[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 135 (Saturday, November 20, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11769-S11773]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA

  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, in a bit we will be wrapping up. There is a 
lot of business that is being tended to and it will probably be 30 
minutes or so before we officially wrap up. I thought I would address 
several issues that have come to my attention over the last several 
days and cover some of the events that have occurred earlier this week.
  The first is an issue that leads from what we learned earlier this 
week when the Department of Defense warned American military bases 
worldwide to cease officially sponsoring the Boy Scouts of America.
  The Department issued its directive in response to a lawsuit filed by 
the American Civil Liberties Union. The Illinois chapter of the ACLU 
accuses the U.S. Government of improperly supporting a group which 
administers a religious oath. The ACLU's legal attack has forced the 
Defense Department to suspend its decades long tradition of supporting 
Scouts and it may even prevent Scouts from celebrating their annual 
jamborees on Defense installations. But it does not stop here.
  There is fresh evidence that the ACLU intends to end all Federal 
support for the Boy Scouts of America. In their view, where there is 
Government, there cannot be faith. The separation of church and state 
is a bedrock principle of our Republic, and Americans are grateful that 
we are free to worship as we choose without Government interference or 
fear of persecution. But to this legislator, the ACLU's continued 
attacks on the Boy Scouts is starting to become its own form of 
persecution.
  The Boy Scouts of America is a congressionally chartered 
organization. It serves a patriotic, charitable, and educational 
purpose. Furthermore, its support by the Federal Government is outlined 
in U.S. law. I was a Boy Scout as a young boy in Nashville, TN. All 
three of my sons, Harrison, Jonathan, and Bryan, have been Boy Scouts 
here as we have lived in Washington, DC.
  We have found, and it is generally accepted, that Boy Scouts and 
Scouting is a noble tradition, an honorable tradition, that inculcates 
the very best of our values. Since its founding in the early 20th 
century, scouting has served America's communities and families with 
distinction and with honor. The Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts promote 
character in leadership by instilling in our youth values such as 
honor, duty, charity, integrity. These programs help prepare our young 
people for the ethical and moral choices that they will face throughout 
our lives.
  It is for these reasons that I introduced a bill called the Save Our 
Scouts bill to reaffirm our longstanding commitment to the tradition of 
scouting. The legislation stipulates that no Federal law, including any 
rule, regulation, directive, instruction, or order shall be construed 
to limit any Federal agency from providing any form of support to the 
Boy Scouts of America or Girl Scouts of the United States of America or 
any organization chartered by the Boy Scouts of America or the Girl 
Scouts of the United States of America.
  Activities supported include holding meetings, jamborees, camporees, 
or other Scouting activities on Federal property, or hosting or 
sponsoring any official event of such organization.

  I am disappointed that this bill did not pass by unanimous consent, 
but I am hopeful that in the next Congress common sense will prevail 
and both Chambers will give their unanimous support to protecting the 
Scouts.
  Scouting has served generations of American boys and girls. It has 
earned its place in the hearts of millions of Americans who look back 
fondly, just as I do, on that special time of merit badges, hikes, 
fellowship, and service. I am confident that we will preserve this 
honorable tradition for years and generations to come.


               Individuals With Disabilities Act Of 2004

  On a separate issue, late last night a very important bill called the 
Individuals with Disabilities Act of 2004 passed and is now on its way 
to the President's desk for his signature. Several years ago, I had the 
opportunity in this body to chair what was then called the Subcommittee 
on Individuals with Disabilities, and over that Congress, that 2-year 
period, spent a great deal of time focused on this particular 
legislation called IDEA, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
  I commend the Senators from New Hampshire and Massachusetts who have 
done a tremendous job in their bipartisan work on this very important 
legislation. There are more than 6.5 million children with disabilities 
who are served through IDEA, along with more than 430,000 special 
education teachers. The Individuals with Disabilities Act of 2004 
carefully addresses the needs of those disabled children and the 
schools they attend.
  The bill refocuses Federal law on outcomes for disabled children, 
ensuring that States focus on academic results, not process, while 
still guaranteeing the rights of the child to be protected.

