[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 98 (Tuesday, July 25, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7515-S7519]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  UNFINISHED BUSINESS ON SENATE AGENDA

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I was listening to some of the discussion 
this morning before the Senate broke for the party lunches. I was 
especially interested in a couple of presentations about the progress 
some think the Senate has made in this Congress, and about why they 
believe the Senate is not making progress today or this week.
  It reminds me of the story of the fly that landed on the nose of an 
ox. The ox, with the fly on its nose, went out for the entire day and 
plowed in the field. They came back to the village at night, and the 
villagers began applauding. The fly, still on the nose of the ox, took 
a deep bow and said to the villagers: We've been plowing.
  That is sort of what I heard this morning--we've been plowing--when, 
in fact, this Senate, as all of us know, has not done the work we 
should have been doing for the American people.
  I thought it would be interesting to describe what the agenda should 
have been and what we have done.
  I will talk about some of the issues with which most Americans 
believe the Congress should be dealing: Common sense gun safety. For 
those who might be listening, I'm not talking about gun control; this 
is not in any way going to abridge people's Second Amendment right to 
own guns. This legislation will, however, close a loophole in the law 
that allows people to purchase guns at gun shows without having to get 
an instant check.
  If you buy a gun in this country in a gun store, you must have your 
name run through an instant check system

[[Page S7516]]

to find out whether you are a felon. That makes good sense. We should 
not sell guns to felons. The instant check system helps identify if 
someone trying to buy a gun at a gun store has been previously 
convicted of a felony and therefore should not be sold a weapon.
  But guess what? Go to a gun show on a Saturday somewhere and you can 
buy a gun without an instant check being done. This does not make any 
sense. We want to close that loophole. We do not want to be selling 
guns at a gun show to a convicted felon. Yet we cannot get this common 
sense piece of legislation enacted in this Congress because it is 
considered radical or extreme by some. It is a very simple proposition: 
Close the gun show loophole to prevent felons from buying guns. We 
should get that done.
  Or what about the Patients' Bill of Rights? Every day 14,000 patients 
are denied needed medicines; 10,000 are denied needed tests and 
procedures in this country. But we cannot pass a decent Patients' Bill 
of Rights because, in this Congress, we have people who stand with the 
big insurance companies rather than standing with patients.
  I know it is inconvenient to some to hear about specific patients who 
have been denied needed care by their HMOs. I have talked about these 
patients at great length in the past because these folks are what the 
Patients' Bill of Rights is all about. It is about the woman who fell 
off a 40-foot cliff while she was hiking in the Shenandoah Mountains. 
She fell 40 feet, broke several bones and was hauled unconscious into a 
hospital emergency room on a gurney. After surviving her life-
threatening injuries, she was told by her managed care organization 
that it would not cover her medical care in the emergency room because 
she didn't have prior approval to go to the emergency room. This is a 
woman who was hauled into the emergency room unconscious. That is the 
sort of thing people are confronting these days.
  Senator Reid and I had a hearing in Nevada on this subject. At that 
hearing, a woman stood up and talked about her son. Her son is dead 
now. He died last October at 16 years of age. He was battling cancer 
and needed a special kind of chemotherapy to give him a chance to save 
his life. Unfortunately, his insurance company denied him this care. He 
not only had to battle cancer, but he also had to battle the insurance 
company that wouldn't cover the care he needed. His mother held up a 
very large picture of her son at the hearing and, with tears in her 
eyes, she cried as she told us: As my son lay dying, he looked up at me 
and said, Mom, I just don't understand how they could do this to a kid.
  Kids who are battling cancer ought not have to battle the insurance 
companies or HMOs. Yet that is what is happening too often in this 
country. We propose to pass a Patients' Bill of Rights that is very 
simple. It says every patient in this country has a right to know all 
of his or her options for medical treatment, not just the cheapest 
option. It says that if you have an emergency and go to an emergency 
room, you have a right to care in that emergency room. It says that if 
you have cancer and your employer or your spouse's employer changes 
health plans, you have a right to continue seeing the oncologist who 
has been helping you to fight that cancer. But we can't get a Patients' 
Bill of Rights enacted because when it comes time to say who you stand 
with--the patients who ought to have certain rights or the big 
insurance companies that in too many cases have denied those rights--
too many Senators say: We stand with the insurance companies.
  The last time we debated this issue on the floor, about a month ago, 
my colleague from Oklahoma, Senator Nickles, offered an amendment that 
he called a Patients' Bill of Rights. He accomplished his purpose, I 
suspect, because the next day the paper said the Senate passed a 
Patients' Bill of Rights. However, what the Senate really passed was a 
``patients' bill of goods,'' not a Patients' Bill of Rights.
  I thought it interesting that Dr. Ganske, a Republican Congressman, 
wrote this letter:

