Don Nickles

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Correct me if I am wrong, active steelworkers would apply and would benefit under the TAA proposal as any other TAA eligible employee. The Senator's amendment applies only to retired steelworkers?

Mr. NICKLES. And correct me if I am wrong, you are talking about retired steelworkers basically in two plants, is that accurate? Or is this retired steelworkers, any steelworker who happens to be retired? Or is it specifically to steelworkers who are in chapter 11 or chapter 7?

Mr. NICKLES. Since we are not going to vote on this today and you are sponsoring the amendment, I have heard the arguments made. We want to help these families. And you are providing health care for the families, 125,000 families, I believe I heard you say. I would like to know, health care costs so much per month, so much per year per family. I would love for my colleagues to tell me how much these plans cost so we would have a little better idea of the per-family benefit.

Mr. NICKLES. I am just trying to make sure we find out what we are talking about. If COBRA costs $700 a month and you are talking about 70 percent of that, that is $500 a month. And you are talking about 12 months, so you are talking about $6,000 benefit per year. Is that pretty close to accurate? I am just trying to figure this out so I will know, if we are getting ready to give benefits to one particular group--as a matter of fact, a couple of companies--I kind of need to know. I think it would be nice for the taxpayers to know. I am happy to yield to the Senator from Maryland.

Mr. NICKLES. I think I have the floor.

Mr. NICKLES. Well, I am not a big fan of tax credits, just so the Senator from Maryland knows--and the Senator from West Virginia already knows this about the Senator from Oklahoma. Therefore, I question the wisdom of doing this in tax credit form. It would be a lot more direct, legitimate, for scorekeeping and otherwise, to say we are going to write a check, and here are thousands of people, and say pay for your health care, than to try to go through silly system of tax credits, where it doesn't work very well. I think maybe I will explain that at some point. I am trying to have a better understanding. If you have a 12-month payment--or assistance in payment, 70 percent--for steelworkers, and we are doing that for 12 months, this is 2002; why are we making payments in 2004 and 2005? I don't understand that.

Mr. NICKLES. What age of eligibility can people--when you think of retirees, you think of somebody at age 65. What is the earliest age a retired steelworker might be who might receive benefits under this proposal?

Mr. NICKLES. Correct me if I am wrong, so you have it that 75 percent of the pool are now Medicare eligible, is that correct?

Mr. NICKLES. And 75 percent of the beneficiaries--the 125,000 people--are eligible for Medicare, is that correct?

Mr. NICKLES. And 25 percent are not eligible for Medicare, so presumably under the age of 62, is that correct.

Mr. NICKLES. I stand corrected, 65. So what is the earliest age that a beneficiary can receive benefits under the Senator's proposal?

Mr. NICKLES. Let me ask one other question. To be eligible, then they have to be receiving retirement pay to be called a retiree?

Mr. NICKLES. So you could work 15 years and I don't know how many years you have to work--

Mr. NICKLES. I understand. I am trying to figure out who is eligible. So I think I heard the Senator from Maryland say they are eligible if they are receiving retirement checks. They may be receiving the checks from the steel company, which even though the company went bankrupt, it may well still be making payments for pension benefits, or maybe it dumped their liabilities on the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, or there may be some other consortium employer payment plan. But if they are receiving their retirement check, they are classified as retiree. What is the earliest age a person can be receiving a retirement check as a steel worker?

Mr. NICKLES. After 15, 20 years of service?

Mr. NICKLES. A couple other questions, and then I will make a few comments. If we are doing this for the steelworkers, how can you say we should not do this for the textile workers?

Mr. NICKLES. Why shouldn't we do it for the communication workers or the airline workers or the hotel workers in Nevada?

Mr. NICKLES. Yes.

Mr. NICKLES. I appreciate my colleague's response. I want to make a few comments, and I appreciate the patience of my friends and colleagues from Maryland, West Virginia, and Minnesota.

Mr. NICKLES. I thank my friend from Minnesota.

