Christopher Dodd

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. I thank my colleagues from Rhode Island, Iowa, Senators Wyden and Merkley, and Senator Brown who spent a little time talking about this. There is a lot more to talk about, such as the quality issues that Senator Mikulski of Maryland spent a long time helping to develop, and Senator Murray from Washington on workforce and the coverage questions that Jeff Bingaman worked on, as well. We hope in the few days we have between now and adjournment--and we know a good part of the time will be taken up with the Sotomayor nomination--we will have a chance to talk further about this bill and say to our colleagues: We welcome your comments. There are five committees of Congress charged with the responsibility of health care. Four of the five have met and completed their work. Our committee, the HELP Committee, has completed its work. We know the Finance Committee is working to complete its work. I want to make clear that the HELP Committee product will be very much a part of this effort. We welcome the work of the Finance Committee. But much of health care coverage is the shared purview and responsibility of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, under the leadership of Senator Kennedy of Massachusetts, as well as the Finance Committee. Senator Kennedy has championed for four decades this effort. Regrettably, he cannot be with us because of his own struggles with illness. But he has helped frame this. It has been a bipartisan effort over the years. We are determined as we move forward in this debate that the product my colleagues have worked on so diligently over these past number of months is going to be very much a part of our health care program. I express my gratitude to each member of the committee who helped produce this result that took so long. We have taken this time to explain to our fellow citizens what we tried to incorporate in our bill that will get us to the point of increased accessibility, increased quality, and affordable products. That is what we are gaining. That is the purpose we are driving at to get those three goals met. I think we achieved a good part of it with this bill. More needs to be done, but, obviously, it is a great step in the right direction. I see another partner of ours in this effort. He played a critical role with community health care centers. I say to my colleague from Vermont, last week I was in New Britain, CT. I have many community health centers in Connecticut. As a result of the stimulus package, several of them received some real help to expand because they are overcrowded. Getting electronic records is critically important. Their patients have greater needs, but they have a medical home now. I have three volunteer clinics in Connecticut, one in Norwalk, CT, one in Danbury, CT, and one in Bridgeport, CT, under AmeriCares. That program only serves the uninsured. It is completely voluntary. In Norwalk, I have 60 physicians in the area who volunteer their time to come in and serve the needs of the people of the greater Norwalk area, not to mention retired doctors, nurse practitioners, and others who help. I say to my colleague, that he has been a tremendous voice--in fact, our bill increases by 400 percent the commitment to community health centers across our country. We can expand community health centers and provide that medical home for so many people. They are a source of prevention, early detection, providing for the needs of families--all of these things that occur in these remarkable facilities called community health centers. The best champion, other than Ted Kennedy, who helped author the idea to begin with, is our colleague Bernie Sanders from Vermont. I thank him for that effort.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I want to briefly, before he leaves the floor, commend my friend and colleague from Vermont. He has been a remarkable advocate, and this evening is yet one more example of it. He speaks with that passion I love to hear about these issues and talks about real people and what they go through every day. I was thinking as he was talking, I say to Senator Sanders, there is a wonderful small business guy in Connecticut named Penn Ritter. I have known his family a long time. He got up and talked about his business and how difficult it has been to buy health care for his employees. He talked about one particular case which is very moving. They were laying people off. The economy was down. They didn't need people. One of the people they were going to lay off had terminal cancer. He knew if he laid him off, he would have no access to the kind of health care coverage he would need to go through the difficult period he was about to go through. But the verdict was clear. This small business decided this was not going to happen. So they kept the man on, not because they could afford to keep him on--because they couldn't afford it--but in good conscience they couldn't do that. There are people like that in small businesses all across our country, in every community in which we reside, who make a difference every day. There are wonderful providers and hospitals and places that take in people and treat them every single day. I would like to see us, in this Congress, at least rise to the level of our citizenry who do these things every day--the Penn Ritters of America, the doctors who work at Manchester Memorial Hospital in Connecticut, those people who work at AmeriCare, those volunteer doctors who show up every day. I could go down a long list, and every one of us can talk about what happens in our communities by caring people who help people maneuver and navigate in a difficult time during this health care crisis. The least we should be able to do is to figure out how to meet the challenges they meet every single day, and my colleague from Vermont is as eloquent as any other Member on this subject matter, and I thank him for his comments.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that there now be a period for the transaction of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that on Tuesday, August 4, at 10:30 a.m., the Senate proceed to vote in relation to the following amendments in the order listed; that prior to the second vote, there be 2 minutes of debate equally divided and controlled in the usual form; and that the time for the second vote be limited to 10 minutes: McCain amendment No. 1912 and McCain amendment No. 2030; that no amendment be in order to either amendment prior to the vote; and that following the second vote, the Senate then recess until 2:15 p.m.