       Heaven forbid that any member of Congress would ever vote 
     on a bill they haven't had time to read! Heaven really forbid 
     that a member would vote on a bill that their staff hasn't 
     seen!
       Yet, that is exactly what happened two weeks ago on the 
     floor of the Senate when the Nickles HMO amendment was 
     brought up for a vote.
       People are just now beginning to realize what was in that 
     legislation. To help you understand the fundamental flaws of 
     the Nickles bill, I am including a copy of an analysis of the 
     Senate's patient's bill of rights that was added to the FY 
     2001 Labor/HHS legislation.
       This Senate legislation eliminates virtually any meaningful 
     remedy for most working Americans and their families against 
     death and injury caused by HMOs.

  This is Dr. Ganske, a Republican Congressman, making this reference 
to the Nickles bill. He then includes a rather lengthy analysis.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to print Dr. Ganske's letter 
and the analysis in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                                                    July 13, 2000.
     Hon. Byron Dorgan,
     U.S. Senate, Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, DC.
       Dear Senator Dorgan: Heaven forbid that any member of 
     Congress would ever vote on a bill they haven't had time to 
     read! Heaven really forbid that a member would vote on a bill 
     that their staff hasn't seen!
       Yet, that is exactly what happened two weeks ago on the 
     floor of the Senate when the Nickles HMO amendment was 
     brought up for a vote. The Norwood-Dingell-Ganske bipartisan 
     Consensus Managed Care Reform Act of 1999 had been public for 
     months before the House voted. Not so with the Nickles HMO 
     bill.
       People are just now beginning to realize what was in that 
     legislation. To help you understand the fundamental flaws of 
     the Nickles bill, I am enclosing a copy of an analysis of the 
     Senate patient's bill of rights that was added to the FY 2001 
     Labor/HHS legislation.
       This Senate legislation eliminates virtually any meaningful 
     remedy for most working Americans and their families against 
     death and injury caused by HMOs. Please read the analysis by 
     Professors Rosenbaum, Frankford, and Rosenblatt as to why the 
     Nickles bill is worse than the status quo!
           Sincerely,
                                                      Greg Ganske,
     Member of Congress.
                                  ____

                                                     July 6, 2000.
     House of Representatives,
     Rayburn House Office Building,
     Washington, DC.
       Dear Sir: At your request we have reviewed the Senate 
     patients' bill of rights legislation that was inserted into 
     the FY 2001 Labor/HHS legislation last week.
       Rather than expanding individual protections, the measure 
     would appear to undo state law remedies for medical injuries 
     caused by managed care companies' treatment decisions and 
     delays. In this regard, the bill runs directly contrary to 
     United States Supreme Court's reasoning in its recent 
     decision in Pegram v. Herdrich, which seems to reaffirm the 
     authority of states to determine medical liability policy, 
     and underscores the appropriateness of state courts as the 
     forum for medical liability cases.
       The displacement of state medical liability law in favor of 
     a new federal medical liability remedy might have some policy 
     validity, were the new law fair and just. But the remedy set 
     forth in the Senate bill is compromised by an unprecedented 
     range of limitations, exceptions, and defenses and appears to 
     leave injured persons with no remedy at all.
       In sum, in the name of patient protection, the Senate 
     legislation appears to eliminate virtually any meaningful 
     remedy for most working Americans and their families against 
     death and injury caused by managed care companies.


