[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 112 (Wednesday, September 20, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8782-S8787]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    PRESCRIPTION DRUGS COST TOO MUCH

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I want to talk today about the issue of 
prescription drugs. Some of my colleagues have already talked about 
this issue at some length. Let me add to that.
  In January of this year, on a cold, snowy day, a group of North 
Dakota

[[Page S8783]]

senior citizens and I drove from North Dakota to Canada. It was not 
much of a drive, as a matter of fact, from Pembina, ND, to Emerson, 
Canada. We went to Canada to allow these senior citizens to purchase 
prescription drugs in Emerson, because the same drug that is marketed 
in Canada--in the same bottle, made by the same company--is sold in 
most cases for a fraction of the price for which it is sold in the 
United States.
  I want to illustrate that, if I may. I ask unanimous consent to use, 
on the floor of the Senate, two pill bottles. These bottles are for a 
medicine called Zocor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DORGAN. The bottles are slightly different, one is bigger than 
the other, but Zocor is sold both in Canada and the United States. 
Zocor is one of a number of cholesterol-lowering drugs. In fact, Dan 
Reeves, coach of the Atlanta Falcons, has an advertisement saying he 
takes a similar drug to lower his cholesterol following some heart 
problems he had.
  In any event, Zocor is an FDA-approved drug produced by the same 
company, often in the same FDA-approved plant. Yet, this bottle of 
Zocor is sold in Winnipeg, Canada, for $1.82 per caplet. But if you are 
an American who is using Zocor to lower your cholesterol, you pay $3.82 
per tablet. Again, if you buy it in Canada, it is $1.82 per tablet. But 
in the United States, the same tablet, by the same company, is not 
$1.82, but $3.82.
  The Senate just finished yesterday a debate about normal trade 
relations. This used to be called most-favored-nation status. Do you 
know what the situation is with respect to prescription drug prices? We 
have least-favored-customer status for the American consumer. Why do I 
say this? Because prescription drug prices here are higher than 
anywhere else in the world. Why should the American consumer pay prices 
that are 10 times, or 5 times, or triple or double the price paid by 
everyone else in the world for the same prescription drugs made in the 
same plants by the same companies?
  The answer is that U.S. consumers should not be least favored 
consumers as they are forced to be by the pharmaceutical drug industry. 
We can change that. How can we change it? We can change it by allowing 
our pharmacists and our distributors to be able to access the same FDA-
approved prescription drug in Canada or in other countries--sold by the 
same company and produced in an FDA-inspected plant--at a lower price 
and pass the savings along to their customers. If we did that, the 
pharmaceutical industry would be required to reprice their prescription 
drugs in this country and reduce their prices.
  I want to talk about Sylvia Miller. Sylvia Miller is one of the 
senior citizens who went to Canada with me. She is from Fargo, ND. A 
columnist in Fargo wrote a piece about Sylvia Miller. Let me just 
acquaint you with Sylvia Miller by reading from this piece:

       Sylvia Miller isn't one to complain, but few people would 
     blame her if she chose to complain just a little bit. . . . 
     Sylvia knows that life isn't always easy, that people 
     struggle with the lows and look forward to the highs. . . . 
     She's had her share of dark days in her 70 years of life on 
     this earth.
       The 1980s were a pretty rough decade for her. She beat 
     breast cancer in 1981, then lung cancer eight years later. 
     She's a tough lady.

  This article says she and her husband lived most of their lives in 
Durbin and then moved to Fargo in 1987, after ``we were flooded out by 
water coming cross country--the basement filled up nearly to the 
ceiling.''

