Christopher Murphy

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Thank you, Mr. Ryan, Mr. Altmire. And let's just talk about health care during that 6-year period in which the Republicans controlled every piece of the apparatus down here in Washington. By allowing them to set a health care agenda for this country which made a really good deal with the insurance companies and the drug companies and a lot of the for-profit health care entities, what we saw over that decade of time, where the Republicans were driving the agenda here in Washington, was for businesses in my district and in your district, 120 percent increase in the amount of money that they were paying for health care. Now, it would have been nice if revenues for those same companies were going up by the same percentage, but they weren't. Revenues couldn't keep pace with the health care inflation that businesses, many of them small mom and pop shops, manufacturers that maybe employed only 10 or 20 people, it couldn't keep up with the rising costs of health care. And so businesses went under. We lost manufacturing and industrial capacity to countries overseas that spend half as much as we do on health care, and approach it in a very different way. Workers during that same period of time saw their wages remain largely flat because every bit of extra money that the company that they worked for made went straight into health care costs. For small businesses it was even worse. During that same time, as insurance companies gathered and gathered more power by virtue of the I think very, very bad decisions made here in Washington, small businesses ended up paying about 20 percent more than large businesses did, forcing more of them to go out of business. Our health care system got worse and worse and worse, and it contributed in a bigger and bigger way to the recession that we find ourselves in today. We have got to wake up to the fact that when you hand a health care system over to the insurance companies and the drug companies, when you write a Medicare drug benefit bill that essentially guarantees lifetime profits for the insurance and drug companies, while passing down the bill to regular Americans, while you ignore the festering problems in Medicare so that you push more and more of the problem back ultimately onto businesses who are going to have to front the cost for an increased Medicare budget, you are crippling our economy. The Republican health care agenda here in this House over the course of the last decade, and what continues to be their agenda, is part and parcel of what got us into this economic mess, Mr. Ryan. We can tell the story from the handing of the reins of economic power by the Republicans over to the banks and to the Wall Street lending community. We can tell the story with regard to our energy prices that are also crippling our economy, as we handed over the power of our energy policy to the big oil companies. But you can absolutely tell the story of where we are today with respect to our economy through the lens of the health care policy that the Republicans perpetrated on this Congress and on this country for almost a decade, and would like to bring us back to if they were ever to get control of this place again. That is part of the story.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. We could have ideological differences over an issue like health care or energy policy, but what maybe was the most remarkable to me over the course of the last year was to see that divide between Republicans and Democrats happen on the issue of financial regulatory reform. I mean when I am back in my district, you know I certainly got people who are on both sides of the energy debate, and on both sides of the health care debate, but boy, almost everybody I run into, with maybe the exception of a few people who are commuting back and forth to high-priced jobs in New York, say you got to step up to the plate and stop these Wall Street investment banks from going back and doing the same things that they did to us regular, average everyday Joes over the course of the last decade. You got to go in and fix the problem of derivatives. You have to go in and stop these institutions from becoming so highly leveraged that they cause catastrophic failure of themselves and the entire system. Go back and fix this for us. When I got sworn in maybe I was a little bit naive this year. I thought, yeah, we are going to have some knock down, drag them out fights on a couple of issues, but I bet you this Congress is going to come together and rein in the abuses and the excesses on Wall Street. Well, we are even fighting over that. The Republicans don't want to join us and try to curb the real abuses on Wall Street. And if they do, they kind of want to do it with a little patch here and a little Band- Aid here when President Obama said step up and listen, to the extent we are sending money to these banks to try to keep the economy afloat, well then we should ask them to help pay it back with a fee on the big banks. Republicans ran out and opposed that as well. I mean, listen, we represent very similar districts. We have got a lot of Republicans, a lot of Democrats, a lot of liberals, conservatives. I get that they are going to fight on things, but there has got to be some fundamental issues to how we institute some fairness back in our economy and stick up for the little guy against these big Wall Street banks that have caused so much of this trouble. There has got to be places that we can agree on. And I guess as you talk about past is prologue, you know, I think we are in for a lot of fights when it comes to sticking up for the little guy because it seems like there is only one group here, Mr. Altmire, that is fighting those fights.