[[Page S11770]]

  Teachers are now burdened with hours of paperwork that take away from 
classroom instruction. I have seen the paperwork requirement. Teachers 
have shown me stacks of forms that are 6 inches, even a foot high, page 
after page. They are required to complete these forms before they can 
take care of the needs of those disabled students.
  This bill enables those teachers to devote more of their time and 
more of their energy to the classroom, and in turn their students 
benefit from more of their undivided attention. The attention is on the 
students with disabilities rather than on paper.
  The staff of Senators Gregg and Kennedy deserve great credit for 
their hard work and effort that made final passage of this conference 
report possible. In particular, I recognize the tremendous work of 
staff members Denzel McGuire and Connie Gardner for their commitment, 
their dedication and labor on behalf of disabled students.
  As I mentioned, it was late last night that that bill passed, and it 
is on the way to the President, again a tremendous achievement for this 
body. I congratulate the chairman and the ranking member on the success 
of this bill.


                       Medical Modernization Act

  Mr. President, because we will be leaving tonight and will not be 
here over the course of the week, I want to address a bill called the 
Medicare Modernization Act. Next week is the 1-year anniversary of the 
Senate's historic passage of this act, the Medicare Modernization Act. 
Since we will not be here next week, I want to again just mention, on 
this anniversary, a few days early, the historic significance of this 
bill.
  First, the Medicare Modernization Act represents the most significant 
improvement to the Medicare Program since its inception almost 40 years 
ago. It also represents one of the great bipartisan achievements of the 
108th Congress. Because we acted, because this bill passed 1 year ago, 
seniors will gain access to more affordable prescription drugs, the 
most powerful tool in American medicine today.
  Up until passage of that bill, this powerful tool in American 
medicine, prescription drugs, was not a part of the Medicare Program. 
They were not covered under Medicare at all. To me, it made no sense. 
To this Congress, it made no sense to deny affordable access to seniors 
to prescription drugs in this program if you are going to be promising 
it, if your obligation to them is true health care security.
  Seniors and individuals with disabilities will enjoy better and more 
cost-effective care through disease management and chronic care 
management because of this bill. They will have access to expanded 
preventive care, such as annual physical exams, because of this bill. 
The overall quality of care will improve over time because Medicare 
will begin, for the first time in the program, to measure and, indeed, 
pay for quality performance.
  We will also improve health care safety and efficiency through means 
such as electronic prescribing and other innovative reforms. We know 
this whole process of electronic prescribing or e-prescriptions will 
have a direct impact on reducing those unintended and unnecessary 
medical errors. It will improve patients' safety for our seniors when 
they receive their care.
  Because we acted a year ago, seniors and individuals with 
disabilities will soon enjoy true health security. I am pleased to say 
that real help already is in place. The bill will not be fully 
implemented for another year yet but already help is in place. Less 
than 1 year after the Medicare bill became law, nearly 6 million 
seniors were already getting substantial savings on their prescription 
drugs through that Medicare prescription drug discount card.
  As an aside, if you are a senior and you are receiving prescription 
drugs today, you are on prescription drugs today, and you do not have 
that Medicare prescription drug discount card, please call 1-800-
MEDICARE and talk to the Medicare representatives and ask them how you 
can get that card because that card can give you immediate savings.
  If you are a low-income senior, it is especially important because if 
you sign up for that card before the end of December, you get an 
additional $600 value on that card. I say an additional $600 value; 
that is in addition to the discounts of 15 or 20 or 25 or even 30 
percent that everyone gets on that Medicare discount card.
  I have a couple of examples in my home State of Tennessee. Almeta 
Chesney of Knoxville, TN, came to a drug card enrollment event I hosted 
in May. I had the opportunity to host several of these events across 
the State to help educate our seniors as to the advantages of this 
card. She enrolled in the prescription drug discount card program and 
is now saving over $230 every month. Before she had the card, before we 
passed the bill, she didn't have the card. She was having to pay an 
additional $230 which she is not paying today. That is $230 in savings 
that is in her pocket now, so she can save or invest or spend. Now, 
$230 a month is nearly $3,000 a year because of that prescription drug 
card that she can get through Medicare, that she got through Medicare.