Mr. NICKLES. I will be happy to yield.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I thank my friend from Nevada. I also urge colleagues if they have amendments to bring them down. I hope and pray we will be ready to conclude this bill soon. I do not think the amendment my colleagues from West Virginia and Maryland offered should be included in the bill. I think it is a killer amendment. I am concerned what people are trying to do in loading up the trade promotion authority bill. They know President Bush wants trade promotion authority, as every President has wanted trade promotion authority. Every President wants to negotiate trade deals because they realize if we are going to be the world leader in trade, we need to expand trade. We have been the beacon, the leader for trade all across the world. President Reagan, whom we honored today with a Congressional Gold Medal, was adamant in saying we want to expand trade. We did so, and that greatly contributed to the fall of communism. It opened up markets. It created jobs. It led to a robust world economy. Everybody started realizing that trade is mutually beneficial, we should pass trade promotion authority, and every President has had trade promotion authority going all the way up, including President Clinton. He had it in his first couple years but lost it in 1994, and did not ask for it until after the 1996 election. When President Clinton asked for it, he could not get it through the House. He could have gotten it through the Senate. We had the votes for it. The Senate traditionally has been more free trade. Unfortunately, he did not get it for the duration of his term, and many of us supported giving it to him. Whether the President was Republican or Democratic, we felt it was important. We happen to be supporters of free trade enough to know we have to be the leader in free trade if we are going to make it happen. It did not happen. President Bush asked for it and got it through the House. It is always more difficult to get it through the House than the Senate. President Bush got it through the House. Everybody said it was going to go through the Senate. Senator Daschle said: I support trade promotion authority, but we are going to add two other bills to it. Senator Baucus agreed. I disagree with it strongly. When we passed these bills out of the Finance Committee, they were not together. They were individual bills, as they always have been. We have always had trade promotion authority as one bill. We have done the trade assistance bill separately and both passed with large margins, usually a 70-vote margin. We did not have to tie the two together. Unfortunately, Senator Daschle and Senator Baucus tied in the Andean trade bill, which actually has to pass today, and it is not passing today. Now we could have imposition of tariffs on poor countries, Andean nation countries. It would be a disgrace for us to let that happen. Yet the Democratic leadership said we are going to tie all three together. Basically, what they were saying--and not hiding it--is we are going to hold trade promotion authority and Andean trade hostage until we get a lot of other things added to the trade adjustment assistance bill. I supported trade adjustment assistance, but let's look at how they are trying to expand it. They said: Let's have trade adjustment assistance, which is supposed to train people if they lose jobs due to imports, to learn a new job, new business, new trade. I fully support this. Usually it costs about $10,000 per person. Only one out of four who is eligible applies. The Democrats are saying now we want health care to be a benefit for this and have the Federal Government pay three-fourths of the cost. That was their original proposal. Now it is 70 percent. We do not pay three- fourths for anybody. Why is it a Federal responsibility to pay now a 70-percent tax credit? Most corporations get a deduction. That is 35 percent of a deduction. There is a big difference between a 70-percent credit where the Government is writing a check and under this proposal. This proposal is a refundable credit, it is a welfare payment, it is the Government writing a check. That is very expensive. Then some people say: Maybe we can do that. That is not enough. Now we are going to have steel legacy costs for one industry, and now we find it is not just one industry, it is not just retired steelworkers, it is retired steelworkers for a couple of bankrupt companies. These are companies that went bankrupt, and we are going to pick up their health care costs. Three-fourths of these individuals are already eligible for Medicare. They are in the same Government health care program that my mother is in and that most senior citizens are in, but my colleagues are saying that is not good enough; we have to have the Federal Government provide additional health care. A lot of companies do offer Medicare supplements. Great. And they do that in a way that says: We do not want anybody to go out of pocket for anything. That is nice. It is a fringe benefit. Only some companies do this, as it is not available for everybody. There are a whole lot of people who only have Medicare. My colleagues want the Federal Government to pay for Medicare supplements for retired steelworkers if their company went bankrupt. Why are we going to do that? If we do it for them, why not do it for textile workers? They have the same problems. Why do we not do it for communication workers? Senator Lott--WorldCom is going through a heck of a debacle. They have laid off thousands of people. What about other communications companies? We see layoffs after layoffs. Is the Federal Government picking up their health care costs? Where are we going to stop this march toward socialism with Government saying: We will benefit this group and this group. We benefited the railroad retirees. We helped take care of their railroad retirement plan. Yes, we have done that. Let's take care of steel. We have already imposed tariffs that are supposed to help the steel industry. That is not enough. So even though we are going to have all kinds of tariff protectionism for the steel industry, that is still not enough. Now we are going to pick up the retirement costs for some of the bankrupt companies. Why do we not have a real incentive for people to sign