mesut/congress_speeches huggingface dataset:
Healthcare (Executive Session)
Richard J. Durbin (Democrat, IL) \u2014 2017-9-19

I wish to say that the comments made by the ic leader, the Senator from New York, really touched me because they go to the heart of this institution. prgtoken It was only a few weeks ago, in a dramatic moment, when Senator John McCain returned from Arizona to come to the floor of the Senate and cast a historic vote to move forward on the debate on healthcare. He asked for 15 minutes after that vote to say a few words about his experience as a person and his observations as a Senator, and I stayed in my chair because I wanted to hear him. prgtoken John McCain came to the House of Representatives the same year I was elected. Our careers have at least been close or parallel in some respects, though I couldn't hold a candle to him in terms of his personal life experience and his experience in the military, as well as being a candidate for even higher office. prgtoken I listened carefully as he reminded us of what it takes for the Senate to work. What it takes, of course, is the determination of both political parties to solve a problem. He reminded us that means sitting down in committee, with experts, working through some of these issues, particularly the more complex issues--the give-and-take of the legislative process. prgtoken He pointed specifically to the effort to repeal Care as a failure by those standards. He used as an example the fact that Care, during the period of s' efforts to repeal, was actually gaining popularity in this country--exactly the opposite of what the other party might have expected. It was an indication to him that we needed to do things better in Senate. Just a few days later, he cast a critical vote to stop what was a flawed process on the side--to repeal Care without a good alternative, without a good substitute. prgtoken I remember that vote early in the morning, right here in the well of the Chamber, and I remember what followed when I saw Senator Lamar Alexander and Senator Murray behind me in front of the cloakroom in a bit of a huddle after that historic vote. I later learned that they had decided it was their turn to step up on a bipartisan basis and find a way to strengthen our healthcare system, not what we had just seen but a different way--a way that kind of relied on experts at State levels to give us advice and experts in Washington to really cull through the ideas to find the very best. They invited other Members of the Senate to join them, even those of us not on the committee. prgtoken Senator Alexander and Senator Murray have had several meetings, which I have attended and which were very productive meetings--bipartisan gatherings over coffee and donuts with insurance commissioners from States all across the Nation, commissioners from both political parties, bipartisan meetings of Governors from States all across the United States. They were basically sitting down and saying: What can we do now? What can we
Healthcare (Executive Session)
Edward J. Markey (Democrat, MA) \u2014 2017-9-19

in July, millions of Americans awoke from a months-long nightmare, as the Senate did the right thing and voted down multiple proposals to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The American people breathed a sigh of relief when the future of their healthcare and of their children's healthcare was safe for the time being. prgtoken Unfortunately, s want us to go back to that nightmarish time by reigniting their proposal to threaten healthcare coverage for millions of Americans. While the bill the s are supporting today may have a new name, it contains the same mean, devastating policies. It is a zombie bill that despite best efforts and against the will of the American people, will not die. prgtoken Like its Care predecessors, the Graham-Cassidy bill will result in less coverage and increased costs. It eliminates the built-in protections for Americans with preexisting conditions, causing many of them to see their premiums skyrocket just because of a diagnosis. Some experts estimated that an individual with diabetes could face a premium surcharge of $5,600 under Graham-Cassidy. prgtoken Graham-Cassidy will also allow States to decide what insurers have to cover and what they don't; meaning, once again, your ability to have comprehensive healthcare coverage would depend upon where you live. prgtoken This is not the type of healthcare reform people in this country want or need, and it is certainly not the type of reform to help us overcome our Nation's opioid use disorder epidemic. prgtoken With 91 Americans dying every day from an opioid overdose, we are clearly in the midst of our Nation's preeminent public health crisis. Over these last few months, we have heard time and time again that access to substance use disorder care is the linchpin to stemming the continually rising tide of opioid overdoses. Unfortunately, it appears our colleagues have not been listening. prgtoken To be fair, access to treatment today is still a challenge. Only 1 in 10 people with substance use disorders receive treatment. Right now, an estimated 2 million people with an opioid addiction are not receiving any treatment for their disorder. prgtoken Yet the solution is not to block-grant funds which would otherwise be used to help people get care for their substance use disorders. The answer is also not kicking people off their insurance, but that is what my colleagues are yet again proposing to do. prgtoken As with the previous versions of Care, Graham-Cassidy would threaten insurance coverage for 2.8 million Americans with a substance use disorder. It would end Medicaid expansion and cap the program, slashing its funding and decapitating access to lifesaving care. This bill would simply take a machete to Medicaid--the leading payer of behavioral healthcare services, including substance abuse treatment. prgtoken Also, in the same vein as earlier proposals, Graham-Cassidy w
FREE Act (Executive Calendar)
Elizabeth Warren (Democrat, MA) \u2014 2017-9-19

