Jay Rockefeller: “This amendment, the amendment of Senator Kennedy and Senator Hatch, reduces the budget deficit. I hope that point has…”

“This amendment, the amendment of Senator Kennedy and Senator Hatch, reduces the budget deficit. I hope that point has been made. It does reduce it by $10 billion. That is specifically the amount. It does not change a single spending cut or tax cut that has been proposed in the budget agreement. It does none of that whatever, and it is consistent with what is already in the budget agreement. It would help children that do not have health insurance. It is very complementary to the budget resolution. Let me say this. When I went to West Virginia 33 years ago, I went as something called a VISTA volunteer, sort of an untrained social worker trying to do good in West Virginia. I worked in a small coal mining community, and my life at that point was involved entirely with children who did not have any health insurance, or any education, for that matter, because the schoolbus would not come to pick them up. Something that has stayed with me forever, since I was a VISTA volunteer, which I have acted on in terms of moral angst and fervor since then, has been the condition of children, particularly regarding health care. I have to report that the children of the children with whom I was a VISTA volunteer do not have health insurance. In fact, 12 percent of our children in West Virginia do not have any health insurance.”