Paul Wellstone

Mr. WELLSTONE

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

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, are we ready for another amendment? Amendment No. 449 (Purpose: To provide for full mental health parity with respect to health plans purchased through the use of amounts provided under a block grant to States)

Mr. WELLSTONE. Ten minutes equally divided.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Ten minutes will be fine.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank the Senator.

Mr. WELLSTONE. That is the one that I would like to get in right now on this unanimous consent, on the mental health. That one I have been waiting several days.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, again since I initiated this discussion, I wonder whether I could not be a part of this. I have two amendments--one Senator Mikulski wants to do with me --and I wonder whether they could be part of it.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I say to the Senator from New Mexico, I am not trying to hold things up. Just a question on the way we are going. I have been waiting for quite a while to introduce an amendment. Is there a way that we could have some understanding about introducing amendments after we get through with this as far as unanimous consent is concerned?

Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank the Chair, and I thank the Senator from New Jersey. Mr. President, just two points in 4 minutes, the first one being, I was listening to my colleague from Oklahoma, and I know he had to leave the floor, but I heard him say this has not been scored and it has nothing to do with the tax cuts. But, I think only here in the Senate do we sort of decontextualize what we are doing. I don't think most people in the country do. Most people in the country see a clear connection between the reconciliation bill on tax cuts, the lion's share of benefits going to the very top of the population and, at the same time, what is, indeed, the functional equivalent of a cut in Medicare benefits. I am troubled by the discussion because, Mr. President, I think that what some of my colleagues are talking about in the name of saving or preserving Medicare will have just the opposite effect. Maybe that is the problem. We do it on a reconciliation bill, there is not a lot of time, and we don't really know what the consequences are of what we are doing. But, I will suggest to you that if we are serious about cost containment and we are serious about what we need to do to deal with the estimates of how many people will be living to be over 65 and 85 when we get to the year 2030 and, at the same time, how many people are working, and all of what has been presented here by way of demography, then what we will do is not just focus on Medicare, we will go back to looking at this overall health care system, and we will figure out ways in which we contain costs so that, indeed, we can provide decent health care coverage, not just to the elderly but to other citizens as well. What we are doing now, philosophically, is we are moving in exactly the opposite direction. Whatever happened here? Just a couple of years ago, we were talking about Medicare for all. We were saying that we ought to make sure that other people have the same opportunities as elderly people. Now what we seem to be doing is saying, My gosh, there are some people in the country who don't have good coverage; what we now need to do is downsize Medicare instead of improving Medicare and improving health care for people in this country. It makes no sense whatsoever. Mr. President, this is a huge mistake--a huge mistake. We ought to be talking about providing good health care coverage for elderly people. We ought to be talking about keeping this as a universal coverage program. We ought to be talking about health care reform systemwide. And we ought to be talking about not downsizing Medicare but, as a matter of fact, taking this very good program and making sure that all of our citizens have the opportunity for decent health care coverage. This proposal coming out of the Finance Committee takes us exactly in the wrong direction. It is profoundly mistaken, and I thank Senator Durbin for his leadership and am proud to support his effort. I yield the floor. Mr. COATS addressed the Chair.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I am pleased to follow the Senator from California, if that would be all right.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I am very proud to join Senator Kennedy's effort. I would say to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle that this amendment is a perfect example of where the rubber meets the road. We are not now talking about adding and subtracting numbers. We are not talking about statistics in the abstract. We are talking about the effect of what we do on people's lives. We are talking about how decisions we make can crucially affect the quality or lack of quality of lives of people all across our country--in Minnesota, Massachusetts, Delaware, Oklahoma, Tennessee, you name it. Mr. President, I just want to take on some of the arguments that have been made about why we need to go forward with this $5 copay on the home-based health care. First of all, I