Trent Lott

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I reserved the right to object to make sure I understand what the request is.

Mr. LOTT. Further reserving the right to object.

Mr. LOTT. I will yield to the Senator from Idaho.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, if I could, I object. I think we can work this out. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, as soon as she completes her statement, we can go back and get this worked out.

Mr. LOTT. Will the distinguished Senator yield for a question?

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I am very interested in what the Senator has to say. Are you telling me that if I am in Mississippi and I want to buy a health insurance policy in South Carolina, I cannot do that?

Mr. LOTT. What is the possible explanation for that, or justification?

Mr. LOTT. Absolutely.

Mr. LOTT. I certainly agree. I thank the Senator for bringing this to the attention of the Senate.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I ask only that the Senator include in his request that Senator Coburn have 5 minutes before his vote, which is the first in the group.

Mr. LOTT. Madam President, reserving the right to object, and I will not object, I wish to inquire, have we gotten an agreement in place for when the next block of votes could come?

Mr. LOTT. I do not object.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I don't believe there is any other Senator wishing to speak right now, so I will rise in support of the amendment by the Senator from Nevada, Mr. Ensign. I believe that Senator Baucus, Senator Grassley, Senator Hatch, and those who put together this compromise did want to try to begin to get some control on the explosion of this program. But there are a lot of others who don't want to do that. They want it to go the other way. Yes, the administration is to blame for a lot of the problems here. They granted the waivers for these States, and they shouldn't have. They started granting waivers for higher and higher and higher income children to be covered, for adults to be covered--and not just pregnant mothers but parents and, in some States, even beyond that. As I have said before, there is no ``A'' in SCHIP. It is the State Children's Health Insurance Program--for children, SCHIP as we refer to it here in this Chamber. But I do have every reason to believe there are many who fully intend for this program, the CHIP program, to be the program that covers not only low-income children, middle-income children, but all-income children and adults. That is the goal here. I voted for this program 10 years ago because I thought there was a need to make sure that truly low-income children had access to health care. A lot of them were not covered, obviously, by private insurance or Medicaid, and I thought there was a need to address this particular area. But it is like so many Washington programs; once they get started, they never end. And once they get started, they grow and grow and grow. Who is going to help get a grip on this program? Who is going to pay for this program? This is a $60 billion, 5-year program this bill would provide for--the underlying bill. The House just passed a bill that I think is close to at least $80 billion over the next 5 years. They pay for it in the House partially by taxes but also by cutting Medicare. So we are taking elderly off of the Medicare Program so we can put more money into the SCHIP program not just for low-income children but for middle-income children and for adults. I think the Senator is absolutely right. Let us make sure these States provide at least 95 percent of what they are supposed to supply to the low-income children before any adults can get in it. Yes, they will have to take adults off. Exactly. They should have to. They should have never put them on there. Now, again, I acknowledge we are hopeful this bill will begin to get this under control. It does take away the waiver that is being used, and has been abused by this administration. But I cannot believe that Senators are ignoring the fact that this program is being exploded, covering people who were never intended to be covered, and paying for it by damaging low-income people or elderly people. I am glad we have this amendment. If we could at least get the adults off this program, even if it does cover some increased level of children below the 200 percent of poverty, I could see that it would be more acceptable. But that is not what this does. I fear what is going to happen in conference. I don't know, maybe the Senator from Montana and Senator Grassley can sit there and say, oh, no, no, no, we are not going above what we passed in the Senate. But I think the reverse is going to be true. This is the base. The $60 billion is the beginning. It is obvious, if you have a classic conference, which we are not going to have, and we are at $60 billion and the House is at $80 billion, what is it going to be? Oh, $70 billion. That is the way it works around here. That is the way it used to work, although we don't have conferences anymore now. We dished up a product such as we had on this lobbying and ethics fiasco a while ago. I don't know how we get through this and help the people we want to help, intend to help, and keep it from covering more and more children and more and more adults. If we want to go to Washington bureaucratic- controlled and managed health care, if we want to go ahead and go to Government-run socialistic medicine, fine, this is it. This is the way it is going to happen. A few years ago, there was an attempt to come in the front door and say, oh, no, we are only going to provide free health care to everybody. It failed miserably, right here. And by the way, it failed in August of that year, I believe it was 1993. Well, here we are coming through the back door this time. And incredibly, even my colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle are buying this deal. I will be back. I don't know whether I will be on the floor of the Senate, but I will be back in years to come and say, I warned you. This thing is going to continue to grow. It won't be $60 billion, $70 billion, or $80 billion, it will be $140 billion over 10, or more. I appreciate the amendment Senator Ensign came up with. I support it, and I hope we can pass it. And I wish the managers good luck in trying to keep control of this thing. If you pull it off, even though I still think you have way too big a program here, I will be first in line to congratulate you if you can hold it to where it is now. I yield the floor.

