Jon Kyl

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. I certainly appreciate the sentiment of my colleague. The underlying bill is important to get done. These perimeter rule revisions are important too. Our fear is, unless there is some action, it will not be resolved, as it hasn't been in the past. I don't think it has to be a lot of amendments or a huge amount of debate. I do think we need the opportunity to have a vote or two on a couple of these amendments. If they don't prevail, then so be it. But that is an issue we will have to deal with one way or the other. What I would like to do is change the subject a little bit and talk about the proposals made by Senators Sessions and Pryor in a different context. We just got the word from the Congressional Budget Office that the new cost of the legislation on health care is going to be over $940 billion. Each iteration of this bill has seen an increase in the cost. This is striking because, as we know, even though the Congressional Budget Office has had to take the legislative language as it has been given to them in providing the pricetag and, therefore, alleges that it will not put us in deficit, the truth is, it will. If you double count savings, if you assume savings that will not exist and so on, then you can project a budget-neutral bill. I think most objective observers have acknowledged that the bill will be far out of balance and that the $940 billion price tag will not be paid for by the various taxes and spending reductions ostensibly a part of the bill. There is nearly $\1/2\ trillion dollars in Medicare cuts. Most people think that is unrealistic. We have never been able to find that much waste, fraud, and abuse in the past. It is going to be hard to find it in the future. You can't assume we will save all that money. It is true this new bill will also raise taxes. There are 12 or 13 new taxes in the bill. It supposedly raises about $\1/2\ trillion in taxes. That includes on seniors, the chronically ill, and on the very drugs and devices that help us when we are sick. I wonder how long those taxes are going to last. The bottom line is, we will be adding to the deficit under this legislation or paying a lot more in taxes than we do today. The irony is, we are not even solving the core problem we started out to try to solve, which was to reduce the cost of health care premiums. CBO confirms over and over again that premiums will continue to rise. They say, in the individual market, this bill will cause premiums to soar by 10 to 13 percent in the year 2016 because the government is going to force patients to buy benefits packages with coverage they may not need or want. According to Lewin Associates, an objective observer, the premiums will go up even more. A third study, Oliver Wyman & Associates, has projected that prices will exceed a 50-percent increase--in my State of Arizona, a 72-percent increase in premiums--as a result of this legislation. That is almost incomprehensible and it is wrong. The irony is, the increases will be paid by small businesses that we are asking to hire more people. It is going to paid for by young families and individuals forced to buy insurance they don't believe they need right now. Right now they have relatively low premiums because they have relatively low health care needs. The bill will raise the cost of insurance for many Americans and then, through new mandates, force everyone to buy a policy and not just any policy but one that has actually been written in Washington. It adds a new entitlement we can't afford. There are so many other things wrong with it. My point was not to go through all the things wrong with the health care bill but, because we now know or we believe the bill will be voted on in the House perhaps as early as Sunday and we now have the new score, the biggest score yet of almost $1 trillion, it is worth talking about in the context of the amendments on the floor to try to deal with escalating spending. During his campaign, President Obama made almost a fetish out of saying he would fix the way Washington works. There would be no more business as usual. But from what we have seen on the health care debate, there has been arm-twisting and backroom deals and sweetheart deals that end up buying the votes they need to pass the legislation but add dramatically