12 days ago, Equifax, one of the Nation's largest credit reporting agencies, disclosed that hackers had breached its system and stolen highly personal information on nearly half of America. Social Security numbers, birth dates, home addresses, phone numbers, even credit card numbers--all in the hands of criminals. prgtoken Since then, I have heard from working families in Massachusetts and all across the country. The Equifax hack is a nightmare. At best, it is a giant hassle--time on hold with the credit reporting agencies, fees for this service and that service, confusion about what has been stolen and what to do about it. At worst, it could be ruinous--a lifetime of responsible spending and borrowing wiped out by identity theft and fraud. People are outraged, and rightly so. prgtoken Bad enough that Equifax is so sloppy that they let hackers into their system, but the company's response to the hack has been even worse. First, Equifax hid the information about the breach for 40 days--40 days. Equifax gave criminals a 40-day headstart to use the information they had stolen, while the rest of us were left in the dark. prgtoken Then, when Equifax finally decided to disclose the breach, they didn't call or send letters to the millions of Americans who were victims of the hack. No, they announced the breach and then made everyone go to an Equifax website and turn over more personal information to see if they were one of the people who had been affected. Once Equifax had the new information, they provided confusing and misleading information about whether the person had actually been a victim of the breach. prgtoken Worse still, while Equifax was unclear about whether someone's information had been stolen, they were very clear about one thing: Everyone, whether or not their information was stolen, should sign up for a supposedly free Equifax credit monitoring service called TrustedID Premier. The terms of use for this program initially required anyone who signed up to have a credit card. Why? Because after the first year, Equifax could start automatically charging the credit card for the service if the customer hadn't already canceled. That is right. Equifax was trying to impose secret fees and profit off the hack of their own system. prgtoken But wait, it got even worse. To sign up for this credit monitoring service, Equifax at first forced consumers to give up their right to go to court and sue Equifax if they had any disputes about the product. Equifax changed some of the terms after there was a lot of public pressure. prgtoken Let me see if I can recap all this. After allowing hackers to steal personal information on as many as 143 million Americans, Equifax hid the breach from consumers for more than a month, failed to clearly inform people whether the information had been stolen, then tried to profit off the breach by tricking people into signing up for a costly credit monitoring product that
Healthcare (Executive Calendar)
Tim Kaine (Democrat, VA) \u2014 2017-9-19

I rise to talk about a topic that is consuming much attention--our efforts to improve healthcare for Americans. Before the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, Americans with preexisting conditions faced serious barriers. Since 2010, the rate of uninsured Americans has declined to a historic low, with 20 million more Americans--the combined population of 16 or 17 States--getting access to health insurance coverage. prgtoken Over 410,000 Virginians have received care through individual marketplaces just last year. An additional 400,000 would be eligible to receive Medicaid if Virginia ever chooses to expand it. Since being put on the HELP Committee or being notified I would be put on it in December, I visited community health centers, medical schools, behavioral treatment centers, nursing programs all across Virginia talking to people about their healthcare needs. I am committed to working together with my colleagues to improve the healthcare of Virginians and Americans. There is a right way and a wrong way to do it. prgtoken After there was the failure of an effort in late July or early August to pass a partisan repeal and replacement of Care using the budget reconciliation process, the success of which would have taken health insurance away from 20 million Americans, I am disappointed that we haven't learned the lesson about the right way to do this and are apparently poised to explore yet again doing it the wrong way. prgtoken There is a proposal on the table that is designated the Graham- Cassidy proposal, and it is just as threatening as the ACA repeal we voted on just 2 months ago. It restructures traditional Medicaid funding using per capita caps and block grants. The core of this bill is an effort to dramatically go after, restructure, and shrink Medicaid, which is critical to so many people. prgtoken It ends protections for people with preexisting conditions by allowing States to essentially rewrite essential health benefits. It would eliminate Medicaid expansion and the Affordable Care Act subsidies and replace them with a block grant that would be insufficient to cover the needs of Virginians. Even that block grant funding would end after 2026--as if the need to help low- and moderate- income people afford coverage would dramatically disappear overnight. prgtoken The proposal is new and is newly on the floor. There isn't a full CBO analysis of it, but initial indication has led groups like the American Medical Association and the AARP to come out against it. They are worried it will leave insurance out of the reach of millions of Americans. In Virginia alone, more than 301,000 marketplace enrollees would have their tax credits to help them afford insurance jeopardized. prgtoken What would it mean for the healthcare system? We are not completely sure. At least on the earlier versions we voted on, we had CBO scores telling us how many millions might lose insurance. There see
Healthcare (Executive Calendar)
Al Franken (Democrat, MN) \u2014 2017-9-19

