NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2020--Resumed
Floor Speech
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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, if I might, let me describe where things are in the state of play with respect to the supplemental appropriations bill that deals with the border.
I know the situation at our border has been at a crisis point for weeks now. Our agencies are stretched to the breaking point, struggling to care for the overwhelming flow of migrants; yet we have House Democrats continuing to play politics with the border funding bill.
Again, to describe the state of play, we had a request from the President 7 weeks ago for $4.5 billion to address this humanitarian crisis we are having at our southern border, and the Democrats didn't act on it. They described it as a manufactured crisis. When I say the Democrats, I am talking about the House Democrats, which is where most spending bills originate.
After the House failed to act and failed to respond to the President's request for emergency funding, the Senate decided to act. So the Senate Appropriations Committee took up and passed a bipartisan bill out of the Appropriations Committee by a vote of 30 to 1--not a vote that you see all that often around here these days.
So that bill was reported out to the floor. In the meantime, the House Democrats decided that maybe it wasn't, after all, a manufactured crisis and perhaps they needed to act. So they picked up a bill--a partisan bill--and passed it out of the House of Representatives on a party-line basis, after which the Senate voted on its bill, the bill I mentioned that was reported out of the Appropriations Committee by a vote of 30 to 1, and it came to the floor where it passed yesterday by a vote of 84 to 8--84 to 8 in the U.S. Senate.
Well, just to demonstrate that the bipartisan bill passed by the Senate is the vehicle that should move forward and should go to the President for his signature, the President had indicated he would veto the House-passed bill, but we took it up. We took up the House-passed bill yesterday on the floor of the U.S. Senate. We had a vote on it. It got 37 votes here on the floor of the Senate--not nearly enough, obviously, to pass the Senate. Of course, it was going to meet a certain veto by the President even if it had.
That being said, there were 37 votes for the House-passed partisan bill that came out of the House of Representatives. Here on the floor of the Senate, there were 84 votes for the bipartisan bill produced by the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Where we are right now is that was sent back to the House. The House, frankly, should just take up that bill and pass it. We know for certain the President would sign it. Again, I think it demonstrates a body of work that reflects the will of both sides, Republicans and Democrats-- certainly in the Senate--to get a vote of 30 to 1 out of the Appropriations Committee or 84 to 8 on the floor of the Senate. You had to have a high level of bipartisan cooperation.
That bill to address the humanitarian crisis at our border is awaiting action by the House of Representatives. All they have to do is simply pick it up and pass it and send it to the President, where it will be signed into law, and we will get much needed resources and much needed manpower to the southern border, where they desperately need it. I hope that will be the case.
We are being told that the House is now considering sending yet another partisan bill over here to the Senate. The only thing I can tell you is, if you want to get legislation signed into law by the President of the United States that actually does deliver and put the much needed assistance on the ground that is desperately needed on the southern border, the only surefire way to do that right now is for the House to pick up the Senate-passed bill, which passed here with 84 votes, pass it, and send it to the President, where it will be signed into law, and that $4.5 billion will be on its way to the border to assist with all the needs down there that are currently being unmet. I hope that can happen yet today.
That is the state of play with respect to the supplemental appropriations bill. Democratic Party
Mr. President, I think 2019 is going to go down in history for the Democratic Party. It has been a notable year.
While the Democratic Party has obviously always been left of center, I never expected to see the Democratic Party running so far to the left of the American people or wholeheartedly embracing socialism and a government takeover of a large part of the economy.
The socialist fantasies are rapidly piling up: a government takeover of healthcare, a government takeover of the energy sector, government- funded college, a government writeoff of all student loan debts, guaranteed income, government-guaranteed housing, and on and on. So what is wrong with that? After all, those proposals sound really nice-- free healthcare, free college, the government guaranteeing you an income. Here is the problem: Providing all that stuff is going to cost a lot of money, an almost inconceivable amount of money. Somebody is going to have to pay. You might say that obviously the government is going to pay, but the government has to get its money from somewhere. Here is the catch: The government gets its money from the taxpayers.