to the cost, as well as the unfairness, because certain provisions of the bill are made inapplicable to certain favored constituencies. I have always thought, if the bill is such a great idea, why would Members exempt their own constituents from the application of the bill. One of the areas in which this is done is the cuts to Medicare. About half of that comes from reducing the benefits under Medicare Advantage. Medicare Advantage is enjoyed by a great many seniors who are on Medicare, about 330,000 in my State of Arizona. Their benefits will be dramatically decreased under the bill. Our colleague from Florida heard an earful from his constituents, senior citizens, who said: Don't cut my benefits under Medicare Advantage. He said OK. We will grandfather you, and we will grandfather some folks from other States. But my constituents in Arizona don't get grandfathered. Their benefits are going to be cut. How is that fair? How is that right? Let me run through a couple of these other special deals. Unfortunately, not everybody gets the advantage of these special deals. There was the so-called ``Louisiana purchase,'' $300 million. I don't know the page of the new bill, but in the old bill it is section 2006, page 432, line 14. The ``Gator aid,'' which is the thing I was just talking about, grandfathers Medicare Advantage patients to the tune of about $25 to $30 billion from the cost of rather than from the effects of reducing their Medicare Advantage benefit. There are some other States that get specific benefits as a result of Medicaid patients who are added to the rolls: Vermont, $600 million; Massachusetts, $500 million. There are three targeted FMAP provisions: bonuses for Vermont, Massachusetts, and Nebraska. Vermont gets a 2.2-percent FMAP increase for 6 years for their entire program. Massachusetts gets a half-a- percent increase for 3 years. Nebraska gets a 100-percent FMAP increase for newly eligibles forever. That was this new particular deal. Under the disproportionate payment section, Hawaii is alone among the States that get an extension. Michigan and Connecticut get a special benefit under section 508 so that their hospitals have an option to benefit under that section if it means higher payments. This was also done in previous legislation. Montana, South Dakota, North Dakota, and Wyoming get a special deal: an amendment that adds 1 percent to the hospital wage index for those States. There are other States that would qualify but would not benefit because they are already above the 1-point wage index value. It also establishes a 1.0-practice expense floor for physicians in those particular States. One of my colleagues got a benefit for his constituents in Libby, MT: Medicare coverage for individuals. The EPA has announced there is a public health emergency at a Superfund site there, so they get a special advantage. It is interesting that while the Nebraska ``Cornhusker kickback'' got a lot of attention, two other benefits for Nebraska entities did not. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Nebraska and Michigan Blue Cross Blue Shield and also Mutual of Omaha get special benefits--so two in Nebraska and one in Michigan. They get a carve-out. One of them gets a carve-out from the insurance fee for Medigap policies and the other the insurance fee paid to these two particular companies. Connecticut hospital--Senator Dodd from Connecticut took credit for getting $100 million for a hospital in his State. I could go on and on. The point is, the process by which the legislation has been put together, as well as its substance, is what has caused the American people to have an extraordinarily low opinion of Congress. The latest trick, this so-called scheme to deem the legislation the Senate passed--passed without a vote; in other words, passing a law without ever voting on it--is just the latest of the chicanery that appears to be engaged in, in the House of Representatives now, in order to get around the Senate bill, which, as the Speaker said, her Members do not like and do not want to vote on. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an editorial from this morning from one of my hometown newspapers, the Arizona Republic, which discusses what they call the end run by Democrats as a travesty, and they discuss this so-called scheme to deem in the editorial.

