Don Nickles

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I think we have some colleagues who are out right now. It is my anticipation the majority leader will want to have the vote afterwards. If my colleague wants me to pursue it, I can send an amendment to the desk or I can ask for a quorum call and we can talk to the leaders to determine what time we want to vote.

Mr. NICKLES. I would like to make a few comments. I will not address the amendment that was just sent to the desk, but I would like to respond to my colleague. First, I started to call Senator Frist. Sometimes I call him because we need help on the floor to debate things, such as medical necessity or other medical procedures. This time I thought I would call him because I thought we might need him because I was afraid somebody might have a heart attack getting so excited in the debate. But let me just touch on a couple of comments that my good friend and colleague, Senator Kennedy, made. He said: Enough about this cost stuff. He said: That was done by some study that was bought and paid for by the insurance companies. Correct me if I am wrong, but I stand corrected if the Congressional Budget Office is bought and paid for by the insurance companies. If so, I would like to know it. I am not aware of that. My colleague alluded to the fact that Republicans are bought and paid for. He was close to getting a rule invoked. I do not think he meant to say that. I will let that go. I am not going to make allusions that trial lawyers have bought one side or that the unions have bought one side, although he did mention that the unions support his bill. It just happens to be that the unions are exempt from his bill. That is interesting. They are exempt for the duration of their contracts. So his bill basically tells every private employer: You have to rewrite your contract next year, except for unions. Oh, if you have unions, you don't have to redo it until the end of your contract. If the contract is for 4 years, you don't have to touch it for 4 years. But anybody else, you rewrite it next year. Maybe that is the reason the unions have signed on. Maybe there are other reasons or other special interest groups that have gotten into his bill. But back to the cost. My colleague says: Well, it is only 1 percent per year. CBO says the cost would be 6 percent when it is fully implemented in 3 years--not 5 years. So Senator Kennedy is able to say: Well, we think it is about 5 percent over 5 years; therefore, it is a 1-percent per year cost increase. And employees only pay 20 percent, which is how he gets his one Big Mac per month. It just does not work. It does not equate. The bill, when fully implemented, is 6.1 percent. That is in 3 years, and the cost is $355 per year. If that happens, you are going to have a lot of people, according to CBO--not some study financed by the insurance companies--who are going to lose their coverage, a lot of people who are going to get less quality coverage, people who are going to have to pay a greater percentage of the coverage, people who are going to have to pay a greater percentage of the premiums if we pass the Kennedy bill. That is the bad news. The good news is we are not going to pass it. But I think we have to stay with the facts. The facts are that the Kennedy bill increases costs dramatically and increases the number of uninsured dramatically. That would be a serious mistake. That is something we are not going to allow to happen. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. NICKLES. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. NICKLES. Unfortunately, that is the case.

Mr. NICKLES. Most of the professionals and actuaries usually estimate about 300,000.

Mr. NICKLES. Even higher than that. I think the estimate I have, that was done by the National Survey of the Employee-Sponsored Health Care Plans, Mercer, which is probably one of the biggest actuaries in health care, estimates a 9-percent increase for next year in health care costs. So if you put 6.1 percent on top of that, that is a 15-percent increase in health care costs for next year.

Mr. NICKLES. That is correct.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I yield the principal sponsor of the amendment, Senator Santorum, 1 minute.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I yield the Senator from Texas 1 minute.

Mr. NICKLES. I move to lay that motion on the table.

Mr. NICKLES. Under the unanimous consent that has already been agreed to, we have 4 minutes equally divided.

Mr. NICKLES. I did not make a UC.

Mr. NICKLES. For the information of all of our colleagues, we are now getting ready to begin a series of votes, beginning with the first vote dealing with medical necessity. We expect there will be four votes tonight, so I encourage all our colleagues to come to the floor to vote. I encourage all of our colleagues to stay on the floor because it is our intention to reduce the time allotted to each vote to 10 minutes after the first vote.

Mr. NICKLES. I think our friend from Rhode Island has made a good suggestion. I suggested possibly doing that. I think we will possibly do that after the first vote.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, that means there is about 20 minutes remaining. Just for the information of our colleagues, I think they can expect a rollcall vote on this and subsequent amendments to begin at about 6:45. So those offices should notify their Senators to expect rollcall votes beginning about 6:45.