  Sylvia went with me to Emerson, Canada, 5 miles across the border, 
because she wanted to buy her prescription drugs at a better price. 
This article says Sylvia is a pleasant person. I know that because I 
know Sylvia. It also says she leads a disciplined life. She has to. She 
has diabetes. She also has asthma, and she has a heart that could be 
stronger. She tests her blood sugar level several times a day, eats 
wisely and at the right times, and the article goes on to say she gives 
herself shots four times a day, mixing three different insulins, uses 
two different inhalers for lungs which function below normal capacity, 
and she requires seven different prescription drugs every month. Last 
year, she received $4,700 from Social Security, and her prescription 
drug bill was more than $4,900. She says: Things don't quite add up, do 
they?
  On our trip to Canada, I stood with Sylvia and the others in this 
little one-room drugstore in Emerson, Canada. The exact same 
prescription drugs you can buy in this tiny drugstore are sold 5 miles 
south, in Pembina, ND, or 120 miles south in Fargo, ND. The difference 
is not in the pill--it is the same pill, same color, same shape, made 
in the same plant, marketed by the same company. The difference? Price. 
Americans are the least favored consumers. They pay the highest prices.
  So a group of senior citizens who pay too much for prescription 
drugs--such as Sylvia, who gets $4,700 on Social Security and has a 
$4,900 prescription drug bill--are trying to get a better price for the 
drugs they need to lead a good life by traveling to Canada.
  These senior citizens should not have to load up in a van on a cold 
winter morning and drive to Canada. The Customs Service will allow 
individuals to bring back from Canada a small amount of prescription 
drugs for their personal use. But there is a Federal law that says a 
pharmacist from Grand Forks, ND, or Montana or Vermont, can't go to 
Canada and access that same drug and come back and pass the savings 
along to their customers. Federal law says you can't do that. We aim to 
change that Federal law.
  The Senate has already passed our proposal. Senator Jeffords, Senator 
Gorton, Senator Wellstone and I, and a range of others have worked to 
pass this plan in the Senate. Our proposal says: Let's allow U.S. 
pharmacists and distributors to go to other countries and access the 
identical prescription drugs, approved by the FDA, at a lower price, 
bring them back, and pass the savings along to the American 
consumer. Of course, if we get this plan signed into law, what will 
happen is that the pharmaceutical industry will be required to reprice 
these drugs in this country.

  Now, guess what. The pharmaceutical industry is spending a fortune to 
try to defeat this proposal. It is in a conference committee. I am one 
of the conferees. The conference isn't even meeting. Why isn't it 
meeting? Because people have heartburn over this proposal, and they 
want to kill it.
  The pharmaceutical industry said the 11 former Food and Drug 
Administration Commissioners have come out in opposition to the 
proposal. Well, yesterday, I showed a letter that we received from 
David Kessler, the former Commissioner of the Food and Drug 
Administration under Presidents Bush and Clinton. I want to tell my 
colleagues what he says:

       The Senate bill which allows only the importation of FDA 
     approved drugs, manufactured in approved FDA facilities, and 
     for which the chain of custody has been maintained, addresses 
     my fundamental concerns.

  He is not opposing what we are trying to do. This is a former FDA 
Commissioner.
  Dr. Kessler says further:

       I believe the importation of these products could be done 
     without causing a greater health risk to the American 
     consumers than currently exists.

  We need to give the FDA some additional resources to make sure we do 
not have counterfeit drugs imported. The pharmaceutical industry says 
this is an issue of safety. It is not. Here is an FDA Commissioner who 
says this can be done safely as long as you have safeguards. The 
pharmaceutical industry says this debate is about safety. They know 
better than that. It is about profits. Whose profits? Their profits.
  Donna Shalala, who is the Secretary of Health and Human Services, has 
also written us a letter. She has indicated she believes that the 
Senate approach is an approach that can work. Secretary Shalala has 
said: ``With respect to the three amendments now in conference''--one 
of which is the Jeffords-Dorgan amendment I am talking about that was 
passed by the Senate--``we believe the Jeffords amendment represents a 
promising approach'' that can be effective if Congress provides new and 
efficient resources--which we intend to do--to the FDA.
  So the head of the Department of Health and Human Services says this 
can be done safely as well, as long as we provide additional resources 
to the FDA.
  But, again, today, for those who are trying to kill this proposal, I 
would like to offer another challenge. Of