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Judiciary Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. Res. 200 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that 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 related to the resolution be printed in the Record.

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 234, submitted earlier today.

Mr. DODD. 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.

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 236, submitted earlier today.

Mr. DODD. 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.

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 235, which was submitted earlier today.

Mr. DODD. 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.

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 10 a.m. tomorrow, Tuesday, August 4; 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 Calendar No. 105, H.R. 2997, the Agriculture appropriations bill, with the time until 10:30 equally divided and controlled between the managers and Senator McCain or their designees; further, I ask that the filing deadline for second- degree amendments be 10:15 a.m. tomorrow.

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, under the previous order, at approximately 10:30 a.m., the Senate will proceed to a series of two rollcall votes. Upon the completion of the second vote, the Senate will recess until 2:15 p.m. for the weekly caucus luncheons.

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. 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. DODD

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I understand that H.R. 3435 has been received from the House and is at the desk.

Mr. DODD. I ask for its second reading and object to my own request.

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. Madam President, I rise in strong support of this legislation. In addition to the important sections dealing with transportation and unemployment insurance, the bill before us today includes two important provisions that are crucial to our Nation's housing market--it increases the authority of the Federal Housing Administration--FHA, to insure loans and the authority of the Government National Mortgage Association--GNMA, to guarantee securities backed by FHA loans. Just about 2 years ago, the housing market started to implode as the predatory and abusive loans that were pumped out by banks and mortgage lenders started to fail in great numbers. These loans were made by lenders who knew these borrowers could not afford to repay them, and they were made under the eyes of regulators who were indifferent to the fate of the borrowers and who underestimated the impact on our financial system. These loans were originated by mortgage brokers or retail lenders with funds provided by Wall Street. Nobody took any responsibility for the quality of these loans because everyone thought they were laying the risk off on the next guy by securitizing the loans and selling them off. Regrettably, it is the American people--and the economy--that is paying the price today in the form of a severe credit crunch that is affecting homeowners, small businesses, entrepreneurs, and every consumer that uses a credit card. As we all know, foreclosures have skyrocketed. Some analysts predict that 8 million homeowners will lose their homes to foreclosure before this crisis is over. In fact, as the mortgage market has ground to a halt, housing prices have fallen all over the country, in many places by 20 percent or more. This problem is being exacerbated by foreclosed homes flooding the market, driving home prices down further. The only mortgage credit available in this country is credit that is provided, directly or indirectly, by the Federal Government. A key component of this, accounting for about 30 percent of the new mortgages being made in the market today, is FHA-insured mortgages. The legislation before us would increase FHA's authority to insure mortgages. If we do not do this, FHA could shut down while we are away on recess. That would mean that about 30 percent of the mortgage credit that is available today to homebuyers and homeowners would simply vanish from the marketplace. The impact of this would be immediate and devastating--a likely spike in interest rates; more foreclosures; and fewer home purchases as buyers withdraw from the market. Just this week, we heard some data which indicate that home prices may be stabilizing. But the situation is fragile. If we eliminate FHA from the marketplace, we could eliminate tens of thousands of potential home buyers from the market, as well. As demand dropped, so would home prices, starting a new cycle of economic despair and disinvestment in our cities and towns. That is why the National Association of Realtors, the National Association of Home Builders, and the Mortgage Bankers Association all strongly support this legislation. The story is much the same with the GNMA increase. GNMA makes it possible for lenders to make FHA loans, and then sell them in federally guaranteed loan pools. GNMA creates an essential outlet for FHA loans so that banks and other lenders can make more mortgage credit available. Without the increased commitment level included in this bill, GNMA will also be forced to close its doors. These two provisions of the bill before us are crucial for working American families. I strongly urge my colleagues to pass this legislation so that we can send it to President Obama for his signature.

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. Madam President, I thank my colleague from Georgia. Along with Orrin Hatch, I am the original cosponsor of the Child Care and Development Block Grant Program more than 20 years ago, the first childcare program in this country since World War II. It was a long struggle to pass that legislation. There were battles over supporting people who could not afford expensive child care--to be able to do that for working families. In those days, when we drafted the legislation, it was very hard to convince people of the importance of establishing some standards in childcare. There was a lot of resistance to it. Nonetheless, we got the bill done at minimum standards. That bill made a huge difference in the lives of millions of people, particularly working women with young children, raising them on their own, to be able to hold down the job and make sure their child could be in a safe place. That was important. I remember talking about how we had better Federal regulations when it came to pets being cared for than we did for children. Your automobile got better care, under Federal regulations, than your child. Ultimately, that legislation became law. Along with my colleague from Georgia, I, too, commend Mrs. Boatwright for taking on this issue, showing how one individual can change things regarding the minimum requirement that parents be informed as to whether the childcare facility has appropriate insurance. In fact, I would have presumed that was the case, even as author of the original legislation, believing that was something States would have required, let alone Federal legislation. We have a bill that passed the other body before us, and it makes eminently good sense to me, as someone who has been involved in this issue for 25 years, along with Olympia Snowe, from Maine, a terrific advocate for the Child Care and Development Block Grant Program. I don't know where the objections are coming from. I am prepared to work with my colleague and say to Mrs. Boatwright and her family and others that we thank you for raising this issue. I will do whatever I can to see if we cannot get this cleared on the floor of the Senate and have it go to the President for signature. That is a small accomplishment on a major issue that can make a difference in the lives of families. I thank my colleague from Georgia.

