Tom Harkin

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. I am befuddled, Mr. President, because I say to my friend from Maine, the CBO--which I want on the record--the CBO has scored our amendment as saving more money than is in the bill. I want that on the record. That is so. We did not weaken the provisions in the bill, we significantly strengthened them. For example, as I pointed out, we require the commercial software, we reduce the paperwork by having one claim form. We required the competitive bidding and we prohibit the Medicare payments for unnecessary things like personal use of automobiles, tickets to sporting events, things like that. And CBO has certified that this amendment saves more money than the underlying bill's provisions.

Mr. HARKIN. I have an amendment that I am sending to the desk, and I ask for immediate consideration.

Mr. HARKIN. Parliamentary inquiry, Mr. President. How much time do we have?

Mr. HARKIN. Thank you, Mr. President. I thank the Senator from Nebraska for yielding. As I said, I support the Abraham amendment. It is not a bad amendment. It is a good amendment. There is nothing wrong with it. I would just point out it is sort of voluntary on the Secretary's part. It does not mandate that they have to do this. It says the Secretary may set these up. That is fine, as far as it goes. I would just say that probably later on today or tomorrow, the amendment that I had offered to the Abraham amendment last night will be coming up for a vote, which provides for some tough measures. We will talk about that later. This amendment is a good amendment. I intend to support it. It is in keeping with trying to give the Secretary more power to cut down on waste, fraud, and abuse. So it is a good amendment. We will certainly support it.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, this amendment is the fraud, waste, and abuse amendment. It saves $600 million, by CBO's estimate, more than the underlying amendment. This is a culmination of 5 years of hearings. All of the things in this amendment were recommended by the Inspector General's office and by GAO. It saves more than $600 million. In sum, all I can tell you is what this does. It says that when the Veterans Administration pays 4 cents for a bandage and Medicare pays 86 cents, something is wrong. Let us pay the same thing as the Veterans Administration. That is what this amendment does.

Mr. HARKIN. Point of order. The Senate is not in order.

Mr. HARKIN. Absolutely not. CBO said today it would save $4.7 billion, considerably more than the underlying bill. Let there be no question about that.

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

Mr. HARKIN. I will reserve my time if the other side wants to speak.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. It is entitled ``The Reality of Cutting Student Aid.'' I will read a couple of items from it: If you want to talk to Robin Kniech, you'd best catch the Drake University junior early, before she heads for class or checks in at one of her five jobs, which add nearly 40 hours to her already full load. Between the baby sitting, secretarial and other work, Kniech just manages to eke out her $1,200 tuition contribution. The rest of the $14,100 is made up from merit- based scholarships and college loans. ``I don't have any financial support from my parents,'' says Kniech. ``I don't have any more hours to squeeze, and if I were to lose $300 in aid, I probably wouldn't be in school.'' John Parker, director of financial planning, said that 60 percent of Drake students get need-based assistance. ``There are students at Drake who, if they had to come up with another $50, just could not, flatout could not, do it,'' Parker said. I think I will end on this note, a good note. The writer of the article said: So excuse Robin Kniech if the politicians' lectures about working her way up ring a little hollow. She's keeping her end of the bargain, and a 3.8 grade-point average. She just doesn't have anything left to give. Mr. President, here is what is happening at one of our regent universities, the University of Northern Iowa, the smallest of our three state universities. For the 1990-91 school year the average loan of a student per year was $2,589. That was in 1991. Today that is up to $4,395, and, if this reconciliation bill passes, that is going to climb even higher. This bill just piles more debt on students. That is going to discourage students from going to school and seeking a higher education. Who does it hit? It hits moderate- and low-income families the hardest. That is why we have to defeat this reconciliation bill and make sure that these students can get a decent education.