[[Page S8784]]

course, no one has ever accepted the challenge, but I am interested in 
finding just one Member of Congress--one man or woman serving in the 
Senate or in the House out of 535 of us--to stand up on the floor of 
the Senate or House and say: I believe the American consumer should be 
treated as the least favored consumer by the pharmaceutical industry. I 
support that. I believe it, and I think we ought to leave it the way it 
is.
  I want one Member of Congress to stand up and say that. I want one 
Member of Congress to stand up and say: With respect to Zocor, a 
prescription drug to lower cholesterol, I believe that Americans ought 
to have to pay $3.82 per tablet for the same medicine for which the 
pharmaceutical industry will charge the Canadians only $1.82 per 
tablet. A similar discount is provided to the Italians, the Germans, 
and the English, and the Swedes, and the rest of the countries, because 
the big drug companies are charging Americans the highest prices in the 
world.
  I am not asking for the Moon here. I am only asking for one Member of 
Congress to stand up and support the pharmaceutical industry's pricing 
policies. And no one will. Because they want to kill this under the 
cover of darkness. They want to kill this by not having a conference, 
and by dropping it during some closed meeting in some crevice of this 
Capitol Building.

  This is not an issue without names and faces and consequences. Sylvia 
Miller went to Canada with me to purchase prescription drugs at a much 
lower price, as did other senior citizens. But it ought not have to be 
that way. There is no reason anybody ought to have to go anywhere else 
in order to access the same prescription drug for half the price they 
pay in the United States.
  That is unfair to the U.S. consumer. We can change it. And we can 
change it without compromising safety. We can change it, and should, 
and will.
  Let me mention a word about the prescription drug industry. I happen 
to think we benefit mightily from much of what they do. When they 
develop a new prescription drug, good for them. But much of the new 
work in prescription drug development is coming from public investment 
through the National Institutes of Health and elsewhere. We are making 
substantial taxpayer-funded investments in research. Much of that 
research is then taken by the pharmaceutical industry and used to 
produce new medicines, for which they charge higher prices to the 
American consumer than anyone else in the world. That is not fair.
  I want the pharmaceutical industry to be profitable, but profiting in 
ways that are unfair to the U.S. consumer should not be allowed.
  The pharmaceutical industry has said--and incidentally, they have 
sent people all around North Dakota to newspapers and TV stations with 
this message--that if what Senator Dorgan wants to do gets done, there 
will be less research done on new medicines.
  Interesting point. The pharmaceutical industry spends more money for 
research in Europe than it does in the United States, by just a bit. In 
other words, more research is done by that industry in Europe than in 
the United States. They say: If we charge less in the United States, 
somehow we will do less research. Yet they charge less in Europe and do 
more research there. And they charge more for prescription drugs in 
this country than in any country in Europe and do slightly less 
research. If their argument had any validity at all why is that the 
case?
  To those in the pharmaceutical industry, I understand that you have a 
responsibility to your stockholders. I understand that. You have the 
responsibility to earn a decent profit. I understand that. Yet the Wall 
Street Journal says that the pharmaceutical industry has profits that 
are ``the envy of the corporate world.''
  We am not talking about price controls with the Senate proposal. We 
are simply saying if the global economy is good for the pharmaceutical 
industry--and every other industry in this world--then why is the 
global economy not able to work for Sylvia Miller? Why can't Sylvia 
Miller's pharmacist go to Winnipeg, Canada, and purchase Zocor, and 
bring it back and sell it at a price that is much less than is now 
charged in this country?
  The pharmaceutical industry will say: Gee, some of these countries 
have price controls. That is true. Some of these countries--many of 
them--say: All you can charge for prescription drugs is your cost plus 
a profit.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 3 additional minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, one of the inconveniences of the global 
economy is that you have advantages and disadvantages, and you have to 
live with both. When you move products around in a global economy--and 
the pharmaceutical industry certainly does--you get the advantages of 
importing lower-priced compounds and chemicals with which to make 
prescription drugs. So the big drug companies benefit from the global 
economy. But one of the inconveniences of the global economy is that 
the conditions that exist in the country you are purchasing from comes 
with that product.