Mr. NICKLES. Could we have order?

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

Mr. NICKLES. The Senator is correct.

Mr. NICKLES. The Senator makes a good point, but probably not 100,000. Estimates would probably be much closer to 2 million people would be uninsured and have no coverage whatsoever in any insurance proposal if we adopt the underlying Kennedy amendment.

Mr. NICKLES. The Senator is exactly right.

Mr. NICKLES. I ask how much time we have?

Mr. NICKLES. The Senator from Massachusetts says it is the same amendment offered in committee, but that is not factual. The Senator can correct me if I am wrong, but this amendment deals with Superfund. This amendment deals with transferring money from general revenue into Social Security. That was not offered in committee. There are few tax provisions in here. I asked somebody: What is this extension of taxes on page 17? My staff tells me it is a tax increase of $6.7 billion on Superfund. I don't know what that has to do with breast cancer, but it is a tax increase on Superfund. I know we need to reauthorize Superfund. I didn't know we were going to do it on this bill. I stated in the past we are not going to pass the Superfund extension until we reauthorize it. We should do the two together. Why are we doing it on this bill? So there are tax increases in here that nobody has looked at. They did not do that in the Labor Committee or the health committee, I do not think. I asked the Chairman of the committee. I don't think they passed tax increases on Superfund. That does not belong in the HELP Committee. Certainly transferring money from the general revenue fund, as this bill does, into the Social Security trust fund, was not done in the HELP Committee, I do not think. It should not have been done. My guess is the Finance Committee might have some objections. Senator Roth is going to be on the floor saying: Wait a minute, what is going on? So there is a lot of mischief in these amendments. Some of us have not had enough time. One of the crazy things about this agreement is we are going to have amendments coming at us quickly. We have to have a little time to study them. Sometimes we find some things stuck in the amendments which some of us might have some objections with. I want to make a couple of comments on the amendment. In addition to the big tax increases hidden in the bill, this amendment also strikes the underlying amendment that many of us have proposed on this side that says, whatever we should do we should do no harm. If we are going to increase premiums by over 1 percent; let us not do a bill. Maybe people forgot about that, but that is an amendment we offered earlier. This amendment, the Robb amendment, says, let's strike that provision. We do not care how much the Kennedy bill costs. Some of us do care how much it costs. We do not want to put millions of people into the ranks of the uninsured. We do not want to do harm. Unfortunately, the amendment proposed by Senator Robb and others would do that. It would strike that provision. It would eliminate that provision. On the issue of breast cancer and mastectomy and lumpectomy and so on, Senator Frist has addressed it a little bit. Senator Snowe and others will be offering an amendment that is related and, I will tell you, far superior to the amendment we have on the floor. I do not know if we will get to it tonight. Certainly, we will get to it tomorrow. It is a much better amendment. It is an amendment that has been thought out. It is an amendment that does not have Superfund taxes in it. It is an amendment that includes, as this bill does, transfers from the general revenue fund into the Social Security trust. I urge my colleagues at the appropriate time to vote ``no'' on the Robb amendment, and then let's adopt the underlying amendment which says we should not increase health care costs by more than 1 percent; let's not do damage to the system; let's not put people into the ranks of uninsured by playing games, maybe trying to score points with one group or another group. Let's not do that. Let's not make those kinds of mistakes. If people have serious concerns dealing with breast cancer and how that should be treated, again, Senator Snowe, Senator Abraham, and Senator Frist have an amendment they have worked on for some time that I believe is much better drafted. It does not have Superfund taxes in it. It does not have a transfer of general revenue funds into the Social Security trust fund. It does not make these kinds of mistakes that we have, unfortunately, with this pending amendment.

Mr. NICKLES. No, I do not.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, let me make a couple of comments. I heard my friend and colleague from Massachusetts say: Where is everybody in the debate? We have just received the amendment. I would like to look at it, and I had a chance to look at it while some of the debate was going on. I would like to make a couple of comments on it. I found in the amendment--

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, how much time remains on this amendment?