have heard it argued here that $5 is not that much. But we cannot make those arguments, in all due respect. There is a huge difference between our salaries and what we can afford and what an elderly person can afford. Now, when the argument is made, ``But, Senators, we have protection for those who are officially defined as poor,'' do you know where that definition comes from? Mollie Orshansky in 1963, Social Security, a minimal definition--a minimal definition. So now we are saying that a single elderly woman 80 years of age, who makes over $7,000 a year, she is not officially defined as poor, but we are going to charge her $5 every time for a home-based health care visit. That is outrageous. That is outrageous. So, first of all, please, do not have any illusions, colleagues, that because we say the poor are taken care of, we really are taking care of vulnerable elderly people, because if you are a single person, single woman living at home and you are over the poverty level income--maybe you make $9,000 a year--you do not have any protection at all. Now, is there any Senator here, Democrat or Republican, who believes that a single woman living at home making $9,000, $9,500 a year can afford to pay $5 for each home health care visit? As to the expansion of this, in all due respect, I thought that what we were trying to do here, albeit we have not done it nearly as well as we should, is to make sure that as many elderly people as possible can live at home in as near normal circumstances as possible with dignity. We want to encourage people to be able to live at home. When one of our parents or one of our grandparents needs to have a home health visit once or twice or three times a week in order to stay at home and be independent and not have to be institutionalized, we should applaud that. It should not be surprising that this is more a part of what we do by way of investment in resources because more and more of the people in our country are living to be over 65 and 85. But if we want people to be able to stay at home and live with dignity, and we do not want people to be institutionalized, and we do not want to take away a benefit that is so important to vulnerable elderly people, even if they are over the poverty level income, which is defined in such a minimal way, we ought to for certain support this amendment. This amendment that Senator Kennedy and I have introduced is all about connecting this debate to people. This proposal in the Finance Committee of a $5 charge for every single home-based health care visit and support for elderly people is profoundly mistaken. Mr. President, let me repeat that. It is profoundly mistaken. Please, colleagues, admit to the fact that we may have made a mistake here and that we can do better for elderly people. Therefore, I hope that we get a huge vote for this amendment. I yield the floor. Mr. KENNEDY addressed the Chair.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Thank you, Mr. President. I just want to put this in a little bit of context. There was a piece today in the New York Times headlined, ``Study Shows Tax Proposal Would Benefit the Wealthy.'' This is when we get to the tax part of the reconciliation bill. I quote: The changes in Federal tax and benefit policies now working their way through Congress would eventually be worth thousands of dollars a year to the 5 million wealthiest families in America, while the 40 million families with the lowest incomes would actually lose money, a new study shows. This is the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Their work, generally respected in academic circles, indicates that after-tax incomes of the richest 1 percent of Americans--those with incomes above $300,000 a year for a family of three--would ultimately be increased by an average of $27,000 a year. ``Families of three with incomes below about $17,000 a year would end up with about $60 a year less than they have now.'' Mr. President, let me just say that, in this context, I know colleagues worked very hard in the Finance Committee, and I also know people were up very late, and we did not have a chance to study every particular proposal. The copay for home health services makes no sense at all. This proposal is profoundly mistaken. I am very proud to support Senator Kennedy's amendment. Sixty-six percent of the recipients of home health services are over the age of 75; 43 percent of them have incomes under $10,000 a year; 66 percent are women and 33 percent live alone. As Senator Lautenberg pointed out, a $5 copay may not sound like much to people who have pretty high incomes, and it may not sound like much to those of us in the Senate, because we earn a fair amount of income; but to people living on maybe $500 a month, and that's it, this $5 copay for a home health visit is really worry about it. I am hoping that we will have very strong support here on the floor of the Senate. Mr. President, I think that part of the direction of where we are heading in health care--and I wish there had been more discussion. Part of the problem is that these reconciliation bills that are fast-tracked don't give us much of an opportunity to really talk about policy and its impact on people's lives. Too much of the discussion is adding and subtracting numbers. Too much of