Speech #1100134011

I want to say something about one of the several mistakes. or oversights. that is in the House bill. I dont mean to imply that these were known as oversights at the time. But one stands out so strongly you wonder whether the House is consistent in its approach to the issue of illegal aliens. I will speak from the standpoint of my experience with the childrens health insurance bill. You may be familiar with this phrase: "Where you stand depends upon where you sit." Nothing better illustrates that point than this debate and the Issue of rebates for illegal immigrants. We are told we must pass the House bill and that changes are unnecessary. In other words. somehow you assume the House of Representatives passed the perfect bill and we ought to rubberstamp It. I disagree. I think the House bill makes it too easy in several areas. but especially in the area of illegal immigrants. to get rebate checks. According to Numbers USA. the House bill could allow as many as 3 million illegal immigrants to receive rebate checks. The House minority leaders spokesman was quoted in the press as saying: There is no language in the measure that would enable illegal immigrants to receive a tax rebate. There is no language whatsoever in the House bill that would prevent an illegal immigrant from receiving one of these tax rebate checks. My colleagues on the other side of the Rotunda should be quite familiar with this line of reasoning. because they devoted countless times on the House floor last fall trying to convince people that because the SCHIP bill didnt explicitly prevent States from covering children up to 400 percent of poverty. it must mean States can cover kids up to 400 percent of poverty. The same folks who want us to believe the House bill is fine said we hadnt done enough to prevent illegal immigrants from receiving benefits in SCHIP. even though the SCHIP bill had this very language: Nothing in this Act allows Federal payment for individuals who are not legal residents. Titles 11. 19. and 21 of the Social Security Act provide for the disallowance of Federal financial participation for erroneous expenditures under Medicaid and under SCHIP respectively. That was in our bill that passed last year. It is amazing how the standard has changed. The same people who said the language I just read wasnt good enough when we took up the childrens health insurance program are now saying no language whatsoever is fine. The simple fact is the House bill allows illegal immigrants to get rebate checks. plain and simple. It is important for us to fix that. and I believe we will before the bill leaves the Senate. We should not give rebate checks to people who have come to this country Illegally. and we should give the House of Representatives an opportunity to fix this huge mistake that is in the bill they sent to us. I cannot imagine why anyone on the House side would complain about our doing that after all the uprising we had last fall about the Senate even considering the language I readdidnt do enough to prevent people here illegallymeaning illegal immigrantsfrom getting childrens health insurance program. My recent experience in negotiating with the House on the issue of illegal immigrants and public benefits taught me that certain folks seem to care quite a lot about that issue. except somehow it was an oversight in this tax rebate bill. I will quote from the debate on the SCHIP bill in the House of Representatives of October 25 of last year. I will not actually quote the Members by name. You can find it in the CONGRESSIONAL RECORD if you want to know who said it. but it doesnt matter who said it. It was an overwhelming opinion of people in that bodyparticularly Republicans. One Member alleged that the SCHIP bill tried "to give benefits to illegal immigrants while we still have Americans unserved." He went on to say. "that is not right. This is not fair. This is not democratic." Suppose I put "tax rebates" in there in place of "benefits." and paraphrase it this way. with the same quote: "To give [tax rebates] to illegal immigrants while we still have Americans unserved. That is not right. This is not fair.