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor the life and work of Mr. Arnold Minicucci of Watertown, Connecticut. For the last 59 years, Arnold Minicucci has been the proud owner and manager of Minicucci's Incorporated, a menswear clothier and downtown mainstay in Waterbury, Connecticut. This coming January, he will retire and close the store he took over from his father more than a half- century ago, ending one of Waterbury's most beloved and long-tenured businesses. After returning from service during World War I, Arnold's father founded Minicucci's in Waterbury in 1919 as a maker of custom men's suits. Upon his return from service in the Navy during World War II, Arnold joined his father's business in 1946 and became full owner of the store four years later, transitioning the establishment into a retail suit seller. Soon thereafter, Arnold moved the store from East Main Street to its present location at 52 Bank Street. Throughout its history, Minicucci's has served mayors and governors alike, with loyal customers whose relationship with the store can be measured in decades. Anyone who's spent any time living or working in Waterbury knows Arnold and his beloved wife, Mary, both of whom were born and married in the Brass City. They are true pillars of the community: former chairs of the Cancer Ball, long-serving members of the Immaculate Conception Church and the Exchange Club, and a driving force behind the construction of the Little League Stadium, to name but a few of their strong ties to Waterbury. Every one of Arnold's hundreds of friends and loyal customers who attend his retirement party early next year will receive a silver money clip engraved with the words ``Minicucci's 1919-2009.'' That night, all those that have been touched by Arnold's work will celebrate him and his family's business. But, amidst the celebration, there will also be a palpable pang of sorrow--that they don't make businesses like Minicucci's anymore. Or men like Arnold Minicucci.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Madam Speaker, I have come to the floor tonight to speak about an issue important to my home State. As you can see by the 1-minute speeches given here earlier tonight to this entire Nation, Connecticut pioneered America's shipbuilding and aerospace industries. Shops which were once bustling with workers are now silent. When those shops went away, thousands of good-paying jobs for hardworking people in my State went away with them. We just learned recently that Connecticut will lose another 1,000 jobs when a major defense supplier shutters two of its facilities and moves its operations to Singapore and Japan. At this moment, 158,000 people in my State and almost 16 million across this country are out of work--many of those as a result of the transfer of military manufacturing jobs overseas. At the same time, the Department of Defense and other Federal agencies have created thousands of waivers of our domestic sourcing legislation, like the Buy American Act, which has resulted in billions of taxpayer dollars being sent to overseas companies. Now, in working with a group of Members who is dedicated to shoring up the rules that require the government to purchase domestically, I've been drafting legislation which will seek to address the growing number of loopholes that allow companies to take taxpayer dollars overseas. My legislation would begin to reorient and to build up our domestic manufacturing and construction base, which has been hit so hard in recent times, by using taxpayer dollars to do it. Taxpayer dollars are already going to buy, too often, overseas products. We don't seek to interfere with the decisions of private businesses. We do, however, seek to make it clear that the U.S. Government values American-made products and that taxpayer money shouldn't be shipped off to a foreign country to contribute to the bottom line of that foreign company when American businesses can produce the same high-quality goods right here at home. I believe strongly in international trade, and I accept the necessity of an interdependent global economy. However, what we are discussing here is not just economics, and it is not simply a race to find the lowest price. It is about national security. It is especially about national security with regard to the Department of Defense. A stable supply of domestically manufactured defense products is imperative to this Nation's long-term safety and common defense. We have a real opportunity here to both reinvigorate our domestic capacity for manufacturing while enhancing our national security. With that in mind, I, along with a group of Members, am crafting legislation which will seek to assist firms that are victims of the loopholes in our current Buy American and Buy America regime. This legislation will target assistance to suppliers that manufacture or that could manufacture products that Federal agencies have deemed nonavailable from domestic sources, which is a misleading designation. Under current law, an agency can determine that an item is nonavailable in sufficient quantity or quality in the United States and then can just waive the Buy American restrictions. Therefore, the assistance in my legislation will target firms that make these nonavailable items right here in the United States but that might not have the capacity right now to meet the agency's needs. These firms will use this assistance to increase their capacity so that they can be the suppliers to the American Government rather than ceding that ground to foreign firms. It will also assist suppliers that manufacture an item which is currently being bought through the Buy American provisions. If that firm is in danger of going out of business, then let's step up and help it stay in business because the only place that we are left to go after that firm folds is to a foreign supplier. Madam Speaker, my colleagues came to this House floor earlier tonight to talk about the major Federal tanker contract which is going to a foreign supplier--Airbus. It is just one example. It is a major example of a growing trend in defense work going overseas. We have had enough. It is time for us as a Congress to deem this unacceptable, to strengthen the Buy American provisions, and to bring our taxpayer dollars back home.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I ask those in this Chamber this evening to join me in a brief moment of silence. Thank you. The American Economy is Being Sent Overseas

