Climate Change

Floor Speech

CLIMATE CHANGE -- (Senate - December 14, 2009)

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Mr. RISCH. I thank the Senator. I am astonished at the process that is involved here. If one steps back and has a look at this from 30,000 feet and you look at what we are doing here, what we are doing here is--and I say ``we'' but it is actually the other side of the aisle--what the other side of the aisle is doing here is attempting to entirely revamp the health care system of this country and they are doing it all in one bill, which we think is a mistake. It should be broken into its component parts. The bill contains and attempts to address quality, cost, accessibility, and the insurance industry all put into one bucket and stirred and expected to resolve all of these problems at one time.

If you look at what has happened here, the House produced three bills, a multithousand-page bill. Those bills were stirred around over there, and eventually in the dead of night they finally got one of them passed with one or two votes to spare. Then it came over here. There were already two bills over here.

The two bills were produced through the committee process. The committee process is a very good process by which we produce bills. Admittedly, both of those bills were heavily skewed to the Democratic side, and all of the Republican amendments--or virtually all of the Republican amendments, certainly all the significant amendments--were voted down on a party-line basis.

Those two bills came out of those committees. One would expect that then they came to the floor and would go through the process. But, no, the two bills were taken over to the majority leader's office, doors shut, curtains closed, and various people were brought in. We don't know who, we don't know how, we don't know what the negotiations were, but at the end of the day, a third bill over here was produced, and it is 2,074 pages long. It is usually kicking around here on the desks. I see they removed most of them. I suspect they removed most of them because most people were afraid they were going to fall over and hurt somebody. These were 2,074 pages that were put together. Nobody really knows exactly what is in them. There are some generalities that we know, but we don't know all the specifics.

Then what happened is a week ago, they decide they will put 10 people in a room, leave the rest of the 90 of us out, and they will try to come up with some type of compromise. And they did. The next day, I got calls from home: I guess it is over; they put out an announcement; they have a compromise. I said: That is news to me. I don't know what is in it. I started to make some calls. Nobody would release the details of what this supposed compromise is.

Remember, in the last election we were promised things would be changed. Change we could believe in. These things would be done out in the open, without lobbyists coming and getting their input in the bill behind closed doors. That is exactly what has been produced. You have a secret document that has been produced that we have not even seen.

In spite of all this, the other side is saying: By golly, we are going to produce a bill before Christmastime. Christmas is coming, and Christmas is very close.

I can tell you, after looking at these 2,074 pages--not looking at the compromise because we are told we cannot see it--it would be reckless, absolutely reckless to shove down the throat of the American people something that has been put together in secret, something that has been put together in the dead of night, something they will not let us look at and examine, and to say: We are going to take this now and shove it down the American people's throats before Christmastime.

This is not a Christmas present the American people want. If you don't believe me, all you have to do is look at the polling. The polling shows every single day support for this bill deteriorates. It deteriorates amongst Republicans, amongst Democrats, and amongst Independents. The last poll, I think, was up to 61 percent of the American people said: Don't do this to us.

We need health care reform in this country. We want health care reform in this country. But this monstrosity that has been produced, and whatever it is they are going to drag out of the alley tomorrow and say: This is what we are going to vote on now, is not what the American people want.

I have a message for those on the other side from the American people: Don't do this to us. Stop. Bring some sanity into this. Do it right.

I yield the floor back to my good friend from Tennessee.

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Mr. RISCH. I want to add to what the Republican leader has said. I think there is this push to get this done before Christmas because they think people are not watching. People are watching. If you look at the poll, the poll is moving. It is moving in the wrong direction for them, but it is clearly moving.

More important, I have news for the people on the other side. If they think this is going to go away after Christmas, they have another ``think'' coming. This is one of the largest issues to be debated in this room for a long time. Every senior citizen in America is going to wake up after Christmas and say: Wait a minute, let me get this straight. Those people in Washington, DC cut $500 billion out of Medicare? Don't they care about me? The system is already going broke and they took $500 billion out of Medicare, benefits I have paid into all my working life, and transferred it over to start a new program, a new social program that also is not sustainable? What is wrong with those people?

This discussion is going to go on. Because of the complexity of this, because of the size of this bill, there are going to be news stories every single day from now until November 2 of 2010. My friends, November 2 of 2010 is coming a lot quicker than you think. By the time you get there you are not going to be able to run from this vote. The American people are wisely going to respond and they are going to tell Washington, DC, through their voting what they think of what happened in this debacle that is called health care reform. It is misnamed, health care reform. It is higher taxes, higher insurance premiums, it is stealing from the Medicare Program, and it is creating a new giant Washington, DC bureaucracy.

The American people do not want this.

I yield to my friend from Wyoming.

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