Mr. LOTT

Mr. LOTT. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Brownback) and the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain).

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

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

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I thank the managers of the legislation for allowing me to go forward with this alternative amendment at this time. I think it is important on an issue of this nature that we have a full discussion and amendments offered and debated and voted on. That helps us get to a conclusion on a major piece of legislation such as this without it turning into a late-night ugly session. This alternative is intended to show we fully intend to be supportive of the SCHIP program--the program for children's health insurance--and we want it to be done in a responsible way and in a way that actually increases funding to make sure the children it wants to cover are actually covered. This is an effort of good faith to come up with an alternative that I think is better, in many ways, than the underlying Baucus and others legislation. I have, on two previous occasions, indicated that part of my big problem is the pattern of the coverage going up and up, to the point where States that have waivers now, and under the underlying bill, middle-income children would be covered, and that we are on a steady march to say all children ought to be covered regardless of income. I think that is a mistake. I think it is unaffordable. It will lead to disruptions, and it will lead to significant tax increases, or it will start to put our children against the parents. The way the House proposes to pay for this underlying bill is to go after funds in the Medicare Program. At least this bill doesn't do that, but it does pay for the increases with tax increases--yes, tobacco tax increases, but still tax increases which, in my opinion, are not going to be achievable and which will leave a huge hole in the funding. So what we do in the alternative is to direct our attention at the core mission, which is low-income children--not adults, not middle- income children. We pay for it in a way that would equalize this Medicaid coverage in our States. So I think overall it is a very good alternative. We have a number of Senators who are cosponsors of the legislation and would like to speak on it as we go forward this morning and into the afternoon. Again, we all support reauthorization of the so-called SCHIP program, and we want to ensure that children have access to good, quality health care insurance. How you do it is the difference. We have come up with a different alternative that does it better because it puts kids first. It makes sure we take care of the kids, not an ever-growing list of kids and not a lot of adults. I think you have to do it in a fiscally responsible way so we don't have huge holes develop in the outyears. One of the problems in the underlying bill is that down the road, in 6 years or so--and before that, in my opinion--the numbers are not going to add up. We will not have the income we were going to have, and there will be an explosion of the costs that are involved. So I think we should pay attention to the impact not just next year, or in 5 years, but it will be the situation in 7 or 8 years. That is what this bill does. We have heard talk in the last couple of days from our friends on other side of this issue that they are concerned about the insurance for kids. I believe that, but that will be done in this bill. Let me tell you why. Under the Kids First amendment we sent to the desk, 1.5 million more children will be covered under SCHIP in 2017 than under the Baucus bill. Yes, that is a long way down the road, but the truth of the matter is we need to look at these programs over a 10-year period, not just the 5 years, because the commitments we make in that 5 years will continue to go up. We need to think about what is going to be the impact. You heard it right. It would cover actually more children in 2017. The Kids First bill will cover 3.6 million children. The Baucus bill will cover 2.1 million children in the SCHIP program. The Kids First bill actually spends more money than the Baucus bill. You heard that right. We increase SCHIP spending by $9.3 billion over the next 5 years, expanding coverage to 1.3 million new children. Because the Kids First Act doesn't rely on any kind of budget gimmicks, as the underlying bill does, we can actually spend more on SCHIP over the budget window than the underlying bill does. I think it is important we focus on honest budgeting. I realize honest budgeting is quite often in the eye of the beholder, but I don't think anybody would deny there are budget problems with the underlying bill. The Baucus bill has a long-term budget point of order against it, meaning that over the long-term it will significantly increase the budget deficit. The reason for this is the budget bill relies on the declining revenue. When you have the amount of increase on tobacco products included in the underlying bill--61 cents a pack for cigarettes and, of course, the same application to other tobacco products, including cigars--you are going to get less revenue than you project. People will not be able to afford it. They are going to change their habits. Some people would say that is going to be good for health. OK. I am not a big advocate of smoking, even though I smoke a pipe privately. Nobody here has ever seen me do that. I think we have to be honest about what is going to be the impact the next 5 years. This will also contribute to an increase in Medicaid costs because the Baucus bill reduces SCHIP funding in those outyears, and CBO assumes those kids will have to be moved to Medicaid. That is part of what is going to be happening. More children will be under SCHIP under the bill and more children will be on Medicaid and more children will be coming off private health insurance. I don't think we want to do at least two out of those three things. So I think it is important we cover the children in the low-income area and that we cover more children. That is what this alternative does. This amendment doesn't have a dime in tax increase to pay for it. It would not be subject to a point of order. Then it does a couple of other very important things. Unfortunately, last year, we never could get action on the associated health plans, the small business health plans. We were so close, and yet because of some objections, perhaps legitimately, that the sponsors could not agree on, we did not give this opportunity to small business women and men to cover more of their employees, and they would like to. I talk to small business men and women. They don't understand why they cannot form groups and provide coverage to these low-income, entry-level workers, a lot of times unwed mothers, high school dropouts. For the life of me, I cannot understand why we do not give that option. It would probably be a way that 10 to 20 million more working adults could get coverage. We do include in the bill the small business health plans. We also include important health savings accounts reforms and provide for a study of ways to increase health insurance coverage through reforms to our Tax Code to enhance tax equity. The Kids First Act is an amendment that all my colleagues, Republicans and Democrats, should support. The amendment enrolls millions more kids in SCHIP than the underlying bill and does it in a fiscally responsible way and avoids budget points of order. It will not expand Medicaid spending. I urge my colleagues to actually take a look at this legislation. We have spent a long time coming up with it. I actually thought this was probably the bill that would come out of the Finance Committee when we started. We had bipartisan meetings. We talked about, OK, do we want to do this health insurance program for children? Yes, we do. How much do we want to do, and how are we going to pay for it? Of course, there were those in the beginning who said: No, we need a lot more than this. We need an increase of $50 billion or more. I know the Senator from Massachusetts, Mr. Kerry, feels strongly about that point. He made his point legitimately. He said: Should we just decide how many we want to cover and don't worry about the cost and just do it? No, I think we also have to worry about the cost of these programs and how it is going to be paid for, who pays for it. One of the things that worries me because we have this gap in the outyear funding--we have had pictures of children on the floor of the Senate. I have some grandchildren I worry a lot about--a 9-year-old grandson and two little girls, just under 6, and one 3. My daughter is a working mom full time, partially so her family can have insurance coverage, and her husband is a small businessman, an entrepreneur. It is not easy working full time as a mom, having two children, and dealing with other issues she really cares about, such as charitable activities. I worry about them. She is working to make sure they have this coverage, but I am worried they are going to be saddled with the cost of this extra coverage. So let's do what we can affordably while complying with the underlying core mission of making sure that low-income children have access to this coverage. Generally speaking, my daughter and her husband would be considered middle-income Americans. That is what they would consider themselves. Yet they are having to work to get the coverage they want and barely making it so that others can have coverage who are making probably almost as much money as they are. I don't know, the way things are going, they might be eligible for this program. I don't think they should be. Common sense is what is called for. We have a long way to go. There is no question the House bill is going to be much larger and funded in a much worse way. By putting down this marker, giving Members a legitimate alternative that a lot of Senators have been involved in, is a good way to go. I urge Members to support this alternative. I yield the floor. Mr. McCONNELL addressed the Chair.