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Madam Speaker, before I address the issue which has brought me to the floor tonight, I want to recognize the ultimate sacrifice made by a young man from my district in the service of the United States Marine Corps. I am sad to report that my office received news last week that Marine Corporal Xhacob LaTorre, from Waterbury, Connecticut died due to wounds received in combat in the Helmand province of Afghanistan. Corporal LaTorre's fatal injuries were the result of a roadside bomb. I speak for myself and for my constituents in expressing my appreciation for this young man's service in the defense of his country. Corporal LaTorre, who would have turned 22 last weekend, is one of America's heroes. I send my prayers and my condolences to his family; to his wife, Frances; to his son; and to his brother, Corporal Daniel LaTorre, on this tragic loss. We will never forget the sacrifice he has made for us. Moment of Silence

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to celebrate the life of author and educator Frank McCourt. As many know, Frank McCourt died on July 19 at the age of 78. As an author, he was best known for his best-selling series of memoirs, including the Pulitzer-prize winning 1996 work Angela's Ashes. Years before he became a literary icon, however, he was best known among thousands of New York City high school students as a passionate and committed teacher, holding his classes spellbound with his rapturous stories. But to me, and to so many others who call Northwest Connecticut home, he was a friend. While Frank was an Irishman and a New York City native to the last, it was in Roxbury, Connecticut, that he spent years with his beloved wife, Ellen, at his side. Frank was dearly-loved throughout his community as a warm, friendly neighbor who was always willing to roll up his sleeves and get involved in local causes and charities. The wit and generous spirit that defined his writing was familiar to anyone who knew Frank--he was a fiery, vital presence. Frank spent his life shaping young people's minds as a teacher and sharing his writings with the world. This resolution before us today is dedicated to his memory, and to Ellen and the McCourt family. On behalf of myself and Representative Courtney, who helped make this resolution possible, as well as the millions around the world whose lives he touched, Frank McCourt will be missed.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. This is not my line; I think others have said this, but this is a consumer takeover of the health care system. That is what this is. This is putting consumers and patients and regular, average, ordinary Americans back in charge. And people were angry about a lot of things when President Bush was in charge and the Republicans controlled the House and Senate. They were angry that it seemed like the oil companies were running our energy policy. They were angry that the banks seemed to get whatever they wanted when it came to financial policy. And they were angry that the insurance companies and drug companies seemed to get everything they wanted when it came to health care policy. And they had a pretty good examples, Mr. Ryan, why that happened. I will add to your list of all of the deficit increases over the course of the Republican control of this Congress. Medicare part D, the one time that this House of Representatives woke up and decided to legislate on health care, they did it in a way that guaranteed enormous profits for the insurance and drug industry, in particular by inserting a provision into the Medicare part D law that specifically prohibited the Federal Government from negotiating deep discounts on behalf of all Medicare beneficiaries against the drug companies. And they paid for it all by borrowing. So this sudden conversion to fiscal responsibility by the Republicans is pretty transparent to people that have been caring about health care for long enough to remember when Republicans came here, proposed and passed a Medicare drug benefit that was written by the drug and insurance industry and paid for by borrowing. So for all of those TEA baggers out there and all of those non-TEA partiers who are concerned about the deficits, this health care bill isn't just deficit neutral; it brings down the deficit by $30 billion over the course of 10 years. You can argue about the policy, but you can't argue with the CBO score. The Congressional Budget Office says that this bill, over the course of 10 years, will bring down the deficit, and actually tells us that in the second 10 years will bring down the deficit by even more, standing in contrast to the Republicans' sole effort at health care reform when they controlled this place, which handed more power to the industries that were running the joint to begin with, and did it all by borrowing. So, Mr. Ryan, it's the war, it's the tax cuts, but it's also the Republicans' policy on health care. And I don't have a lot of sympathy for our Republican friends who come down here and talk to us about the health care implications for the deficit. Our bill lowers the deficit. Their one attempt at health care reform massively increased the deficit.