Mr. HARKIN. I thank the Senator for yielding. I just could not help but hearing my friend from Washington saying we have a moral obligation. Yes. We do. We have a lot of moral obligations to our children and to the future. One of the most important obligations is to ensure that future generations have the ability to get a decent, sound education so that they can raise their families and so that they can compete in the world marketplace. That also is a moral obligation. What this reconciliation bill does is pull the rug out from under that obligation that we have for future generations. Mr. President, we hear a lot of talk about the tax breaks that are in this bill. Those of us on this side have been talking about the $245 billion tax breaks for the wealthy that will come at the expense of the elderly and Medicare cuts. There is an $11 billion cut in student aid in this bill, the largest cut in student aid in our history. But what we are not hearing about are the hidden taxes that the Republicans have in this bill, the ``stealth taxes.'' This is what they are hitting students with to pay for those tax breaks for the wealthy. This chart illustrates this right here. This budget adds about $700 to $2,500 of debt per student by eliminating the interest subsidy during the grace period. That is a hidden tax on our students. It also includes up to $5,000 in additional expense for families who use the PLUS program by raising their interest rates. It is another tax on students and their families. It imposes a direct Federal tax of .85 percent on colleges and universities participating in the student loan programs; a direct tax on colleges. Of course, they are going to have to pass that on to their students. Last, of course, it forces schools out of the direct loan program that has been so successful. So we hear about the tax breaks to the wealthy. We do not hear about the stealth taxes that are in the Republican bill, and mainly it falls on students. Mr. President, there was an article recently in the Des Moines Register which I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record at this point.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. I thank the chairman for yielding me an additional amount of time because I did want to make another point--that this 2,000-page bill really destroys our basic commodity programs that we have had to put a safety net under our farm families. It puts a hard cap on deficiency payment rates, doubles the percentage of unpaid base acreage and decimates USDA's ability to respond to price-depressing surpluses. What if commodity prices and farm income fall as they did in the 1980s? Under this disaster bill, if corn prices fall to $2 a bushel an Iowa farmer with a 350-acre corn base--which is a modest size--would lose over $10,000 of income protection compared to the current farm bill. And, if corn prices fell to $1.80 a bushel, which is not out of the question, that farmer would lose over $17,000 in income protection compared to what we have now in the law. Also, this is a disaster bill for hungry kids. The nutrition cuts in this bill are excessive and unsupportable. It is unconscionable that this bill is cutting our commitment to school lunches, school breakfasts, summer meals, and the special milk program. Mr. President, these drastic cuts to rural America are driven by ideology and not by common sense. They are unfair, unreasonable, and unconscionable. Enough is enough. Rural America is already paying its fair share for deficit reduction. So this amendment offered by the Senator from Montana is to send this disaster bill back to the Finance Committee with instructions to pare back the upper income tax windfalls, and to reduce the assault on rural America. It is time, Mr. President, to put common sense ahead of ideology and to put the interests of rural communities over the interests of a privileged few.

Mr. HARKIN. I will pick up the roll.

Mr. HARKIN. For a minute and a half. I was on a roll, and I did not want to stop.

Mr. HARKIN. May I finish my statement? May I have enough time to finish my statement?

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator for yielding. Mr. President, in times past, when rural America was hit with droughts or floods, we brought disaster bills to the floor of the Congress. These bills were to ease the suffering of rural communities in hard times and to help stop disasters. Yesterday morning we were handed this, a brand new 2,000-page disaster bill. But this bill does not cure a disaster in rural America; it provokes one. This is a disaster bill for agriculture. We were supposed to have a farm bill this year with a full debate on a sound food and agriculture policy for the Nation. Instead, agriculture has now been slipped into these 2,000 pages--I bet no one has really read the darned thing--and we have had no opportunity for real debate or amendments. Once again, agriculture is being forced to take unfair and unreasonable cuts amounting to 25 percent over the next 7 years --even though agriculture has already been reduced significantly and commodity programs amount to about one-half of 1 percent of the budget. One-half of 1 percent, but commodity programs take a 25 percent cut over the next 7 years. Tell me if that is fair. This is a disaster bill for rural health care. We all know that access to quality, affordable health care in rural communities has been a serious problem for years--especially for seniors. This disaster bill, with its drastic Medicare cuts, makes it even worse in rural America. This is a disaster bill for America's farm families, who are already having a tough time making ends meet. Net farm income in real dollar terms will be at its lowest level this year since 1986, in the depths of the farm crisis. This disaster bill makes it worse by lowering farm income another $9 billion, according to USDA estimates.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. I just wanted to ask one very small thing.

Mr. HARKIN. Before the Senator puts in a quorum call, I hope he will yield for a question.