  Today, if I were to go up to my colleagues--and I will not--and turn 
over their necktie, I would find some of them are wearing a necktie 
made in China. So I say to them: If you are wearing a necktie made in 
China, governed by a Communist government, no doubt, when you purchased 
the necktie, you were contributing to the salary of the Communist 
leader of China. Do you feel comfortable with that necktie?
  But, of course, no one set out to give comfort to any government 
anywhere. They simply bought a necktie. That is why, when the 
pharmaceutical industry says, ``if you are able to access the lower 
priced drug in Canada, you are importing some sort of price controls,'' 
I say nonsense. All you are doing is taking advantage of the global 
economy, the buying and selling of goods back and forth across borders.
  Yes, it is inconvenient that some countries--in fact, many 
countries--do have price controls. But if pharmacists were able to 
access products in other countries at a lower price, why should they be 
prevented from moving them into this country? The Senate plan would 
allow this with complete safeguards, only for medicines that are 
approved by the FDA, only those medicines that are manufactured in an 
FDA-approved plant. Additional resources to the FDA would allow you to 
make certain you are not moving counterfeit products in and out of this 
country. With safeguards such as these in place, former FDA 
Commissioner David Kessler, Health and Human Services Secretary Donna 
Shalala, and others say it is perfectly appropriate and perfectly 
acceptable to give consumers, such as Sylvia Miller, the opportunity to 
have lower priced drugs in this country.

  I will finish by asking this: Is there any Member of the House or 
Senate who believes the U.S. consumer should be the least favored 
consumer in international trade on prescription drugs? Does anybody 
stand up in support of this? I fail to see one, in all my time 
discussing this over the last year and a half, who will stand up and 
say: Let me be the first to say I support the highest prices for 
American consumers on prescription drugs. No one will do that because 
they don't dare do it publicly. They understand how unfair this pricing 
scheme is.
  That is what Senator Jeffords and I, and Senators Gorton and 
Wellstone and many others, are intending to change. The Senate has 
passed our proposal by a wide margin. It is now in conference. Those 
who have the strings to pull want to dump it and kill it by not having 
a conference convened. I happen to be a conferee. I intend to be at a 
conference at some point and fight for this proposal.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senator has expired. Under the 
previous order, the Senator from Illinois is recognized to speak for up 
to 25 minutes.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I salute my colleague, the Senator from 
North Dakota. He has been a leader on the issue of prescription drugs 
and has challenged all of us to focus on an issue which most American 
families understand completely.
  They know what it costs to go to the pharmacy, if you are not lucky 
enough to have good insurance. They know what it means when you go into 
your local pharmacy and they tell you how much a drug costs and you 
almost faint.

[[Page S8785]]

  They say: Wait a minute; don't you have some insurance coverage?
  Well, yes, I think I do.
  This happened to me recently in Springfield, IL. It ended up costing 
me a fraction of what it would have cost. It was a prescription where I 
had to think twice about whether I wanted to spend that kind of money 
on it, if the insurance didn't cover it. But that was an option for me; 
I am in pretty healthy shape. Imagine a person who is really struggling 
to just survive, to stay healthy and strong, and the choices they have 
to make when they have limited income.
  What I am talking about is not an outrageous situation or an 
outlandish idea. It happens every single day. It happens across 
America. People, families across America, keep looking to Washington 
and saying: Do you get it? Do you understand this? Do you care?
  I have a quote one of my staff came up with that I thought was 
apropos. It is very old. It goes back to 1913. President Woodrow Wilson 
wrote it to a friend. He was venting his frustration because several 
Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee were blocking something he 
considered to be a high priority. He wrote:

       Why should public men, Senators of the United States, have 
     to be led and stimulated to what all the country knows to be 
     their duty? Why should they see less clearly, apparently, 
     than anyone else, what the straight path to service is? To 
     whom are they listening? Certainly not to the voice of the 
     people when they quibble and twist and hesitate.

  That is what this debate gets down to. Are the men and women elected 
to the Senate and the House of Representatives really listening to the 
people back home? If we were, would we be wasting a minute and not 
dealing with the prescription drug benefits people need to survive?
  Yet when we take a look at what has been proposed, they are 
dramatically different, the two major proposals coming from the two 
major candidates for President. The one that comes from Al Gore and Joe 
Lieberman on the Democratic side suggests to treat the prescription 
drug benefit as a Medicare benefit; to say, yes, it is available to 
every American. It is universal. It is an option which every American 
can take, and we will protect you under Medicare. You will know that 
there is a limit to your out-of-pocket expenses. It is simple. It is 
straightforward. It is consistent with the Medicare program that has 
been around for over 40 years.
  Frankly, there are some people who don't care for it. The drug 
companies don't care for it. They are making very generous profits 
every single year, and they know if all of the people under Medicare 
came together and bargained with them on drug prices and drug costs, 
their profits may go down. That is why they resist it. That is why this 
special interest group has been so good at stopping this Congress from 
doing what the American people want done. Their profits come 
first, unfortunately, in the Senate--not the people in this country, 
not the families struggling to pay the bills.