Mr. KYL. Yes, I will. I was about to get to the final point, which is the matter on which my colleague from Tennessee is the expert, and that is the latest item to try to flavor the legislation to get more votes; namely, to have the Federal Government take over student loans. But, yes, I will yield.

Mr. KYL. Madam President, my colleague from Tennessee is exactly correct. Just that one item alone--of course it is part of Medicare; you have to pay doctors to take care of you in Medicare--and if you do not include the cost of that, then obviously you are not identifying the true costs of the legislation, and just that item alone would be enough to knock it out of balance. I did not even get into all the double counting and the other ways in which they try to game the system so it makes it look like you have saved money, but you have not. One of our friends, Stephen Moore, I heard, had this analogy. He said: This is a great deal: Gee, you cover an additional 30 million people and you save money. Gee, at that rate, we should cover everybody in China. We could really reduce the deficit. Well, I think it makes the point. The American people have broken the code here. We are not going to save money by adding more people to the rolls. That may be a good idea. It may be that we should subsidize people, but let's acknowledge the true cost, and that gets back to the amendment of our colleague from Alabama, the amendment that is pending on the floor. He says we have to stop spending so much, so let's do something very modest. Let's put a cap using last year's budget. We are not talking about cutting way back. We are not cutting into muscle or bone or anything like that; we are just saying: OK, if it was good enough for 2010, let's stop there. Let's have a little hold, let's have a little pause here before we add a whole lot more money to the deficit. My State of Arizona has had to cut well over $1 billion out of its budget. I think it is closer to $2 billion. They are cutting significant elements that the State has paid for in the past. The city representatives were in seeing us yesterday and last week the county representatives. They are all having to dramatically cut what they provide in the way of government services. But we in the Federal Government, we keep right on going as if there were no problem at all. That is why the amendment that is pending--I guess we are going to vote on it in about an hour--the amendment by Senators McCaskill and Sessions is one we need to support and to vote against any other amendments that appear to try to provide savings but, in fact, do not. I will close here because I see my colleague on the floor. The last thing I want to mention is the latest gimmick to get support for this health care legislation: adding something that has nothing to do with health. It is the Federal Government takeover of the student loan program. A lot of folks in the country have gotten student loans for their kids to go to college. It is a process that has worked. It is federally guaranteed so banks are able to make those loans at a relatively low rate of interest. It is a good deal for kids who want to go to college. Well, the Obama administration--which has taken over car companies, taken over other insurance companies, now wants to take over health care and has taken over, partially, banks--now wants to take over student loans. It has made them part of this legislation. We do not know for sure exactly how because we have not seen the bill yet. But allegedly it is made a part of this legislation. My colleague from Tennessee has been very good at pointing out that actually it is going to cost people more money because the government gets to borrow money at 2.8 percent interest, then it is going to loan it out at 6.8 percent interest, and then take the difference in the two and pay for additional government programs. To me, though, one of the most pernicious things is that after July, you are not going to be able to pick the lender that best fits your needs or your kids' needs to go to college. You get to go to a Federal bureaucrat who is going to decide that for you. Instead of something like 3,000 different places where you can go to get this, I think there are going to be four call centers. Good luck. If you think it is slow down at the motor vehicle division or the Post Office, good luck trying to get a loan for your kid now to go to college. As my colleague, Senator Alexander, wrote in the Washington Post: [Y]ou'll work longer to pay off your student loan to help pay for someone else's education--and to help your U.S. representative's reelection. This is a bad idea. To try to fold this into the health care legislation is a doubly bad idea. The bottom line is, our House Democratic colleagues who are now being very strongly pressured to vote for this health care legislation are not going to be able to fix any of this. Because when the bill comes over to the Senate, and they supposedly have put the fixes in it, the reality is that every one of those things that is subject to a point of order will be stricken from the bill on a point of order. Some things can be amended, of course. So the House is going to have to deal with the bill at least one more time if, in fact, they pass it this weekend. The Senate is not going to bail them out, as some of them apparently think may be the case. So I throw that note of caution to my colleagues in the House who may be thinking of supporting this bill on the grounds that the Senate is going to clean it up. In fact, that is not going to happen.

Mr. KYL. Yes. Madam President, my colleague is exactly correct, and the math is correct as well. It is very disappointing to me because most of the doctors with whom I have spoken are very afraid of this legislation. They are afraid of what it will do in their practices in the way they will be able to deal with their patients. They are also afraid because they can see this continued downward pressure on reimbursements they receive. Frankly, a lot of them are saying: We are not going to be able to take Medicare patients in the future. In my own State of Arizona, in fact, the Mayo Clinic has already announced that at two or three of its facilities, it is not going to take new Medicare patients. So that is one of the things that should be fixed in the health care bill. It is not fixed. It disappoints me that even though the medical association has urged they take out a very pernicious amendment that deals with specialty hospitals--basically, it cuts specialty hospitals off in the future; and the AMA has fought very hard to allow specialty hospitals to exist, but that is not going to get fixed in this bill--even though they have sought to be excluded from the Medicare cuts that are in the Medicare Commission here--that is supposedly going to save $250 billion or so; that has not been fixed--and even though they need to have the basic reimbursement section, the so-called SGR, fixed--and as my colleague has just pointed out, it is not fixed in the legislation--what is disappointing to me is--and those are three of the most critical elements of this bill because of the effect it will have on the treatment of their patients--the American Medical Association is still toying with the idea of supporting the legislation, when the vast majority of physicians in the country, in my opinion, do not support the legislation. Again, it is primarily because of the effect they think it will have on their patients. I would close by saying, all of these----

Mr. KYL. OK.

