M E M O R A N D U M
TO: Reporters and Editors
RE: Final Senate vote on Reid health care bill
DA: Thursday, December 24, 2009
Senator Chuck Grassley, Ranking Member of the Committee on Finance, issued the comment below regarding his vote today against final Senate passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
“Starting a year ago, I worked for nine months for a health care reform bill that I thought would be a bipartisan product that would bring about true health care reform. I don’t have any regrets spending those nine months. There are a lot of good things that came out of that process. But, about September 15, the White House shoved Republican negotiators to the side and decided to go ahead in a partisan way. So, I’m voting no on the health care bill before the Senate today. When Social Security was first passed, when Medicare and Medicaid first passed, and civil rights laws passed, they were very bipartisan because there’s a feeling in this country that when you make big social change, it ought to be done on a more consensus basis, or a bipartisan basis. Not true this time, and I regret that very much, particularly having worked for a bipartisan bill for about nine months. There are some good provisions in the Senate bill today, but there are core things that are part of this bill that quite frankly Democrats, in order to do what they wanted to do, would not compromise on, and I think these four things are bad for the country. Number one, taxes are going to go up. Number two, premiums are going to go up. Number three, there’s almost a half a trillion dollars coming out of Medicare, which is financially broke, to set up a new entitlement program. And four, inflation in health care is not going to go down. If there was a discussion group in Iowa, and I was asked what this bill did, and I said taxes were going to go up, premiums were going to go up, there’s a half a trillion dollars taken out of Medicare to fund another program, and we weren’t addressing increasing costs of health care, you’d say, well that doesn’t sound like health care reform. And I don’t think this bill is health care reform. Instead, it’s a two-and-a-half trillion dollar cost to the taxpayer that’s not going to accomplish what we set out to accomplish a year ago. I regret it very much, but that’s where we are today.”