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Ryan, in Connecticut alone, our largest insurer, which insures over half the individuals in the State, announced earlier this year that they were going to be passing down a 30 percent premium increase to small businesses, small group plans and individuals--30 percent. It's beyond me to figure out how on Earth health care costs changed so much from last year to this year that you can justify a 30 percent increase, but from a small business standpoint, that causes thousands of small businesses to walk away and say, that's too much. My business in a recession is dropping, and you're asking me to pay 30 percent for one of my biggest line items? It causes individuals who were just being able to cobble together the money that they could to pay for insurance to walk away and say, listen, I have had my wages held flat this year. I can't go out and pay a 30 percent increase. And it causes our Republican friends to shutter their ears and close their eyes and pretend that all of those people and all of these employees who lose their health care because of the 30 percent increase are going to suddenly spend the rest of the year really, really super healthy and never need to get health care. They are going to get sick. Those employees are going to get sick. Those individuals who had to walk away from care because the premium increase was too high are going to get sick. And they are going to get so sick that they are going to end up in our emergency rooms. And then we are all going to pay for it. We are going to pay for it in higher taxes to subsidize emergency room care. We are going to pay for it in higher private premiums to make up for the uninsured that walk into the doors of those hospitals. And we are going to end up perpetuating our current system of sick care where we force people to go without insurance, wait until they are so sick that they show up at the emergency room for the most expensive, and frankly, most inhumane type of care, crisis care, which costs us all a lot more money in the long run, Mr. Ryan.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Thank you, Mr. Ryan. I thank you for convening us down here again. And I think you're right to focus on the issue of small businesses because that is where the problem has laid for a very long time. Small business men and women with a couple of employees, maybe 10, 15, 20 employees, they want to do the right thing. They want to provide insurance for their employees, but with the kind of margins that they face normally, and in particular with the kind of margins they are facing in this tough economy, combined with their inability to access capital from the lenders in their community who might be providing them with loans, means they don't have the room to provide health care. In my district, it prompted one individual, a brave small businessman named Kevin Galvin who had had his own experience with confronting our very backwards health care system when his daughter got very sick, and it forced that family to go through layers of bureaucracy and layers of appeals to try to get their own insurance company to cover her. He runs a small business in Connecticut, a maintenance company that employs a handful of people. And their margins are so small that he can't afford to provide insurance for his employees. Now he has gone through it, the tragedy of trying to cobble together the money and the insurance claims in order to pay for the care of a sick loved one. And so, it has ripped him apart that he can't provide insurance for his employees. So he decided to go out and do something about it. He decided to go out in Connecticut and organize small businesses around the State for health care reform. And his group, Small Businesses for Health Care Reform, centered in Connecticut, has thousands, thousands of members amongst the Connecticut small-business community, all rallied around our effort to provide relief for those small employers that desperately want to get health care for their employees but they can't. They can't in part of because of the margins that they have. They can't also because they, on average, as you pointed out, Mr. Ryan, are paying about 15 to 20 percent more in premiums than large businesses are. It is just a matter of simple economics. If you're bargaining with the insurance companies on premiums for only a handful of employees, you're just going to get a worse deal and have to pay a higher price than you will if you're a big business that has a couple hundred employees. And so he and his group see the genius in what we are trying to do here, which is to not erase the private market, not substitute our current health care system with some other country's health care system, not engage in what the cable news talk show hosts claim is a government takeover, but simply to make the existing market work better, to allow Kevin Galvin and his handful of employees to join together with all of those other small businesses who are in the same position with all of those other uninsured individuals and sole proprietors who are negotiating on behalf of only themselves, to put them all in a pool and to allow them to negotiate for lower premiums against the insurance companies with the kind of bulk purchasing power that we know works. So we have small businesses throughout Connecticut that are standing up and screaming for health care reform because they want to provide health care for their employees. And those that already are are being crushed by the weight of those premiums. So when they look at this bill, when they see the health care exchange pooling all of their purchasing power together, when they see the tax credits in the bill, that in my district alone, Mr. Ryan, are going to mean that 17,000 small businesses will now pay lower taxes because they are going to be able to offset their health care expenses against their tax obligation, they see a tremendous benefit. And if we want to point the way forward on the economic revitalization of this country, if we want to start to plot a real strategy about how we grow jobs, jobs in this country, small businesses are the solution. And picking up off of their shoulders the crushing weight of health care costs is one of the most effective strategies in allowing them to start growing jobs again, Mr. Ryan.