Page 4 - Help Committee News Today

That are on the plate. hopefully we can solve them in a rational way. >> welcome back. you heard him. that was president trump today mentioning the many things congress has to take on now that theyre back from the august recess. on top of raising the debt ceiling, funding the government, passing relief for hurricane harvey and everything else this month, health care still remains a big priority. now the senate is doing something many lawmakers pleaded for before the republican healthcare bill im...

Harvey aid, immigration, avoiding a government shutdown, tax reform some of the things that congress is dealing with but something else is on the agenda -- health care. >> this hearing is about taking one small step, a small step on a big issue which has been locked in partisan stalemate for seven years. >> lamar alexander holding a hearing with state insurance commissioners to talk about stabilizing the premiums. its the first of four meetings planned by the help committee. the goal is to get a...

I have that bill just waiting to go if we can put this in committee. i think the next chapter after the result early this morning was the help committee can start taking up ideas. i have bills. republican members like susan collins and bill cassidy have bills. we should start taking them up aunds debating pros and cons and what we can do to improve health care. >> chuck schumer dug in and said under no circumstances will democrats be working with republicans on health care while they try to repe...

Box, but its not going to be debated. you remember when we passed the affordable care act, we accepted 150 republican amendments in the help committee, senator kennedys committee that i sat on. we did weeks and weeks, months of hearings and discussions. people had a chance to thoroughly understand it. then we moved. this is t exact opposite of this, and theyre going to jam the american public. and in my state as i said before to you, chris, 200,000 people right now in ohio are getting opioid tre...

Complicated and too long to really understand it. they didnt do a cbo score and they moved on it. it looks to be the same construct. maybe theyll do the cbo score so they can at least check that box, but its not going to be debated. you remember when we passed the affordable care act, we accepted 150 republican amendments in the help committee, senator kennedys committee that i sat on. we did weeks and weeks, months of hearings and discussions. people had a chance to thoroughly understand it. th...

Nations civil rights laws are such that he should be attorney general, and second, i strongly oppose the use of torture. senator mccain on the armed services committee where i serve, we put together a resolution to make clear that the armys anti-torture rules apply to every agency, including the cia. we had nearly 80 votes in the senate for that. senator sessions was one who voted no. i dont want an attorney general advising the president who is kwif equivocal about whether torture is okay. i wa...

They chose not to do it. they chose not to even try. >> they would -- >> so now theyre blaming the federal government when they didnt even try to do it. if youre not going to do your job, you have got to be a little bit careful about blaming the people who came in to do it for you. >> thats all republicans were talking about, was local control and no government takeover and we can do it ourselves in the backyard, which i think walked the help committee down the road of framing it to their liking...

Reports, pushed through pages and pages of nominations for president obama yesterday, when everyone was focused on what the house would do on the fiscal cliff vote. and harry reid did that with the active but invisible help of mitch mcconnell, who did his part to make sure that no republicans would vote against any of those nominations. and what did the united states senate do today? that dysfunctional united states senate? according to the news media, absolutely nothing. congress is closed down...

There were committee hearings on this issue. in fact, back in june. >> please come to order. i welcome everyone to this important hearing. nine years ago this september we all remember that day and we all remember exactly where we were and what we were doing when that happened. >> thats tom harkin, chairman of the senate committee on health education labor and pensions. thats called the help committee. and if you go to senator coburns own website, youll see right there on the same page about sen...