Sherrod Brown

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, I have listened to the debate in the last few hours, yesterday, and today. I have heard these debates for years about unemployment compensation, unemployment insurance. In the end, some of my colleagues vote for extension of unemployment benefits for hard-working Americans, Americans who have had jobs and are trying to find jobs but have lost their jobs. When I saw what happened a month ago when Senator Bunning, time and time again, single-handedly for a period of time--because of the peculiar rules of this institution, one Senator representing a State that has less than 1 percent of the population, one Senator representing a State which makes up less than 1 percent of the country--granted the minority leader is in that State too--one Senator can block the extension of unemployment compensation to millions of Americans, to people in Youngstown, Lima, Mansfield, or Chillicothe and Toledo. Now we have a handful of his colleagues doing the same thing. Sometimes I think they don't understand unemployment compensation. They believe unemployment is welfare. It is called unemployment insurance. That doesn't mean people are looking for a handout. It means workers, as virtually everyone does who is working, pay into an insurance fund when they are working. The whole point is, if they lose their job they collect unemployment insurance. It is like you buy car insurance, hoping you don't have to use it. But if you get in a car accident, you use the insurance to pay for it. Many people don't ever have to collect unemployment insurance. They are the lucky ones. It is the same with health insurance. You buy health insurance and you hope to not use it, but if you get sick, then you use your health insurance. Whether you are a worker in Boulder or Pueblo or Trinidad or Columbus or Dayton, you need that unemployment insurance as a backup. So many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, so many conservatives think it is a welfare program: I got laid off. I can draw unemployment and stay on it, and I don't have to work. I can enjoy my time off. It is not vacation. The New York Times had some articles the other day about the number of people who can't find jobs and how it affects their health. It affects their mental health, their relationships with their children and spouses. It affects their views of themselves and their self-worth. It is not a welfare program. It is not enough money to get by comfortably. It is enough to keep them going with the hopes that they will find a job pretty soon. There are, of course, requirements too. They don't just sit home and draw unemployment. They are required to actively seek work in most States. I know of people in my State, as does the Presiding Officer, in Colorado, who have sent out 20, 30, 50 resumes a week. Most of them are not even answered or the answers are curt and negative over and over. My colleagues, all of whom dress up, men and women both, wear decent clothes, are paid $170,000 a year. Many more come from great wealth. They probably don't experience what unemployment compensation is like. I will not be personal, and I will not mention any names, but for them to stand on the Senate floor--I know what they really think sometimes-- for them to come up with all kinds of reasons to block the extension of unemployment benefits--not to mention COBRA, the program, the government helps people continue to get health insurance after they have lost their job, when they have almost no money to spend on it-- don't know how important that is to people's lives. I hear some of my colleagues say: I am voting against an unemployment extension because we are not paying for it. First, unemployment insurance is considered emergency spending. This is a little bit too much beltway talk, but it has always been considered emergency spending. We don't have to find a way to compensate for it, to pay for it, any more than when there is a flood in North Dakota or there is a hurricane in Louisiana or, unfortunately, there is a war in Iraq which had always historically been paid for. Senator Simpson, a former Republican Senator from Wyoming, said the Iraq war is the first time he ever knew about in American history when we didn't pay for a war. I hear these lectures--and that is what they are--from our conservative colleagues, preaching to us, talking to us like we are children because we are not paying for an unemployment extension. In the last 10 years, they voted for a war that they refused to pay for. Only $1 trillion it has cost. They voted for the giveaway for drug companies and insurance companies, all in the name of Medicare privatization. That was $100 billion or more. They didn't pay for it. Then they voted for tax cuts that went to the richest Americans. They just forgot to pay for that too. We do tax cuts for the rich; we do giveaways to the drug companies and insurance companies. Tax cuts for the rich, not paid for; giveaway to the insurance companies and the drug companies, not paid for; a war in Iraq, not paid for. Yet they are all of a sudden shrinking it down to: We are not going to let workers in this country who are laid off get their sustenance--just a few dollars for rent, for food, kids' school supplies--we are going to block that. That is, frankly, why people around the country are angry at Congress. They say: Why can't you just do the right thing here instead of making it political? They have made it political by saying: This is where we are drawing the line. We are not paying for unemployment insurance extension. If you are not going to pay for it, we are not going to do it. It is the same over and over. Offer another drug company giveaway or tax cuts for the rich, they will say: Where do I sign up? That will help the country. Their way of thinking is a bit peculiar. Senator Kaufman, who has such insight on preventing another disaster on Wall Street--if people would