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Listen, it's the reason, Mr. Ryan, why AARP has come out so strongly in favor of this bill, because they know that this is a good bill for seniors. Now, a lot of Democrats disagreed with the fact that AARP came out and supported the Medicare prescription drug bill when it did, but it, frankly, shows that this is a group that, when they think it's right for seniors, is going to support it whether it's a Republican or Democrat proposal. Because I've heard a lot of Republicans and conservative talk show hosts come out and say, Well, the AARP endorsement doesn't mean anything. They're friendly to Democrats. Well, they endorsed the Medicare prescription drug benefit, which was, I think, voted on almost solely by Republicans. So whether we agree or disagree with their support for that, they've played both sides of this debate. But AARP supports this bill because it gets rid of the doughnut hole. Now it takes a little while to fully get rid of it, but on day one after this bill is passed, the size of the doughnut hole gets reduced by $500, and for every senior that walks into the pharmacy when you're in that moment of exposure, the cost of a brand name drug is going to be cut in half. Every single brand name drug for seniors in the doughnut hole gets cut by 50 percent immediately with the passage of this bill. When you walk in to get your checkup, no longer does any senior have to come up with money out of their pocket. Medicare is going to pay for that now, because we know it just makes sense to have no barriers to preventative health care for seniors. So AARP, joining the American Medical Association, joining Consumer Reports, joining dozens of other specialty physician groups out there, has supported this legislation because they see the benefit for that senior that you're talking about on Medicare part D and millions more.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I will just add one last thing, Mr. Ryan. The people we're talking about--you know, the stories that we're telling, I don't think you or I know whether these people that have approached us are Republicans or Democrats. I have no idea whether that guy who had to drain his entire college savings watches MSNBC or watches FOX News. I have no idea because health care crises, health care-caused bankruptcies strike Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, people on the left and people on the right. This is a nonpartisan, nonpolitical issue. Maybe I was naive when I came here a couple of years ago, but I just thought that there was going to be a way with 50 million people uninsured, with health care costs rising 120 percent for the average small business in this country over the last 10 years, with bankruptcies caused by medical costs on the rise. I just figured that there would be a way for Republicans and Democrats to get together on this to say, Let's do something. I think for the longest time, I believed that there was still going to be a chance for Republicans to come to the table here. I don't want to believe that the Republicans' opposition to this bill is just about political gain. I don't want to believe that the reason that Members come down here and oppose every single thing the Democrats want to do and then propose an alternative bill that was a joke--which actually left more people uninsured at the end of its life than had the bill not gone into effect--I just don't want to believe that, but there is mounting evidence of that case. So listen, this thing is not over, Mr. Ryan. We're going to continue to come down here and press the case for reform. We're going to continue to come down here and press the need for both parties to be part of this compromise, to be part of this solution. But it is increasingly apparent that there is only one piece of this House and one piece of the Senate that is really pushing to get this done for the American people. I wish that wasn't the case, and we'll continue to try to press for a change, Mr. Ryan.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. And people have been crying out for it, Mr. Ryan, and I think that's why you and I both have families coming up to us and, as you said, kind of quietly expressing to us their stories. Folks in my district do it the same way. But you find them. You hear from them. I remember knocking on somebody's door this summer as I was going around a couple of neighborhoods to check in and hearing a guy talk about his illness. He had actually, I think, been injured, and his worker's comp didn't pay for the entirety of the care that he needed, so he had to go to his primary insurer. He had to pay for some of it out of his own pocket. It got so bad and his expenses got so high that the only place he could go without losing his house was the one main savings account he did own, and that was his child's college fund. And so he planned at first to only take a little bit out from his child's college fund because he figured he could get his insurer to pitch in a little bit, figured the economy might turn, he might be able to get a little better job, and then he had to go back again. And he had to go back again. By the time I saw him this summer, that college fund was gone. He had no money saved for college. The only way that his son, who by this time was in his teenage years and only a few years from going to college, the only way he was going to be able to go to college was if he got a full ride somewhere. His son's dreams have evaporated because of health care costs, because of illnesses. Now, this particular family had that money saved away for college and so it's not one of the thousands of families that went into bankruptcy. So we should remind ourselves that when we hear all these statistics about the thousands and thousands of families who go into bankruptcy every year just because Mom got cancer, that doesn't count all the families who did the responsible thing and were able to squirrel away a little bit of money and exhausted all of it, changing their plans forever. So layer on top of all of the bankruptcies the hundreds of thousands of families who were ruined without bankruptcy because of the crippling cost of medical care. So this is being celebrated by all of these families out there who have had their lives change for so many different reasons, because they do see that they're actually going to get some wages back from their employer who doesn't have to spend every dime on health care. But they also see that this bill is going to give them some security that a lot of people thought just came with being a citizen of the most powerful, the most affluent country in the world. You're right, Mr. Ryan. That does involve taking on the insurance industry. That does involve stepping up to the plate and telling them that they're wrong. For the life of me, it's beyond me why this Congress hasn't been able to do that. And I get that that invites the ire of the health care industry that has had their way for so long. I get that that means there's going to be a lot of commercials on the air criticizing Members who voted in favor of this and those that might vote in favor of it in the Senate. But it's been a long time coming for those families that we both know and those small businesses that have been calling for it.