[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 112 (Monday, September 9, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8336-S8337]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   IMPORTANT ISSUES BEFORE THE SENATE

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, we have many important issues to consider in 
the limited time left in our legislative calendar, and therefore it is 
important we decide what our priorities must be.
  President Bush has focused, in recent weeks, on Iraq, announcing his 
plans to send American troops there to accomplish the goal of a regime 
change. We have focused on the situation in Iraq now for about 3 weeks, 
or maybe more.
  During the Presidency of his father, I was the first Democrat to 
announce publicly I would support the invasion in Desert Storm. I have 
no regret having done that. But there are, at this time, a number of 
questions that I think must be answered.
  I expressed personally to the President on Wednesday in the White 
House that I thought there was a model to follow. It is a model that 
was created by President Bush, his father, and that model is one where 
there is support from the United Nations, the world community. The 
people of this country supported the action President Bush had taken, 
and the Congress supported that action. That is a model that I think is 
one of success.
  There have been some in the administration who have said we don't 
need help. I am happy to see the President has reached out to the Prime 
Minister of Great Britain and met with him Saturday at Camp David. 
Today he is going to meet with the President of France. That is 
important. He needs to do that.
  But we have to be very careful--and that is an understatement--in 
sending men and women into battle. We have about 12,000 or 13,000 
troops stationed in Nevada at Nellis Air Force, Fallon Naval Air 
Training Center, and at the Hawthorn Ammunition Depot.
  I want to make sure these people and others who serve in the Armed 
Forces are sent to do the right thing. I think we have to be very 
careful in what we are doing in this instance. I don't know what 
validity should be placed on it but certainly some. One American 
inspector was quoted in all the national press today as saying Saddam 
Hussein does not have the ability at this time to do anything regarding 
weapons of mass destruction. A case has to be made for that.
  I am certainly standing by with an open mind, looking forward to 
whatever the President and his people bring forward. But I think the 
burden of proof is that we have to have a case made to us.
  We represent the American people, as does the President. We are 
separate branches of Government, but they are equal in nature. We have 
a role to fill. He has a role to fill. And to this point, there have 
not been Members of Congress--Democrats or Republicans--convinced that 
would be the right thing to do.
  I think we all have open minds. The American people all have open 
minds, and we want to do the right thing.
  I repeat for the third time today: I am willing to listen to the 
President. I have listened to the President. I have a record--I am not 
embarrassed--about supporting his father. I am not a big fan of the War 
Powers Act. I felt that way in the House; I feel that way in the 
Senate. This is more than the War Powers Act. This is a situation where 
we must have the support of the international community, at least some 
in the international community, and we must have the support of the 
American people. The President must have our support before there is an 
incursion into Iraq.
  I acknowledge that Saddam Hussein is a bad person. He has gassed his 
own people. He has killed his own blood. He is a vicious, evil man. I 
am ready to do whatever is necessary to protect the American people and 
bring about stability. But we have to wait until those different 
requirements are met before we do that.
  In the meantime, we cannot be Johnny one-note. We have to do what is 
necessary to be done in Iraq but also understand the American people 
face a tremendous domestic crisis. The economy continues to struggle. 
The American people are concerned about losing jobs, investment, 
retirement savings. America's slumping economy has severely impacted 
working families and retirees.
  Two of the major economic concerns we in Nevada have are that we have 
to be convinced our pensions are safe and that the cost of health care 
is debated, including prescription drugs. We passed strong legislation, 
led by the Senator from Maryland, Mr. Sarbanes, regarding corporate 
accountability. We will soon take up pension protection to provide 
additional security for American workers and retirees. Earlier this 
summer the Senate passed the greater access to affordable 
pharmaceuticals legislation. It didn't do everything I think should be 
done, but it did take some important first steps.
  It didn't do a lot to deal with the Medicare prescription drug 
program. We should have as a component of Medicare prescription drugs. 
It is not right that seniors are struggling. It is not right that we, 
the only superpower in the world, have a medical program for senior 
citizens that does not include prescription drugs, even though the 
average senior citizen has 18 prescriptions filled every year. We need 
to take care of that.
  The legislation we did pass, the greater access to affordable 
pharmaceuticals, would lower prescription drug prices because it would 
stop pharmaceutical company abuses that prevent generic drug 
competition. It would allow pharmacists, wholesalers, and consumers to 
import prescription drugs from Canada at a lower price than they can 
find in the United States, and it would allow States to extend Medicare 
rebates and discounts for prescription drugs to residents who don't 
have drug coverage--not everything, but certainly it is a step in the 
right direction.
  I have previously shared the stories of Nevadans struggling to pay 
for prescription drugs they need to stay healthy and to live quality, 
pain-free lives. The legislation the Senate passed will help make 
lifesaving and life-enhancing medicines more affordable and thus more 
affordable to Nevadans and all Americans. Unless we enact the Schumer-
McCain bill this year, consumers will not get any relief from the 
skyrocketing cost of drugs. The Senate has passed this important 
legislation. Now Americans are looking to the House to do likewise. 
Without this bill, drug prices will continue to drain the budget of 
everyone--the elderly, the uninsured, State governments, employers, 
labor unions, and other groups--all because brand-name drug companies 
have abused loopholes in the law and have profited handsomely.