  Mary Surber, 86 years old, also signed up for a card at an event I 
held in October in Knoxville. She will save over $2,000 a year, a 
savings of 87 percent of her annual drug bills. Again, this Medicare 
Modernization Act in this first phase, where you can get that Medicare 
drug discount card, has huge potential savings for seniors who are on 
prescription drugs.
  The Medicare Modernization Act is helping younger Americans gain 
access to more affordable health insurance coverage through portable 
and tax-free health savings accounts.
  The health savings account, although we passed it in the Medicare 
bill, is available for people in this body, our colleagues. I do 
encourage my fellow Senators and other Federal employees to look at a 
health savings account. For the first time in the Federal Employees 
Health Benefits Program, FEHBP, our health care program, you can have 
that option of getting a health savings account. I look forward to 
looking at it very closely, and I expect I will sign up for a health 
savings account in the next couple of weeks, and I encourage others to 
look at that.
  The advantage of these health savings accounts--and, again, they are 
new with the Medicare Modernization Act--is that they are portable. You 
can take them with you. If you change jobs, the personal savings 
account, health savings account, you can take it with you from job to 
job. If you don't use that savings account in 1 year, the good thing 
about it is you can roll it over to the next year. So it has this 
rollover component. It has the savings component which grows tax free. 
The interest actually grows, but you can put in money tax free and you 
can take money out tax free.
  So these health savings accounts are tremendous. They are already 
giving younger Americans and others more control over their health care 
choices and hard-earned dollars, health savings accounts, being a high 
deductible policy coupled with this personal, portable health savings 
account that did become rolled over.
  All of this was in the Medicare Modernization Act that was all passed 
by this body in a bipartisan way over a year ago--almost a year ago. I 
am deeply thankful for the cooperation and the hard work and dedication 
of my colleagues in this body to overcome years of partisan gridlock. 
We had hunkered down for years, having affordable access to seniors 
through Medicare, yet we never did it. It used to be just talk. But, 
indeed, a year ago we delivered that on the floor of the Senate. We 
finally have offered seniors the security they need and the choices 
they deserve.
  I am very proud of our health care accomplishments, proud they 
provide a platform to build on on which we can take our next steps to 
making health care more affordable and more available and more 
dependable for all Americans.
  Although we are bringing, really, tonight--and we will come back on 
December 7 for a very short period--to a close the 108th Congress, I am 
very excited about looking to that agenda in the 109th Congress on 
health care, where we address what bothers most Americans today, or 
what bothers most Americans, and that is the soaring cost of health 
care.
  That has a huge impact on the number of uninsured in this country, as 
we look at issues such as medical liability, where in States such as 
Florida and

[[Page S11771]]

Ohio and Pennsylvania there is a medical liability crisis, a lawsuit 
abuse crisis which has a direct impact on raising the cost of health 
care but, probably even more importantly, diminishing the access to 
health care in ways that are hurting people--hurting the quality of 
care, hurting the access where moms or future moms are losing their 
obstetricians; where you have to worry, if you are driving through 
parts of Ohio or Florida that, if you have an accident, if you are so 
unfortunate to have an accident, that there might not be a trauma 
surgeon on call.
  Because of the impact these unnecessary frivolous lawsuits are 
having, it is driving physicians out of the practice of medicine, out 
of obstetrics. No longer can they afford to take a call at these trauma 
centers.
  We have a great foundation to build on as we address health savings 
accounts, health care security and prescription drugs for seniors and 
individuals with disabilities. In that bill, we open the door to paying 
for performance and paying for quality of ownership of health care 
accounts, of stressing chronic disease management, managing for 
illnesses such as diabetes and hypertension, of being able to look at 
health care in an integrated way of pulling all the little stovepipes 
together in a way to the benefit of individual patients.
  There has been real progress in the past, and I look forward to a 
really exciting future as we go forward to address this new agenda in 
health care that focuses on the individual patient, focusing on 
consumer-driven medicines, focusing on provider-friendly health care 
that is patient-centered and that is the model of the future, the model 
that we will continue to work toward.