Mr. KYL. Madam President, I will conclude by saying, absolutely yes. This is one of the good ideas Republicans had. Rather than creating a new entitlement, taking money from Medicare to fund that new entitlement, the savings we believe we can achieve in Medicare should be applied to keeping Medicare solvent for another 17 years or whatever amount of time this money could provide. Then, if we are going to expend money, let's use it to pay the hard- working physicians and all the other providers, the RNs, the folks in the hospitals, and everybody else whom we want there to take care of us when we get sick. Let's make sure that money is available there and that we have some kind of permanent resolution of this problem so we do not have to come back and try to fix it every year. Those are just some of the things we believe should be done rather than to scrap the whole system we have, replace it with this new government-operated behemoth that takes over this big section of our economy, pushes government bureaucrats between patients and their physicians and ends up providing enormous new taxes, without cutting the premiums--in fact, allowing premiums to go up even more than they would have otherwise. Other than that, it is a nifty idea. Of course, I am being facetious. The health care bill, in my opinion, is not a good idea. My last point is simply to urge my colleagues in the House to appreciate the fact that the Senate is not going to bail them out by cleaning up the Senate bill, which we already passed here, and they should not be voting for this legislation under the false assumption that somehow we are going to make all those changes in the Senate bill.

Mr. KYL. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Utah (Mr. Bennett).

Mr. KYL. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Utah (Mr. Bennett).

Mr. KYL. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Utah (Mr. Bennett).

Mr. KYL. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Utah (Mr. Bennett).

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, let me echo the comments of all my colleagues who have spoken to the issue. I think the comments Senator Warner just made summarize the issue very well and I will not repeat all those things. The translation of all this for our colleagues is--although I am not making the announcement--that I presume there will be no further formal action in the Senate tonight or tomorrow but that we will be laying down a modification of the amendment that was filed that would include modifications to the perimeter rule and perhaps other matters. We will have an opportunity to discuss that tomorrow, and there will be some opportunity to discuss that Monday, for those who perhaps have already left. In particular, I know some of my colleagues will not return until around 4:30 in the afternoon. I am not going to propound a unanimous-consent request, but I hope, in consultation with the two leaders, we could work out an arrangement whereby at least some of the time on Monday can be reserved for a debate on the amendment that will be filed by, presumably, Senator Hutchison, myself, Senator Ensign and others and that part of that time will also be in the 4:30 to 5:30 timeframe. That is the time the leader has ordinarily set for the first vote, returning on Monday, and presumably there will be a unanimous- consent agreement with the leaders that will reflect the precise understanding of what vote or votes will occur on Monday night and when, but presumably it would fall within that timeframe that is customary. Just to conclude by saying I hope that as a result of the conversations we have had and will continue to have Monday and tomorrow, that we can lay the foundation for the establishment of a Senate position in the conference committee that would reflect a consensus and perhaps some compromise that would satisfy the interests of all. We are never going to outdo the fierceness with which both Senator Warners--Senator John Warner, who preceded, and now-Senator Mark Warner--fight for their constituents and for the interests of two national airports--in a sense representing us all. We certainly appreciate the single-mindedness with which now-Senator Mark Warner has pursued those interests but also his recognition that obviously times change, there are some needs for other parts of the country, and that through comity and conversation perhaps things can be worked out without having any detriment to anybody. That is obviously the goal we would seek to accomplish. In any event, we will have an amendment on the floor that can discuss this. Perhaps we will vote on it. In any event, the object will be to vote on final passage of the bill on Monday evening.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Utah (Mr. Bennett) and the Senator from Idaho (Mr. Crapo).

Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Utah (Mr. Bennett) and the Senator from Idaho (Mr. Crapo).

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Utah (Mr. Bennett).