Mr. HARKIN. It is going to go up to 67, right. The Senator is absolutely right. If the Senator will yield further, the only thing I can come up with--and I really do not know why they are doing what they are doing on the other side of the aisle. I know they want to give tax breaks to their special interest friends. I understand that. That is what they want to do. They made their agreements and their contract, and they want to do that. But why do they believe they can take it out of the elderly? The only thing I can assume is that they think the elderly are so gullible that they are not going to pay attention. Maybe they are so busy, like this couple, paying their bills and making ends meet that they are not going to pay attention to what happens here. Maybe they feel that. I hope not because, I am telling you, the elderly have to understand that this is going to hurt and hurt badly for the next 7 years.

Mr. HARKIN. That is right. Not only that, but for some of the low- income elderly in Iowa making less than $10,000 a year, they are cutting the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program where they get a measly $80 or $100 a year to help out in that respect.

Mr. HARKIN. Well, right now about 21 percent of their income. So if they have $20,000 a year, you can figure right away that 21 percent of that--about $4,000 a year--is going for out-of-pocket expenses. One- fifth of their income is going out. Under the Republicans' proposal, that will go up, over the next several years, to 31 or 32 percent. So it will be one-third of their income that would go out. Right now, for us who are working, it is around 7 percent, 8 percent of our total income that goes for health care. So in Iowa, where we have 50 percent of our people making less than $10,000--and I have this letter which is a heartbreaking letter, where she talks about how much they have to pay for their premiums, what they have to pay for their deductibles and their prescription drugs. Their income is $20,000 a year, Mr. President, and they are paying $7,668 a year out-of-pocket. I ask the Senator from West Virginia, what hope would there be for this couple under the Republican proposal, cutting $270 billion out of Medicare? What could you tell this couple when their premiums and deductibles are going to double, yet, their income is not going to go up?

Mr. HARKIN. If the Senator will yield again on that point, I will just say, if you have fee for service and the doctor is taking fee for service, and then you have this automatic provision to cut all these provisions, then it would be very discouraging to doctors to take fee- for-service elderly. Thus, once again, that would be lying--the intention of the Senators on the other side of the aisle that they want to provide more choices for seniors. They can say it all they want. You can say the Moon is made out of cheese, but that does not make it so. The facts are that this bill is going to push the seniors out of their fee for service. If the Senator will yield further for a question, I want to ask the Senator what the Republicans are trying to do here with their $270 billion cut--and now with this BELT gimmick that I never heard about before--how that would work for an elderly person who just wrote me this letter from Iowa. A husband and wife--I will not use their names, because I do not have their permission yet. I will get in touch with them to ask for permission. Their total income per year with Social Security, plus they have an old house rental, is $20,000 or less. She adds up all of their health expenses and premiums, which totals $7,668 a year, out of a $20,000 income. She has diabetes and her husband has heart disease and a fractured hip socket. She had a stroke 3 months ago. She is talking about how wonderful Medicare has been for them. She said, ``People around here are worried that Congress is destroying the best programs in our country, which have made people's lives so much better. My late grandparents lived in poverty receiving $40 a month welfare. Could we live on that?'' I ask the Senator from West Virginia, how could someone like this, making $20,000 a year--and I might add this: When I hear people on the other side of the aisle talk about the elderly, I swear all the elderly they know live in Beverly Hills, or Palm Beach, or something like that, because in my State of Iowa, 80 percent of the senior citizens make less than $20,000 a year, and 50 percent of the elderly in Iowa have incomes of $10,000 a year or less. That is what we are talking about.

Mr. HARKIN. I am going to ask the Senator to yield. Again, I hold up this poster. I talked about it earlier. But just in light now of what I have found out from the Senator from West Virginia of what is hidden in this bill reminds me of what the majority leader said just last night, and I will quote again for the Record: I was there fighting the fight--voting against Medicare-- one of 12--because we knew it wouldn't work in 1965. That was the majority leader just last night. So I guess I would say, who do you trust? I keep hearing from the other side that they want to save Medicare. From what the Senator from West Virginia just pointed out on this BELT, it ought to be called the ``knife,'' because it is really cutting Medicare. That is what they are doing. I thank the Senator. He has done a great service in bringing this to our attention.

Mr. HARKIN. And one last question of the Senator from West Virginia, then. The only reason he can discern for having this provision in there is only so the Republicans can get their $270 billion cut in Medicare to fund the $245 billion tax break; is that correct?

Mr. HARKIN. I ask the Senator from West Virginia if he will yield for another question. Then in the substitute that was offered by the Senator from West Virginia earlier today, on which they will not allow us to vote, it looks like, that BELT provision is not in the substitute of the Senator from West Virginia?