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, there are a lot of special interests out there that are making noise about what the House health care bill means for seniors. But seniors that I met with yesterday in Meriden, Connecticut, they're not falling for the scare tactics. That's because for years they've been dealing with the rising cost of health insurance, and they're the ones that have been paying for the prescription drug doughnut hole that was created by the Republicans and their drug industry allies. The seniors that I talked to yesterday, they support the health care reform bill because it lowers their out- of-pocket expenses in Medicare. It eliminates the doughnut hole, and it extends the life of Medicare to make sure that it will be around for their kids and their grandkids. And that's why AARP supports the bill as well, with polling showing that their members also support health care reform by a 2-1 margin. Mr. Speaker, seniors out there support health care reform because they, better than anybody, know what the status quo is, and they don't like it.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, every night in my State, thousands of kids go to sleep sick in their beds just because their mothers can't afford to get them to doctors. This is the most affluent, most compassionate Nation in the world, and it makes absolutely no sense that our health care system is the most inefficient, most unfair in the world. But to change this, we don't need to throw out what we've got. Despite all this nonsense political speak from the Republicans about government takeovers, this bill simply seeks to reset the rules of the private health care marketplace so that it starts working again like it should, so that small businesses can band together to negotiate for lower prices, so that individuals will have access to tax credits to help them pay for private insurance, insurance that's fair and doesn't discriminate against them because they're sick. We'll fix this crisis in our health care system all on the shoulders of a reformed private system so that never again does a child fall asleep sick in his bed because his country, the most powerful in the world, didn't have the coverage to make him well.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I'm glad to be here and I thank my friend from Florida for yielding. This is an historic moment. It doesn't come around very often when you have the opportunity to make good on a promise that seemingly every President has tried to make good on, frankly, with a couple of Republicans thrown into the mix over the years, to bring health care out to the millions of people that don't have it. And as my friend Mr. Ryan said, we don't have a choice any longer. If we allow the status quo to continue, we're not just going to bankrupt every family and business out there, we're going to bankrupt our government. The sad thing is that at this critical juncture in the history of American government, the history of the American health care system, you would like to think that the arguments that were happening on the floor of the House or in the Rules Committee where Mr. Pallone was all day or on the airwaves is a debate about what's best for this country. Instead, it seems that some of the debate is about what's best for one political party. This idea of the bill that we're debating being socialized medicine is laughable. It's laughable, but we have to talk about why we are hearing that phrase come up over and over again. You have to go back to the spring of this year when the Republican Party's favorite pollster, Frank Luntz, came out with a memo, before the Democrats had even put their bill on the table, before there was a bill to critique, and the memo essentially said here's how you kill health care reform: You call it ``socialized medicine.'' You call it ``government-run health care.'' Before anybody had even looked to see what the bill was, the decision was made that for political purposes, a bunch of people are going to get behind killing this thing and they're going to call it these names no matter actually what's in the text. Now, as it turns out, the bill that's presented before the House for a vote this weekend or early next week is so far from socialized medicine, from government-run medicine, to make that claim is absolutely outrageous. But if you make it over and over again and you get a few allies on talk radio and the cable news entertainment shows, the same people will start to internalize it. The fact is that the Congressional Budget Office says pretty plainly that over the 10-year window of this bill's rollout, there will be more people, millions of more people, on private health care than there are today. Why? Because we fix the existing private health care market. We think that the salvation of our system can be the private market but not under the rules we're playing by today. Under those rules, the price of health care over the last 10 years has shot up by 120 percent for small businesses in my district. This year, our major insurer in Connecticut announced they were going to be raising rates by 30 percent in one single year for small businesses. The rules of this game have meant that millions of Americans are kicked off their health care just because they get sick and