  On the other side, they make a proposal which sounds good but just 
will not work. Under Governor Bush's proposal on prescription drugs, he 
asserts, for 4 years we will let the States handle it. There are fewer 
than 20 States that have any drug benefits. Illinois is one of them, I 
might add. His home State of Texas has none. But he says: Let the 
States handle it for 4 years; let them work it out.
  In my home State of Illinois, I am glad we have it. But it certainly 
isn't a system that one would recommend for the country. Our system of 
helping to pay for prescription drugs for seniors applies to certain 
illnesses and certain drugs. If you happen to be an unfortunate person 
without that kind of coverage and protection, you are on your own. That 
is hardly a system for America.
  It is far better to take the approach which has been suggested by Mr. 
Gore and Mr. Lieberman, to have a universal plan that applies to 
everyone. Let's not say that a person's health and survival depends on 
the luck of the zip code, where you happen to live, whether your State 
is generous or not. I don't think that makes sense in America. I think 
we are better than that.
  We proved it with Medicare. We didn't say under Medicare: We will let 
every single State come up with a health insurance plan for seniors. We 
said: We will have an American plan, a national plan, and every single 
American--Hawaii, Alaska, and the lower 48--everyone who can benefit 
from it gets the same shot at quality health care. And it worked. The 
critics said, in the 1960s; that is big government; that is socialism, 
Medicare will be the end of health care as we know it in America. 
``Socialized medicine,'' they called it.
  Wrong, completely wrong. Ask the people in the hospitals and the 
doctors today what Medicare has meant. It has meant they are able to 
give the elderly in America quality health care. Just take a look at 
the raw statistics. Seniors are living longer today than they did in 
the 1960s. They are healthier. A lot of good things have come from 
Medicare.
  We believe the same standard should be applied when it comes to 
prescription drugs. Let us base this on the Medicare system. If you 
doubt for a moment that this is a serious problem, I wish you would go 
to your local pharmacy and ask your pharmacist. When I held hearings 
across Illinois, I brought in doctors and pharmacists and seniors to 
talk about this issue. The people who were the most adamant about the 
need for reform were the pharmacists, the men and women in the white 
coats behind the counter who get the prescriptions from the doctor and 
try to fill them for the patient and have to face the reality of the 
cost. Those are the men and women who know every single day that there 
are seniors who are not filling prescriptions, taking half of what they 
are supposed to, ignoring the request and, frankly, the best advice of 
their doctors because they cannot afford otherwise.
  Here we stand in the Senate, 7 weeks away from a national election, 
an election where the American people say a prescription drug benefit 
is the highest health care priority, and we are not prepared to do 
anything. Is it any wonder that people looking at the Congress of the 
United States wonder whether we are paying attention to the reality of 
life for families across this country? When people can go across the 
border into Canada and buy the same exact drug sold in the United 
States, made in the same laboratory, subject to the same FDA 
inspection, for a fraction of the cost, how in the world can we stand 
here and say there is nothing we can do about it? There is something we 
can do about it. There is something we must do about it.
  This election is a referendum on whether this Congress has the will 
to respond to families in need. A lady in Chicago, IL, received a 
double lung transplant. What a miracle.
  Years ago, that was unthinkable. Now it is possible. It works. She 
stood before me and looked good several years after it occurred. But 
she said:

       Senator, it cost me $2,500 a month for the 
     immunosuppressive drugs to stay alive. I cannot afford it. So 
     what I have done, frankly, is to give up everything I have on 
     earth and move into my son's home, where I live in the 
     basement. I asked for Medicaid at the Department of Public 
     Aid in Illinois and for the money to pay for my prescription 
     drugs each month. I fill out the forms every month to try to 
     make sure I qualify for the drugs.

  She said:

       Senator, one month I missed it. I didn't get the paperwork 
     back in time. For one month, I didn't take the drugs and I 
     was worried sick. I went back to the doctor after that month 
     and he said, ``Don't ever let that happen again. You had 
     irreversible lung damage that occurred during that one-month 
     period of time.''