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. I ask unanimous consent to speak for 15 minutes.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, we are going to be taking up the so-called HIRE Act starting tomorrow. I wish to address some of the problems with it since the procedure under which we have considered this bill does not allow any amendments. As a result, we have no opportunity to fix problems that are inherent with the bill and will force me to vote against it. The first provision that should be highlighted is the provision called the Build America Bonds. This was created first in the 2009 stimulus bill. It offers a direct subsidy from the Federal Government to States and other governmental entities to cover their cost of financing for certain kinds of projects. The House-passed bill expands this subsidy by allowing four current tax-preferred bonds to qualify for the direct subsidy under this program and increases the generosity of that subsidy to cover all of the borrowing costs for education projects. This will mean an expansion of the already substantial support the Federal Government offers for State and local governments, support for which we taxpayers are then responsible. The Federal Government gave $44 billion in extraordinary stimulus State aid last year and regularly spends $26 billion annually in sub-Federal Government subsidies through tax-exempt bond financing. This is a significant Federal expenditure for which taxpayers will be responsible. Here is the key problem, in addition to the additional exposure of taxpayers: Because interest rates reflect risks, States with poor credit ratings that therefore pay higher interest rates would actually be rewarded under this legislation due to the structure of these bonds. For example, a State that issues $1 billion worth of debt paying a 5- percent interest rate would receive a bigger direct payment from the Federal Government than a State issuing $1 billion worth of debt paying a 4-percent interest rate. Thus, States with lower credit ratings could receive larger subsidies, which, of course, encourages greater risk- taking and creates an incentive for States to issue even more debt than they would have without the subsidy. The so-called jobs bill would further reward States with poor credit. The Senate version of the bill expands the Build America Bonds program by giving insurers of certain tax credit bonds for school construction and alternative energy projects the option of receiving direct payment of up to 65 percent of the interest cost. The House bill would, in certain cases, reimburse up to 100 percent of a project's interest costs. The original Build America Bonds program encouraged States to take greater risks. The bill we will consider tomorrow would make the problem even worse. One of the lessons from the financial crisis is that people should not borrow more than they can afford. Unfortunately, it appears many of us have not taken this lesson to heart. There is a provision relating to highway extension. Rather than being a straight extension of the current highway authorization, this bill represents a significant expansion of the Federal Government's funding for highway projects. The highway piece first cancels rescissions that were scheduled under the last highway reauthorization. It then permanently increases the authorization levels for highway spending and permanently authorizes interest payments from the general fund to the highway trust fund and authorizes a one-time transfer of $19.5 billion from the general fund to the highway trust fund. Although not all of these costs will show up as increasing the deficit because of the unique CBO scoring conventions, all told, the highway extension under this bill will add $46.5 billion to the debt over the next 10 years and will authorize $142.5 billion in additional spending over the next 10 years. You hear the President talking about not adding to the deficit. All of our colleagues wring their hands and say: We have to somehow control Federal spending. Yet in this legislation we take up tomorrow we add $46.5 billion to the debt over the next 10 years and then authorize an additional $142.5 billion of spending over the next 10 years. When will it stop? There is a provision of the bill that has some merit to it. It is called the payroll tax holiday, although I think the way it has been constructed is not something we should do. This is the most expensive piece of the bill. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office has told us that it expects a provision similar to this to create five to nine jobs for each million dollars in budgetary cost in 2010. Since this provision would cost approximately $13 billion by using the CBO model, one would estimate that the provision would create between 65,000 and 117,000 jobs this year at a cost of $110,000 to $200,000 per job. This sounds a lot like the stimulus bill to me, a very inefficient way to create jobs, if, in fact, they actually get created. The proposed payroll tax holiday comes on the heels of the Senate- passed health care bill which actually increases the Medicare payroll tax from 2.9 percent to 3.8 percent. This actually would relieve employers of an element of the payroll tax. So which is it? Do we agree that payroll taxes that are increased are unhelpful to job creation? According to Timothy Bartik of the Economic Policy Institute: The employer tax credit in the Senate jobs bill is likely to create few jobs and at an excessively high cost. As I have said, up to $200,000 per job. He explains it this way: Awarding credits for hires can be very expensive. Over a one-year period, the number of hires, as a percentage of total private employment, is over 40 percent even during a recession. To pay for hires that would have occurred anyway will be expensive and won't necessarily increase total private sector employment. The Schumer-Hatch design tries to avoid some of these large costs in several ways. First, credits are limited to hiring the unemployed, apply only to the rest of 2010, and are only worth 6.2 percent of the new hire's payroll costs. The retention bonus is of modest size and delayed. While these limits control costs, they also hamper the credit's benefits. Limiting the credit to hiring someone unemployed at least 60 days makes the credit less attractive to employers. Not only does the credit become more complicated to claim (which reduces its effectiveness), but it restricts the employer's hiring to a more limited pool of workers. Bartik also explains that past experiences--for example, with the targeted jobs tax credit, the work opportunities tax credit, and the welfare-to-work tax credit--show that tax credits to encourage hiring disadvantaged workers usually generate little employer interest and have a negligible effect upon employer behavior. He says: Employers are happy to claim such credits, if they happen to meet the credit's rules, but they are reluctant to change their behavior in response to such targeted tax credits. So even the one provision of the bill that actually has some alleged relationship to job creation probably would not and, to the extent it does, would cost an extraordinary amount of money per job actually created. Let me turn to one of the ways in which these expenses are allegedly offset: delaying the application of the so-called worldwide interest allocation. This is a very bad idea. This delays implementing a corporate tax reform we passed in 2004 in order to help American businesses properly account for their overseas income and, frankly, be more competitive with those abroad. The worldwide interest allocation rules were originally improved as part of the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004, as I said, and were scheduled to take effect in 2009. However, the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 delayed the effectiveness of these rules by 2 years to 2011. The Worker, Homeownership, and Business Assistance Act of 2009 that extended the first-time home buyer tax credit further delayed the effectiveness of these rules to 2018. The so-called jobs bill would delay this provision through the end of the existing budget window to 2021. Repeated delays have the same effect as repeal: an increase in the effective corporate tax rate. As I said, that does nothing to help our American businesses in their desire to compete overseas. So these are just some of the reasons why I am not going to be able to support the HIRE Act, and I would urge my colleagues, since we are not going to have an opportunity to amend it, to oppose it as well. Might I ask, Mr. President, how much time I have remaining?