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, what I have done every day over the last week or so is to take the floor to talk about health care, and I do so again this evening, with a note of some sadness. I have just been told there has now been a statement issued that there will be no markup of the Finance Committee bill next week on health care. I know Senator Baucus has worked hard at that. I know other members of that committee, in that effort, have been working to try to reach some understanding in all of that. I regret we will now leave here, I gather, next week, at the conclusion of the nomination process for Judge Sotomayor, for a month-long recess to our respective States, or whatever other obligations our colleagues may have. So I am saddened by that. Let me try to find a good note in all of this--there are five congressional committees between the House of Representatives, the other body, and ourselves that have some jurisdiction over the health care debate. Three of those committees reside in the other body, the House of Representatives; that is, the Energy and Commerce Committee, the Education and Labor Committee, and the Ways and Means Committee. I am told that by tomorrow those three committees will have completed their jobs. They will have reported out a bill. There are two committees in the U.S. Senate with jurisdiction. Jurisdiction over some of the most major components of health care resides in the committee chaired by our colleague from Massachusetts, Senator Kennedy, who is not with us, as most Americans know, because of his ongoing battle today with brain cancer. In his absence, I have been asked to act as the acting chair of that committee. Two weeks and 2 days ago, we completed our work in that committee. So the only committee remaining to do some work is the Finance Committee. So of the five committees, four, by the end of business tomorrow, will have completed their jobs. That does not mean the work is completed. Obviously, a lot of work remains in melding these bills together to try to come up with answers to the thorny questions that remain on how we structure the health care system in our Nation to go from a sick care system, which it is today, to truly a health care system, to deal with the issues of cost, to try to manage these issues so we bend that cost in the coming decades and beyond in a different direction than we are headed today--I will talk about that in a minute--obviously, to improve the quality of health care, which all of us care about. And while we have great quality of health care in many areas of our country, there are still numerous areas where the outcome, the overall health condition, the life expectancy of our fellow citizens, is far less than it ought to be. So accessibility, quality of care, and affordability are still the primary goals. We are all working very hard to try to reach that point. So four out of five committees will have acted. The fifth, we hope, will achieve that result at some point here or in some manner in which we can move forward with this critical debate in our Nation. So this evening, I want to spend a few minutes talking about where we are on a couple of these issues. I have discussed, on previous gatherings, my thoughts on aspects of the legislation. Let me share where this debate is. There is a strong case to be made--we know the economic argument. I am going to get to that in a minute. But there is a moral case to be made as well for health care reform, and it is a very strong one. Maybe that impresses economists or actuaries, but there is a moral obligation, it seems to me, in a nation as blessed as ours, with great resources and wealth and abundance of resources, natural and otherwise. We live in the wealthiest Nation in the history of mankind. Our generation is an inheritor of incredible work that was done by those who have come before us, who sacrificed greatly, including their very lives, to produce the kind of Nation we live in today. It has been a remarkable story for little more than two centuries, which has resulted in one of the great miracles in world history--to produce a nation where the vast majority of our population can live with financial security, with job opportunities, with the ability to raise families with security, despite what we have gone through in recent years in certain instances. Nonetheless, there is a sense of stability and security about being an American. In many ways, we are the envy of a good part of the world. So it is important, as we think of the debate on health care, to remind ourselves what others have given to produce the kind of results that leave us with a level of lifestyle that is unmatched anywhere around the globe. In spite of that great news, we should note that also 45 million of our fellow citizens, many of whom are children, go to bed every night without health care coverage. In the wealthiest Nation in the history of mankind, nobody should be denied coverage for health care because they have some preexisting condition. What is that? That is some determination that you had a problem, a healthcare problem, before. Therefore, that insurance company will deny you coverage because of that preexisting condition, especially when that excuse is used by so many insurance companies to avoid covering victims of domestic violence, for instance, or those suffering from the most painful of long-term illnesses--those preexisting conditions. In the wealthiest Nation in the history of mankind, nobody should have to choose between paying their electric bill or taking a sick child to the doctor. I wish that were just in minor cases, small anecdotes. It is not. Regardless of which State we represent, every one of us represents families who, every single day, make those kinds of choices, such as paying that electric bill or cutting back on the family budget because they have to make a choice about whether they can care for that sick family member. Nobody