have listened to him a few years earlier, we would be in a better situation. He is waiting to speak. I will read a few letters I have received. Marianne from Lorain County, the county I live in, says: I am a single mom of a 4-year-old. I have been unemployed for over a year. I have never been unemployed before. I have worked since I was 15. It is a terribly difficult situation. I am at the end of my rope, not knowing what do I have to give up next. Do I have to give up my home, my car, my son's preschool. I am writing to ask you to push another unemployment extension, please. How can that not be an emergency. How can they stand on this floor and say: Sorry, can't do it, just can't do the unemployment extension? This is exactly the kind of person who is so often afflicted by this situation. She works and she has worked since she was 15. She has a 4- year-old. She is making a choice: Do I give up my home? Do I give up my car? I live in Lorain County. Unless you are lucky and you live in exactly the right place, you have a lot of trouble getting to work if you don't have a car. So we are going to say: You get rid of your car, but we want you to find work. Or if she gives up preschool, we know, by any measurement, if we are going to get this country competitive economically, internationally, and do what we need to do, we need to do better with education. The Presiding Officer understands that preschool education is such an important component for children for preparing for the future. Let me read a second letter from Stephen from Tuscarawas County, a county south of Canton, west of Youngstown, a fairly small county. Stephen writes: I am a union electrician who started my apprenticeship in 1992. I have been an electrician ever since. I have never been at a loss for work until September 2009. As much as I wish I didn't have to collect unemployment, I am terrified it will run out. I will have no means to take care of my family of five. I will have no idea what to do if that happens. I am the sole breadwinner for my family. My wife has had to have surgery twice in the past year and a half. She broke her knee and currently can't walk. She is a mother of five and busy doing what she is doing taking care of this family. For many families, there are two breadwinners. In Stephen's case, with electrician's wages, he has had enough income for a wife and three children. He continues: I just ask that you take into consideration our situation. We need this extension. I will not share other letters. I wanted to share those two from a single mother who has worked all her life, and an electrician in Tuscarawas County who has, for more than 20 years, been a well-paid union electrician. We know those are good jobs with good benefits and contribute a lot to our country. I will close with this: Again, I plead with my colleagues, my conservative colleagues, put aside your ideology for a minute. Put aside your ideology that says that unemployment is welfare because it is not; it is insurance. People have paid into it. They should collect when they have paid into it and when they have done well; they collect from it when they have done badly. It is an American concept of insurance, social insurance, private insurance, whatever. Put aside your ideology, put aside your politics that you want to score points by saying: We will not do this because we have to ``pay for it.'' If they had shown us they cared a little more about the budget deficit 10 years ago, when we had a huge budget surplus, soon after the Presiding Officer came to the House--he was part of the effort that put a budget together and we had economic growth and we had a budget surplus. They took that surplus and put all that money to their contractor friends in Iraq and put all that money into drug companies and insurance company subsidies, put all that money into tax cuts for the richest Americans. Now they want to take it out on those people who have lost their jobs. It is unconscionable. It is not what the American people stand for. It is not American values. I ask them to reconsider what they are doing. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, I wish today to recognize World Tuberculosis Day. It is a day that allows us to take stock of how far we have come, and how far we have to go, in the fight against this deadly disease. Claiming about 1.8 million lives each year, TB is a vicious killer that must be stopped in order to protect the global public health. Today we recognize not only that we must do more, but that, with the technology, medical expertise, and a worldwide commitment, we can do more. We have waged an aggressive campaign to eliminate TB in the U.S. However, progress toward TB elimination has slackened. Anywhere from 9 to 14 million Americans are infected with latent TB. Without treatment, about 5 to 10 percent of them will develop active TB. As the global pandemic of drug resistant TB spreads, the disease poses an imminent public health threat to the United States. According to the World Health Organization, 5 percent of all new TB cases are drug resistant, with estimates of up to 28 percent in some parts of Russia. Of these cases, it is estimated that only 7 percent are being treated. Over the past decade, the U.S. has had more than 83 cases of an extremely drug resistant strain of TB, known as XDR-TB, which is very difficult and expensive to treat. Because XDR-TB recognizes no borders, these cases will continue to rise unless we adopt control measures on a global scale. As it stands, drug resistant and extremely drug resistant forms of TB are not easily transmittable; however, should an easily transmittable strain arise, we face the real possibility of a deadly pandemic in our country and across the globe. TB control is not just an imperative for the developing world; it is an imperative for every nation on this planet. Our current drugs, diagnostics, and vaccines are out of date and increasingly inadequate to