the discussion is statistics. I don't think we are looking at some of these proposals--I am not saying all of them--very carefully. To that extent, some of the things in this bill are a rush to recklessness, which I think this is. Mr. President, if anything, we want to make sure that as many elderly people as possible--or, for that matter, people with disabilities--can live at home with dignity. That is what we are trying to do. And what we are doing here is, we are saying to senior citizens--especially low- income, and the income profile of elderly people is not that high--we are saying, you know, we are going to start charging a $5 copay. And for a lot of these people, this isn't going to work. What is going to happen is, they are not going to get the help they need; it is that simple. I don't think this amendment is about party strategy or taking shots at somebody. I don't think it is about any of that. This amendment speaks to a policy discussion that I don't think we have had. I actually think that is part of the problem. I just think it is hard to do that on these bills. But this particular proposal--on this provision that was put in by the Finance Committee, I don't think there was an up-or-down vote. I think it was part of an overall chairman's mark. I think it is profoundly mistaken. I just think it was a mistake. I don't think this is the way we need to be generating revenue. This is not the place where we want to make the cuts. I could carry on, and I will later on by marshaling a lot of evidence about the tax part, which I still think is way too tilted to those at the top. But for right now, let me simply say, since we are talking about Medicare, let me enter into a policy discussion and just say to all Senators--Democrats and Republicans alike--I hope there will be strong support for this amendment that Senator Kennedy has introduced and that I am a cosponsor of. In this particular case, it is not a matter of numbers. You are really talking about a provision or proposal that could have a very, very negative impact on some of the most vulnerable citizens in this country. I don't think there is one Senator in here who wants to do that. Now, if there are some alternatives and other proposals, fine. But this was a mistake. We ought not to be doing this $5 copay on home health visits for very elderly people, most of them very vulnerable, most of them very low-income. So I rise to speak on behalf of this amendment. I am proud to be an original cosponsor, and I hope we will get a tremendous amount of support for it tomorrow. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. I say to both my colleagues, I potentially am ready to do an amendment or two. But I would rather wait until after some discussions with other Senators. Also, Senator Moynihan and Senator Roth will be here. I thank the Senator for his courtesy.

Mr. WELLSTONE. When do we expect them to come to the floor?

Mr. WELLSTONE. That is correct. I just want to ask the managers--it is fine with me if Senator Gregg proceeds. It is my understanding that Senator Moynihan will be coming to the floor seeking a modification. Is that correct?

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. When you have a tax cut bill, a reconciliation bill that gives the vast majority of the benefits to those people at the very top and gives middle-income and working families the shaft, you don't have justice. You don't have a bill that represents expanding opportunities. And, as I said, fix it up, do your best, but, again, you can put an earring on a hog, but that won't hide the ugliness. You are not going to be able to hide it from people in the country. Next week we are going to have one heck of a debate. My appeal is that we work together here in this body. But my appeal also is to the President: I hope you will hold the line. During the last campaign the President talked about economic fairness. Boy, if there ever was a place to draw the line and have a debate, it is here. To Democrats, my colleagues, I hope you will come out here with an alternative. I hope we will be united behind it, and I hope we will stay strong. Because this piece of legislation is the exact opposite of what most folks mean by fairness. It is no wonder that most people in the country think there has been a hostile takeover of the government process. They know who has been in there lobbying, they know who is going to get the vast majority of the benefits, and they can see that it does not have a whole lot to do with them. That is the disconnect in American politics today. This reconciliation bill, this tax cut, represents a huge disconnect to middle-income and working families. It is an outrage. Let me just conclude by asking unanimous consent that a Wednesday, June 18, piece, ``Rising College Costs Imperil the Nation, Blunt Report Says,'' from the New York Times and a Washington Post piece, June 18, ``Colleges' Failure to Resolve Funding May Bar Millions from Attending, Study Finds,'' be printed in the Record.