should have to lose their home and go into bankruptcy because their medical bills are too high. I know the Presiding Officer has heard me on previous occasions in recent times talk about the statistics. Let me repeat them quickly: 62 percent of all bankruptcies in the last several years are health care crisis related--62 to 65 percent. Of that 62 percent, 75 percent of those people had health insurance. When I first saw those numbers that 60 to 65 percent of bankruptcies are due to the health care crisis, I assumed that the overwhelming majority of people in that situation must be those without health care coverage. It pained me to learn that 75 percent of those people actually had health care coverage. Despite that, they ended up in financial ruin, having to go into bankruptcy to survive economically. In the wealthiest Nation in the world, the one that spends far more on health care than anybody else--some $2.5 trillion a year, and we now rank 37th in the world in medical outcomes--that is in terms of our overall condition, healthwise, as a people, life expectancy. We now have the first generation of Americans who will live shorter, less healthy lives than their parents. That has never happened before in the history of our country. Each generation of Americans has been able to improve the quality of the health care of their children. Even in that 19th century and throughout the difficulties of the 20th century, every generation did better on that score. We are about to be the first generation whose children will be less well off--not financially, although that may be the case, but in terms of their health care. I don't know of anyone in this generation who wants to leave a legacy like that, where because we could not figure out how to deal with health care we left our children in a condition where they will have less healthy lives than we have had. I don't think any one of us--I don't care what our politics are, or where we are from--wants to be part of a generation that gets referred to in history because we could not take better care of our children. There is a moral case for health care that I know gets dispelled by some because people don't want to take it seriously or don't want to talk about that. Let's just talk about the economics. I think, as a people, we ought to talk about it. I think it motivates us. I think all of us share that common concern that we believe in this great country of ours we ought to be able to do a better job taking care of our fellow citizenry when it comes to the basic right of being provided for when a health care crisis comes. Today I want to make the case for reform, in addition to being the right thing to do, is also the smart thing to do, the very smart thing to do. It is the smart thing to do for our Federal deficit--and my colleague from Iowa talked about the deficit. I think he is right that we need to confront that issue. Six months ago, an American President assumed office--how quickly we forget--having inherited the largest deficit accumulated not just by any President but by every previous President combined. That is a remarkable track record. It is one thing to have a larger deficit than your predecessor, but over the previous 8 years the administration that just left town, and the Congresses that supported them, accumulated a deficit in 8 years that exceeded the deficits accumulated by all previous 42 Presidents in our American history. All of a sudden, President Obama arrives in town on January 20 and he gets handed this ``gift'' from the previous administration: a mountain of accumulated debt. All of a sudden, now this is the big issue we hear about. Where were those voices over the past 8 years as that debt accumulated day after day? All of a sudden they want to lay this at the doorstep of a new President arriving in town. If they are concerned about it--and I believe my colleagues are--then one certain way to add to it is to do nothing about health care. Let's just leave town for another month, without having addressed this issue in any concrete and thoughtful manner because, clearly, if we do that, the amount of deficit this country will accumulate--Mr. President, we spend 16 cents of every dollar on health care today. I don't know of a single expert who would tell us that by 2040 we will be spending as much as 30 to 40 cents out of every dollar on health care if we do nothing, with inaction, if the status quo dominates. There is a danger of that. We are all painfully aware of that. The bill that passed our committee 2 weeks and 2 days ago--by the way, it took a long time, 5 weeks. We had 23 sessions and went through some 60 hours--it was 4 weeks from start to finish, actually, almost 60 hours, 23 sessions, on 13 days. We actually considered 287 amendments over that month-long process day in and day out. We accepted 161 amendments offered by our friends on the Republican side. Many were technical and many were substantive amendments. So we went through a long process and considered it at length, with long debates, with 23 of us, one-quarter of the Senate, sitting on the committee chaired by Senator Kennedy to consider various ideas within our jurisdiction. Under that bill we established a very large and robust marketplace where small business owners can go to comparison shop for various health care packages for their employees or themselves. Our bill is the smart thing to do for businesses which often today find themselves choosing between reducing coverage for their employees or laying off workers because they cannot afford to provide it. In our bill--the one we passed--if our bill would be adopted, as I believe it will be, no longer will small businesses in our country be forced to act as health insurance experts. No longer would they be denied affordable insurance options. No longer would small businesses be discriminated against because they employ someone with a preexisting condition or one who suffers a sudden