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I wish to address now the health care legislation we passed in the Senate and that is pending over in the House of Representatives. There is a news report that Democrats are going to use the strangest of all procedural tactics to try to pass the Senate health care bill over in the House of Representatives, and this is against a backdrop of a lot of strange things--the use of the reconciliation process, all the backroom deals that result in the various benefits for various Senators and Representatives--we have heard so much about. It almost seems Democratic leaders view the views of their constituents as an obstacle to be overcome, and every time the polls show even more opposition to the legislation, they decide to try even more clever ways of getting around their constituents' views--wheeling and dealing, backdoor legislation--but nothing quite as brazen, I guess I would say, as the process we now see developing. This is a process I became familiar with as a Member of the Senate--not when I was in the House of Representatives because I do not believe it was ever used then, although it might have been and I was not aware of it. But it is a process by which House of Representatives Members can actually say they have passed a piece of legislation without ever voting on it. You might say: That does not quite comport with what I learned in eighth grade civics class, and you would be right. We all know the only way a President can sign a bill is if identical versions of legislation pass both the House and the Senate. Well, the House does not want to have to vote on the Senate health care bill because, as the Speaker of the House said: ``Nobody wants to vote for the Senate bill.'' So now what they have done is concoct a way you can actually pass the bill without ever voting for it, and it is by including the substantive Senate-passed bill into the rule that as a procedural matter the House votes on to consider each measure. So as a rule to consider the reconciliation bill is brought to the House floor, it would contain a provision that would deem the Senate-passed bill passed, even though the House Members would never vote on it. That is wrong. It is probably unconstitutional. Any House Member who believes he or she can go home and say to their constituents: Well, I never voted for the Senate-passed bill is, frankly, not going to get away with it because, by voting for the rule, they will have voted for the Senate-passed bill. It seems to me this is the time for principled Members of the House of Representatives to stand and say: Enough. I may even somewhat like what we are trying to do with this health care legislation, but somebody has to stand for principle, and principle means, at a minimum, voting for legislation that you send to the President for his signature--not standing behind a rule which deems legislation to have been passed, even though it was never separately voted on. It seems to me, first of all, we should make it crystal clear we will make this famous to the American people, if in fact they decide to use this process--something that has never been used for a bill such as this before. This so-called deeming rule will become part of the lexicon of American political discourse, and people will come to know it, just like they did the House banking scandal and certain other things here in Washington, to represent a time period and a group of people who were willing to violate all rules of sensibility, of morality, as well as legality in order to try to accomplish ends that could not be accomplished in other ways. Nobody who votes for this rule and then later claims they did not have anything to do with passing this Senate bill is going to be able to get away with that. The American people will understand it. Frankly, whether they are sympathetic to the underlying health care legislation, they are not going to be sympathetic to Members of the House of Representatives who decide to do this kind of end run, this sort of scheme to deem a bill passed that has never been separately voted on in that body. I hope the health care legislation we have now debated for a year can stand or fall on its merits. The American people have made it clear they do not want this legislation. Twenty-five percent do, but seventy- three percent have said either stop altogether or stop and start over. That is what we should be doing. Because of this wave of opposition by our constituents, our colleagues in the House should not try to get around that by using a procedure that is totally inappropriate to the purpose.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, might I make a parliamentary inquiry: Is there more time remaining on the Republican side?