                               conclusion

       The central purpose underlying the enactment of federal 
     patient protection legislation is to expand protections for 
     the vast majority of insured Americans whose health benefits 
     are derived from private, non-governmental employment, and 
     who thus come within the ambit of ERISA. Not only would the 
     Senate measure not accomplish this goal, but worse, it 
     appears to be little more than a vehicle for protecting 
     managed care companies from various forms of legal liability 
     * * *

                           *   *   *   *   *

     By classifying medical treatment injuries as claims denials 
     and coverage decisions governed by ERISA, the Senate bill 
     insulates managed care companies from medical liability under 
     state law.
       Section 231 of the Senate bill amends ERISA Sec. 502 to 
     create a new federal cause of action relating to a ``denial 
     of a claim for benefits'' in the context of prior 
     authorization. The bill defines the term ``claim for 
     benefits'' as a ``request * * * for benefits (including 
     requests for benefits that are subject to authorization of 
     coverage or utilization review) * * * or for payment in whole 
     or in part for an item or service under a group health plan 
     or health insurance coverage offered by a health insurance 
     issuer in connection with a group health plan.'' ERISA 
     Sec. 503B, as added. Thus, the bill would classify prior 
     authorization denials as ``claims for benefits'' that are in 
     turn covered by the new federal remedy. Federal remedies 
     under ERISA Sec. 502 preempt all state law remedies.

[[Page S7517]]

       This classification would have profound effects, 
     particularly in light of the Supreme Court's recent decision 
     in Pegram v. Herdrich. As drafted, the Senate bill arguably 
     would preempt state medical liability law as applied to 
     medical injuries caused by the wrongful or negligent 
     withholding or necessary treatment by managed care companies. 
     The bill thus would reverse the trend in state law, which has 
     been to hold managed care companies accountable for the 
     medical injuries they cause, just as would be the case for 
     any other health provider.
       In recent years courts that have considered the issue of 
     managed care-related injuries have applied medical liability 
     theory and law to managed care companies in a manner similar 
     to the approach taken in the case of hospitals. Thus, like 
     hospitals, managed care companies can be both directly and 
     vicariously liabile for medical injuries attributable to 
     their conduct. In a managed care context, the most common 
     type of situation in which medical liability arises tends to 
     involve injuries caused by the wrongful or negligent 
     withholding of necessary medical treatment (i.e., denials of 
     requests for care).
       State legislatures also have begun to enact legislation to 
     expressly permit medical liability actions against managed 
     care companies. The best known of these laws is medical 
     liability legislation enacted in 1997 by the state of Texas 
     and recently upheld in relevant part against an ERISA 
     challenge by the United States Court of Appeals for the 
     Fifth Circuit.
       In Pegram v. Herdrich, the Supreme Court implicitly 
     addressed this question of whether managed care state 
     liability law should cover companies for the medical injuries 
     they cause. The Court decided that liability issues do not 
     belong in federal courts and strongly indicated its view that 
     in its current form ERISA does not preclude state law 
     actions. It is this decision that the Senate bill would 
     appear to overturn.
       In Pegram, the Court set up a new classification system for 
     the types of decisions made by managed care organizations 
     contracting with ERISA plans. The first type of decision 
     according to the Court is a ``pure'' eligibility decision 
     that, in an ERISA context, constitutes an act of plan 
     administration and thus represents an exercise of ERISA 
     fiduciary responsibilities. Remedies for injuries caused by 
     this type of determination would be addressed under ERISA 
     Sec. 502 (which of course currently provides for no remedy 
     other than the benefit itself).
       The second type of decision is a ``mixed'' eligibility 
     decision. While the Court's classification system contains a 
     number of ambiguities, it appears that in the Court's view, 
     this second class of decision effectively occurs any time 
     that a managed care company, acting through its physicians, 
     exercises medical judgment regarding the appropriateness of 
     treatment. Such decisions, as medical decisions rather than 
     pure eligibility decisions, are not part of the 
     administration of an ERISA plan and thus not part of ERISA's 
     remedial scheme because, according to the Court, in enacting 
     ERISA, Congress did not intend to displace state medical 
     liability laws. The Court thus strongly indicated that these 
     claims are not preempted by ERISA and may be brought in state 
     court. In the Court's view, these mixed decisions represent a 
     ``great many, if not most'' of the coverage decisions that 
     managed care companies make.
       The Senate bill would appear to reverse Pegram by 
     effectively classifying all prior authorization 
     determinations as Sec. 502 decisions, without any regard to 
     whether they are ``pure'' or ``mixed''. As a result, state 
     medical liability laws that arguably now reach mixed 
     decisions apparently would be preempted, leaving individual 
     physicians, hospitals, and other health providers as the sole 
     defendants in state court. Under the complete preemption 
     theory of Sec. 502, remedies against managed care virtually 
     impossible standard to prove and particularly egregious in 
     light of the fact that plaintiffs cannot even bring such an 
     action unless they have gotten a reversal of the denial at 
     the external review stage. Even where they have proven that a 
     company wrongfully withheld treatment, plaintiffs can recover 
     nothing for their injuries without taking the level of proof 
     far beyond what is needed to win at the external review 
     stage. Virtually all injuries would go uncompensated.
       A plaintiff will be forced to show ``substantial harm'', 
     defined in the law as loss of life, significant loss of limb 
     or bodily function, significant disfigurement or severe and 
     chronic pain. This definition arguably would exclude some of 
     the most insidious injuries, such as degeneration in health 
     and functional status, or loss of the possibility of 
     improvement, that a patient could face as a result of delayed 
     care, particularly a child with special health needs. In 
     Bedrick v. Travelers Insurance Co., the managed care company 
     cut off almost all physical and speech therapy for a toddler 
     with profound cerebral palsy. The Court of Appeals, in one of 
     the most searing decisions ever entered in a managed care 
     reversal case, found that the company had acted on the basis 
     of no evidence and with what could only be described as 
     outright prejudice against children with disabilities (the 
     managed care company's medical director concluded that care 
     for the baby never could be medically necessary because 
     children with cerebral palsy had no chance of being normal).
       The consequences of facing years without therapy were 
     potentially profound for this child: the failure to develop 
     mobility, the loss of the small amount of motion that the 
     child might have had, and the enormous costs (both actual and 
     emotional) suffered by the parents. Arguably, however, none 
     of these injuries falls into any of the categories identified 
     in the Senate bill as constituting ``substantial harm.''
       The maximum award permitted is $350,000, and even this 
     amount is subject to various types of reductions and offsets. 
     This limitation on recovery will make securing representation 
     extremely difficult.
       No express provision is made for attorneys fees. Were the 
     new right of action to be interpreted not to include 
     attorneys fees this would be a radical change in the ERISA 
     statute, and one that would create a massive barrier to use 
     of the new purported ERISA remedy. To mount a case proving 
     bad faith denial of treatment that caused substantial injury 
     is an enormously expensive proposition. The limitations on is 
     enormous. In Humana v. Forsythe the United States Supreme 
     Court held RICO applicable to a managed care company that had 
     systematically defrauded thousands of health plan members out 
     of millions of dollars in benefits by systematically lying to 
     members about the proportional cost of the treatment they 
     were being required to bear (the policy was a typical 80/20 
     payment policy, but because of secret discounts that were not 
     disclosed to members, group policy holders in many cases were 
     paying for the majority of their care). This is racketeering, 
     pure and simple, and thus represents a classic type of RICO 
     claim. To use a patient protection bill potentially to 
     insulate managed care companies against these types of 
     practices is unwise at best.