                                 Sudan

  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, the fourth issue I want to mention is an 
issue that even before the last recess--I remember on the night before 
closing the Senate down we had a period of time similar to this before 
the final business and the final what we call wrapup was brought to the 
floor--I was talking about this very same issue. I was talking about a 
similar type of issue a year ago, and I am going to bring it back to 
the floor right now because it is an issue that is close to my heart. 
It is an issue that affects me in profound ways. It is an issue that I 
don't have the answer to yet, and no one does, but it is an issue that 
by continually focusing a shining light on it, by educating others, we 
can change the course of humanity in this part of the world. This part 
of the world is the Sudan in Africa.
  This week the Sudan Government agreed once more to make peace with 
its southern region. Civil war has gone on for about 23 years. About 5 
million people have been displaced from homes. Over 2 million people 
have died in this civil war which has now gone on for about a quarter 
of a century.
  I have spent a little time in Sudan. I was there in August a couple 
of weeks before the Republican Convention, and I was there about 10 
months or 11 months ago as well. I was there the year before that and 
the year before that and the year before that. So the Sudan is close to 
my heart.
  While it is encouraging news that we are much closer to peace and the 
international community is hopeful, we still can't overlook a crisis. 
Again, this is a north-south civil war on which we are making real 
progress. But in the whole western part of this huge vast country of 
Sudan is a region called Darfur. This Darfur region that is about the 
size of France is a region that is in crisis.

  For 22 months, the Sudanese Government has waged war against the 
people of the Darfur region. Despite two United Nations Security 
Council resolutions, pressure from the international community and 
neighboring countries, the government of Khartoum continues its 
genocidal campaign. Last week Khartoum ostensibly agreed to halt 
attacks, but within hours of their agreement Sudanese police raided a 
camp in southern Darfur destroying homes and driving out civilians.
  Tens of thousands of innocent victims have died as a result of 
government-sponsored violence, and 1.8 million more have been displaced 
from this Darfur region. Entire villages have been burned to the 
ground. Women have been raped and children have been abducted and 
executed. Special United Nations envoy Jan Pronk warns that Darfur is 
on the brink of anarchy.
  We cannot stand by as the people of Darfur suffer. We cannot allow 
another Rwanda. They are calling out to us. They are pleading for our 
help. We have a responsibility to act.
  In about mid-August, I visited a refugee camp called Touloum in the 
country of Chad. The country of Chad is just to the west of Sudan and 
just to the west of this Darfur region, which is in the western aspect 
of Sudan. Touloum is several hours northeast from the capital 
N'Djamena.
  I met with refugees and community leaders in this refugee camp. What 
I saw and what I have heard in Touloum in this camp was truly 
appalling. Thousands of refugees were housed in dust-covered tents. 
Many more lived in makeshift shelters of gathered wood and plastic 
sheathing. Some of the itinerant refugees just moving into the camp and 
waiting to get into the camp had simple sticks with either clothes or 
sheets or rugs, pulled together and slept there for days waiting to get 
into the refugee camp.
  I remember the moms and many children running around, some way or 
another. The children are fairly malnourished and having been on the 
road for a period of time walking through the bush, what we call 
cachectic in medicine but skinny and clearly no muscle tissue at all 
and sunken faces but still smiling, still playing, and still 
fashioning, with a piece of balled up cloth, playing soccer.
  There was a lot of dust there. The rainy season had not quite yet 
hit.
  I had the opportunity to speak with a gentleman named Asman Adam 
Abdallah. In Darfur, he had been a man of prominence, an officer of his 
tribe, a government official. He was from a village called Jemeza just 
north of the regional capital of El Fasher.
  During the attack on his village, he became separated from his 
family. That tends to be the rule. He didn't know if his family was 
still alive. He didn't know how he would be able to go back to find 
them.
  He told me their story--recounting that he watched 15 people of his 
village killed one by one by one by one. It had taken him about 18 days 
to reach the safety of this refugee camp called Touloum.
  Sudanese Government planes bombarded Asman and his fellow survivors 
as they trekked first to the Tine, which is a town on the Sudanese-
Chadian border.
  Another refugee in that Touloum camp described how during a raid on 
her village several soldiers grabbed a baby to check and look at what 
the sex, what the gender of that child was. The soldiers began arguing 
back and forth as to whether to kill that little baby boy. She 
overheard one soldier remarking but ``he is so young.'' It appeared 
that the soldiers were under orders to kill all male children.
  I heard of a mentally disabled 15-year-old boy being thrown into a 
burning house and an old paralyzed man burned alive in his hut. I heard 
stories of women raped in front of their own children.
  I asked one refugee in Touloum what would it take for him to go home. 
He said to me: I will go if you come with me and stay with me.
  The Janjaweed attacks described to me were disturbingly similar. The 
Janjaweed are preceded by aerial attacks by Government planes flying 
overhead.
  In some cases, soldiers in government uniforms participate on the 
ground and they made references, according to these witnesses and the 
villagers whom we talked to, references to orders from Khartoum. 
Survivors tell of racial slurs being probed at them as the Janjaweed 
swept through their villages, killed the men, killed the boys, and 
razed the homes.
  The dictatorship in Khartoum claims it has no control over the 
Janjaweed, but I believe otherwise. I believe if they were sincere in 
their efforts to make peace, peace indeed would be at hand. The direct 
line between the Government of Sudan, the Janjaweed, and the raping, 
the pillaging and murder is so direct that I am convinced, with an 
order from the top, the crisis would stop. It would immediately end.
  The regime in Khartoum, however, has cynically concluded it can 
survive a moderate amount of diplomatic pressure and continue the 
genocide. I refer,