  Think about the burden on that poor lady's shoulders. How many of us 
dream of being dependent on our children in our elderly and late years? 
None of us wants that. Many times my mother has said to me, ``I don't 
want to be a burden.''
  That woman is living in the basement of her kid's home. She has no 
place to turn and is wondering if she can get the paperwork in on time 
to qualify for Medicaid. Missing that opportunity, she could lose the 
chance for the miracle of two new lungs that gave her new life, losing 
the chance for that miracle to continue.
  That is the reality of what is happening. Hers is the most extreme 
case, and I remember it because of that. But as I went across my State, 
people said: Senator, I get $800 a month from Social Security and it 
costs me $400 a month for prescription drugs. I don't have any 
insurance to cover that.
  A third of the seniors in this country have no insurance protection 
whatsoever; a third have poor protection, and

[[Page S8786]]

a third are lucky because they worked in the right place and had the 
right retirement. They are covered and protected. When you hear stories 
and you come back to Washington, you think: Why are we here? The men 
and women here are supposed to be here to respond to the real needs of 
America's families. Yet in this case, and in so many others, this 
Congress has come up empty. Missed opportunity after missed 
opportunity.
  Let me suggest another thing to you. One thing I have noticed as I 
visited families in my State of Illinois is that they talk about their 
children. They will brag about how good they are at playing soccer or 
playing the piano or getting good grades. But then there will be a 
pause, a hesitation, and they say: I wonder how we are ever going to 
pay for that college education. I hear that over and over. New parents 
with a little baby might say: He looks like his dad and he is sleeping 
all night, but how in the world are we going to pay for this kid's 
college?
  That is a real concern. The people know the cost of a college 
education has gone up dramatically. We did a survey in Illinois of 
community colleges, private colleges, and public universities. Over a 
20-year period of time, when a child might consider being in college 20 
years later, what happened to the cost of tuition and fees at 
universities and colleges in my home State of Illinois? They have gone 
up over 250 percent and, in some cases, over 400 percent. So even if 
you think you are putting enough money away today to cover what is 
already a high cost of education, quadruple that cost and you are 
dealing with the reality of what that could cost in years to come.

  So families say to me as a Senator and to those of us serving in 
Congress: Do you hear us? Do you understand it? You tell us that 
education is good for our kids and for our country. What are you doing 
in Washington to help us out, to give us a helping hand?
  The honest answer is: Absolutely nothing. There is something we can 
do. Senator Chuck Schumer, my deskmate here from the State of New York, 
and Senator Joe Biden of Delaware, have been pushing for a plan that I 
think makes a lot of sense. It is a plan the Democrats are proposing as 
part of this Presidential campaign. It is very simple and 
straightforward. It says that you can take the cost of college tuition 
and fees and deduct them from your income. What it means is that up to 
$12,000 of tuition and fees can be deducted. For a family, that means 
they are going to have a helping hand of around $3,000 each year to pay 
for it. I wish it were more, but it is certainly a helping hand.
  When I went to Rockford College in Rockford, IL, I said: What did the 
average student graduate with in terms of debt? They said it was about 
$20,000. That is a lot of money when you are first out of college. Yet 
if the deductibility of college expenses were part of the law in 
America, that student would be walking out with a debt of $5,000 or 
$6,000 instead of $20,000.
  Wouldn't that be good for this country and for that family? Doesn't 
it give that young man or woman the right opportunity to make a choice 
of a job or a graduate education? I can't tell you how many young 
people I ran into who said: Because of my college debts, I had to take 
the best-paying job. I really want to be a teacher, but they don't pay 
enough. I got a chance to go with a dot-com and make a zillion, so I 
had to do that.
  We lost something there. We lost a potential teacher, someone who 
wanted to put his or her life into teaching others, but decided, 
because of the finances, to postpone it or never do it. That is 
reality.
  If we look at that reality, the question is, What does Congress do to 
respond? Instead of coming up with tax relief for middle-income 
families to pay for college education expenses, the only tax relief 
bills we have come up with is for the wealthiest people--the so-called 
elimination of the death tax and the elimination of the marriage 
penalty tax. When you lift the lid and look inside, it ends up giving 
over 40 percent of the benefits to people making over $300,000 a year. 
Excuse me, but if I am making $25,000 a month in income, how much of a 
tax break do I need? My life is pretty good, thank you. And thank you, 
America, for giving me the opportunity to have it. I don't need a tax 
break from this Congress.
  But the families struggling to pay for college education expenses 
deserve a tax break. If we really believe that the 21st century should 
be the American century, we need to invest not only in helping families 
put their kids through college, but in helping workers who realize that 
additional skills give them greater earning potential, the chance to 
get that training and education. Sometimes that costs money. If it is 
going to cost money and tuition and fees, they, too, should be able to 
deduct it. Lifetime learning, lifelong learning is a reality today if 
you want to be successful. You can't step back.
  When I went into my Senate office representing Illinois 4 years ago 
and put the computer on my desk, believe me, I am not of an age where I 
am a computer wizard, but I am learning. I realize I have to learn to 
keep up with this technology because it makes me more effective and 
efficient. Everybody is learning that lesson, whether you are in a 
classroom or a workplace, and the people who want to prosper from that 
experience and want to make their lives better sometimes need 
additional training. So when we talk about the deductibility of these 
expenses for lifelong learning and for college education, we are 
talking about people setting out to improve themselves. It is not a 
handout. These people are asking for an opportunity to be educated and 
trained and skilled.