                               conclusion

       The central purpose underlying the enactment of federal 
     patient protection legislation is to expand protections for 
     the vast majority of insured Americans whose health benefits 
     are derived from private, nongovernmental employment, and who 
     thus come within the ambit of ERISA. Not only would the 
     Senate measure not accomplish this goal, but worse, it 
     appears to be little more than a vehicle for protecting 
     managed care companies from various forms of legal liability 
     under current law. Viewed in this light, Congressional 
     passage of the Senate bill would be far worse than were 
     Congress to enact no measure at all.

  Mr. DORGAN. We cannot get a real Patients' Bill of Rights passed. How 
about a Medicare prescription drug benefit? Well, we are not able to 
get that done either. We have been busy providing tax cuts, an estate 
tax repeal and a change in the marriage tax penalty. The head of OMB 
said yesterday that, under the recent tax proposals passed by the 
majority party, the top 1 percent of the income earners in this country 
will get more tax cuts than the bottom 80 percent combined.
  This explains why the upper income folks, those with the largest 
estates and the highest incomes, rally around these tax cut proposals. 
There should really be no difference between the parties on the estate 
tax. Those of us in the minority believe we ought to repeal the estate 
tax for family farms and small businesses and allow a reasonable 
accumulation of wealth for a family. We said if you have up to $4 
million, you should pay no estate tax. For a family farmer or small 
business, you can have assets up to $8 million and pay no estate tax at 
all. But that wasn't good enough for the majority. The majority party 
said, we must also fight to eliminate the tax burden on the estates of 
the Donald Trumps of America who will die with half a billion or a 
billion or several billion dollars. At what price? What else could we 
do with the money that the majority wants to use to relieve the tax 
burden on the wealthiest estates in America?
  Perhaps we could use it to reduce the Federal debt. It seems to me 
that is probably a better priority than providing a tax cut for the 
estates of billionaires. Or we could use the money for a prescription 
drug benefit for Medicare, perhaps for school modernization, or to hire 
more teachers to lower class sizes. There are a whole series of 
proposals that might represent a better alternative than deciding we 
must use this revenue to relieve the tax burden on the largest estates 
in this country.
  Is a prescription drug benefit in the Medicare program important? It 
is quite clear that if we were creating the Medicare program today, we 
would provide coverage for prescription drugs through Medicare. Senior 
citizens make up twelve percent of our population, but they consume 
one-third of all the prescription drugs used in this country. They 
reach a period in their life where they need to maintain their health, 
and miracle drugs that did not exist 30 years ago now exist to extend 
their lives. In the 20th century, we increased the life expectancy in 
America

[[Page S7518]]

by 30 years. A part of the reason for that is better nutrition, better 
living conditions, better education about healthy living, but part of 
the reason is also miracle drugs.
  It is not unusual for a senior citizen to be taking two, four, five, 
and in some cases, ten or twelve different prescription drugs to deal 
with their health challenges. Those prescription drugs are enormously 
costly. The price is increasing every year. Last year, spending on 
prescription drugs in America increased 16 percent in 1 year. The year 
before the increase was about the same. Many senior citizens just can't 
afford these expenses.
  I have held hearings through the Democratic Policy Committee in five 
or six States on this subject. I have had senior citizen after senior 
citizen tell me that, when going shopping, they first must go to the 
pharmacy in the back of the grocery store to purchase their 
prescription drugs. Only after they have bought their medications do 
they know how much money they have left to purchase food. It is a 
common story all across the country. So should we add a prescription 
drug benefit to the Medicare program? Of course, we should. Will we? We 
won't do it unless we get some cooperation from a majority party that 
believes this is not a priority for the country.
  We believe it is. We have a plan that will provide a prescription 
drug benefit to Medicare beneficiaries in a way that is cost-effective, 
in a way that will tend to push down the prices of prescription drugs 
and provide an opportunity for coverage for senior citizens who elect 
to have this benefit. That ought to be part of the agenda in this 
Congress, but we can't get it done.
  Or what about school modernization? This country has had such a 
wonderful 20th century, especially the last half of the century 
following the Second World War. Those who fought for America's freedom 