control the spread of TB. The TB vaccine, for instance, provides some protection to children, but provides little to no help to prevent TB in adults. In addition, the most commonly used TB diagnostic in the world, sputum microscopy, is more than 100 years old and lacks sensitivity to detect TB in most HIV/AIDS patients and in children. Finally, the course of treatment available today is simply too long, resulting in skipped doses and the development of resistant strains. New TB drug regimens are long overdue, and Congress must act to help accelerate the development, approval, and delivery of new TB medicines around the globe. We must bring our methods of prevention and treatment into the 21st century so we can fight the new age of the TB epidemic. Congress has made significant strides toward this goal. The enactment of the Lantos-Hyde Act and the Comprehensive TB Elimination Act reaffirmed our commitment to research, treatment, and prevention. These laws put the U.S. on the path to successfully treating 4.5 million TB patients and 90,000 new multidrug resistant TB cases by 2013. However, Congress and this administration must not underfund the commitment we made with this legislation. World Tuberculosis Day provides an opportunity to reflect on the progress made to eradicate TB, acknowledge the millions of lives this disease takes as it orphans children and destabilizes communities throughout the world, and recommit to fighting TB with the sense of urgency and level of resources this global public health battle requires.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, I have only been in the Senate about 3 years, but you don't have to be too quick around here to figure out that it is pretty easy to attack and to oppose and to try to stop things. I am fairly amazed at the number of people I see--and I will share some letters of people from Ohio, from my home State, about this health care bill and about what this means personally to them. I will do that in a second, but just putting aside ideological arguments and political attacks, these attacks that there is nothing good in this bill, it is a government takeover, it is socialism, it is putting a government bureaucrat between you and your doctor--the same argument the John Birch Society used against Medicare we are hearing again. I hear those things, but I really never hear anything constructive. They talk about the deals, forgetting about the deals they made when they were in the majority, which were huge giveaways to the drug companies and to the insurance companies and giveaways to the oil companies and to these big companies that outsource jobs to China. Whoever had their hand out, whoever the special interests were, they got what they wanted. Now I see my colleagues just shrink back and say how horrible all this is. Well, they have nothing to offer. They say: Let's stop; let's work together; let's start with a blank sheet of paper and do this over. Well, they have no intention of doing that. We spent a year answering their objections, and we accepted 160 Republican amendments in the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, amendments from Senator McCain, Senator Alexander, Senator Enzi, Senator Burr, and Senator Coburn--from one Republican Senator after another, one hundred sixty Republican amendments. It is never enough. They continue to oppose. But in the 8 years when President Bush was here and in the several years when they were in the majority in both Houses, the only thing consequential they could do for health care to insure the uninsured, to do anything, was to give hundreds--not tens of billions but hundreds of billions of dollars of giveaways to the Nation's largest drug companies and insurance companies. Then I hear my Senate colleagues talk about we are blowing a hole in the budget. The fact is, the Congressional Budget Office--and the Presiding Officer understands this, because we all know the Congressional Budget Office is not comprised of Democrats or Republicans; they are not on our side or their side; they are simply accountants and lawyers and actuarial people who play this straight-- the CBO says this bill more than pays for itself. I wonder, Mr. President, if this water we drink here causes amnesia for some of my colleagues because all of a sudden they are for balancing the budget. But in 2000, when President Bush took office, there was a budget surplus--a trillion-dollar budget surplus, year after year, as far as the eye could see--and we had tax cuts for the rich that they never even tried to pay for, and they never even tried to pay for the Iraq war. Even Senator Simpson, one of the most distinguished Senators of the Republican Party, who sat in this Chamber for 18 years, said in the paper yesterday: Never, to my knowledge, have we gone to war without paying for it. But they did that in those days, and I didn't hear my colleagues saying: Let's pay for this Iraq war, which cost us billions of dollars a month, month after month, year after year. When they did the Medicare privatization--the giveaway to the drug and insurance companies--they didn't try to pay for that either. But now they are saying we have to balance the budget. And I think we do, and I know the Presiding Officer and his constituents in Chesapeake and Arlington and Richmond think the same thing because we do need to balance the budget. But I find it curious, when the CBO says this actually creates a budget surplus--and they are not willing to believe them--that they were also not willing to pay for anything when they were in the majority. But putting that aside, this bill is too important for that. It is too important to throw political accusations around. What is particularly important is what this bill means to individual Americans. I hear my Republican friends talking about we are cutting Medicare. Yet this is the party that opposed Medicare, the party that tried to privatize Medicare. Yet they accuse us of cutting