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Madam President, I was on the floor yesterday speaking about the reconciliation bill. I decided to not go forward with an amendment today. The amendment that I was considering offering, and the amendment I offered yesterday to the intelligence bill, speak to the issue of tax fairness. But the reconciliation bill will be on the floor next week, and the DOD reauthorization is not going to come up in any case until after the reconciliation bill. So I will wait until next week and then offer amendments directly to the reconciliation bill. Madam President, let me just start out with a piece from the National Journal of June 21. The caption is ``Fighting Over Taxes.'' I quote: In the coming weeks Wall Street will be lobbying in support of all the new tax measures it likes, notably capital gains tax cuts, expansion of IRA's, and trying especially in the Senate to keep unwanted provisions out of the final bill. ``We have to make sure that they are not offered on the floor to pay for some other provisions,'' said Bruce E. Thompson, Jr., the head lobbyist of the Washington office of Merrill Lynch & Co. Madam President, I think this is the real question about this tax bill that is before us. The question is, who really has say in this process. Let me just go back to some charts--again, the Department of Treasury analysis. Looking at the House bill, the tax cuts disproportionately help those who need help the least. If you look at the share of tax cuts by family income, the top fifth get almost 70 percent of the benefit of the tax cuts, the top fifth. Then the fourth fifth gets 19 percent of the cuts; the third fifth, 9.2 percent; the second fifth, 2.4 percent; the bottom fifth, less than 1 percent. In other words, the bottom 40 percent of the population get a total of about 3 percent of the benefits of these tax breaks; the third fifth, the middle class, gets about 9.2 percent. Then you get to the top fifth, the top 20 percent, they get almost 70 percent of the breaks. So you have about 80 percent of the benefits going to the top 40 percent, and almost 70 percent of the benefits going to the top fifth. This is just unbelievable. Just look at the next chart. This shows the dollar amount that families get. Again, the source here is the Department of the Treasury, Office of Tax Analysis: If you have an income of $400,000 a year, or over, you will get about $7,000 a year in benefits under these tax proposals. Congratulations. If you earn $200,000 and up, you are going to get about $3,706. But on the other hand, if you are down here in the $30,000 to $40,000 range, you get $152. If you are $15,000 to $30,000, you get about $52. A buck a week. If you look at the tax cuts on the House side, and the way in which they are back loaded because of the capital gains cuts and the IRA's, you are talking about an erosion of revenue to the tune of about $950 billion by the time we get to the year 2017. It is not just the first 10 years that matters. It is what happens in the second 10 years that is tragic. This is not my analysis. It is the Joint Tax Committee and the Center on Budget & Policy Priorities. By the way, Bob Greenstein, who is the director of that Center-- people can agree or disagree with some of Bob's views on different issues--but his data analysis is impeccable. Bob received the MacArthur award, the genius award, for the work he does. And you add to his reputation Congress' own Joint Tax Committee. On the one hand, Members of Congress say they are for deficit reduction, and then they go forward with this erosion of the revenue base via back-loaded tax cuts. That is bad enough. The second thing that is bad enough, or even worse, is what is going to be the tradeoff. We are going to have more and more people that are going to be 65 years of age and over, and more and more people that are 85 years of age and over. We will have the pressure of supporting them financially and covering their medical costs, and we will end up either running the deficits back up again, or we will be cutting into what little is left by the way of investment and education programs for our children and for our grandchildren. But what makes this really unconscionable is basically we are talking about tax cuts that go to people on the top. Let me quote a Washington Times headline from today: from Speaker Gingrich--``Gingrich Derides Democrats' Tax Cut Proposal As Welfare.'' This is unbelievable. What the Speaker is worried about is that Democrats--I hope--are going to be on the floor of the Senate next week, and in the House, focusing on the welfare of working families. Let's not have a play on words here. This is not a debate about welfare policy. This is a debate about the welfare of working families and their children. That is not rhetoric. That is what this is all about. So, Madam President, I will suggest to you--and we will see what happens next week--that people in the country are going to be sorely disappointed and people in the country are just going to shake their heads in disbelief. And people in cafes in Minnesota and Maine, when they finally get a look at who is really going to get the benefits, are going to say, ``Wait a minute. We thought you were talking about tax cuts for our hard-pressed families.'' And they are going to find out that is not the case at all. Apparently, we made some progress in the Finance Committee last night, at least for some of the people who are in the $20,000 to $25,000 range who weren't going to be getting any child care credit because they received