unexpected health crisis, thus driving up the premiums for every employee, either making it too costly or making it impossible to provide them coverage. In our bill we passed not only do we give small businesses somewhere to turn for insurance options, we give them the financial assistance to pay for it--$1,000 for individuals and $2,000 for families. Every small business could get that to assist them in that very business of trying to provide for their families. That has been in our bill. It is written in there. If we can pass that bill, I am confident the other body would adopt it. We give employers a healthier, more productive workforce. I point out in many parts of our country employers only have one choice or two choices for health care coverage for their employees. That is all that exists for them, and they want to shop to find out what is available. Under our marketplace in the bill, they would have a wide range of options to choose from of private carriers offering different packages and different levels of cost, allowing the employer to shop on behalf of their employees, and we give them the credit to make it available, financially, to do so. Our bill does more than anything else-- certainly, when it comes to small businesses. Importantly, for those employers who are happy, as many are, with the insurance they have--maybe they are a large employer who has invested heavily in prevention, or they have negotiated low prices and a wide network of providers as exists in some parts of our country. Under our bill nothing changes for them. They can keep the insurance as long as they choose to renew it. That is their business. We change none of that. If you like what you have, you keep that. If you are a smaller employer and you want to change that and you want better plans, we provide the credits to do so and the option for you to have more choices. Most of all, we believe reform is the smart thing to do for the American consumer, for those employers and employees. Some of our fellow citizens are getting a good deal when it comes to their insurance. They like the doctor they have, they like the hospital they go to when they need one, and they like the insurance plan they have. They don't want anything about their health care to change. They should not have to worry about that. Our bill protects that. If you like your doctor, your hospital, and your health care coverage, you can keep that, just as that business who wants the plan they have, they can keep that under our bill, which we wrote 2 weeks and 2 days ago--the 900 pages we worked on for almost 5 weeks and on which we considered 300 amendments. Some of our colleagues have tried to scare our fellow Americans into believing our bill would force change upon them. That is just not true. That is a falsehood. It is being dishonest with the American people. The bill that was crafted in the HELP committee won't make anyone change their doctor or their insurance plan. If they like what they have, they get to keep it. The only change they may see is that there may be more money back in their pocket as a result of what we provided in the options available to people to make better choices at lower costs. Here is what our opponents won't tell you: If we don't take action-- if it is just the status quo and we go back to our States and walk away from all of this and never deal with this issue, you may very well lose the ability to see the doctor you like. That is at risk with inaction. If we don't take action, you may lose that good insurance plan you have. If we don't take action, you may well find yourself unable to get the kind of care you need when you need it. If we don't take action in the Congress, families with insurance will continue to pay that hidden tax of $1,100 that the average family pays every single year to cover the costs of the uninsured who show up at hospitals. In our country, you will get care. If you walk into the emergency room, we take care of you. But there is a cost for doing so. The cost is, on average, $1,100 per family a year. That is the tax we pay today because of the failure to provide the kind of plans we adopted in our bill. So that cost falls on families. Further, Mr. President, if we don't take action, premiums will continue to rise faster than wages. If you don't believe me, look what happened to my State of Connecticut a few weeks ago when an insurance company proposed to raise their rates by 32 percent. I wish that were uncommon. The rates in my States in the last 6 years have gone up 45, 46 percent, and since 1996 in the country, they have gone up 86 percent, vastly outstripping the rate of inflation, with no end in sight. For those who say we can wait, we don't need to do this now, we ought to postpone all this, it is not necessary, we ought to deal with the deficit or other issues, then consider what is going to happen if we don't move and if we don't come together and get this job done. On every one of these issues, if we don't take action, no matter how secure you may feel today, you may lose that insurance, you may lose that coverage, you may find yourself unable to go to that doctor or hospital you believe you would like to and you continue to pay a rising cost in premiums to cover the uninsured. Mr. President, 2 weeks and 2 days ago, since our committee acted, 210,000 of our fellow citizens have lost health care coverage. These are people who had insurance 2 weeks ago. Every single day we delay taking action on legislation, 14,000 of our fellow citizens lose health care coverage--every day. So since 2 weeks and 2 days ago, 210,000 of our fellow citizens lost their health care coverage, and we are about to leave for another month. Do the math on a daily basis. While we as Members of this body go back to our respective States, we have our health care coverage, we have very good health care coverage-- very good health care coverage. None of us have to worry about that as we go back and