Medicare? I know nobody really believes that. They probably ought to quit saying it. It undercuts anything else they say because, as I say, nobody really believes that. They say this bill was done behind closed doors. We had hearing after hearing, negotiation after negotiation, and floor debates. This has been going on, well, for 75 years, some would say, because Franklin Roosevelt tried to do it, Harry Truman tried to do it, John Kennedy tried to do it, Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson, who had some success between Kennedy and Nixon on Medicare. Instead, my colleagues would rather talk about process and deals. In Washington, there is a buzz about process and deals, but in the country there isn't because people in the country know why we are here and why we are doing this. And as a result, Mr. President, let me take 5 or 10 minutes to read a handful of letters from constituents of mine because this is really why we are doing this. We are not doing it to score political points: This may help the Democrats or it may help Republicans win the election. That doesn't really matter. It may help or it may hurt a reputation. None of that matters. What matters is this bill, and this matters to so many Americans. I have read letters on the Senate floor for months now as we have debated this bill, and what is most common in these letters are two things. One of the most common things I hear from so many people is that a year or 2 years before they wrote these letters, they would have said: I am satisfied with my health insurance; it seems to work pretty well. Then something happened and they lost their job and then lost their insurance or they got sick and it was so expensive that the insurance company cut them off or they had a child born with a preexisting condition and they couldn't get insurance. The insurance company model is why this is important, because of what it does individually for people. In a sort of macro way, think about how insurance companies operate. I have a lot of insurance companies in my State. I have no malice aimed toward them or their executives. I think their executives are paid too much. The CEOs in the average largest 10 insurance companies make $11 million a year. When they are cutting people off from their insurance, I think that is a bit of an overreach. But I also think the insurance companies, because they compete with each other, in a for-profit model, do things they probably would rather they didn't have to do. Let me explain that for a moment. Insurance companies hire a whole bunch of bureaucrats to decide they do not want to insure potential customers. They look at all the new applicants, do tests, find out things about them, and these bureaucrats make the decision: We don't want to insure that person because that person has a preexisting condition and will get sick and it will be expensive. So they hire a bunch of bureaucrats to keep customers away. Then, on the other end, they hire a bunch of bureaucrats to deny claims of their customers when they get really sick sometimes. So their business model is to keep customers away who are too expensive, too costly, and to deny payments for those who actually get expensive. That is their business model. That business model serves their profitability, to be sure, but that business model doesn't serve the American people. So while we will continue to use private insurance in this country for health care--many countries in the world do, although no country uses private for-profit insurance. Many countries use private insurance to run their health care systems, in whole or in part, but they are nonprofit insurance companies. We will continue to use for-profit insurance companies, but we are going to have a whole set of rules around what they do. No more denying care for a preexisting condition; no more putting a cap on coverage so that once you get sick and get expensive, you could lose your insurance; people will be allowed to stay on their parents' insurance until they are 26--a whole host of things. Eighty-five percent of the insurance premium dollar must go to health care, not to executive salaries and marketing and to hire all those bureaucrats that the insurance companies do. So that is the one thing mentioned by people in most of these letters, people who were satisfied with their insurance a year or 2 years earlier but then found out it wasn't such good insurance. The second thing in these letters--and a lot of this comes from people in their early sixties--is many of them say they simply just need to hang on until they reach 65 and become Medicare eligible because then they will have the security and stability of something they trust. As Senator Cardin of Maryland knows, government really can provide health care, as it does with Medicare, as it does with Medicaid, as it does with TRICARE for all the Active military people in Maryland and Virginia and Ohio. Government knows how to do this and can do it very well. But this bill is not a government takeover. It uses the parts of government that run the insurance, that do the insurance now, but it is certainly not a government takeover. Let me now share these three letters from constituents, and then I will turn it over to Senator Cardin. This first letter is from Melanie, Erie County in northern Ohio, the county next to mine, along Lake Erie. I have a health condition that requires me to be on thyroid hormone replacement the rest of my life. But before my condition was diagnosed, I had to undergo all kinds of tests. And instead of being able to afford a 6 month and 1 year prescription, I have to buy my pills monthly, depending if I can afford them or not. We need a health care system that doesn't let insurance companies decide whether I can afford the medicine I need. When someone is sick, they want to put their efforts into, how do I get well, not into, how can I afford this? Do I have to cut the pills in half? Do I have to take