Jay Rockefeller

Mr. ROCKEFELLER

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, I am proud to offer this amendment with Senator Moseley-Braun and also Senator Feingold. It basically does three things, and we combine them for the sake of efficiency. We propose several improvements to the Medicaid Program. One is to help low-income families get health care when they move from welfare to work. Second is to help seniors get long-term care. And third is to make it much better for pregnant women and children----

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

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

Mr. ROCKEFELLER

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Reserving the right to object. Several Senators addressed the Chair.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. I am speaking in favor of the amendment.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, this is the most cruel and unusual amendment of this entire 24-hour fiasco. It rejects the idea of making sure America's poorest children, poorest elderly, pregnant women, disabled, SSI--it decimates people who need help. It is an evisceration of Medicaid. It is a cruel amendment. It ought to be rejected by both sides.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Reserving the right to object.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. I will not object. I will just say, there are a number of Senators here, including the Senator from Rhode Island and the Senator from West Virginia, who note this withdrawal may have been strategically a very good idea because it was going down to a dreadful defeat because it is such a dreadful amendment. Mr. GRAMM addressed the Chair.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, simply to affirm what the Senator from Nebraska says, I think it is, in fact, part of the agreement between the leaders that we will know what we are voting on, that we will have copies of these amendments. I have a list here of 17 of what are called Republican amendments, and three of them are question marks. There are all kinds of words. There is a word that says kickback, one that says taxes, health care, sugar. There is no way to make any kind of a judgment. So I just affirm the view of the ranking member of the Budget Committee that we need to have these amendments. It is part of the agreement that we would have these amendments and our amendments in writing before we act on them. Otherwise we are just singing in the dark.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, two excellent Senators are offering this amendment and trying to protect the basic Medicaid coverage for the very poorest, very oldest and disabled Americans. I hope everybody will vote for it. But, again, you cannot turn a frog into a prince. The underlying bill would require 200 such amendments to make it agreeable. I hope people will support this.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, this amendment pretends that the Republican budget's destructive plan for Medicare will preserve the senior citizen's ability to get their care through fee for service and continue to see his or her own doctor. Now, it is fine to pretend, so vote for the amendment. It is all right. It is not going to do any harm. Make no mistake. There is no guarantee of anything in the Helms amendment for seniors and their future ability to see their own doctor.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. May we have order.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. I thank the Presiding Officer and the Senator from Arkansas. If there was a sense upon my colleagues of nervousness just before Senator Pryor offered his amendment--there was a lot of huddling--in the sense of what was going to happen, my colleagues noticed correctly. I think that there was an effort to try and not have a vote on this tonight, because this is one of the most important amendments that we will vote on in this entire, somewhat bizarre process.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. I yield back my time.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, what is the time situation?

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, this amendment should absolutely be defeated on both sides. It has this wonderful kind of a kind-hearted title to it. It talks about ``flexibility.'' The purpose is, of course, to get rid of all of this. If the Senator wants to have a vote on getting rid of Medicaid or getting rid of care for pregnant women, for children under the age of 12, or the disabled, why does he not suggest that? We have been through this so many times before. ``Let the States decide what being disabled means.'' So then you have 50 different ideas of what a disabled person is, and it is complete chaos. I really do believe this is a country which has not given up on the idea that if a child is sick, no matter what its family's income is, that the child should get care. If a poor person is ill, or needs a test because something is desperately wrong and nobody knows what it is, America is the kind of country where you should be able to get that test without worrying about something called ``flexibility.'' I believe that health care is about giving people the opportunity to grow up to be what they really want to be. Health care is an enormous part of that. This Senator, in what appears to be a ``kind'' amendment, but what is really, in the judgment of this Senator, a very mean- spirited amendment, would just get as far away from doing anything for pregnant women and children and the disabled as the Senator possibly could. It is an amendment which should be absolutely crushed. I yield the remainder of my time to the Senator from Rhode Island.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Medicare, let us face it, has been put on the chopping block. These are huge, huge cuts that are going to be made in the next 7 years that our people have absolutely no concept of. And here we are talking about adding on services. I am for that. I am for Senator Snowe. She is an excellent Senator, and her sense-of-the-Senate resolution is excellent and it should be supported. But the division on the one hand of the virtue of that purpose and the utter devastation of Medicare is a very awkward coupling, to say the very least. I hope and pray Medicare can do more for breast cancer, for prostate cancer, but I will guarantee you it cannot so long as we are cutting $270 billion out of it.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. One minute.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, let me put this in two forms. One is, I think this amendment has a virtuous purpose, and I will support it. It is a wish. It is just simply a wish. That is why it is put in the form of a sense of the Senate. We are hoping that the reconciliation conferees will approve Medicare. I support it. In fact, I worked on matters of this oral use of cancer pills and other things in the past. But I would be very surprised, quite frankly, if we can in Medicare buy a single new aspirin, much less prostate cancer and breast cancer remedies, under the $270 billion cut which the underlying bill of the majority contemplates, let alone any more coverage whatsoever for cancer. And I think that Senator Snowe understands that, making this, therefore, a sense of the Senate. Keep in mind, please, my colleagues, that we are cutting $270 billion. We were devastating everything from graduate medical education to rural hospitals, to premiums, to original research in any area. You are going to find a lot of people--in fact, I notice our colleague from Massachusetts coming in--you will find a lot of people not going into research medicine to come up with new cures for prostate cancer or breast cancer because of what is happening to graduate medical institutions. But all we had to do to get this amendment and to be able to pass this amendment was, in fact, to do what the Democrats wanted to do, which was simply cut $89 billion from Medicare. But, no, they wanted to cut $270 billion in order to be able to----

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. I yield 10 seconds to the Senator from Delaware.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Will the Senator from Rhode Island yield? Will the Senator from Rhode Island correct the misstatement of the Senator from West Virginia about pregnant women, children and disabled as opposed to the elderly?

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, first, I want to compliment the Senator from Rhode Island, because actually it was the Senator from Rhode Island and myself in the Finance Committee who put up this amendment, which won 17 to 3, and then it sort of disappeared. It particularly disappeared with respect to the disabled. It should be understood the Senator is entirely correct in his amendment, and I urge my colleagues to support his amendment. On the other hand, it is also important to understand that by voting for this amendment that we are not going to be making a prince out of a frog; that the underlying Medicaid bill which encompasses this amendment is, in the judgment of this Senator, a disaster. This amendment will help. I do not want to in any way diminish that. This is pregnant women, children, and the disabled, and it is a guarantee. The guarantee was not there before. The Senator is right when he says the States now have to make a determination under the current law what ``disabled'' means. Good heavens, 50 different definitions coming in on ``disabled.'' The point is, it is a good amendment in a bad bill. The States will still lose 30 percent of their Medicaid funding. In the case of my State, it is a little more than that. On nursing home protection, Federal standards are wiped out. That really does bring up the specter, and some say, ``Well, you are just making a fuss over this.'' What a fuss. The standards we passed in 1987 by which you could no longer tether, that is tie down, an elderly person in a nursing home or drug into passivity an elderly person, is wiped out. So that is now possible under the underlying bill. These are terrible things. Children with primary care needs, early detection, early protection, no immunization--it is not a good bill. But the amendment is good and the Senator from Rhode Island has suggested an amendment that ought to be adopted. So I just simply make that point and compliment the Senator significantly for now getting the word ``guaranteed'' coverage into the legislation. I compliment him on that and urge my colleagues to support the Senator's amendment. Mr. EXON addressed the Chair.