any kind of contract, whether they can afford it or not, because Uncle Sam is going to pick up the cost? Wow, that is terribly irresponsible policy. How can it be done for this group and not for another group? When we start this policy where Uncle Sam is going to start picking up retiree costs, I am figuring out you can be 35 or 37 years old and get benefits under this proposal. Most people who are 37 years old--my son is about that age. I do not think of him as being retired, but to think my daughter is going to have to be paying taxes for him to get health care benefits is absurd. Yet that is what we are trying to do in this legislation. I am amazed at the fiscal irresponsibility that people are trying to put on this, and when I say ``people,'' I am thinking right now of the Democrats who are trying to run the trade adjustment assistance and trying to attach more and more stuff on it, and maybe it is because they really do not want trade promotion authority in the first place. Maybe some of the people are saying, we did health care, we did not think some of the Republicans could agree with that, now we will try to see if we can't put steel legacy; let us put more and more on this wagon and see if trade promotion can keep pulling more and more along. They are going too far. This is terrible policy. I used to run a company that had the steelworkers in our plan. I have negotiated steelworker plans, so I know a little something about health care costs and I know a little something about plans. You can negotiate contracts you cannot afford. That is an easy thing to do. You go along to get along. You sign contracts. You have peace and harmony, and all of a sudden you have a contract you cannot afford, and you go bankrupt. Why in the world should the Federal Government be bailing out? I do not think you can do that. If you do it here, why don't you do it for every other union contract that has found itself on the wrong side of the economic chain? Why don't we pick up the health care costs for railroad retirees? We took up their pension costs. Why don't we do their health care costs? Why don't we do that for other unions? I do not know where you would stop if we agreed to this. We have already had a battle on, are we going to have wage insurance on this bill? Unfortunately, Senator Gregg's amendment did not pass. Wage insurance, which is about as socialistic a direction as one could go, was put on this bill. It is almost like people are saying we are going to keep loading up trade adjustment assistance, where we know they cannot swallow it, where we know we are going to bog down this bill, and the bill will not pass. This bill is just going to be loved to death. We are going to keep piling it on, piling it on, and piling it on. I hope people will step back a little bit and say a couple of things are happening. One, we happen to have a deficit. We do not have a surplus. So we are going to be taking taxes and we are going to be borrowing money to pay for a brandnew benefit for one little group of workers. Now, maybe that group of workers has a lot of political clout, maybe they contribute to a lot of campaigns, maybe they have a lot of influence, but I do not see why we should do it for this group and not do it for others. Maybe some people think we should do this for everybody. Maybe that is the objective. I do not know. But I do not think it is affordable when I start looking at the costs. The Senator from Minnesota was very generous to say the cost of COBRA is typically about $700. That is for a family plan. Then you multiply it by 12, and that is $8,400. Seventy percent of that is about $6,000; $6,000 per year for which Uncle Sam is going to be writing a check. That is a lot. The reason I was trying to compute this was, well, $125,000, and it is going to cost $179 million. Trying to figure that out, it is a lot less than that. The difference is, three-fourths of these people are already on Medicare. They already have health care. They happen to have the same health care my mother has, but my mother is going to be paying taxes so some individuals can get their Medicare supplement? I do not know that that is right. I do not know why the worker in Wal-Mart, who may not even have health care, has to pay taxes so somebody else can get not only Medicare but a Medicare supplement. This is pretty much a stretch. There are 40 million Americans who do not have health care insurance. They have health care, possibly through the emergency room or something, but a lot of them pay taxes. They may not be able to afford their own health care, but we are going to increase their taxes or make them go into debt so they can provide health care for somebody else who already has health care, who is already paying a lot because they get Medicare. Medicare is not a perfect system. I think it needs to be reformed. It needs to be fixed. It needs to include prescription drugs, and we ought to be doing that this year. We ought to be working in a bipartisan way to make it happen. To say we are going to be increasing taxes or debt on the rest of America so one group can have their Medicare supplement or people in their thirties or forties can get health care for a year-- and we all know the original proposal was 2 years. I also happen to believe that some people are going to try to extend this year after year, after year, after year. If they get it for 1 year, they will be fighting to get it extended for the next year. I am just guessing that might happen. I am going to work very hard to see that this bill does not happen, so we will not get started down that slippery slope of ever increasing entitlements, ever increasing expansion of spending, ever increasing loading up the trade promotion authority with things that are not affordable, that frankly should not become law. My guess is that if this amendment is adopted, we will not have trade promotion authority passed this Congress. Maybe that is the sponsor's objective. Maybe not. I do not know. But some people are trying to kill trade promotion authority. They are trying to load it up with too much. This amendment is too much, and I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment when we vote on it next Tuesday. I yield the floor.

Don Nickles

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