[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 99 (Wednesday, July 14, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8423-S8424]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                SCHEDULE

  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, today the Senate will immediately proceed to 
a period of morning business until 10 a.m. I see Senator Grams is here 
for some remarks after my opening statement.
  Following morning business, the Senate will resume consideration of 
the Patients' Bill of Rights Plus, and a number of amendments will be 
offered, I am sure, throughout the day. Debate will resume on the 
pending Dodd amendment regarding coverage of clinical trials.
  As we go forward today, I remind Senators that we will continue to 
have what I am sure everybody will agree has been a good debate. I 
assume there will be several amendments offered today, and so there 
will be votes, I hope, even this morning or early afternoon and then 
throughout the rest of the afternoon. By previous consent, the Senate 
will complete action, I remind Senators, on the pending bill during 
tomorrow's session of the Senate. We may go into the evening, but it 
will be a normal evening. We have tried to make sure we had full time 
allocated for this debate and amendments. We agreed in the beginning 
that we would at least have normal days or more.
  Actually, so far, on Monday we spent 6 hours 17 minutes on this bill. 
The average Mondays are 4 hours 46 minutes. On Tuesday we spent 7 hours 
5 minutes. The average Tuesdays are 7 hours and 30 minutes. The average 
Wednesdays are usually around 9 hours 39 minutes. So we are going to 
stay right on track. I encourage my colleagues to make their best case, 
offer their amendments, make their speeches, but at the end of this 
week I hope we will come to a conclusion that will produce a bill which 
will address the important areas of patients' rights, consumer rights, 
protections they need, the right to access of documents, the rights 
that they should have to care, including emergency instances, but there 
has to be a prudent standard; there has to be some common sense applied 
to all of this.
  I would also say at this point how proud I have been of the only 
doctor we have in the Senate. I think we are really blessed and 
privileged to have Dr. Bill Frist here. Not only is he an outstanding 
human being but, unlike a lot of us, he knows what he is talking about. 
Having been a highly acclaimed heart surgeon, having a family that has 
been involved in hospital care, he has an extent of knowledge when it 
comes to clinical tests or how patients are treated, what procedures 
are necessary, most of us just do not have. So it has been a real 
pleasure to watch him at work over the past few days.
  The Senate may consider any available appropriations bills when we 
complete the Patients' Bill of Rights. I remind Senators we are 
scheduled to have a vote on the Abraham-Domenici Social Security 
lockbox on Friday. There have been indications that the President 
supports a lockbox concept. I asked him in our meeting on Monday: Mr. 
President, what is your plan? Do you support the House version, which 
is a real lockbox? The Senate version is really tight because it bases 
the lockbox on the declining debt that would result from locking the 
Social Security funds up and not allowing them to be spent for anything 
but Social Security. Or the House version, which is a more procedural 
effort to keep these funds from being spent, requiring a supermajority 
vote, for instance, in the Senate of 60 votes in order to spend that 
money for anything but Social Security, which I think it should not be. 
Or is there some compromise version?

  Senator Daschle and I have communicated on that a couple times over 
the past 2 days. We hope that maybe we can come to some agreement and 
get this Social Security lockbox done, set those moneys aside so that 
we can move on and deal with other issues such as Medicare reform and 
returning

[[Page S8424]]

some of the tax overpayment to working American families.
  So after the Patients' Bill of Rights, we do have the vote scheduled 
on Friday on the lockbox for Social Security, and then we are looking 
at other appropriations bills that we could go to Friday or early next 
week or the intelligence authorization bill. We will confer with 
leadership on both sides before that announcement is made.
  With that, I thank my colleagues, and I yield the floor so that 
Senator Grams can make his statement.

                          ____________________