in May, Jimmy Kimmel shared the story of his newborn son Billy, who was born with a life-threatening condition that required open-heart surgery. Kimmel said that he was fortunate to have had good health coverage and was able to pay for the care that his son needed, something he believed every American deserved. prgtoken A few weeks later, as efforts to repeal Care were gaining steam, Senator Bill Cassidy explained that the bar he believed any healthcare bill had to clear to get his vote was what he called the Jimmy Kimmel test. He said: ``Will a child born with congenital heart disease be able to get everything she or he would need in the first year of life?'' prgtoken When Kimmel interviewed Senator Cassidy a few days later, Kimmel explained the test this way: ``No family should be denied medical care, emergency or otherwise, because they can't afford it.'' Well, I am here to report that this latest version of Care, offered by none other than Senator Cassidy himself, fails the Jimmy Kimmel test miserably. prgtoken Over the past few weeks, there have been two ongoing conversations about the future of healthcare in the United States. The first has been conducted in an open, bipartisan manner in the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee in full accord with the traditions of this body. In the HELP Committee, s and alike have been talking with Governors, insurance commissioners, and other experts on ways to address concerns of States and consumers by stabilizing the individual market and lowering premium costs. That is how the Senate is supposed to work, and the bill that emerges from that process will be one that makes things better, not worse. It will create certainty. It will bring down costs for consumers. It is a bill that any Senator should be proud to vote for. prgtoken The second conversation is a model of how things shouldn't work. It has occurred behind closed doors between Senate s and party operatives. It is not about making the system work; it is about passing something--anything that can be said to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, and along the way, it destroys the Medicaid Program as we know it. As many of us have argued before, this conversation is an affront to the traditions of this body and, more importantly, to the will of the American people. prgtoken I urge my colleagues to oppose the Graham-Cassidy bill-- the newest iteration of Care--which will rip healthcare coverage from tens of millions of people, create higher prgtoken costs for consumers, and ensure the destabilization of the individual health insurance market. prgtoken While I have worked closely with Senators Cassidy and Graham on other bills, and I respect them, I have grave concerns with this legislation. prgtoken First, the bill undermines protections for people with preexisting conditions. prgtoken States could apply for waivers that wo
Climate Change (Executive Calendar)
Sheldon Whitehouse (Democrat, RI) \u2014 2017-9-19

each week that you see me standing here means another week in which the Senate of the United States has sat out doing anything to address climate change and another week of carbon pollution streaming into our atmosphere and oceans. Carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is changing our atmosphere and our oceans. We see it everywhere. We see it in storm-damaged homes and flooded cities. We see it in drought-stricken farms and raging wildfires. We see it in fish disappearing from warming, acidifying waters. We see it in shifting habitats and migrating contagions. prgtoken All these harms we see carry costs--real economic costs--to homeowners, business owners, and taxpayers. That cost to homeowners, business owners, and taxpayers is known as the social cost of carbon pollution. It is the damage that people and communities and States suffer from carbon pollution and climate change. The Office of Management and Budget last calculated the social cost of carbon to be around $49 per ton of carbon dioxide emitted. If you just do some simple math, you can multiply the total measured U.S. emissions coming from energy production alone in 2016--that is emissions of over 5.7 billion tons of CO2--by the $49 cost per ton. It is pretty simple math: $49 times 5.7 billion tons gives you about $280 billion. So $280 billion is the annual cost that the fossil fuel industry offloads onto the American public in harm from the carbon dioxide emissions. That is a big number and a big consequence--$280 billion per year. prgtoken There was a more complex analysis than my simple math that was done by the International Monetary Fund. The International Monetary Fund has a lot of smart people. They don't have any conflict of interest that I am aware of in dealing with this issue. Their calculation puts the annual subsidy just in the United States of America for the fossil fuel industry at $700 billion per year. prgtoken So is it my simple math where the social cost of carbon is $280 billion per year or is it what the International Monetary Fund calculated at $700 billion per year? Whichever it is, it is a big enough harm to the American public that you would think we might do something about it here in the Senate. But of course, we don't because that huge social cost of carbon, that huge subsidy gives the fossil fuel industry the biggest incentive in the world to--instead of fixing up its situation and cleaning up its mess--come over here and instead mess with our politics so that our ability to deal with this issue is silenced by their political muscle and manipulations. prgtoken One way in which they play this game is to populate the climate denial machinery with one-eyed accountants--accountants who can only see the pollutants' side of the ledger. Honestly, we hear their testimony. The only thing they see is the cost to polluters of reducing their pollution. They don't see the public harm side of the ledger. They pret
Healthcare (Executive Session)
Amy Klobuchar (Democrat, MN) \u2014 2017-9-19