  One of the bills we are going to debate this week is the H-1B visa. 
You may not know what the term means, but basically it is a question as 
to how many people we will allow to immigrate into the U.S. to take 
highly paid, unfilled jobs--jobs that require skills America's 
employers say they can't find in the American workforce. Well, it is a 
real problem. I think we need to have an expansion of the H-1B visa to 
allow people to come in from overseas to fill these jobs so American 
companies will stay in America, so that they will continue to prosper, 
pay their taxes, profit by their ventures, and I think we can help 
them.
  But what a commentary on our workforce and our education system that 
we continue to have to look overseas not for what used to be the brute 
force of labor coming to build railroads and towns, but now they are 
the most skilled people in the world. So if we say we are going to 
allow more people to come into this country to fill the highly skilled 
jobs, don't we have a similar responsibility to the people and families 
of this country to explain how, the next time around, there will be 
Americans skilled to fill these jobs? I think that is part of the 
debate. Yet you won't hear much about it on the floor of this Senate. 
We don't talk about education much here.
  Some of my colleagues want to dismiss it as a State and local issue, 
that the Federal Government has little or nothing to do with that. I 
disagree. We should be giving tax relief to families to pay for higher 
education and even more. When you look at the schools in America, there 
are genuine needs. I think everybody who has raised a family, as my 
wife and I have, appreciates that the more kids you have in the room, 
the tougher it is to manage it. A teacher with 30 kids in a classroom 
has her hands full. We have to talk about lower class sizes, smaller 
classes with more individual attention.
  On the Democratic side, we have proposed 100,000 new teachers who 
will go into classrooms. Schools are growing and the population is 
getting larger, and 100,000 teachers will cut back on the number of 
kids in a classroom and give a teacher a better chance to teach.
  A teacher came up to me at O'Hare Airport in Chicago and said: I 
teach on the south side of Chicago. We qualified for the Federal 
program to have smaller classrooms. Thank you, Senator. It is working. 
Those kids are getting a better education.
  I don't deserve the credit. It wasn't my idea. But I happen to 
support it. We should support more of it. We are not even discussing 
education on the floor of the Senate. We are talking about H-1B visas 
to bring in more skilled employees from overseas. And we are not 
talking about educating and training our kids in the next generation to 
fill those jobs. We have lost it in this debate. Somehow we are 
consumed with things that other people think are much more important. I 
can't think of