Mr. KYL. Thank you, Mr. President. What I would like to do, until Senator Grassley arrives--I first ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a letter from Gov. Janice K. Brewer of Arizona, dated March 10, 2010, to President Barack Obama.

Mr. KYL. Let me briefly describe the reason for this request. Arizona is suffering, as are other States, from the economic downturn. We have an unemployment rate now that has more than doubled. In fact, it has gone from 3.6 percent in June of 2007 to 9.2 percent this month. Our State faces a $1.4 billion shortfall in the current fiscal year and a $3.2 billion shortfall for the next fiscal year, despite the fact that the Governor and the State legislature have imposed significant spending reductions. State revenues are down by 34 percent. Notwithstanding this, over 200,000 Arizonans have enrolled in the State's Medicaid Program, known as AHCCCS--which is our Arizona health Care Cost Containment System-- just since the beginning of 2009. That is nearly 20,000 new enrollees every month. The last thing, given these kinds of numbers, Washington should be doing is making the States' economic or fiscal problems even worse. Yet that is exactly what Governor Brewer says the Senate health care bill would do because it would require every State to expand its Medicaid Program. The Federal Government would foot the bill for 3 years. Then the States would have to help finance the expansion in 2017 and in subsequent years. She estimates the bill would increase the cost in Arizona by nearly $4 billion over the next 10 years. Making matters worse, the early expansion States--States such as Arizona that have already expanded Medicaid to cover the uninsured, as I noted--will actually get fewer Federal dollars than the States that have not yet expanded their Medicaid Programs, in effect punishing those who have tried to do the right things--the exact things Democrats have wanted in the health care bill. As she observed in her letter: Arizona taxpayers will have the misfortune to pay twice: once for [Arizona's] program and then once more for the higher match for other states. Additionally, States currently retain important flexibility in administering their Medicaid Programs so they are not caught off-guard as the economy changes. But as Governor Brewer notes, that flexibility would be eliminated under the Senate bill. She says: Under your proposal, more power is centralized in Washington, DC, and the states just become another financing mechanism. Not only will states be forced to pay for this massive new entitlement program, but our ability to control the costs of our existing program will be limited. These policies are simply not sustainable, and will result in a greater burden on state budgets and state taxpayers. Mr. President, since I put the letter in the Record, I will not reflect further on it but note the fact that this is yet one more reason for Members to oppose the Senate-passed bill in the House.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Utah (Mr. Bennett).

Mr. KYL. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Utah (Mr. Bennett).

Mr. KYL. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Utah (Mr. Bennett).

Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Utah (Mr. Bennett) and the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Shelby).