earned income tax credit. These are working poor people. At least now they're not going to be a 100-percent offset, and some of these families are going to be able to get some child care credits. But, Madam President, this still begs the question as to why in the world giving these families a benefit is even controversial. Don't we want to make sure that working families' children also get benefits? Don't we want to make sure that these tax cuts are not tilted and skewed toward the very top--the top fifth--of the population that gets the lion's share of all the benefits? Don't we want to target precious dollars toward middle-income people and toward working families? That is not what this legislation is all about. That is not what these tax cuts are all about. That is not what is going to be reported out on the floor of the Senate. Madam President, I just want to mention one other area that I know is near and dear to the Presiding Officer's heart. That is higher education. I want to be critical of Democrats and Republicans on this. I still say that we are making a mistake here by underreaching. If we are going to say that we are concerned about higher education not being affordable, and we are going to claim to focus on getting support for the people who need it most, how can we talk about tax credits that are not refundable? Nonrefundable HOPE tax credits mean that many of these families with incomes of $20,000 to $25,000 a year are not going to get anything because they don't have any tax liability. That is why the Pell grant is a far better way of getting help to the people who need it. The IRA's are great if you can afford to put the money in savings. We already have the tax incentives for working families to do that. They can't do any more. The problem for many people is they still struggle very hard to earn a decent living and to raise their children successfully. To raise your children successfully means to try to be able to send your kids to college or to a university. But so many struggling families just don't have any money to put into savings. So let's just not fool anybody here. We don't have, really, anything that I see in this tax cut, in this reconciliation bill, that as a matter of fact is going to make higher education affordable for those families that have had the most difficult time. We have had a flat 8 percent graduation rate for families with incomes under $20,000 a year since about 1979. That is scandalous. We ought to be making sure that those families are part of the American dream as well, and we ought to reach well into the $20,000 and $30,000 range of hard-pressed, middle- income working families. We are not doing that. The President's proposal does not do that and certainly the alternatives we have here do not represent a step forward. They represent a great leap backwards. Madam President, let me just finish up with a kind of appeal --I will have amendments next week which will be very specific, and we will have up or down votes on them--but right now, I want to make just a broad appeal. I am grateful for whatever improvements have been made in the Finance Committee. I thank all my colleagues for their work. They have made some improvements. However, like my good friend Jim Hightower likes to say, you can put an earring on a hog, but you still can't hide the ugliness. A couple of earrings don't make a hog beautiful. You can put a couple of earrings on this tax cut, this reconciliation bill, but you can't make it beautiful; you cannot hide the ugliness. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent I have 3 more minutes to speak.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank the Chair.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank the Chair. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed and other Senators be allowed to speak for 10 minutes as if in morning business.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank the Chair. Amendment No. 416

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that members of the Finance Committee be immediately informed of the result of this vote.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank the Senator.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I thank the Senator for his courtesy and inform him I appreciate him. And after the vote, I think I will ask unanimous consent that the Finance Committee be immediately notified of the result of our vote in the Senate.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I think that this debate is healthy for the body politic. People don't want to see us bitterly angry, but they do want to see us genuinely debate issues that directly affect them and their children and their families. I am telling you something, this amendment, that is what this amendment is all about. These tax bills, that is what they should be about. I thank my colleagues for their courtesy. Mr. SHELBY addressed the Chair.