it would pass big time. The Speaker has another opportunity to do the right thing.
This afternoon, the Senate voted to strip the hollow political ransom notes from the House. We rejected the House amendments. The House has what we passed. They have had it since last Friday. The Republicans will face the same choice tonight, this afternoon, or this evening, whenever they choose, as they did this weekend, to pass the Senate's clean bill to keep the government functioning or force a government shutdown. Democrats have already met Republicans in the middle and agreed to their lower funding level even though Republicans have refused to negotiate a responsible budget for more than 6 months.
Let's talk about what a lot of my Republican friends have talked about this afternoon. They need more time to negotiate. Democrats have already met Republicans in the middle.
Senator Murray, the chairperson of our Budget Committee--because the Republicans said they wanted it and it was the right thing to do, and we acknowledged that, we passed a budget 6 months ago. Where are the Republicans in this 6 months, a half a year? Why couldn't we go to conference? Because they wouldn't let us.
What has happened and why they can't take yes for an answer is hard for me to understand. Our number was a lot higher than theirs. We took their lower number.
Senator Murray doesn't like it; Senator Mikulski doesn't like it. We took their lower number, 98. Why can't they take yes for an answer?
In addition, all these people who whine that we haven't done any negotiating--how many times has the President taken Republican Senators to dinner at the White House, this restaurant, and that restaurant?
What did he do? He put in writing what he was willing to do. Many of us were concerned that he had given far too much. We didn't like it, but that is what the President did because he wants a deal. He wants something big to help the government.
All of these meals that he paid for, have we gotten anything from the Republicans? Not a single sentence. Not a single sentence. They refused to put anything in writing.
Let's not talk about not negotiating. We have negotiated, negotiated, and negotiated. The last 2 weeks, we have had enough, and we are not going to negotiate. That is where we are.
For shrill Republicans in the House to demand more time to negotiate is simply ludicrous. I looked up today what ludicrous means. It means comically ridiculous. That is a good definition. When I put in ludicrous, I wasn't sure what it meant. I wanted to make sure I had the right word and I got it--comically ridiculous.
The President met with Republicans at the White House over dinner and other places. He has given a list of difficult cuts he is willing to make to reduce the deficit, but Republicans haven't reciprocated. They have never once put down in writing what they are willing to concede, not once. Democrats are through negotiating with ourselves. This is what it amounts to.
The fate of our country and our economy now rests with John Boehner. Tonight we will see whether the Speaker is willing to shut down our government and risk our economic recovery to extract callous political concessions. I hope he makes a responsible decision. I doubt that he will, but I hope he does, and helps avert a government shutdown.