Can't we just take that money from rich taxpayers? If you talk to some of the socialist Democrats offering these proposals, they will talk about making the rich pay. The rich are their favorite funding mechanism. Want free college? We just get the rich to pay for it. Want free healthcare? We can just get the rich to pay for it. There is just one big problem with that: There aren't enough rich people in America to even come close to paying for Democrats' socialist fantasies. Deep down, Democrats know it, which is why they tend to get very foggy when pressed on the details of how they are going to pay for some of their plans.
Take the junior Senator from Vermont's proposal of a government takeover of America's health insurance, the so-called Medicare for All plan. A conservative estimate puts the cost of that plan at $32 trillion over 10 years. The current cost is likely much higher since the Senator from Vermont's most recent plan for government-run healthcare also includes long-term care, which we all know is an incredibly expensive benefit.
The Senator from Vermont did release a list of proposed tax hikes to pay for his proposal. The only problem is, the tax hikes wouldn't come close to covering the estimated cost of his original Medicare for All plan, much less the cost of his new expanded Medicare fantasy.
Of course, as staggering as the costs of Medicare for All would be-- more money than the Federal Government spent in the last 8 years combined on everything--they pale in comparison to the cost of the so- called Green New Deal. An initial estimate found that the Green New Deal would cost somewhere between $51 trillion and $93 trillion over 10 years--$93 trillion. That is more money than the 2017 gross domestic product for the entire world. That is right. You could take the entire economic output of every country in the world in 2017, and it still might not pay for the Democrats' socialist fantasy. Once you realize that, it is pretty obvious that the Green New Deal is not a plan that could be paid for by taxing the rich.
How about taxing every household making more than $200,000 a year at a 100-percent rate for 10 years? That wouldn't even get you close to $93 trillion. How about taxing every household making more than $100,000 at a 100-percent rate for 10 years? That wouldn't get you anywhere close to $93 trillion. Like Medicare for All, the Green New Deal would be paid for on the backs of working families.
I have talked a lot about the money aspect of Democrats' socialist proposals, and that is one of the major problems with these proposals-- they sound nice until you realize that actually nothing is really free. Working Americans are still going to be paying for the cost of all those programs through new and much higher taxes.
But that is far from the only problem with some of the Democrats' socialist fantasies. Leaving aside the fact that the Federal Government is not exactly known for its efficiency or bringing programs in on time and on budget, there is the tremendous cost Americans will pay in the loss of their freedom, the loss of their autonomy. Americans are used to choices and being able to make their own decisions. It is part of our heritage. Those are freedoms we cherish. That is not the way things work under socialism.
Nowhere is this more obvious than with Medicare for All. Medicare for All doesn't give Americans health insurance options; it takes them away. Are you part of the majority of Americans who are happy with their current healthcare? Too bad. Medicare for All eliminates all private insurance plans and replaces them with a single, government- run, one-size-fits-all plan. Under Medicare for All, private health insurance plans as we know them would actually be illegal. If you are not happy with the government-run plan, too bad; you won't have any other choices.
The treatment options would also be limited by what the government decides. If the government doesn't want to pay for a particular cancer treatment, for example, as has happened in other countries with socialized medicine, you will be out of luck.
Then, of course, there are the long wait times that are the hallmark of socialized medicine. Imagine having to wait months for diagnostic imagining or needed surgery or having to stand by while your spouse or child is forced to wait months for care. That is the kind of thing Americans would have to look forward to under Medicare for All.
Margaret Thatcher once said that the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money. Once Democrats have taken every dollar they can from the rich to pay for their socialist fantasies, they will come after the paychecks of ordinary Americans, who will face higher and higher taxes for fewer and fewer benefits and greatly reduced choices. Democrats' socialist dreams would quickly trap the American people in a nightmare.
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