in World War II came back to this country, and began careers, got 
married, had children. They built schools all over America 50 years 
ago. Many of those schools are now in disrepair. These schools need 
renovation or replacement.
  Not only are many of these schools desperately in need of 
modernization and renovation, but there is also a need to reduce class 
sizes from 28 or more, in some classes, down to 18 kids or fewer.
  We know the quality of education is better when there are smaller 
class sizes. We know it is better for kids' education when they are 
going through the door of a modern schoolroom that all of us can be 
proud of. As I have said many times--and if it is tiresome to people, 
it doesn't matter to me--it is hard to go to the Cannon Ball Elementary 
School in North Dakota and have a third grader such as Rosie Two Bears 
say: Mr. Senator, will you build us a new school? That school has 150 
students, one water fountain, and two bathrooms. Some of the classrooms 
have to be evacuated periodically because of raw sewage seeping up 
through the floors. Part of the building is 90 years old and has 
largely been condemned.
  Are we proud of sending that young girl through that classroom door? 
I don't think so. We can do better. Perhaps that is more important than 
providing relief from the estate tax burden of somebody who dies with 
$1 billion. Instead of being able to leave only $600 million to their 
heirs, they get to leave all of the $1 billion because the majority 
party says that is their priority. Their priority is to give tax cuts 
to the top 1 percent of the American income earners that are more than 
the tax cuts we are going to give to all of the bottom 80 percent. That 
is their priority. My point is that we ought to be focusing on other 
priorities.
  So this morning when we had people shuffle over to the floor of the 
Senate and talk about what a wonderful job this Congress has done and 
how we are stalled now because the Democrats somehow don't want to do 
anything, I just had to come over here and correct the record. One of 
the things hanging up work today is that there are people who have been 
nominated as Federal judges whose nominations have been before the 
Senate for 3 years without having been brought to the floor for a vote. 
We would like that to happen. That is considered unreasonable.
  I say to those who think this Congress has a wonderful record that 
this is a Congress of underachievers. We have a little time left. We 
have this week and September and the first week of October. This is 
what we have to do. We have a Patients' Bill of Rights that we ought to 
pass. We have gun safety legislation that we ought to pass. We ought to 
close the gun show loophole. We ought to pass an increase in the 
minimum wage. The fact is, those working at the bottom rung of the 
economic ladder in this country have lost ground. Everybody here is so 
worried about providing tax breaks to the top income earners. What 
about providing some help to those at the bottom of the economic scale? 
These people get up and get dressed and have breakfast in the morning 
and go out and work hard, and they are trying to raise a family on a 
minimum wage that has not kept pace with inflation. We ought to do 
something about that.
  We ought to provide a Medicare drug benefit. We can do that to 
address the needs of our senior citizens who are now struggling with 
health problems and just to make ends meet, only to discover that, in 
their twilight years, the medicines they need to make life better are 
financially out of reach for them.
  Last week, we passed a piece of legislation that says maybe we ought 
to be able to access the more reasonable prescription drug prices on 
exactly the same prescription drugs that exist in Canada and elsewhere. 
The same companies produce the same pill, put it in the same bottle, 
and they sell it for a third of the price up in Winnipeg, Canada, or, 
for that matter, in virtually any other country in which they sell 
these drugs.
  Last week, I suggested that I would like to see just one Senator 
stand up--in fact, I renew the challenge to anybody who wants to come 
to the floor--on the floor of the Senate and say that it is fair for 
American consumers to pay significantly more for the same exact drug 
than consumers in other countries. I will give any Senator who wants to 
do this the pill bottles; I held up several last week. The bottle of 
the prescription drug sold in the U.S. costs $3.82 a pill and the same 
drug in the same bottle, made by the same company, in the same 
manufacturing plant, sold in Canada costs only $1.82 a pill. The U.S. 
consumer pays $3.82 and the Canadian consumer pays $1.82. I want to see 
a Senator, just one Senator, stand up and hold these bottles and say, 
yes, this is fair to my constituents and, yes, this price inequity is 
something we ought to support. Of course, no one will because nobody 
believes that is fair. That is another issue that we have to address. 
We were able to get some legislation through the Senate and, of course, 
the pharmaceutical industry has indicated that it fully intends to kill 
that in conference. We will see.

