Judd Gregg

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Without losing my right to the floor.

Mr. GREGG. Well, I would like to ask the Senator from Tennessee a question on the substance of his proposal.

Mr. GREGG. Because I do think it is an important proposal. As I understand it, what the Senator is saying is that they put this baggage on the train, which is the nationalization of all student loans in this country, the government is going to take them all over, which will be the fourth major nationalization event this administration has undertaken. First, they nationalized the auto industry. Now, they are in the process of quasi-nationalizing the health care industry. Now they are going to nationalize the educational industry. If the House final reform bill passes, they will essentially be nationalizing the financial industry--or having the capacity to--because they can break up any company, whether they are healthy or not, under the Kanjorski amendment. So my question is: They threw this proposal on the train, nationalizing the student loan industry, in order to use student loan money to finance the health care bill because this bill would have violated the budget rules if it did not have the student loan money basically paying for it?

Mr. GREGG. If I can ask a further question of the Senator. If they did not have that $8.7 billion of student loan money being used to finance the health care bill, this reconciliation bill would fall; would it not? Because it would not meet the budget instructions of having $1 billion of savings.

Mr. GREGG. The Senator had a further question about whether the floor could be yielded. We are in the process of seeking a unanimous consent agreement.

Mr. GREGG. I appreciate the Senator from Tennessee's courtesy. At this time, we are ready to go forward with a unanimous consent request.

Mr. GREGG. Reserving the right to object, I would simply note that the next amendment on our side would be offered by Senator Hatch.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I would ask further unanimous consent----

Mr. GREGG. As I understand what the Senator is asking, is that the voting order be in the order they were offered.

Mr. GREGG. May I make a point? Mr. President, I spoke inappropriately. I believe the Senator from Tennessee will want to submit his amendment back for the Record. He had withdrawn it. Can we do that? I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be the Senator from Tennessee's amendment.

Mr. GREGG. Why don't we do that on every amendment we offer so we do not have to do that.

Mr. GREGG. How much time does the majority have on their half hour?

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, a couple comments need to be responded to because they are so patently inconsistent with the facts that they should be clearly rejected. It is almost as if somebody spent too much time at the movie ``Alice in Wonderland.'' The idea that by their own score, when you cut Medicare by $521 billion--$\1/2\ trillion cut out of Medicare by their own score, which is inaccurate, of course, because it doesn't count the full 10 years--if you count the full 10 years, it is $1 trillion taken out of Medicare--the idea that seniors are not going to be affected by that type of a cut is absurd on its face. The claim is, we don't affect senior benefits. That is nice. That is like telling somebody they can have a car, but there is no engine in it. I mean, the simple fact is, when you cut the providers of seniors by as much as this bill cuts them, clearly it is going to be harder for a senior citizen to see a provider, a doctor, a hospital group. Or when you reduce the spending on Medicare Advantage, which is an insurance program that many seniors appreciate--CBO scores the reduction as being so large that over 11 million seniors will be thrown off that system-- that affects seniors. If they genuinely believe their language, ``we don't do anything about Medicare; we don't do anything about seniors,'' even though the score says they cut Medicare by $500 billion, their own score, and the CBO has said over 11 million people will be knocked off of Medicare Advantage--if they believe that, if they believe their language, then they have to vote for my amendment. They have to vote for my amendment which makes it clear that we protect Medicare. Then there was some other comment made that somebody was going to vote against our amendments, not because they don't make sense but because they are dilatory. This is from a leadership on the other side of the aisle that produced the largest piece of social engineering in our history: 2,500 pages, $2.6 trillion of spending, $1 trillion of cuts in Medicare when fully implemented. They produced that bill in a closed room behind a secret door somewhere on that side of the Capitol, never open to the public, brought it to the floor of the Senate on a Saturday afternoon, filled up the tree, wouldn't allow any amendments, and within 3 days forced us to vote on it on Christmas Eve. Then they took it over to the House, where they rewrote this trailer bill, again, in a secret room, behind a closed door, and brought that bill to the floor and didn't allow anybody to amend that. But amendments are dilatory. Why have an opposition party? Maybe we should just go with the Cuban system. That seems to be the attitude of the other side of the aisle. The American people are an unfortunate inconvenience. The fact that they have elected a Republican membership to this Senate and to the House, they are an unfortunate inconvenience that should be ignored and not allowed to participate in the process. When they come up with ideas such as protecting the Medicare system or such as taking out the sweetheart deals or such as suggesting that the President and his people and the staff of the majority leader should be under the laws we are about to pass or suggest that we should live by the terms of the rhetoric which is, if your premiums go up, you won't be impacted by this bill, or that says that there won't be any taxes on people under $200,000 of income, amendments which just fulfill the statements of the other side of the aisle on issues--they are going to keep the bill clean, they are not going to tax people under $200,000 of incomes, people's premiums won't go up, Medicare won't be affected, and everybody will be subject to this new law of the land, including the President of the United States and his people and the staff of the majority leader--when we offer amendments like that, they are dilatory. They are an inconvenience. They should not be allowed. They should not be voted on, not because they don't make sense but get rid of them; they are the opposition. They are the American people speaking through their elected representatives and they ought to have a voice and they ought to be voted on and they ought to be given a vote based on the substance of the amendments, not on the fact that the other side of the aisle doesn't like opposition. It is so arrogant, this attitude which pervades Washington now that says: The American people, we know better than you do how to live your lives. Why do you get in our way? We in Washington know how you should live. Just stand back. Let us make your decisions as to what you should do with your life, especially relative to health care. We will do a much better job. Certainly, don't countenance any opposition. Don't countenance any dissent, and, certainly, don't hold us to our word, for example, when we say people with incomes under $200,000 won't be taxed or when we say premiums won't go up or when we say everybody will be covered by the bill or when we say Medicare recipients won't be impacted. Don't make us hold to those words by voting on amendments because those amendments are dilatory. The arrogance is palpable and inexcusable. Now we will hear from the Senator from Oklahoma who has another amendment that I am sure the other side will say is dilatory and inappropriate, even though it makes a heck of a lot of sense to me. I yield the floor. Amendment No. 3556