walk away, unfortunately, from a set of issues with which we should be grappling. But we can do so with the assurance, the certainty, and the stability as elected officials in this body that if something happens to any one of us, we are going to be fine because we have great health care coverage. But, unfortunately, for 210,000 of our fellow citizens in the last 2 weeks, that is not the case. Imagine tonight that you are one of those 210,000 and you wake up in the middle of the night because your child is very sick and you rush them to the hospital, or a spouse or loved one who needs that kind of care because of an accident. These things happen with the least predictability. Every one of us knows what happens. We have all had it happen to us with a child, a spouse, where all of a sudden there is a tragedy, an accident, an injury, there is an illness, and all of a sudden we need that coverage to protect us. Tonight there are 210,000 more people since 2 weeks ago who are in that free-fall hoping that nothing happens until they get back on their feet again, maybe get that new job, find that insurance company that will cover them and provide those benefits. Imagine yourself being in that spot--think about that--that lack of stability, that lack of certainty, that lack of comfort knowing that if something happens to my family, I cannot help them. I hope we can get them back on their feet again. I hope they get to see a good doctor, and they will have the drugs they need or care they need to restore their health. But you never get to that question if you cannot even approach it because you don't have the coverage any longer to pay for it. Those 14,000 a day are going to continue to mount up under the present circumstances. I am disappointed, to put it mildly, that we find ourselves leaving here without continuing to do work. Not that we are going to solve all the problems in the week before we leave, and no one, of course, argues that we shouldn't do this right and we shouldn't be careful to make sure we are doing it right. It is a silly argument to suggest there are people here who don't care about crafting responsible legislation. I will not accept the argument it is too hard and that is the reason we cannot get it done. That is why reforming our health care system is so important, for all those reasons. Even if you are satisfied with your personal health care situation, you ought not have too much comfort and believe it will be there when you may need it the most. The bill we passed provides stability so that care that is available to you stays available day after day and provides cost savings that you will see in your family budget. Our bill eliminates entirely the annual and lifetime caps on benefits. So even if you suddenly develop a serious illness or get into a bad accident, you will be able to get the treatment you need, and it does put limits on how much money out of your income you could be forced to spend on insurance. Today there are no limits. Our bill provides those limits so your expenses will never be more than you can afford to pay. Our bill we passed prohibits insurance companies from discriminating against people with preexisting conditions. That is gone forever in our bill. That argument about preexisting conditions is absolutely gone. If we do nothing, it is still there, and so that certainty you think you have is not certain at all with preexisting conditions that exist today. Our bill eliminates those. You don't have to stay in a job just because you have an illness that would keep you from getting coverage elsewhere. I cannot tell you how many stories I have heard about that, where people have miserable jobs with miserable pay, but they don't dare leave it because they know if they do and they have a preexisting condition, they will be denied the kind of coverage they need to have. Our legislation also prohibits insurance companies from changing or dropping coverage or refusing to renew it if you get sick. It mandates that these companies cover the things that will help you stay well, such as mammograms or annual checkups, at no additional charge to you as a patient. The truth is that too many Americans are getting a bad deal, even those who are operating with a comfort that they believe that what they have will be there whenever they need it, and the ones who are getting a good deal might not be able to keep it unless we take action to provide the kind of stability people are looking for. Even those who somehow are able to ignore the urgent moral imperative of reform I think should support the legislation we crafted simply because it is a better deal for American consumers, and it is the smart thing to do. It has now been, as I said, more than 2 weeks since our HELP Committee passed its legislation. It is a good bill. It is not a perfect bill, and more work needs to be done. All of us acknowledge that. But it is one that I think every Member of this body can get behind. Every single member of that committee, all 23 of us, every single member added contributions to the original draft. Every Democrat, every Republican added amendments that were adopted to our bill. By the end of this week, as I pointed out earlier, four of the five committees with health reform bills will have completed their work. I know the Finance Committee, as I said earlier, is working hard to produce a bill as well. When their work is complete, I look forward to sitting down with them to merge our efforts, which is clearly going to happen. We are going to merge our efforts. We are going to take what we have done and merge it with what the Finance Committee has done. So the Senate will have two committees on equal footing dealing with health care issues. I know the leaders guaranteed that, the President has spoken about it, and I am sure my colleagues will support that effort. I heard some of my colleagues mention that now is not the time to plow ahead. I disagree. I can't think