millions more can't get on health care because they were sick to begin with. The rules of this market don't work. So all we say is let's set up some fair rules that aggregate the purchasing power of individuals, that don't deny health care to people that need it. Let's just fix the market. That's what this bill does. It fixes the market. We are at the very last minute, Mr. Ryan, presented with an alternative bill from our friends. Now, you and I have been on this floor for a long time. We come down here and we talk about the differences between the Democrats' approach to health care and the Republicans' nonapproach to health care, but then over the last year we have talked about the places we agree on. And one of the places that we all thought we agreed on was that if you have a preexisting condition, you shouldn't be denied health care. I mean, I heard Republicans come down here night after night and say we should absolutely do that, and I listened to them on the talk shows and they said Democrats and Republicans should come together. We came down here on the floor and we wanted to lock arms and say you know what, let's do it. Let's stop sick people from being denied health care. Then we see their proposal that they're apparently going to offer on the House floor as a substitute to the Democratic plan, and it does nothing for people that are sick and need health care. It doesn't even come close to banning the practice of insurance companies to deny coverage based on preexisting conditions. So even the things that we thought we had agreement on we don't any longer, because when it comes down to it, the Republicans are more interested in preserving the profits of their friends in the health insurance industry, more concerned with stopping President Obama's quest to bring health care to Americans at a lower cost because it scores political points, Mr. Ryan.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, we are in the final days here in the House debating health care reform that will lower costs for families and businesses and give people more choice. We are closer than ever to delivering what people have been clamoring for: access to lifesaving health care. And last night we learned a little more about this mythical Republican alternative. We learned that the Republicans are going to potentially propose some collection of bullet points that deliver the status quo for people who have a preexisting condition, for people who are under the threat of losing their coverage if they get sick. And for the millions of Americans who will not be able to afford health care insurance, this Republican plan says sorry, you are out of luck. This Republican plan that exists somewhere out in the ether today might be good for a fantasy movie, but it is not offering anything for those of us that live in the real world. Because here in the real world, people get sick and live paycheck by paycheck and can't afford the current status quo. Let's give people real reform, not fantasy reform that leaves people right where they started.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. And the consequences of standing in the way of reform, as we've talked a little bit earlier in this hour, is defending the status quo. I think that there has been an awakening out there that that is just unsustainable. Mr. Sarbanes talked about 20 percent, 30 percent increases in insurance in Maryland, the same thing in Connecticut. Our main insurer that covers more than half of the individuals in our State announced just this year a 30 percent increase in premiums. People have woken up to the fact that the status quo cannot work. Whatever the objective is of people who are trying to stand in the way of reform, if the result of that is another year of double-digit increases of premiums, if the result of that is another year of millions of Americans being denied care simply because they're sick, if the result of that is another year of the Medicare program being on a trajectory to bankruptcy, that just doesn't work for people. So I think we have seen this momentum towards reform, in part because people have discovered that the catch phrases and the slogans out there from the opponents of reform don't have much grounding in the text of the bill. And the consequence of going with the people who say, do nothing, preserve the existing system, is disastrous for families and potentially ruinous for this government. Mr. Sarbanes.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. And Mr. Sarbanes, we've got to remember, health insurance is a business, it's a for-profit business. There used to be a lot of nonprofit insurers out there, including in Connecticut, but they're disappearing. In Connecticut, I'm not sure that we have a nonprofit health care insurer that's a viable alternative for folks in our State. And so as a business, I guess you can understand that what we perceive as payments for necessary health care insurance companies term ``medical loss''; that's what they call the money that they pay out for health insurance claims, ``medical loss.'' Because to them it's a loss; any money that they pay out to pay claims is less money that they can keep for profit or as a return on their investment to shareholders. Now, it's a business, so I'm not going to begrudge them the fact that in the end their motivation is often profit investment return, but it speaks to the fact that the interests of the insurance industry are not always perfectly aligned with the interests of their beneficiaries and of patients out there, and it is up to a fair-minded, commonsense government to try to even out that playing field. That is why this health care reform bill has to have all of those provisions that you talked about. Now I want to just talk for one second about the debate here that we're having because we would like to think that there is consensus around these issues. We talked a little already about the fact that the tough decisions are the ones that Republicans were unwilling to make for a very long time. But there was a 27, 28-page memo that