the pill every other day and hope that works out right? How am I going to pay for it this month? There is a mind-boggling statistic that a woman in this country with breast cancer, without insurance, is 40 percent more likely to die than a woman with breast cancer who has insurance. Part of the reason for that is the anxiety and the fear people have when they are sick and trying to get well but who have to worry about so many other things in their lives and, most importantly, how are they going to pay for their medical treatment and how is their family going to deal with this. This bill will obviously help with that. Here is a letter from John from Hancock County, Findlay, OH, not too far south of Toledo. I am a 44-year-old diabetic who has had this condition for 43 years. Most people who know me thought I would never make it past 25. He was diagnosed with diabetes at the age of 1, which is pretty astounding. What my insurance company has done to me may make bankruptcy my only option. In 2008, I needed a new insulin pump. I filled out all the paperwork that was required by my insurance company. I received my insulin pump via mail and thought everything was all right. I received a bill from my pump supply company for $8,500, along with the supplies to use the pump for an additional $5,500. That is a $14,000 bill that my insurance company said they would not pay because of preexisting condition. What is the point of health insurance? What is the point of a system where a man diagnosed as an infant with diabetes is faced with charges such as this, when diabetes is a terrible affliction that an increasing number of Americans have? We know how to manage it pretty well so that people such as John can live a pretty long, productive life. Yet the insurance company puts him through that. What will that do to his diabetes and health generally, to have to worry about how he is possibly going to come up with the $14,000? Here is the last letter. It comes from Hayden, a young woman who is a Peace Corps volunteer from Delaware County, outside Columbus. She e- mailed us from Thailand, but she is an Ohioan. I am thousands of miles away from you. I am far away from family, friends, and my hometown of Sunbury, OH. I am a member of the U.S. Peace Corps in Thailand. I believe I help to provide for the common good. I am creative, courageous and compassionate, and I believe my abilities can make a difference. In 15 months I will return to the United States, and I would like nothing more than to continue to work in community development. But I might not be able to. Unfortunately, my life depends on two pills, each no bigger than your smallest fingernail. Without insurance, the cost of these two small pills is often more than my rent. And I am unlikely to get insurance unless I go to work with a large company. Too many of my friends are in the same situation. We are young and bright, products of an American school system that has taught us to think independently and pursue our dreams. We want to be entrepreneurs, researchers, and community activists. We need the opportunity to start our own ventures, to take responsible risks, and to go out into our communities-- Work to start businesses such as the Presiding Officer has. I work everyday to give voice to those who have none [in the Peace Corps]. But today I need you to be my voice. I need you to speak for my generation. So please let me come home-- She writes, to Delaware, OH, now working in the Peace Corps in Thailand; she e-mails: . . . please let me come home to a system that is better than the one we have now. My future depends on it. She is serving this great country, the United States, in the Peace Corps is doing the right thing with her life. When she comes back to the United States, I hope this bill is passed. I hope the President of the United States has signed this bill, and we can be a better country as a result. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Yes.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. They keep talking about our bill. Health care costs will go up. Health care costs are going to go up a lot faster. It doubled in the last 7 years, and it will double again, if we do nothing, in the next 6 or 7 years. Who is going to pay for that?

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. To me it is. Clearly, if we do nothing, small businesses are going to get creamed, taxpayers are going to get hurt and, most importantly, patients.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. If you count accountability, still allowing them to cut people off for preexisting conditions, no. It allows them to keep abusing the system the way they have.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. It is more and more expensive. If you follow what some of my colleagues want to do, they want to privatize it further.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I ask unanimous consent that following my remarks on health care, Senator Tester be permitted to take the floor to talk about health care.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Not that I see.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, there is already Medicare, which seems to work for a lot of people, and Medicaid, which seems to work for a lot of people. You have military bases in your State, as I do, one of the greatest Air Force bases in the country, and they have something called TRICARE that works pretty darn good. This isn't a takeover. This still allows lots and lots and lots of private involvement. But we have some government involvement in the health care system, I would say.