Mr. LOTT. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Brownback), the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn), the Senator from Minnesota (Mr. Coleman), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain), the Senator from Alaska (Mr. Stevens), the Senator from New Hampshire (Mr. Sununu), the Senator from Ohio (Mr. Voinovich), and the Senator from Virginia (Mr. Warner). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Minnesota (Mr. Coleman) would have voted ``nay.''

Mr. LOTT. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Brownback) and the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain).

Mr. LOTT. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Brownback) and the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain).

Mr. LOTT. Madam President, the Baucus bill we have before us is a $35 billion increase over the current $25 billion, a $60 billion bill. Our Kids First alternative amendment targets children. SCHIP does not have an A in it. We should not move steadily toward more and more higher income children and adults being included in the program. This one is targeted to children. The cost is $9 billion above the $25 billion in the baseline. It will cover an additional 1.3 million children over the next 5 years. This 40-percent increase would maintain children currently enrolled and insure 2.2 million more children by 2017 than is in the underlying Baucus bill. It also includes the small business health plans, which I believe would lead to the coverage of an additional 10 or 20 million people who work for small businesses that now cannot get coverage. There is no tax increase in this provision. It is paid for by equalizing the State match for Medicaid administrative expenses at 50 percent.

Mr. LOTT. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. LOTT. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Brownback) and the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain).