A group of Democratic senators took to the Senate floor this evening to offer a series of bills aimed at fixing our nation’s health care system and to urge their Republican colleagues to work with them on a bipartisan approach to health care.
“Why can’t we work together?” U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) asked his colleagues. “We do in our committees … Why can’t we do it with health care?”
Nelson introduced legislation earlier this month that would lower health insurance premiums for some Floridians by as much as 13 percent. That bill would create a permanent reinsurance fund to cover larger-than-expected insurance claims and help stabilize the market. The additional stability created by the bill would, according to one Florida insurer, lower premiums in Florida by up to 13 percent.
“Every one of us has a suggestion out here,” Nelson said. “You put all of these suggestions together and you’re talking about really fixing the current law.”
Following is a rush transcript and here’s a link to video of Nelson’s remarks:
U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson
Remarks on the Senate Floor
June 28, 2017
Sen. Nelson: Mr. President, all over Florida people walk up to me and say, “Bill, what’s going on? Why can’t congress get together? Why can’t we work together?” We do in our committees. We usually work together. We certainly do with Senator Thune who is the chairman of the Finance — of the Commerce Committee. This senator is the ranking member. We get a lot of things out. We’re going to mark up the FAA bill tomorrow. There are a lot of controversial issues. We’re going to get that out. Why can’t we do it with health care?
So last night I had a telephone town hall meeting in my state of Florida, 6,000 people joined. And they asked questions for an hour. And often they would get through asking their question, and they’d say, “I wish you guys could work together.” So that’s what you’ve been hearing in all of these speeches. Well, let me give you one suggestion that would lower premiums on the existing bill of the — not the existing bill, the existing law, the Affordable Care Act, 13%. I had it costed out in Florida.
Okay. You know, every now and then you’re going to have a catastrophic loss. It’s kind of like when I was the elected insurance commissioner of Florida and I inherited the mess after the monster hurricane. It was — Hurricane Andrew was such a monster hurricane that it took down a number of insurance companies because the losses were so big. So we had to try to get insurance companies to come back into Florida. We created a reinsurance fund. We called it the Florida Hurricane Catastrophic Fund that would reinsure or insure the insurance companies against catastrophic loss.
That’s what you can do right here. You could be like my poor constituent Megan who fought cancer for two years with two transplants and ultimately lost the battle, but the bill was $8 million. That’s hard for any insurance company to swallow, but those are going to be limited, isolated cases. So why don’t we create a reinsurance fund for the marketplace in the Affordable Care Act to help the insurance companies in catastrophic loss? I ask them, if we did that in Florida, with the Florida marketplace, what would it mean? It would reduce the insurance premiums under the marketplace Florida 13%.
Now, that’s just one suggestion. Every one of us has a suggestion out here. You put all of these suggestions together and you’re talking about really fixing the current law, instead of this roadway that we see our friends on the other side of the aisle going down, a solution that’s going to take coverage away from 22 million people, and it’s going to cut $800 billion out of Medicaid and eviscerate Medicaid, or it’s going to charge older Americans over younger Americans five times as much as the younger? We don’t have to do that. Let’s come up with the creative ideas to fix the existing law.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
Remarks
Sen. Bill Nelson's remarks on White House plan to privatize air traffic control
U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), the top Democrat on the Senate Commerce Committee which oversees the FAA, took to the Senate floor this evening to slam the administration’s proposal to privatize the nation’s air traffic control system:
“So let’s hand over to the airlines all the people and the equipment essential to the safe operation of our nation’s air traffic control system and trust them, the airlines, to manage our skies,” Nelson said. “We know that several airlines in the past year have had to cancel thousands of flights and strand passengers at airports for hours because they couldn’t effectively manage their IT systems. How can we trust the airlines to govern an entity that manages our skies, when it can’t even manage its own basic IT systems?”
Below is a rush transcript and here’s a link to watch video of Nelson’s remarks.
U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson
Remarks on the Senate Floor
June 5, 2017
Sen. Nelson: Mr. President, I want to talk about a subject that is near and dear to the presiding officer’s heart as well as to this senator because we both have the privilege of serving on the Senate Commerce Committee — Commerce, Science and Transportation.
Mr. President, Congress finds itself facing a year of deadlines and the two most talked about ones are the debt ceiling and the continued funding for the government. But if that were not enough, a very important deadline is looming that affects the safety of the traveling public. By the end of September, Congress must reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration or risk the shutdown of the agency’s core safety mission. This senator has the privilege of being the ranking member of the Commerce Committee and I have the privilege of working with the chairman, Senator Thune, on a comprehensive and long term FAA reauthorization bill. Unfortunately what prevented the long-term bill from passing Congress last year, it’s threatening to do the same again this year all over.
This morning the White House formally announced its intention to privatize air traffic control, that function of the FAA, a move that the White House claims will be self-sustaining.
This so-called plan for ATC privatization includes an entity that will be run, in large part, by, you guessed it, the major airlines. And that entity would receive, free of charge, government owned FAA assets and that entity would collect user fees to finance its operations.
Well, this is how many of us interpret this proposal: so, let’s hand over to the airlines all the people and the equipment essential to the safe operation of our nation’s air traffic control system and trust them, the airlines, to manage our skies and the increasing air traffic.
And on top of that, here on the other side — on top of that — well, let’s finance the airlines’ control of our sky through user fees paid by the general aviation community.
We know that several airlines in the past year have had to cancel thousands of flights and strand passengers at airports for hours because they couldn’t effectively manage their IT systems. How can we trust airlines to govern an entity that manages our skies when it can’t even manage its own basic IT systems?
The FAA, our government Federal Aviation Administration, safely and effectively manages the largest and most complex airspace in the world. Supporters of air traffic control privatization can cite other countries all they want to that have privatized, but none of those privatized systems hold a candle to the complicated air traffic and densely populated air traffic system that the FAA has accomplished.
Rather than helping the FAA continue its progress toward modernizing our air traffic control system through NextGen, that is being implemented as we speak and in three years the process of handing off most of the air traffic to the satellites instead of ground-based radar — that’s just in three years — the transition, on the other hand, to a privatized air traffic control entity is only going to disrupt and delay the FAA’s modernization efforts.
So one has to ask, if it isn’t broken, what exactly is it that the administration trying to fix? We actually have real issues that need to be addressed in this FAA bill: how to continually, safely integrate drones into our nation’s airspace. Another one: reforming the process for aircraft certification. And, very importantly, helping the FAA hire more air traffic controllers. And we need to work to ensure that consumers — consumers, the flying public — have real protections in place that protect them when things go wrong. I really wish the administration would focus on those issues, which receive near unanimous support in the Senate last year, rather than try and upend the world’s safest air traffic control system.
So let’s not get sidetracked by proposals that have near the bipartisan consensus in Congress nor agreement among aviation stakeholders.
Mr. President, we came very close last year to enacting a bipartisan and comprehensive FAA bill. It passed the Senate by 95-3. All of that, it didn’t have air traffic control privatization.
I know we can do it again, and I look forward to working with Senator Thune and the members of the committee who will have the first crack at this when we bring up the FAA bill. And hopefully we can go with a consensus bill that will give us an authorization for the FAA many years — five to seven years in the future, so we can have the certainty of the authorization with which to continue to build a safe airline and air safety record and implement the next generation of air traffic control.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
Nelson's remarks on GOP health care bill
Sen. Bill Nelson took to the Senate floor today to urge his colleagues to think twice before supporting the “disastrous” Republican health care bill the House passed last week.
“We’re dealing with people’s lives here. We’re dealing with their health. The last thing in the world that we ought to be doing is cutting out the sources of funding to help people who are in such dire straits,” Nelson said. “I would urge our colleagues to think twice about supporting this disastrous Republican health care bill.”
Nelson specifically cited the more than $800 billion that the bill cuts from the federal Medicaid program and how those cuts would negatively affect Florida’s ability to combat the growing opioid epidemic.
“Last week, the Florida Medical Examiners Commission released new data showing that over 2,600 Floridians had died from opioids in just the first half of 2016 alone,” Nelson said. “In 2015 alone, 167 babies were born in opioid dependency in just one city, Jacksonville,” Nelson added, citing a recently published report.
As the single largest payer for substance abuse services, Medicaid plays a critical role in the fight against the opioid epidemic. Nelson sent a letter last week to the Acting Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy urging him to make treatment more available to those addicted to opioids.
A copy of Nelson’s letter is available here.
Following is a rush transcript and here is a link to watch video of Nelson’s remarks: https://youtu.be/ZMZgtUZ1ve8
U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson
Remarks on the Senate Floor
May 8, 2017
Sen. Nelson: Mr. President, I want to talk as well about the Republican health care plan and point out why it is moving on very treacherous territory when it will affect the funding of Medicaid by lessening the amount of Medicaid money that will be spent in the states because so much of that Medicaid money is going to address the opioid crisis and the opioid crisis we found last year – you know, there was a lot of talk about it being in New Hampshire when the eyes of America were on New Hampshire in the New Hampshire primary, but the fact is it’s in every state now, and it is particularly so in my state of Florida.
There are something like 2,600 deaths that have occurred in Florida as a result of opioid overdose. So the seriousness with which we ought to be addressing this issue ought to be of extreme concern and doing something about it, and yet a bill just passes the House of Representatives that is doing exactly the opposite, that is going to cut Medicaid.
It’s a fancy term, cut Medicaid with a block grant. What that means is it’s going to be capped. And that means that a state is not going to get any more Medicaid once that cap has been hit unless the state responds. So, in essence, it’s going to cost the states more money.
I don’t think that you will find many states that are in such a fiscal condition that in fact they could do that. And so what are we doing? We’re harming poor people and disabled who get their health care from Medicare – Medicaid — but in fact we’re not only harming all of them. There is a crisis among us, and that is the opioid crisis. And this is going to particularly hurt addressing that.
So what I want to talk about today is the Republican health care plan that passed out of the House last week. This plan is going to increase costs for older Americans. Remember, it’s going to go on a ratio instead of one to three — you can charge older Americans three times as much in health insurance as younger Americans — it’s going to go up to a ratio of at least one to five and maybe more.
So it’s going to increase cost for older Americans. It’s going to cut Medicaid, and it’s going to take health care coverage away from tens of millions of people. Right now, as a result of the ACA, there are 24 million people that have health insurance coverage that did not have it before this law was passed in 2010. It’s going to reverse that.
Now, do we want to take away health care from people that can now have health care through Medicaid and/or health insurance because they can now afford the health insurance? Is that really a goal that the United States want to do, is to take away that health care through private health insurance? I don’t think that’s what we want to do.
And yet that’s what the House of Representatives’ Republican health care bill has done.
So if we just look at my state of Florida, there are almost eight million people who have a so-called preexisting condition. This includes something as common as asthma. That’s a preexisting condition.
As a former elected insurance commissioner of Florida, I can tell you that some insurance companies would use as an excuse as a preexisting condition something as simple as a rash and say, because you have a preexisting condition, we are not going to insure you. Under the existing law, the Affordable Care Act, an insurance company can’t deny you with a preexisting condition. And just in my state alone, there are almost eight million people who have a preexisting condition. Are we going to turn them out on the streets because their insurance company says we’re not going to carry you anymore? I don’t think that’s what we want to do.
The bill allows insurers to charge older Americans at least five times more than what they charge younger adults. Is that what we want to do?
What is the principle of insurance? The principle of insurance is that you spread the risk. You get as many people in the pool as you can — young, old, sick, healthy — and you spread that risk.
So if you get fire insurance on your home, you’re paying a premium every month, and the insurance company has calculated in an actuarial calculation what it is going to cost you to insure that you don’t get that, but you are part of hundreds of thousands of people in that pool that are also insuring against fire damaging their house. It’s the same principle with health insurance.
So you get young and old, sick and well, and some people with preexisting conditions, and you spread that risk over a lot of people.
This — one of the fallacies we hear is they talk about, well, we can replace this by creating a high-risk pool. In other words, we’re going to set up some money for people who have really sick conditions, and we’re going to take care of them. That’s the most inefficient way to do it because insurance is about spreading risk, not concentrating risk, which is what a high-risk pool exactly is. So the ones down at the House of Representatives who have concocted this thing called the Republican health care plan, they have come up with exactly the opposite idea of funding, instead of spreading the risk, concentrating the risk, and then saying they’re going out an getting $8 billion and that’s going to pay for it. It’s not going to even touch it. But, again, it’s the most inefficient way to approach the subject of spreading risk because they don’t spread the risk, they concentrate the risk.
And what this bill does is over ten years it cuts over $800 billion out of Medicaid. You start doing that and we’re going to lose what we know Medicaid is: a program primarily for the poor, to give them health care, and the disabled.
By the way, isn’t it interesting that they cut over $800 billion to save it out of Medicaid and, oh, by the way, what do they do in the same bill? They give upwards of $600 million in tax breaks to those who are at the highest income levels.
So let me get this right. It’s kind of reverse Robin Hood. I’m going to take from the poor by cutting $800 billion and I’m going to going to give to the rich by tax breaks for the highest income folks. Is that what we want to do? I don’t think so.
Medicaid is a program that guarantees health care for millions of Americans, including children, people with disabilities, pregnant women, and seniors on long-term care. Now, think about that. Seniors on long-term care. What am I talking about? How about seniors in nursing homes? How about seniors that don’t have enough resources, assets in order to pay for their care in the twilight years and, therefore, they’re being paid for by Medicaid, and that’s the only source of income to take care of them? Is that what we want to cut in order to give a tax break for the highest income group? It ought to be the reverse. That is upside down thinking.
So last week the Florida Medical Examiners Commission released new data showing that over 2,600 Floridians had died from opioids in just the first half of 2016 alone. Over the entire year before, 2015, fentanyl killed — and that’s an opioid — killed 705 Floridians. And just in the first half of the next year, 2016, almost the exact same number, 704, in one half of the year died.
You see, we’ve got a problem in the state of Florida, and there are a lot of other states that have the same.
Last month I went to a research institute down in Palm Beach County. They’re using NIH grant money to research new, non-addictive opioid drugs. If they can come up with this that is certainly all to the better to help people with pain and it not be an addictive drug. But we’re not there yet, and we’re using NIH money that is going to that research.
And also last month I sent a letter to the Republican leadership pushing for more funding for the opioid fight and for the National Institutes of Health, NIH and, Mr. President, I would like to enter that letter in the record.
The Presiding Officer: Without objection.
Sen. Nelson: And so, what we need to do is take a comprehensive approach to helping our states and local governments respond to this opioid epidemic.
I was very happy to be a part of an early part of putting together and sponsoring a bill called the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of 2016 and the funding included in the 21st Century Cures Act to start putting more resources into our states right away for this opioid epidemic. And those laws have resulted in Florida receiving more than $27 million to help our state respond to the opioid crisis.
Yet a lot more action is needed, as you can see by just the first half of last year alone, 704 people died from opioid overdoses. Last week in Florida a local paper reported about how the opioid epidemic is affecting our nation’s children. In 2015 alone, 167 babies were born in opioid dependency in just one city, Jacksonville, contributing to Duval County being tapped as having the second-highest number of babies born addicted to opioids in the state. Isn’t that sad that children come into this world and they’re already addicted?
And so, Mr. President, we’re dealing with people’s lives here. We’re dealing with their health. The last thing in the world that we are ought to be doing is cutting out the sources of funding to help people who are in such dire straits. And I would urge our colleagues to think twice about supporting this disastrous Republican health care bill.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
Sen. Bill Nelson's remarks on health care bill
Sen. Bill Nelson was in Orlando yesterday meeting with a group of older Americans who would be among those most hurt by the health care plan currently being considered in the House. Nelson promised the Floridians he met with that he would share their stories with the Senate when he returned to Washington. And this afternoon, he did just that:
“These are the folks that I met with yesterday,” Nelson said on the Senate floor today. “I wish every senator and every member of Congress would go out and talk to people who are real people with real problems and understand how petrified they are. … They’re scared to death that they’re not going to have health care.”
Below is a rush transcript of Nelson’s speech, and here’s a link to watch video of his remarks: https://youtu.be/wPDcAGE-r9A.
U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson
Remarks on the Senate Floor
March 21, 2017
Sen. Nelson: Mr. President, you know how we’ve seen these TV clips about various members and senators around the country having town hall meetings. There, for example, three of our colleagues this past weekend — Indiana was one of them — had tremendous town hall meetings and a lot of good exchange of information.
And so, with this looming House of Representatives health care bill, which I refer to as Trumpcare since the president has endorsed it, I wanted to see a particular group in our society that is extremely vulnerable, and that is the older Americans, but not old enough to be 65 to be eligible for Medicare.
Now, by the way, be careful because there are people lurking these halls and the administration that would like to raise Medicare eligibility from 65 to 67. But that’s not what is confronting the House of Representatives. It’s what’s going to happen to those people for their health care below the age of 65. Because once they get 65, under current law they’re eligible for Medicare.
And so I reached out to a particular group of Floridians. These are folks that I did not know that our offices in Florida had become aware of because they had written about the health care debate that’s going on, and in many cases had described their circumstances.
So, the group of eight or ten that we had in yesterday in my Orlando office all were in the range — age range — of 50 to 64. And I want to tell the Senate about this group of people because if approved in its current form, the House health care bill — Trumpcare – would dramatically increase health care costs for folks in that age group, 50 to 64. And those are folks who either get their health care through expanded Medicaid or they get their health insurance through healthcare.gov, which is the exchange, whether it be on the state exchange or a federal exchange because the state is not participating.
And according to the Congressional Budget Office, here’s one example. A 64-year-old making $26,500 could see their health care costs go from $1,700 a year that they pay now under the Affordable Care Act, all the way up to $14,600 a year under the House plan, Trumpcare.
Now that’s a dramatic jump, obviously. And do we think that that is really too much of an extreme example?
Well, I want to tell you what these people said. If you look at what the House is proposing, the dramatic rise in cost is due in large part to two provisions contained in the House bill, one that would allow insurers to charge older Americans up to five times as much as younger people. This is health insurance. And another, the second one that caps the federal tax credits meant to help seniors pay for the rising cost of health insurance.
Now, federal tax credits is a fancy way of saying the subsidy, so that if you’re a senior and you’re above 138% of poverty, which is approximately for a single individual $16,000 a year.
And, by the way, who making $16,000 a year can afford health insurance? That’s why we need the remaining 19 states — my state of Florida included — to expand Medicaid up to that 138% of poverty.
But if you’re between that level and all the way up to 400% of poverty which, by the way, what is that, for a single individual is about $46,000, $47,000 a year, in that zone of 138% of poverty up to 400%, there are these tax credits or, in other words, subsidies. So, the one with lower income gets more subsidy in order to do what? To buy private health insurance on the private marketplace through the exchange.
And as you get on up to 400%, now you say a person making $46,000, $47,000 a year, can they really afford health insurance? Not the real cost unless it’s some huge deductible plan that doesn’t give them much. That’s why these folks need some assistance. That is in place. That’s the law. That’s the Affordable Care Act that has been so maligned over the last several years.
Then aside from the health insurance, there’s the expansion of Medicaid. That has helped a lot of people.
And there’s still four million people in this country that would benefit if those 19 remaining states would expand Medicaid up to 138%. And so they’re left in the cold. They’re not getting health insurance. They’re not getting health care and they’re eligible to have it, and the federal money is there to draw down to enable them to have that Medicaid. But 19 states, including my state of Florida, have decided not to expand it.
So with all of that as background, I asked these folks to come in.
According to the AARP, there are millions of Floridians in that age group, 50 to 64, who currently receive Medicaid or tax credits to help them pay for the insurance through healthcare.gov. Millions that are eligible.
So, the group came in, and here’s what I learned. I’m going to give you some personal vignettes.
Marshall Stern, he’s a 61-year-old heart transplant survivor. He lives in Kissimmee, Florida. Marshall has had a serious heart condition since he was a young man. Three years ago his condition worsened and it resulted in several hospitalizations, after which he would — he was told he would need a heart transplant. Though he is on full disability, he was told that he had to enroll in Medicaid or he would not be eligible for the transplant.
Just the medication for the after-the-transplant operation patient, it cost around $100,000 a year, which obviously Marshall would not be able to afford without Medicaid coverage. He would also like to take this medication — and is going to have to if he’s going to live — for the rest of his life.
He worried that turning Medicaid in the House bill, the House Trumpcare bill, turning it into a block grant program, which is a fancy way of saying we’re going to cut it off and you’re not going to get any more and if you do, you’re going to have to finance it from your own state resources. Governors, as the presiding officer would appreciate, you are going to have to share more of the health cost burden, Mr. Governor and Mr. State legislatures.
And so he’s worried that if that House bill passes and Medicaid is threatened as we know it, he’s not going to be able to have the medications that he needs to stay alive. And this is what Marshall told me, and it was very dramatic. He says, quote, “It’s as good as saying that I’d die.”
The rest of us who are not facing that, you have a fellow tell you that. This is serious business.
All right, let me tell you about another one.
Susanna Perkins, a 62-year-old living in Altamonte Springs. Susanna’s husband lost his job in 2009 and she lost her employer-provided health plan during the recession. The couple blew through their IRA, and they ended up selling nearly everything they had. They eventually moved out of the country to save money.
But in 2014, they decided to move back. Why? Because the Affordable Care Act passed, and the ACA made it possible for them to afford health insurance again.
And this is what Susanna said, quote, “If they shred the ACA like they are threatening to do, we’re going to have to high-tail it out of here, because dealing with the health care cost and the insurance complications just makes you sick. We’re getting by, but we’re getting by on the ACA and if it goes away, if they make these changes the way they’re talking about, we’ll be uninsured again.”
All right, I was going to show you a picture here of these are the folks that I met with yesterday. I won’t point out the individual ones. And I’m going to talk about some of the other ones, but you can see most everybody, there’s one person over here that’s outside of the photograph. But we sat down for an hour’s conversation, and I heard their stories.
I wish every senator and every member of Congress would go out and talk to people who are real people with real problems and understand how petrified they are.
These folks, they look like our neighbors and our friends. They look like the people that we go to church with. They look like the people who have children or grandchildren that we play with. And they’re petrified. They’re scared to death that they’re not going to have health care.
So let me tell you about another one of those ladies, Terry Falbo is a 59-year-old living in the Orlando area. She moved to Florida back in 2012 because she had to take care of her elderly mother and her disabled sister. And for 25 years, she had already had good health insurance through her employer where she lived up north. And she rarely used the health insurance.
After losing her job in 2006, as we went into the beginnings of the recession, she purchased an individual insurance policy that cost her $500-$650 a month. Prior to the ACA, she had to make withdrawals from her retirement account, she had to max out her credit cards to pay for the premiums, and as a result, she depleted all of her reserves and all of her retirement funds.
So since the Affordable Care Act was implemented, she has had an affordable policy because she qualifies for the monthly subsidy of $600, bringing her premium payments to $70 a month, and that was without a deductible — with zero deductible. She could have gotten a policy at a $5,000 a deductible for $3 a month. She needed that assurance at her age that she would be able to have the health care she needed, and for $70 a month because of the subsidy.
But that is not what is protecting her in the House Trumpcare bill. Under that proposed health care plan, her maximum subsidy would be less than $300 a month, which means she would end up paying $4,000 more per year, an amount that she simply can’t afford, and that’s what she told me — I can’t afford it. She said she would have to go without health insurance instead. And she was desperately, before the ACA, trying to have health insurance. She depleted all of her retirement funds.
There’s another lady sitting around that table that I showed you the picture, Nancy Walker. She’s a 51-year-old self-employed actor living in Kissimmee. She is active, she’s healthy. She chose to pursue a career in the arts. The unstable nature of her profession has often left her unable to afford health insurance so she’s gone without it most of her adult life as an artist, as a performer.
Since the ACA took effect, however, she’s been finally able to afford health insurance thanks to the subsidies. She told me it’s been a relief for her to go to the doctor not only for checkups, but actually, when she has a problem, to fix it. But if Congress passes that House Trumpcare bill, her premiums are going to go up and she has no doubt that she will once again be unable to afford health insurance and health care. She told me that she fears simple health issues will fester, becoming serious, chronic, and expensive to treat. Remember I said they were petrified, that they are scared to death? There’s an example, and she finally has health insurance after all of these years of going without it because she didn’t have an employer that paid it for her.
Take another one, Marilyn Word, a 63-year-old retiree living in Orlando. Marilyn lives mainly off of Social Security payments but is not old enough to qualify for Medicare. She’s under that magic 65 age year that you’re eligible. After retiring, Marilyn enrolled in an insurance plan through the ACA exchange and is eligible for annual tax credits to help her pay for her insurance. Marilyn told me that she was extremely worried about the increased premiums that she would likely have to pay under the House Trumpcare plan.
I’ll give you another lady that’s sitting around that table. Sharon Brown. She’s a 58-year-old widow. She lives in the Orlando area. After her husband’s death, Sharon has been dealing with several medical issues and pulling money out of her retirement account to pay for her current plan. She has a nest egg from her husband’s life insurance money, but due to her health condition, she will likely need long-term medical care. This is what she told me, quote, “My premium’s pretty high because I have multiple medical conditions that make it so I can’t work. I’ve done a lot of reading and the cost of my health care under the Trumpcare plan will amount to double what I make right now in income.” She looked at me with this pained expression on her face and said – “It’s very scary and the anxiety that goes along with this happening right now is making it worse.”
Sharon told me that she’s a lifelong registered republican. She volunteered this and said that the bill being considered now is forcing her to reconsider her party. She says, quote, “I’m changing my political affiliation to independent. I want to vote my conscience,” she says.
So, Mr. president, when you put a face to these stories of these people that I have just talked about that we just talked yesterday, the House Trumpcare plan ends Medicaid as we know it because it cuts it off, the amount going to the states, and I understand that in trying to fix up some things, just last night in the House they filed an amendment in an attempt to address some of the problems.
One of the things that they were trying to fix is it would allow states to choose between capping or block granting the Medicaid program, but under either proposal what that means is that the federal government is going to be contributing less to the states and that means more money will have to be picked up the tab by the states. Just go and ask the governors how much more they can pick up.
So, Mr. President, I urge our House and Senate colleagues to join all of these people that I have talked about and vote, as Sharon said, with your conscience on what you’re going to do to folks like this, gutting Medicaid and forcing struggling older Americans to pay more for health insurance is simply not the right thing to do. And for a change, Mr. President, we ought to be trying to do the right thing.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
Senator Bill Nelson's remarks re: Bob Levinson
Today marks 10 years since Bob Levinson, a retired FBI agent and Florida resident, went missing while visiting an island off the coast of Iran. U.S. Sens. Bill Nelson (D-FL) and Marco Rubio (R-FL) filed a resolution today calling on the government of Iran to follow through on its repeated promises to help search for Levinson.
“Today, we renew our call on Iran to make good on those promises and return Bob,” Nelson said in remarks on the Senate floor this afternoon. “We also urge the president and our allies to keep pressing Iran – to make clear that the United States has not forgotten Bob and we won’t forget him until he’s home.”
Following is a transcript of Nelson’s remarks and here’s a link to watch video of his speech: https://youtu.be/hASS4wwYulY.
The text of Nelson and Rubio’s resolution is available here.
U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson
Remarks on the Senate Floor
March 9, 2017
Sen. Nelson: Madam President, I come to the floor today with a heavy heart because ten years ago today, Robert Levinson, a former FBI agent, was detained in Iran on the tourist island of Kish island in the Persian Gulf.
Bob, a long-time and much respected FBI agent who had been retired, had served his country for 28 years. He is the longest held civilian in our nation’s history. He’s a husband, a father of seven and now a grandfather of six and he deserves to be reunited with his family.
Since Bob’s detention, American officials have sought Iran’s cooperation in locating and returning Bob to his family. And, of course, Iranian officials have promised over and over their assistance, but after ten long years, those promises have amounted to nothing. Bob still is not home.
The bottom line, Madam President, is that Iran is responsible for returning Bob to his family. If Iranian officials don’t have Bob, then they sure know where to find him.
So today we renew our call on Iran to make good on those promises and return Bob, return him where he ought to be, with his family.
Iran’s continued delay in returning him, in addition to the very serious disagreements the United States has with the government of Iran about its missile program, its sponsorship of terrorism and its human rights abuses, it’s just another obstacle Iran must overcome if it wants to improve relations with the United States.
We also urge the president and our allies to keep pressing Iran to make clear that the United States has not forgotten Bob and won’t forget him until he’s home.
Obviously, we owe this to Bob, a servant of America, and we certainly owe it to his family. And so to Bob’s family, we recognize your tireless efforts over the years for ten long years to bring your dad home, and we offer our sympathies.
Madam President, I yield the floor.
Sen. Nelson's remarks on proposed budget cuts
Sen. Bill Nelson took to the Senate floor today to voice his concerns over reports that the Administration is planning severe budget cuts to three federal agencies including: $1.3 billion from the U.S. Coast Guard, $900 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and $500 million from the Transportation Security Administration.
“That plan just doesn’t make any sense,” Nelson said, “especially when it comes to securing our borders. You’d be putting a bunch of money in a wall, but you’re losing the security of the border over here on the oceans.”
Following is a rush transcript of Nelson’s remarks and here’s a link to watch video of his speech: https://youtu.be/AMermCRPs5Y.
U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson
Remarks on the Senate Floor
March 8, 2017
Sen. Nelson: Mr. President, I rise today to express serious concern about reports in the press that the administration is considering deep cuts in funding to crucial aspects of our nation’s national security and our homeland security to pay for the construction of a border wall and also for a crackdown on illegal immigration.
And the first target that alarmed me is America’s maritime guardian, the U.S. Coast Guard. Even as the administration says it plans to secure the borders and increase funding for our military by $54 billion, which, in fact, may be a good thing, it’s reportedly considering cuts on the non-defense side but that includes the Department of Homeland Security, a cut of $1.3 billion, or 12%, to the very military service that secures our vast maritime borders — and that’s the Coast Guard.
That plan just doesn’t make any sense especially when it comes to securing our borders. You’d be putting a bunch of money in a wall, but you’re losing the security of the border over here on the oceans.
The 42,000 member-strong Coast Guard plays a vital role in the protecting our nation from narcoterrorism, from combating human smuggling, from preventing and responding to maritime environmental disasters, as well as protecting living and property at sea, and, oh, by the way, in other foreign parts of the globe, the U.S. Coast Guard is assisting the U.S. Military in our military operations.
Back to border security, if securing our borders and supporting our military is a true priority for the administration, then it ought not be slashing the Coast Guard’s budget. Instead, we should be supporting the Coast Guard’s ongoing and much-needed fleet recapitalization program, including the design and construction of the new of the new offshore patrol cutter and the continued production of the new, fast response cutter. These are desperately needed assets for the Coast Guard.
This senator has personally visited dozens of Coast Guard units all around, not just in my state of Florida, but in Alaska, the Great Lakes. It’s just amazing the job that the Coast Guard does and what I have witnessed firsthand is what they do in the service to our country. The constant theme of my visits is the need — and what I learned from those visits is the need to modernize and increasingly become nimble given the host of threats that could be delivered from our maritime borders.
Now let me give you just one example: the Caribbean. It is a Coast Guard admiral that heads up the task force that has all agencies of government participating as we look to protect the southern borders in the Caribbean as well as the southern Pacific from anything that’s coming to our borders — drugs, migrants, terrorists, whatever. Often this is — since it’s all agencies involved, but if, for example, there are U.S. Navy ships in the area or Air Force assets in the air that might pick up one of these threats coming toward America, they were hand in glove with the Coast Guard because it is the Coast Guard that has the legal authority as a law enforcement agency to stop, apprehend, and board that vessel.
And, yet, we are doing all of this border protection with cutters that have an average age of 45 years old. The average age of a Coast Guard’s 210-foot medium-endurance cutter is 48 years old. The Coast Guard high endurance cutter average age: 45 years. These are just two classes of ships that the Coast Guard uses for interdiction and rescue missions and they do it worldwide.
And, as you may expect, with assets this old, the Coast Guard struggles with major mission debilitating casualties which result in severe losses of operational days at sea and drastically increased maintenance costs.
To correct that, the new offshore patrol cutters and the fast response cutters will give the Coast Guard an effective coastal and offshore interdiction capability in order to meet the objectives. What are they? Combating transnational organized crime networks, securing our national maritime borders, safeguarding water-borne commerce and safeguarding life and property at sea.
Now, look at the administration’s second target to pay for the wall, what’s the second target? Believe it or not, FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Administration. Well, if you’re singling out that agency that comes to the aid of millions of Americans during any kind of natural disaster, single that out for cuts? That doesn’t make common sense and it’s certainly not going to be a popular thing to do in the eyes of those who have to turn to FEMA after a natural disaster to try to get their lives back on track.
Last year — just take one year — two major hurricanes hit Florida in addition to many other devastating natural disasters that struck nationwide and resulted in many deaths and billions in damage. FEMA was critical to people’s survival and recovery in each of these events. Just think of what we hear on the news all the time, storms, tornadoes, earthquakes. You remember the mountain that erupted out in the state of Washington decades ago, not to speak of hurricanes.
For the sake of people’s safety and that of our country, we simply cannot use FEMA as a piggy bank to pay for the administration’s trillion dollar spending programs.
The administration’s third target — this has just been reported. What’s the third target? You’re not going to believe this. It’s TSA, the Transportation Security Administration.
Now, if you target TSA for budget cuts, is that really what you want to do with a threat environment every time we’re going through the airport. TSA is on the front lines of protecting our country from terrorist attacks and that’s its security mission at airports across the country. And, oh, by the way, air marshals that fly on our flights.
Need I remind the administration why TSA was created? It was after the September the 11th attacks in 2001, a funding is vital to ensure the success of TSA’s mission.
In fact, just last year Congress responded to concerns over insider threats and security at airports like the bombings in Brussels and Istanbul with the most extensive security measures in years. And specifically what we did particularly in the Commerce Committee when we formulated the FAA bill, we included bipartisan provisions enhancing the background and vetting requirements for airport employees and expanding the random and physical inspection of airport employees in secure areas.
Remember the case of the Atlanta airport? For several months people had a gun-running scheme coming from Atlanta to New York. They didn’t drive up Interstate 95 to take the guns. They had an airport employee in Atlanta who could get into the airport without being checked carrying a sack of guns, that airport employee would go up into the sterile area where passengers are, go into the men’s room, would exchange knapsacks with a passenger and TSA clean and that passenger took the sack of guns on the airplane flight from Atlanta to new York and the New York city police department couldn’t figure out how they were getting all those guns on the street in New York. That was a gun-running scheme over several months. Thank goodness they were criminals, not terrorists. You want to cut that kind of security?