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Madam President, I don't know where to start. I listened to Senator Kyl, whom I really do like personally, and respect, but I just hear so much. Of course, it is not just Senator Kyl; it is almost all of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who have just engaged in scare tactics. First, they try to scare the middle class and scare people who have parents who are older by talking about death panels. Well, that didn't work because nobody believed that. Some people believed it, but most rational people didn't believe it. Then they try to scare people who have health insurance by saying it is going to be taken away. Then they try to scare senior citizens by saying we are going to cut Medicare. Now--this is almost funny--they are trying to scare House Members. These poor, innocent House Members who can't figure things out on their own, we need Senate Republicans to tell them all about these House rules and Senate rules and reconciliation. It is a little bit funny but, again, it is not very funny because it is standing in the way of what we need to do for the American people. I am particularly amused--again, probably a wrong choice of words-- when my Republican colleagues talk about cutting Medicare. Just look at the history. They have built careers trying to destroy Medicare. I haven't been around here since 1965 by a long shot, but I sure read about 1965. The Presiding Officer knows this history. She has talked to people in Charlotte and Winston-Salem. I have talked to people in Dayton and in other areas of my State about it. In 1965, Republicans used the same arguments. They thought that Medicare might be a government takeover. Then, the John Birch Society made all of these claims about Medicare, as the tea party is doing today about this health care bill. It wasn't true. It didn't matter that it wasn't true. They said government bureaucrats were going to get between you and your doctor. That is what they predicted with Medicare, and that is what they predict now. It didn't happen. In 1965, half of America's seniors had no health insurance. Today, 1 percent of America's seniors have no health insurance. It didn't just end in 1965 when Republicans in large numbers and these same insurance company interest groups--I might add, the Republicans' most important benefactor is the insurance industry. That is why they are coming to the floor acting as if they are defending seniors, acting as if they are defending the middle class and the poor, and health care. They are defending the insurance companies. That is the way they do it. Just as they defend the oil companies on energy legislation, and just as they help and defend the drug companies; just as they defend the drug companies that send jobs overseas, that is why they are against trade agreements. That is why they always support the oil industry in climate change and everything else. That is why they support the drug companies and insurance companies. They are their biggest benefactors. That is who helped them get elected, although don't say that on the floor: I am against this bill because the insurance company is against it. No, they try to scare the Medicare beneficiaries. They try to scare the middle class and rural constituents and urban constituents and suburban constituents. But it just doesn't wash. Now they have brought in the student loan bill: We have to protect middle class, working class students so they can get student loans. No, they want to protect the banks. This is about: Should we give direct loans to college students or should we let the banks skim off and leave some of the money. Then they have the nerve to say the money we save in this will be put back into the government bureaucracy. No, the money we save by saying to the banks, no more skimming off student loans, no more taking your cut, giving worse service at higher interest rates, that money goes for Pell grants. So the money we take back from the banks--the decade of George Bush subsidies for the banks--is, instead, going to students so they can afford to go to college. Back to the health care issue itself. I hear my colleagues so liberally--if I could use that word to define them--quote Lowen & Associates. Every time Lowen & Associates puts out a new study, they come to the floor and they ponderously and seriously say: Lowen & Associates says this bill--da, da, da. Lowen & Associates is owned by United Health Care, which is one of the biggest health insurance companies in the country. So quoting Lowen & Associates on health care is like quoting the oil companies on energy legislation or climate change or quoting the drug companies or the Medicare giveaway to the drug companies bill. Just forget about Lowen & Associates. If they want to comment on something that has nothing to do with insurance, maybe they are reputable. They used to be reputable, but then United Health Care got them. Sorry. That is just the way it is. With all of this, let's stop the scare tactics. Let's take a deep breath. Let's look at what this bill is about. What this bill is really about is helping people who have lost their insurance, who have had insurance and found out it wasn't much good because of what the insurance companies did to them, as Senator Tester knows. He has people in Billings and in Helena and in White Fish who, because of a preexisting condition, lost their insurance or they got sick and then their illness was so expensive the insurance company said: We don't want to insure them, we want to cut them off. I wish to share a couple of letters, and then I will turn it over to Senator Tester because this is what it is all about. They can talk about tax increases. They are wrong about it. They kind of make up some stuff. They can talk about budget-busting legislation. I am a little curious about their saying that because the Congressional Budget Office, which we kind of agree with--whether you are a moderate Democrat such as Senator Carper or a conservative Republican such as Senator Kyl or a progressive Democrat such as the Presiding Officer, we all agree that the Congressional Budget Office is pretty much reliable. They are not partisan. They don't cheat. They don't scam the system. They don't lie to us. The Congressional Budget Office