Mr. GREGG. Reserving the right to object, that would be a half hour off, so we should have the half hour after that because you got the first half hour.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, the Senator from Maine is about to take the floor.

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

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I believe the Senator from Tennessee is here and ready to speak.

Mr. GREGG. No. If the Senator is not ready to speak, I will speak.

Mr. GREGG. The Senator from Tennessee is going to offer an amendment in a second, and I will follow him with an amendment. I wish to highlight what my amendment will do as we are waiting. One of the extraordinary shell games that is played under this bill in the ``Alice in Wonderland'' claim that this bill is paid for is the fact that the doctors will receive a $285 billion cut in their reimbursements if this bill goes forward in its present form. We all know that is not going to happen. So at some point there is going to have to be a doctors fix, which means $285 billion not accounted for in this bill will have to be spent over the next 10 years. Of course, if they had included this in the bill--this fact that doctors are being underreimbursed and that we are going to correct this; this is called the doctor fix, and we do it every year on an annual basis--if they had included it in the bill, as they should have because this is, after all, called health care reform, then the bill would have been in deficit even under the gamesmanship played by the Democratic Party on this bill. Remember, the way they got a surplus in this bill in the first 10 years was they took 10 years of spending cuts, 10 years of revenues, and matched them against 6 years--6 years--of programmatic expenditures. So they were able to get a surplus, and CBO has to score what is given to them. If you are given phony ideas, you have to score them. In any event, what CBO was not asked to score as part of this health care, because there was no attempt to correct it, and even though it is the essence of health care, is how do you correct the reimbursed doctors. So after the Senator from Tennessee proceeds, and I think he may be ready to proceed at this time, I am going to offer an amendment for a doctors fix so that this bill will address that issue which is, obviously, one of the core issues on the question of health care reform around here. So I will reserve now on that issue and turn to the Senator from Tennessee who I see is ready to proceed.