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I quote: The bill would lower the top capital-gains tax rate, now 28 percent, to 10 percent for taxpayers with incomes below $41,200 and to 20 percent for those who were better off. The main beneficiaries of the 10 percent rate, the tax experts said, would not be middle-income taxpayers selling a modest amount of mutual funds. Instead, it would be wealthy families who were selling stock to pay for their children's tuition. They could cut the taxes in half by giving their appreciated stock to their children and having the children sell it, rather than selling it themselves and paying the higher tax because of their higher income. That is not the only instance in which the bill would give a better tax break to affluent people sending their children to college than it would give to taxpayers who were less well off. Well, Mr. President, this happens every way you look at it. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities talks about the children's tax credit. I don't know what is going to happen. I understand Chairman Archer and the Republicans are changing their minds. Good. The more we speak out, the better chance we have of other people changing their minds. That is why I am on the floor today. The Senate did an analysis based on data from the Congressional Budget Office that show that the child credit, given where it was heading, where EITC is essentially used to offset it, that there are 28 million children, 2 of every 5, who will receive no child tax credit because their incomes would not be high enough to qualify. Because their incomes won't be high enough to qualify? Unbelievable. You have a tax bill that is going to give a child tax credit, all in the name of helping families, but not if you are in the bottom 40 percent of the population. Unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable. Let me just simply go back to this amendment, because I have been here now long enough to realize what I think is happening, and I just want to be very honest with my colleagues, all of whom I appreciate whether or not we agree or disagree on other things. I bring this amendment to the floor to essentially sound the alarm, because we have tax bills that are absolutely unbelievable. There is no standard of fairness. Ninety-nine percent of the people in any cafe in any of our States would say, ``What? No, can't be; it can't be. We were thinking about tax cuts that would provide us with some relief. You mean, this is going to people with incomes over $400,000 a year and over $200,000 a year, and they get the lion's share of the benefits and hardly anything comes to us, those of us where both are working and we are making $35,000 a year? Say what? No, can't be, Senator Wellstone.'' Well, it is. Or families are going to be saying in Minnesota, ``Wait a minute, I heard higher education was going to be more affordable. Wait a minute, you are saying to me now basically folks with IRA's are going to get the breaks and the breaks will mainly go to high-income people? And, by the way, the tax credits aren't going to be refundable, so if we are making $28,000 a year we'll be cut out?'' I meet these students all the time at community colleges. You have a woman or a man, she is 40, he is 45, they are going back to school, but their income is $28,000. They are not going to get a thing, hardly a thing. People are going to say, ``What? That's not what we understood was going to be the case.'' So, I ask my colleagues to bring out other data, other charts--I would be delighted for them to do so. I have about 2 minutes remaining. Let me read this again-- It is the sense of the Senate that any tax legislation enacted-- Just for staff who are listening or colleagues listening-- by the Congress this year should meet a standard of fairness in its distributional impact on upper, middle and lower income taxpayers * * * By the way, I don't think anybody in the Congress will say middle- income taxpayers are $250,000 a year. We all know what we are talking about here: and that any such legislation should not disproportionately benefit the highest income taxpayers. If my colleagues vote for this sense-of-the-Senate amendment, I will be delighted. Then I will come back with a slightly tougher one on the next bill, and if I get a strong vote for that, I will be delighted as well. But I want to tell you something, sense of the Senate or not, you are on record. You are on record and people in the country are going to be taking a close look at what we are about, and they are going to ask the question whether this tax relief is going to us or is it basically going to the same folks that all too often are the ones who always get the lion's share of the benefits. This is all about political power, who decides, who benefits and who sacrifices. The folks who are benefiting are at the very top of the economic ladder, and the folks who are really paying the price are the people most in need of the assistance. So, we will have this vote later on. Maybe people may vote against it, in which case you don't agree with this proposition. If you vote for it, don't think that your vote is just symbolic. I will have a tougher amendment on the next bill and all next week, any way I can, I will be talking about what you are on record for and how that is opposed to what is coming out of these tax committees. Mr. President, I assume Democrats are going to have an alternative, in which case it will be good, because then people will say there are differences between the parties and those differences matter. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 30 more seconds.