  The average price paid for a prescription for brand-name drugs is 
three times the prescription price of generics. This means the average 
consumer pays about $45 more for each brand-name prescription. The 
savings that this legislation we passed provides will really add up.
  According to the Congressional Budget Office, this legislation would 
save American consumers about $60 billion over the next 10 years. The 
public has demanded action on the high cost of drugs. They are going 
up. This is supported by patient groups, employers, and insurance 
companies alike. They believe it is not the answer but one of the 
answers to end drug company abuses and close legal loopholes the 
industry exploits to block competition and keep drug prices 
artificially high.
  Just as we decided to close the accounting loopholes abused by Enron 
and WorldCom, we need to finish the job and close the loopholes in our 
drug patent laws exploited by the big pharmaceutical companies.
  I believe it is time for the House leadership to join us in ending 
these abuses that hurt patients every day.
  I also told the President on Friday that when he gave a speech last 
week to a group of labor people in Pennsylvania saying: I am not for 
the trial

[[Page S8337]]

lawyers; I am for the hard hats. I want to pass terrorism insurance, 
and that way we will create jobs--I told President Bush on Wednesday: 
If you want that legislation which you have talked about passed, you 
have to realize that you have to come out and get off this kick of 
having tort reform in addition to this terrorism insurance.
  I said: Your friend, the Republican Governor of Nevada, Kenny Guinn, 
approached that in the right way. He called a special session of the 
legislature which ended about a month ago. The purpose of that special 
session was to do something about the increasing cost of malpractice 
insurance. The legislature met. They set certain limits on what you 
could get for pain and suffering. As a result of that, people walked 
away happy. That is where tort reform should take place, on the State 
level. Even if those people who believe in more tort reform want to do 
it, they can't do it on this terrorism insurance. I think it is a game 
being played; they really don't want terrorism insurance. They want to 
use tort reform as an excuse. That is one of the issues that is left 
pending, terrorism insurance.
  They fought us every step of the way--they, the minority, fought us 
every step of the way. If the President really wants that, he needs to 
deal with the minority and allow this conference to be completed.
  We need to do something about the bankruptcy bill. This has been 
going on for years, as the Presiding Officer, who was the architect of 
that legislation, knows. All the issues, we were told, had been 
resolved. This has been held up for about a year because of the people 
who are not in touch with--I don't mean this as not mentally competent, 
but not in touch with reality, in that how could you hold up 
legislation as important as this bankruptcy reform because of a 
provision we passed over here that said if you are an organization that 
goes to a clinic and trashes it, put this terrible smelling acid on it 
so that you have to really tear the place down and rebuild it, those 
people cannot discharge these acts in bankruptcy. That seems totally 
fair to me. But they are off on this abortion kick that somehow people 
who do something bad to these reproductive clinics--whether or not you 
agree with abortion, people should have to obey the law. You should not 
have the right to trash a place such as that so that it has to be torn 
down and totally refurbished and say I can file bankruptcy and just 
discharge it. No.

  We thought it had been resolved a couple weeks ago. Obviously not. 
All the banks and all the others interested in bankruptcy reform should 
understand that is the only problem and the only reason we are not 
getting the bankruptcy legislation passed. That is a shame. The House 
should let us do that, just as they should let us do the antiterrorism 
legislation. It doesn't end there.
  A lot of legislation is being held up; for example, our 
appropriations bills. We have 13 appropriations bills we must pass 
every year. We cannot complete work on those until the House does it 
because you lose the ability to object because an amendment is not 
germane. When the bill is brought from the House, they won't pass that. 
Why? We are under this legislative delusion that suddenly all this 
financial stuff is going to work out.
  We have less than 20 days before this legislative session ends and 
they are still playing around. They never had a committee meeting on 
the Labor-HHS bill. It deals with the National Institutes of Health and 
so many other issues. It is a huge appropriations bill, extremely 
important for us. But the House is afraid to move on it because the 
President said he is only going to allow a certain amount of money to 
be spent there.
  If that is exceeded, he will veto it. I say let's call him on that. 
Let him veto these important programs such as the National Institutes 
of Health. It is a little hard to do that when he and the 
administration have single-handedly destroyed the economy. Last year at 
this time we had a surplus of about $7.4 trillion for the next 10 
years. That surplus is gone because of these tax cuts--well, about 25 
percent of it is due to the war. The rest of it is due to the tax cuts 
and the bad economic policies. We have no surplus anymore.
  So it seems to me what the President is trying to do is to create the 
illusion that he is fiscally responsible by not allowing us to pass our 
appropriations bills. In fact, what he will probably do in the 
multitrillion-dollar budget is that we will pass the appropriations 
bills, and he will probably veto a couple to say he is fiscally 
conservative, and all the problems are because of the prolific spending 
of the Congress, which is certainly not true. It appears that is what 
is happening.
  The economy is in shambles. We are not having appropriations bills 
worked upon. It is just too bad. Because of the election that took 
place 2 years ago in Florida, we needed election reform. Senator Dodd 
worked night and day getting election reform passed in the Senate. It 
is held up in the House. We cannot complete the conference.
  I am very disappointed in what is happening. I think the 
administration is focused on the wrong things. I should say the wrong 
thing this time. They have tunnel vision on Iraq. I think everybody in 
the Senate has an open mind as to what we should do on Iraq. We can 
also focus on the domestic problems in this country, but we are not 
doing that. I think it is too bad. It is harmful to this country and it 
is certainly harmful to our getting work done.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I am going to speak in morning business.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the 
Senator is recognized for up to 10 minutes.
  Mr. KYL. I thank the Chair.

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