of a more urgent issue for all the reasons I mentioned this evening and how important it is. I said it may not be as much an urgency for those of us with the stability and certainty of our own health care policies, but for so many of the people we represent--those who are uninsured or underinsured--they have a right to insist we do the job, face the difficult questions, and have the courage to lead on this issue, to be leaders. That is what we are asked to be when people chose us to represent them. I know it is the case in my own State, as it is across the country. A lot of the choices we have to make are tough ones and hard to explain, in some cases, because they will involve the shared responsibility that all Americans must be involved in if this is going to work. That is why we get sent here. Occasionally, there are matters that require us to stand and make tough choices. We are at such a moment. For us to do less, to walk away from this, I think, will be one of the great tragedies of our time. I regret we will not be working on this legislation in the coming weeks, although we will in our own way--our staffs will be working and we will be back in our respective States listening to our constituents. I hope when we come back in September, we will have a renewed sense of purpose and get the job done. We have a President who cares about this deeply. We have Members of both bodies who were elected and ran on this issue of reforming our health care system. Major industries, the insurance industry, the providers, the doctors, nurses, the pharmaceutical industry, all today are on the side of getting something done. There are disagreements on how to do this, but wonderful people in public and outside public life are committed to this. It is different than it was 14 years ago. We ought to be able to take advantage of that new alignment, if you will, and get this job done. I yield the floor.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Ohio. He has been a member of our committee, and as I mentioned earlier, he has done a tremendous job, as others have as well. Sherrod Brown brings a wealth of experience. He has been dealing with these issues, obviously, in the other body. And I think in talking about real people with these issues, there is a tendency of all of us to kind of discuss these matters from about 30,000 feet, using the language we are familiar with to describe what is going on, and too often I think for people across the country, they wonder if anybody is talking about them. I think by reading letters from citizens in Ohio and what they are wrestling with every day, it brings this back down to a level that we need to think of more often when we debate these issues, and that is that every single day, of those 14,000 people who are losing their health insurance, there are many who do confront a health care crisis and lack the ability to respond to it other than showing up in an emergency room or hoping there will be free health care for them because they do not have the capacity to pay for it. So I appreciate tremendously Senator Brown's contribution, not only during those long days we spent day in and day out crafting the legislation that is now before us, but now, when we need to do more talking about what is in that bill. Because from a small business perspective, as well as the insured, the prevention, the quality of care, or workforce issues, they are all very significant contributions to our debate. The Class Act, which allows individual people, at no government expense, to contribute to their own long-term care needs is one of the most innovative and creative ideas in our bill. That will provide not only substantial resources, but the ability of people to lead independent lives who have disabilities under what might otherwise force them to live under more expensive care or tapping into Medicare. In fact, the projections under the Congressional Budget Office is that we have saved $2 billion in Medicare costs just by having the Class Act--that is the long-term care provisions in the bill. I invite all my colleagues to read the bill and to go to the briefings. I spent a little more than an hour today with my colleague from California, Dianne Feinstein, who requested that I come by with staff, with her staff, and go through the various sections of the bill and how it would work; how it would affect people in their State; how these various provisions would work. I don't want to speak for her, but I think she was pleased to hear what we had done. Obviously, there is more to be done out of the Finance Committee, and I don't have answers for that because there is no bill out of the Finance Committee as yet, but on the part of the effort we have made, as our Members and colleagues look at what we have done, I think they will be pleasantly pleased about the efforts we have made to assist the insured with preexisting conditions, the caps, as I have mentioned, the credits we provide to small businesses to allow them to make that health care insurance available to their employees-- as many would like to be able to do--at a cost they can afford, without crippling them because one employee ends up with a serious health condition thus raising the cost of every other employee and the cost of overall health care. That is gone as a result of what we have written in our legislation. So I urge my colleagues to read the bill, to talk with us, to raise the questions you have, particularly over these weeks between now and the time we come back. I think you will again be pleased at the effort our colleagues have made to vastly improve the status quo and, I think, contribute significantly to where we need to be going with regard to health care reform. So I am very grateful to Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio for his contribution. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I inquire, we are in morning business, am I correct?

Mr. DODD. I appreciate that.