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anything more important than education. Health care for prescription 
drugs and education so kids have a better chance for their future makes 
all the sense in the world.
  While we are talking about a better future, let me also address the 
10 million Americans who got up to go to work and went to work this 
morning, and who go to work every single morning, not looking for a 
government check but for a paycheck at the end of the week where they 
are paid $5.15 an hour. That is the minimum wage in this country, and 
it has been stuck there for over 2 years. Why? Because this Congress 
refuses to give some of the hardest working people in America an 
increase in the minimum wage. These are people who get up and go to 
work every day, who are waiting on tables in the restaurants, and who 
make the beds in the hotels. They are the day-care workers to whom we 
entrust our children, they are people working in nursing homes watching 
our parents and grandparents, and we refuse to give them an increase in 
the minimum wage.
  For decades in this Capitol, this was not a partisan issue. From the 
time Franklin Roosevelt created the minimum wage until the election of 
Ronald Reagan, it was a bipartisan undertaking. We raise this wage 
periodically so people can keep up with the cost of living in this 
country. But, sadly, it has become a partisan issue.
  While we fight on the Democratic side to give 10 million Americans an 
increase in the minimum wage, we are resisted on the other side of the 
aisle. They don't want to see these increases. Sadly, it means that 
people who are struggling to get by with $10,000 or $11,000 a year--
and, frankly, have to turn to the Government for food stamps and look 
to other sources and more jobs--many of those people are single parents 
raising their kids, working at jobs with limited pay and limited 
requirements for skills, trying to do their level best. We have refused 
time and time again to increase the minimum wage in this country. That 
is a sad commentary on this Congress.
  I also want to comment on the reality that we will be increasing 
congressional pay this year, as we have with some frequency, to reflect 
the cost-of-living adjustment. I think that is fair. But doesn't 
fairness require that we give the same consideration to people who are 
working for $5.15 an hour? I hope my colleagues, Senate Democrats and 
Republicans alike, will share my belief that this is something that 
absolutely needs to be done.
  Whether we are talking about health care or prescription drugs and 
fairness in paying people for what they work for, there is an agenda 
that has gone unfilled in this Congress. It is an agenda which has been 
ignored and about which the American people have a right to ask us to 
do something.
  I can tell you that as we talk about the future of this country and 
its economy, we are all applauding the fact that we have had the 
longest period of economic expansion in our history. We have had 22 
million new jobs created during the Clinton-Gore administration. There 
is more home ownership than anytime in our history. There are more 
small businesses being created, particularly women-owned small 
businesses, across America. We have seen our welfare rolls going down. 
The incidence of violent crime is going down. We have seen an expansion 
of opportunity in this country that has been unparalleled. But if we 
sit back and want to rest on our accomplishments and our laurels, the 
American people have a right to throw all of us out of office. Our 
responsibility is to look ahead and say we can do better to improve 
this country and make it better for our children and grandchildren.
  This Congress has refused to look ahead. It has refused to say how we 
can expand health care so that over 40 million Americans without any 
health insurance will have a chance to get the basic quality health 
care on which all of us insist for ourselves and our family.
  This Congress has refused to address the prescription drug needs of 
families across America at a time of unparalleled prosperity in these 
United States.
  This Congress has refused to look to the need of education when we 
know full well that the benefits of our economy can only accrue to 
those who are prepared to use them and who are prepared to compete in a 
global economy.
  Yesterday, by an overwhelming vote, we voted for permanent normal 
trade relations with China. I voted for that. It was 83-15. It was a 
substantially bipartisan rollcall. We said that country, which 
represents one-fifth of the world's population, is a market we need. I 
hope when the President signs the bill we will begin to see an opening 
of that market for our farmers and our businesses. But we will only be 
as good in the global economy as we are in terms of the skill and 
education of America's workers.
  We know full well that there will always be some country in the 
world--if not China, some other country--that will pay a worker 5 cents 
an hour and they will take it. We also know that those workers have 
limited education and limited skills, perhaps doing a manual labor job. 
And those jobs are always going to be cheaper overseas; that is a fact 
of life.
  But if we are going to prosper in America from a global economy, we 
have to bring our workforce beyond manual labor, beyond basic skills, 
and that means investing in our people. It is important to have the 
very best technology, but it is even more important to have the very 
best skilled people working in the workplace. We happen to think if we 
are going to keep this economy moving forward, we need to make certain 
we don't do anything that is going to derail the economy.
  We have seen some suggestions--for example, Governor Bush and some of 
his Republican friends in the Senate who have suggested over a $1 
trillion tax cut that they want to see over the next 10 years. They 
have suggested we change the Social Security system.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senator has expired.
  Mr. DURBIN. I yield the floor.

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