Sen. Toomey Issues Statement on Children’s Health Insurance Program Rescission
Mr. President, the second topic I wish to touch on today is a subject that is apparently misunderstood, and it is certainly wildly mischaracterized. It is the subject of rescissions. It has become a topic of conversation since the President--the administration--has proposed a rescission. A rescission relates to our budget process. It is when money originally authorized by
Now, specifically, I want to discuss how this relates to the
Let me state an unequivocal fact. Since 2011, there have been rescissions from CHIP every single year. This is not new. It has happened every single year since 2011.
Now, is that because
We have a chart that illustrates this. We can see the vertical columns. The red bars show how much money
Now, take a particular year; for example, this year, 2018. We expect the Federal Government is going to spend
So knowing it is going to be about
Now, within that
Well, let's look at this. Since 2009, there has been a total of
During that period of time, all 50 States and the
Well, next year, according to State law, despite the fact that no State is even close to consuming the full amount of the main fund, we are going to allow another
Look at it another way. If you look at all the CHIP-related accounts--all the Federal money that has been designated for this children's health program since 2009--
So this, obviously, raises a question: Why is it that year after year after year, including this year,
How does this work? Every year, as I mentioned at the beginning of my comments, after knowingly authorizing way more money than is needed,
So that is what happens.
It is completely dishonest. It completely misrepresents the CHIP program. It completely misrepresents--in fact, it blatantly violates the spending caps we have established, and it is not trivial. It is not a trivial amount of money. Over the last 8 years, the amount of these rescissions, so it can be spent elsewhere, has added up to 45 billion taxpayer dollars--entirely a gimmick, a device that just allows
So that brings us up to last week. The administration comes along and says they have a suggestion for
Let's be honest. Let's rescind now most of the excess funding, which has been going on each and every year separately; let's leave more than enough in the contingency fund. Even though it is extremely unlikely that any of it will be tapped, the administration has proposed
Now, for some reason, despite the fact that not a single dollar that would have actually been spent on the CHIP program will be spent differently, will not be spent; despite the fact that the CHIP program will not lose a single dollar of actual funding; despite the fact that
It would be too generous to suggest this is merely a lapse of memory. Everybody knows what is going on. This is ridiculous.
So I fully support the President's proposal that we fully fund CHIP but stop with the dishonesty in our budgeting. Stop throwing a bunch of money under this category, knowing we are going to go back later and spend it somewhere else. This program shouldn't be pillaged this way to spend money on unrelated things that just allow us to bust the budget cap.
I would go a step further. What the administration has proposed, to their credit, fixes this terrible flaw this year. I would like us to permanently fix it. I have suggested to my colleagues, rather than specifying a dollar amount, since we don't know the precise dollar amount, I would be OK with a provision that says: such sums as will be needed. That would guarantee it would be fully funded, but it would not create this big excess that gets wasted on who knows what.
If the only concern people have is to ensure that the CHIP program will be fully and properly funded, how can they object to that? It would specify, codified in language, that would be exactly what would happen. It would be fully funded, but we have gotten this resistance to that. How could that possibly be? Unless it is that people want to continue this gimmickry, this deception that has been going on for all of these years.
Well, I hope we will be able to work out a long-term solution. I hope we will bring an end to this. I understand my colleagues on the other side want to spend more money. Let's just admit it--admit it, and let's debate it. We have agreed-upon spending caps. I think they are too high, but that is what we agreed upon. We shouldn't be lying to the American people and going through this gimmick yet again.
So I want to state my unequivocal support for the administration's proposal for a rescission package. I would prefer if there were actual spending being cut. This is indirectly going to help reduce excessive spending because it is going after these unobligated funds, it is going after these excessive accounts. It happens in other accounts, but CHIP is the most noteworthy. To me, this is a modest step in the direction of honest budgeting and protecting the taxpayers.
I hope we will be able to have a permanent solution to this soon, but in the meantime, I hope my colleagues will support the administration's rescission package.
I yield the floor.
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