says this actually pays for itself and then some. It will help to retire the budget in the first 10 years and do even better in the second 10 years. With all of that debate, why does this matter? This matters because we have constituents in Wilmington, in Chicago, and in Butte, as I do in Youngstown and Toledo, who thought they had good health insurance and then they get sick and then they find out they didn't. I have read letters on this floor since July from people who, a year ago, if you asked them, they would say: My health insurance is pretty good. Then they found out it wasn't because they really needed it. This tells the story, to me, why this is important. Forget the political side. Forget the accusations. Forget the charges. Forget the countercharges. Forget the philosophy. We need to help people and this bill does it. Gwen is from Claremont County, a very conservative county. Her daughter is a recent college graduate who has been denied insurance. She writes: My 22-year-old daughter is a recent college graduate. While looking for a permanent job, she's working full time as a waitress. Her employer will not give her health insurance, and she can't stay on my policy because she is no longer in college. She takes no prescriptions and is one of the healthiest young people you can find. One insurance company offered her a policy for $750 a month. I am a teacher and my husband has been unemployed for a year, and even if he were working full time, we could not afford $750 a month. Our present insurance system decides who can have health insurance at what price. That's a moral and ethical decision no insurance company should decide. We know what this bill does. This bill says these pages sitting in front of us--they are not yet in college. They come home, they can't find a job with insurance, perhaps, when they are 23 years old-- although they are all so young and bright they will, but most people can't at this age. They are 23, 24. They come home from college. They have no insurance. Our bill says: You can go on your parents' insurance plan until you are 26. That takes care of that problem. That is barely debatable. That makes sense for Republicans and it makes sense for Democrats. The second letter is from Tammy from Preble County, another conservative rural county. This one is; the other one is a conservative suburban county. This story is much more tragic. Tammy writes about her best friend who died in January at the age of 31 from cervical cancer. She was a nursing assistant, a single mother of five children. She worked her way out of low-income housing into her first home. When she couldn't afford health insurance, she was able to roll her children into Medicare. She writes: By the time my best friend could afford health insurance and went to a doctor, it was too late. She learned she had cervical cancer and that it was spreading throughout her body. A woman with breast cancer in this country without insurance is 40 percent more likely to die than a woman with breast cancer with insurance. People say: Well, conservatives seriously don't want government involvement--whatever that means, even though Medicare works for millions. Conservatives say: Well, they can just go to the emergency room and get care. If you have breast cancer, you don't go to the emergency room to get care. They will only take care of you right before you die or right before you have an episode. If you are a chronic asthmatic or have chronic diabetes, they won't take care of you in the emergency room unless you have an insulin attack or unless you have a terrible situation with your asthma or you can't breathe. They are not going to help you maintain your health so you don't end up in the emergency room. That is what this bill is all about. This bill will prevent situations such as Tammy's friend. Pure and simple. Thomas from Cincinnati is writing about his brother Jim who has been in hospice care after being diagnosed with lung and brain cancer less than a year ago. He doesn't have much longer to live. He wanted his story told, as Jim said, to anyone who would listen. He doesn't have health insurance and can't afford the cost of cancer treatment. My dying brother is an example, and the countless stories we hear from others are examples of why we need protection from the insurance industry. I have a lot of insurance companies in my State. I don't hate insurance companies. I understand they are in a situation where to compete with each other they have to have a business model. The business model is--if Senator Carper and Senator Tester and I run an insurance company, do you know what we all do? We hire a bunch of bureaucrats to keep people from buying insurance that might be expensive. If you are sick, and you are sick, and you are not, well, I don't want to insure you because you are sick. You are going to cost too much and affect my bottom line. Then they hire a bunch of bureaucrats on the other end for people who actually have insurance policies and get sick to deny their claims. So this is a business model where you don't insure people who are sick and you try to slough off people who get sick whom you insure, and that is the way you make a lot of money. If you don't do that, you go out of business. So I don't have any problems with insurance executives. They are paid too much, but I don't have any problems with what they do except their business model forces them to do this. I think they should come to us and say: Senator Carper, Senator Tester, Senator Brown, thank you for bailing us out from doing bad things because you are going to set new rules so we can't do that anymore. It is outrageous that we have a system--we are the only country in the world that does this. A lot of countries have private insurance companies running their health care system, but they are private, not- for-profit insurance companies. They are not Aetna and Cigna and all of these companies that pay their executives an average of literally $11 million a year to the CEO. Why do we want a system where for-profit insurance forces these companies to keep people from buying insurance if they are sick, keeps them out if they might get sick, and denies them care if they do get sick. It doesn't serve the public interests, period. That is why this legislation is so important. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 10:15 a.m. on Tuesday, March 16; 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 proceed to a period of morning business until 12:30 p.m. with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each; further, that the time until 10:30 a.m. be equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees, and the time from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. be equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees, with the majority controlling the first half and the Republicans controlling the final half; that following morning business, the Senate recess until 2:15 p.m. to allow for the weekly caucus meetings.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Secretary inform the House of Representatives the Senate is ready to receive the managers appointed by the House of Representatives for the purpose of exhibiting articles of impeachment against G. Thomas Porteous, Jr., Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, agreeable to the notice communicated to the Senate, and at the hour of 2 p.m., Wednesday, March 17, 2010, the Senate will receive the honorable managers on the part of the House of Representatives in order that they may present and exhibit the said articles of impeachment against the said G. Thomas Porteous, Jr., Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, I rise today to honor Marilyn Roberson of Massillon, OH, a proud grandmother of five Eagle Scouts. This year, the Boy Scouts of America celebrates its hundredth anniversary of service to our Nation. Already this year, I have attended Boy Scout celebrations and Eagle Scout Courts of Honor across my State. Around Ohio and our Nation, families and friends, community and business leaders, are celebrating Scouting's commitment to service, to protecting the outdoors--some of the original environmentalists--and to instilling the values of faith and fellowship. Growing up in Mansfield, OH, a city of 50,000 in north central Ohio-- an industrial town--my parents instilled in my brother and me our own values of compassion and commitment to community. My two brothers and I are Eagle Scouts and my mother wore a charm bracelet representing each of her Eagle Scout sons. I always claimed my Eagle Scout emblem was larger than my brothers'. She always denied that. In many ways, Scouting's commitment to family and community laid the groundwork for my years in public service--as it has for the Eagle Scouts now in elected office in this body--I think there are 6 others in the Senate--or executives in boardrooms, teachers in classrooms, or just model citizens everywhere in our country. On March 20, 2010, the Boy Scouts of America, Venture Crew 10 of Massillon, OH, will hold an Eagle Court of Honor for five young men who will become Eagle Scouts. Among the Eagle Scouts will be Andrew and Timothy Bushman, who will become the fourth and fifth grandsons of Mrs. Marilyn Roberson to become Eagle Scouts. Marilyn Roberson is now 86 years old, and like many of our role models she has taught her grandchildren the capacity for selflessness, and to have the confidence to serve with humility and honor. I knew Marilyn's late husband Al 25 years ago, when I first met Al and Marilyn and several of their children. Al grew up in Tupelo, MS, across the street from Elvis Presley, then moved north, started a business, was very successful, and always--always--Marilyn and Al and their children gave back to the community. I congratulate Andrew, Timothy, their fellow Eagle Scouts, Ian Christopher McKinney, Mathew Michael McKinney, and Michael David Ternaux, for earning this important honor. I congratulate Eagle Scouts across Ohio--there are hundreds of New Eagle Scouts every year--for earning this honor and taking part in a great American tradition, which asks you to live with honor and loyalty and act with courage and service. It is a creed of common purpose and community service based on the Scout oath, ever present in the 12 points of the Scout law. While each of you as Eagle Scouts will forever be an Eagle Scout, your accomplishments are not easily defined by the number of badges earned but, rather, the character and dignity you show in earning them. For Andrew and Timothy, that dignity has been shaped by your remarkable grandmother, Mrs. Marilyn Roberson. Thank you, Mrs. Roberson, for your dedication to your family and for your service to our great State and for the legacy you have created for so many. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Tonight we were able to reach an agreement to set the vote with respect to the HIRE Act for 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, March 17. Tomorrow we will resume consideration of the FAA reauthorization bill, and rollcall votes in relation to the FAA bill are possible Tuesday afternoon.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it adjourn under the previous order.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, I understand that H.R. 2314 has been received from the House and is at the desk.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I would ask for its second reading and object to my own request.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I ask unanimous consent the concurrent resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and any statements be printed in the Record.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Judiciary Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. Con. Res 53 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and any statements be printed in the Record.