I rise to join my colleagues on the floor to share concerns I have been hearing from people in my State about the latest healthcare repeal bill. prgtoken Minnesotans and patient groups, such as AARP, oppose this bill because eliminating the Medicaid expansion and the Affordable Care Act's help for millions of people means they would lose coverage, and it would increase their out-of-pocket costs. prgtoken People in my State are concerned about this bill's impact on rural hospitals, especially--as are the rural hospitals--because it makes deep cuts to Medicaid, and the new block grant in the bill would end completely by 2027. prgtoken I am very concerned that this bill would reverse the progress we are making in addressing the opioid epidemic by putting a cap on Medicaid, a program that has been critical for substance abuse treatment for people struggling with this addiction. prgtoken A few months ago, I pointed out that we were on plan F in the Senate. Plans A and B were the two House versions of a repeal; plans C and D were the two Senate versions of the repeal; plan E was the repeal bill without a replacement plan; and then we were presented with plan F. That, of course, went down after the Senate were joined by three Senators in voting it down. I actually thought we couldn't get lower than F, but apparently we can because now we are here. prgtoken Many of the Minnesotans I have talked to don't like A, B, C, D, E, F, or the plan we are discussing that has been proposed. I have heard from people all over my State. At the Minnesota State Fair, I heard from , s, and Independents. I heard from people from our cities and people from our rural areas. There are a lot of people-- nearly 2 million people--at the Minnesota State Fair, which is the biggest State fair in the country. A lot of people stopped by my booth. I heard from the old and the young, from men and women, cancer survivors, people with disabilities, and many more. None of them wanted us to keep going down a partisan path when it comes to healthcare. prgtoken That is why I was so happy to tell them over the recess that new work--bipartisan work--was being done with Senator Alexander and Senator Murray, two Senators who proved that they could work across the aisle on the education bill, which they did last year. They are the leaders on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, and they have been moving forward together with truly bipartisan hearings and discussions. I have attended a number of them with Governors and with experts on this issue to figure out the best ways to strengthen the individual markets and to reduce costs. That is something we have done successfully in our State with an all- legislature and a ic Governor. We worked on it in our State, so I figured we could maybe bring this out on the national level. But it isn't enough that the work that is going on
Healthcare (Executive Session)
Charles E. Schumer (Democrat, NY) \u2014 2017-9-19

there is a possibility that by the end of next week, the Senate will have a vote again on a healthcare bill assembled in the dark of night by one party, without a full account of what the bill would do. It will be a shameful return to the same process the majority used to try to ram a bill through in July, unsuccessfully. prgtoken To consider a bill like this without a full CBO score is worse than negligent; it is grossly irresponsible. We were told yesterday that CBO may be able to provide a baseline estimate of the cost of the bill but not the coverage numbers or a detailed analysis of how the bill would affect Americans' healthcare choices. prgtoken We are talking about one-sixth of the economy; we are talking about the healthcare of the Nation; we are talking about the lives, day in and day out, of millions of Americans who need healthcare; and we are not going to really know what the legislation does. prgtoken Senators will be voting blind. They say justice is blind, but the Senators on the other side of the aisle should be walking around here with a blindfold over their eyes because they don't know what they are voting on. Maybe they don't care. I don't know how any Senator could go home to his or her constituents and explain why they voted for a major bill with major consequences to so many of their people without having specific answers about how it would impact their State. prgtoken What we do know is that this new Care bill, the Graham-Cassidy legislation, is worse in many ways than the previous versions of Care. The new Care would devastate our healthcare system in five specific ways. prgtoken First, it would cause millions to lose coverage. prgtoken Second, it would radically restructure and deeply cut Medicaid, ending the program as we know it. It has been the dream of the hard right to get rid of Medicaid, which could happen, even though it is a program that affects the poor and so many in the middle-class--nursing homes, opioid treatment, people who have kids with serious illnesses. prgtoken Third, it brings us back to the days when insurance companies could discriminate against people with preexisting conditions. The ban on discriminating against people with preexisting conditions would be gone. We have had a lot of promises from the other side that they would never vote for a bill that didn't protect people with preexisting conditions. That seems to be going by the wayside in a headlong rush to pass a bill so that they can claim a political victory. What about that mom or dad who finds out his or her son or daughter has cancer, and the insurance company says: Yes, we will cover you; it will cost you $50,000. And they don't have it, so they have to watch their child suffer. This was an advance that almost all Americans supported. It was an advance most people on the other side of the aisle believe in--gone. prgtoken Fourth, the bill gets rid of the consumer