was going around Washington about 6 months back written by Frank Luntz, the sort of pollster-in-vogue for the Republican Party. It was a 28-page memo on how you kill health care reform. It wasn't an analysis of what the bill actually was, it wasn't a summary of the proposals the Democrats had put forth and a critique of those proposals, it just said, Here are the words and the phrases that you need to use in order to kill health care reform without evaluating whether it was a good or bad thing to kill health care reform. The supposition from the beginning was of course we're going to try to kill health care reform. It is no coincidence that the phrases in that memo are the phrases that you will hear over and over again uttered on the House floor by Republicans, by many of their allies in talk radio, ``government-run health care,'' ``socialist takeover of health care.'' The same phrases that polled well to people who were willing to stop health care reform are the same phrases that are used on this House floor--no connection to the bill we are actually debating, the bill that the Congressional Budget Office actually says over a 10-year period will expand the number of people who have private health care insurance, not contract it, but will expand the number of people that are insured by private insurance companies. But this debate doesn't seem for one side of the aisle to be about really the merits here; this debate seems to be about certain catch phrases and sound bites that will stop reform from happening. Ms. Wasserman Schultz, as you mention, every day, as we sort of emerge from the heat of August, it seems that more and more people, whether it be in the public opinion polls or in the calls to our office, are getting behind the idea of health care reform happening. I think that is due to the simple uncovering of these distortions and sound bites. People are realizing that the phrases they hear on TV-- it's not all from Republican Members of Congress, a lot of it is from the folks who are in the news entertainment industry--they're figuring out that there is a very big difference between rhetoric and reality.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I have told the story on this floor at least once or twice before about a gentleman who I met not more than a few weeks ago who contracted gallbladder cancer. He was an hourly worker at a factory in New Briton, and he was going to have to miss a number of weeks of work to get the initial treatment. That wasn't okay by his employer and his employer let him go because of the work that he was going to miss and might miss in the future. He is now unemployed because of his illness, and he is collecting unemployment benefits, but almost every dime of his unemployment is going to pay for the health care costs that he still has to bear. And so everyone I think out there, now more than ever, as this economy puts more people in economic peril, realize that they are not just one paycheck away from potentially losing health care, but they are one diagnosis away from losing their job and the health care that comes with it.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. You also know there are a lot of people out there who when they get sick can't continue working.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Ms. Wasserman Schultz, the awe and esteem you were already held in before the announcement that over the last year and a half you have been battling with this has only increased knowing that you were able to keep up the pace of your work schedule while going through that ordeal.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I yield to the gentleman from Maryland.

Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Reclaiming my time, I think, Mr. Altmire, that our Republican friends know that, because there's a reason they didn't do the 80 percent while they were here and in control of the House and in control of the Presidency, because it does necessitate the other 20 percent being done at the same time. We all agree that preexisting conditions shouldn't be a reason for exclusion from health care, but as you said, you have to make a tough decision to get there, and that's that we have to ask all individuals to participate in health care. And then you have to be prepared to do the things necessary for those that don't have the means to be able to comply with that mandate. Those are the hard things that have prevented health care reform from happening. But you know what? If this job was just about the easy things, there would be a lot more people that would want to be Members of Congress. But this job is about doing the hard stuff. This job is about making some decisions that aren't easy regarding how you get to universal coverage, regarding how you expand the life expectancy of Medicare. I mean it's worth talking about that for a moment, Mr. Ryan. We get all sorts of Republican Members coming down here decrying the fact that this bill starts to slow the rate of growth of Medicare, but they're the same exact people who come down here and talk about how Medicare is so broken and how it's going to go bankrupt and how Congress has to come and do something about it. Well, guess what? There are only two ways that you can fix Medicare. You've either got to send less money out of Medicare or you've got to bring more money in. So our solution is, before we ask workers and employers to pay more in Medicare taxes, let's make Medicare efficient first. Let's get rid of the waste and the fraud and the abuse that's in Medicare today so that we don't have to ask more people to pay into the system or that we don't have to raise the age of eligibility. Yet we have people out there trying to scare seniors, telling them Medicare is going to be cut without telling them that all that's being cut are the payments to insurance companies and the drug companies and the money that goes to health care systems that are performing a lot of extra treatments and procedures without any extra value and that their benefits actually get better, Mr. Ryan.