If you want to cut the strongest security that we have at an airport screening passengers going through, it’s the nose of a dog, the VIPR teams, the dog teams, the most efficient way to screen passengers is a dog team that has been trained with his handler. It’s amazing what those dogs can sense. And so when we did the FAA bill last year, we doubled the number of VIPR teams, the dog teams. And we want to cut this? That was all done in a bipartisan manner.
We doubled the number for the protection of the American public, and we also, in that bill, granted expanded the grant funding to assist law enforcement in responding to mass casualty and active shooter instance which is very important in, for example, again, another tragic example of the recent shooting in Fort Lauderdale at the airport. To counter the issue of long lines, which I know we had to all go through last spring, the legislation included provisions require TSA pre-check and to require TSA to evaluate staffing and checkpoint configurations to expedite passenger security screening.
Does that sound like a lot of administrative mumbo jumbo? Perhaps, but let me tell you it works, and all is designed to protect Americans going to airports and getting on airplanes.
Now, none of this is possible without continued funding, and, in fact, even more funding. Any cuts are certainly going to impair TSA’s ability to keep our country safe.
So the bottom line here is that we must do whatever’s necessary to keep our country safe and our citizens secure. Slashing the budgets of the U.S. Coast Guard or FEMA or TSA is only going to make us less secure. Need I say any more about these proposals to pay for some of these other things like a wall by slashing these kind of budgets?
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
Sen. Bill Nelson's remarks on Rex Tillerson
U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson
Remarks on the Senate floor
January 31, 2017
Sen. Nelson: Mr. President, I rise to speak in opposition to the confirmation of Rex Tillerson, the president’s nominee to be our next secretary of state.
And I’ll tell you why. Two words: Vladimir Putin.
Mr. President, Rex Tillerson’s ties to Russia have been widely reported. The senator from Massachusetts has outlined a number of them specifically – specifically his ties to President Putin, who awarded him the “Order of Friendship” after signing deals with the state-owned oil company Rosneft.
Now isn’t the time to cozy up to Russia. Now is the time to stand up to Russian aggression—in Crimea, in Eastern Ukraine, and Syria. Just yesterday, we heard reports of another outbreak of fighting between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists in the war-torn Eastern Ukraine.
All you have to do, Mr. President, is speak to a Ukrainian and let them tell you, as I met with the former prime minister yesterday, and I will be meeting with a former member of their parliament — let them tell you of what it’s like to have the Russian army march on your country and take part of it away as they did with Crimea and then come in under the disguise of little green men as if they did not have ties to the Russian army, and that’s going on in eastern Ukraine right now.
And, our own Intelligence Community has told us that the Russian President personally ordered a campaign to influence the 2016 presidential election right here in the US. That campaign—a mix of covert Russian operations, cyber-attacks and cyber operations and propaganda—was only the latest in a series of efforts to undermine American leadership and democracies around the world. And what’s coming next for the elections in Europe in the next few months?
Russia is testing us. Mr. President, I’m concerned that Mr. Tillerson cannot stand up to the Russian president, who I am afraid thinks of himself as the next Russian czar.
So, as Mr. Tillerson’s past as Exxon’s CEO, he lobbied against sanctions on Russia for invading and seizing Crimea. The very sanctions that we and our allies have put on Russia for taking over sovereign territory of another independent country. And now it’s not clear—as our nation’s top diplomat—that Mr. Tillerson would fight to keep the sanctions in place, even as Mr. Trump is now considering lifting them and despite clear evidence of Russia’s continued aggression.
And, during his confirmation hearing, Mr. Tillerson refused to condemn Russian and Syrian bombings in Aleppo as war crimes, a question that was proffered to him by the senator, my colleague, who happens to sit in the chair right now.
Mr. President, I also have serious concerns that Mr. Tillerson doesn’t understand the urgent need to combat climate change.
You don’t have to remind us about climate change in Florida. South Florida is ground zero of climate change. Miami Beach is awash at the seasonal high tides as the water flows over the curbs and over the streets, causing Miami Beach to spend hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars to install pump stations, raise the roads, and address all kinds of flooding and saltwater intrusion. Other south Florida communities have had to move their water well locations further west because of the intrusion of south Florida into the fresh water aquifer.
Climate change is not a problem that we’re going to face some day in the future. It’s a daily struggle for our communities along our coast all over America. The state department — the United States State Department is responsible for engaging with other countries to confront both the cause of climate change and the devastating impact of drought, sea level, and sea-level rise and severe weather.
And by the way, speaking of sea level rise, this senator convened a meeting of the Senate commerce committee in Miami Beach a couple of years ago. We had testimony from a NASA scientist that measurements – not forecasts, not projections – but measurements in the last 40 years of sea level rise in south Florida was five to eight inches higher. That is sea level rise.
That’s why even the Department of Defense is concerned. Climate change has the potential to destabilize nations. How about Bangladesh? It has the potential to drastically reduce potable water supplies and result in crop loss and food shortage and to create climate refugees. We simply cannot play fast and loose with the science that will help save our planet.
The top diplomat of our country has to confront the reality of climate change today and to work on it immediately. Mr. Tillerson has not adequately laid out a plan to address that global climate crisis.
And so for all the reasons that I have outlined, including many more, Mr. President, I will vote no.