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

Mr. GREGG. The States don't have the elasticity the Federal Government has, which we will not have much longer, by the way, as a result of passing this bill specifically because our debt is growing so fast that it is going to be very hard for us 5 or 6 years from now to be able to sell our debt at a reasonable price, in my opinion, and we are going to find that maybe some people don't even want to buy our debt. There was a very significant event this week when it was determined that the debt issued by Warren Buffett was going out at a lower cost than the debt issued by the United States of America. That is the first time that anybody can remember something like that, and that is a very clear statement by the markets that they are getting very worried about how much deficit and debt this government is running up. Now we pass this bill which adds $2.6 trillion to the spending of the U.S. Government and alleges it is paid for, but we know it is not going to be, and creates new entitlement programs which we know would not be fully funded. Even if it were paid for, it takes resources which should be used to reduce the debt, especially in the area of making Medicare more solvent, and uses them to expand new programs. This event, as I have described it, is an astroid of debt headed at our country. The simple fact is, it is going to have an effect. The effect will be that we will have more difficulty selling our debt, the deficits and debt we pass on to our children will be extraordinary, and their ability to have a higher standard of living will be reduced as a result of that. But the point, of course, is this bill, on top of all of the other egregious things it does in the area of fiscal policy--of running up debt and creating a massive government that we can't afford, being intrusive in everybody's health care delivery system, undermining the ability of small businesses to offer insurance, raising premiums, raising taxes on people not only earning more than $200,000 but earning less than $200,000, replete with special deals--on top of all of that, this bill, as Senator Corker said, puts pressure on the States and local communities. It asks them to spend money which they did not want to spend and which is not reimbursed. That is not fair. It is called unfunded mandates. It is inappropriate. We actually have a law around here that this bill basically runs over that says we will not do that. As I said earlier, another thing this bill does, which I find extraordinary, is it does not address one of the elephants in the room relative to the cost of health care in this country, which is the fact that we are not adequately reimbursing our doctors; that our doctors are going to receive a $285 billion cut over the next 10 years, a $65 billion cut over the next 3 years unless we correct that. This is from basically a freeze level of reimbursement. Every year we adjust that payment so doctors do get their money they deserve or at least some portion of it in that we do not keep up with inflation. But this bill, which is supposed to be a comprehensive resolution of health care, leaves the doctors out in the cold. It means every year they are going to have to come hat in hand, one more time, asking for something they should not have to ask for, which is a fair reimbursement for their services. We will every year, hopefully, address it. But it is not right that we have a bill that does not even account for that. Why was it not put in? It was not put in because if it had been put in, this bill could not meet the budgetary rules that give it the special protection that allows it to come to the floor of the Senate, and it would have been in deficit, at least over the first 10 years, by $100 billion, even using the gamesmanship scoring the other side of the aisle has used relative to the big bill. This is not fair to the doctors. The doctors deserve better than this. We should correct this right now as part of this process. This trailer bill has the title ``fix-it bill'' on it. One thing we should definitely fix is the fact the doctors are getting shortchanged. So let's fix it. That is what my amendment does. My amendment says: OK, this bill alleges it generates a surplus. Let's use part of that surplus to make the doctors whole for the next 3 years. It is a paid-for amendment. I cannot imagine anybody would want to oppose this amendment. After all, after we complete this bill-- immediately after we complete this bill--we are going to do, I believe it is a 1-month extension to try to correct the doctor problem. How inconsistent, how fundamentally hypocritical is it for us to pass a major health care reform bill, and then in the next breath--literally the next breath--within the next 24 hours, this body will take up a bill to give a 1-month extension to the doctors fix. I think it is 1 month. That is not right. Let's do it now. Let's do it in this bill. Let's do the doctors fix. I have come up with a proposal that will take care of the doctors in a fair and forthright manner for 3 years. That is my amendment. I am not sure if it is at the desk or whether I have to send it to the desk. I send my amendment to the desk.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, let me summarize it again. We know the doctors are being shortchanged. They deserve fair treatment. It is pretty obvious that if we are going to do a health care reform bill, the proper place to correct the doctor issue of reimbursement is in that bill, not the next day in a short-term extension. This is a forthright and fully paid-for attempt--and if it is passed it will occur--to reimburse the doctors at a fair rate for the next 3 years and correct what is known as the SGR problem relative to doctor reimbursement. I cannot understand why we would not want to do something such as this. I see the Senator from North Carolina. I will be happy to yield to him for any thoughts he may have on this amendment or the Senator from Oklahoma.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that we be able to participate in a colloquy on our side of the aisle.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I wish to ask the Senator from Oklahoma, who is obviously a physician and has an indepth knowledge of this issue, I heard the other side of the aisle say: There are no cuts to the benefits of people on Medicare. If you reduce doctor payments under Medicare 21 percent, don't you think that is going to affect what they receive? Technically, there will be no cut because they will still have the right to see a doctor. Is it not going to be hard to see a doctor because doctors will stop seeing them?