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I wish to pick up on the comments of my colleague, the Republican leader. There is another distressing story in the paper today reported by the Associated Press. They report that all of the special deals that last week the President said he was going to try to remove from the legislation, now--except for the ``Cornhusker kickback''--they are going to leave them in there because they need the votes. If that is correct, this process is even sicker than we thought it was. Part of the reason for the Democratic leadership using the reconciliation provision to fix the Senate bill was to take all of these special provisions out, but now it appears, according to the Associated Press, that they are going to be kept in there because they need the votes. Let me detail what a couple of these are. Last week, there was a story in Politico that detailed six specific items. Of course, there was the ``Cornhusker kickback'' that got such bad publicity and everybody agreed it had to go, including the Senator who voted for the legislation after he was promised that in his State there would be no cost for the coverage of additional Medicaid patients. Now that is apparently going to be ``fixed,'' at great expense, I might add, to the taxpayers of the United States, but apparently unfixed are six other items, and there are more, by the way. Quote: ``We have defended it and we will defend it,'' said Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, whose state picked up $600 million in extra Medicaid funding . . . Again, I am quoting from a March 10 Politico story. Second: In a letter to congressional leaders last week, Obama targeted the Nebraska and Florida deals for elimination. The Florida provision could also shield some seniors in California, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, according to Senator Bill Nelson's office. This provision deals with Medicare patients. The reason it is important to me is because there are 330,000-plus Arizona seniors who have Medicare Advantage plans. These are the plans that would suffer under the legislation proposed by the President. Because they would have benefits they currently enjoy taken away from them, the seniors in all of the States are obviously complaining to their Senators. So Democrats have said: Well, OK, if seniors are upset about having these benefits taken away, then we will shield the seniors in our States who have these Medicare Advantage policies so that they don't have to give up their benefits--the biggest set of beneficiaries, and there are over 800,000 of them in the State of Florida but apparently also some in California, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. All right. Special deal for them. If this bill, by the way, is so great, why do we have to protect our citizens from its provisions? But that is the way it works. However, my senior citizen constituents in Arizona don't get grandfathered as do those in other States. It just shows you how bad the bill policy is in the area generally that you have to protect your constituents from suffering the effects of the bill but also the bad policy that does that to the detriment of other constituencies. Apparently, now that is going to stay in the bill. Then there was the so-called ``Louisiana purchase,'' $300 million to Louisiana. Then there was the $1.1 billion in extra Medicaid funding to Massachusetts and Vermont. This Politico article quotes Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont: What I told Harry Reid is that Vermont does the right thing, and I don't want Vermont to be penalized for doing the right thing. Of course, that is the kind of argument that is made in response to provisions in the bill that are bad provisions because they hurt the people in your State. But the solution is not to exempt your State's constituents from the bad effects of the bill. Don't pass the bill. It is a bad bill. Here is a fifth example. There is a $100 million hospital grant program requested by our colleague from Connecticut, Senator Dodd, ``who has acknowledged that the University of Connecticut would qualify for the money.'' Here is a sixth one that is being promoted by the chairman of the Finance Committee, Senator Baucus, on behalf of the residents of Libby, MT. There is another one not mentioned here, but I am aware of it. It protects two insurance companies--Blue Cross/Blue Shield and Mutual of Omaha in Nebraska, again at the request of the Senator from Nebraska. I believe there is another company in the State of Wisconsin protected. My point is, first, if this bill is so wonderful, why do we have to have all these separate carve-outs, special deals, for Representatives or for constituents in the States of certain Democrats in order, presumably, in the House of Representatives, to help the Speaker of the House get her vote total up to where she can actually pass the bill? Why don't we just fix the bill in the first place so none of these bad effects are visited on the constituents whom I represent, for example, or anybody else's constituents for that matter? At a minimum, the President should follow through on his plan last week to try to get these provisions out of the bill. It turns out now that apparently this week, according to David Axlerod, during the rotations of the Sunday morning talk shows he was on, that is no longer part of the plan. The last thing I would like to do is comment briefly on a Washington Post column by Robert Samuelson this morning. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a Washington Post column by Robert Samuelson.