  So there is a lot left for this Senate to do. We have, at the end of 
this week, a break for the two national conventions, and then in 
September and October we will see the end of the 106th Congress. All 
legislation introduced between January of last year and now will 
eventually die, unless it is passed by this Congress, and we will have 
to start over again next year. So the questions of whether this is an 
effective Congress and whether this Congress creates a record any of us 
can be proud of are going to be answered in the next few months. Are we 
able to address the issues that the American people care about? Will 
the majority party stop obstructing on these issues? Will they decide a 
Patients' Bill of Rights should be passed by Congress? If so, let's do 
it soon. Will we be able to address the issue of reasonable gun safety 
measures, increasing the minimum wage, adding a drug benefit for 
Medicare, and school modernization? Those and other issues, it seems to 
me, are central to an agenda that will strengthen and improve this 
country. We will see in the coming days exactly what the 106th Congress 
decides it wants to leave as its legacy.
  One of the great things about this democracy of ours is that the 
majority rules. That is certainly true in the Senate. They control the 
schedule. That is why we are now in morning business in the afternoon. 
Only in the Senate can you be in morning business in the afternoon, I 
guess. But we are not debating an appropriations bill, and we should 
be. There aren't enough people wanting to bring judges to the floor for 
confirmation and so on.

[[Page S7519]]

  The point is this: The majority party has a choice to decide which of 
these issues and how many of them they want this Congress to adopt. I 
hope it will decide very soon that it chooses to join us and say these 
are the issues that matter to the American people, and these are the 
issues the 106th Congress shall embrace in the final weeks of this 
Congress.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________