[[Page S11772]]

again, to this to be ``genocide.'' Indeed, it was in the Senate that, 
through a resolution which was unanimously accepted, we called it 
genocide. That is what it is.
  Khartoum seems to believe it can ignore the mostly rhetorical 
pressure that has been brought to bear by the international community. 
That, unfortunately, has been what the international community has 
done. The light has been shone on the tragedy that has occurred there, 
but the response from the international community has not yet been as 
strong or as bold as it must be.
  Khartoum believes the threat of a Chinese veto at the United Nations 
Security Council will protect it from more serious sanctions. We have 
to prove them wrong.
  About 7 years ago I first went into Sudan. Osama bin Laden left Sudan 
about 1996 and shortly thereafter I had the opportunity to first go 
into the Sudan as part of a medical mission team. I have been able to 
visit the Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, and now Chad, the countries surrounding 
Sudan, as part of this medical mission work. A little hospital called 
Lui in southern Sudan that I visited this August now sees about 40,000 
patients a year. There is still no running water there, and there is 
still no electricity. There is a generator, but there is still no 
villagewide electricity. It is in the southern region of Sudan.
  The first few times we flew into that area, there was no hospital, or 
the hospital had been locked up, with landmines all around, for about 
18 years, and we could not operate in the little hospital. That has 
been closed down for almost two decades. So the first operations were 
performed in a little schoolhouse. I remember vividly driving up and 
they said, this is where you will be operating. It was clearly a little 
schoolhouse because you walked into the room we were operating in the 
next day and there was a big chalkboard there. There was a chalkboard 
on the opposing wall, literally. Within 24 hours we did those first 
operations.
  After a couple of years operating in the schoolhouse, the landmines 
were taken out. It was demined. The old hospital was demined. Today, as 
I said, from the first few patients, almost 40,000 patients were seen 
last year, with thousands of operations performed, still under 
primitive conditions.
  Once you have a health care entity or a doctor-patient relationship 
or surgery being performed, all of a sudden trust is reestablished. And 
although there was no village there at the time because people had been 
displaced from their homes and driven back into the surrounding hills, 
once that doctor-patient relationship began, soon thereafter a little 
commercial activity started and people would come and camp outside the 
facility. Then the next year I would go back and instead of having one 
little cart there selling tobacco or maize, there would be five or six. 
The next year there would be 30. Now there is a huge market. Now there 
is a church that has opened and a school that has opened. It has become 
a village now with people coming from hundreds of miles around to this, 
still, only full-service hospital or clinic in southern Sudan.

  In the southern Sudan, this region of Lui, I also had the opportunity 
to go up to the Nuba mountains, which was an interesting first trip for 
me because the Nuba mountains had been closed for a period of time to 
all aid. There was no United Nations aid coming in because the 
Government at that time--again, this was 6 or 7 years ago--said it was 
too dangerous and they would not let relief agencies go in. I had the 
opportunity to go in. The fact I could get in--at the time I was a U.S. 
Senator but predominantly traveling as a medical missionary--it was 
safe enough for us, so aid could go in and aid is going in from around 
the world to that part of the world.
  I had the opportunity to go to Bapong, a town in the upper west. I 
remember flying into Bapong and we treated a patient right off the 
field we landed in. Somebody brought a patient there. I remember 
vividly the patient would have died, if we had not come in, because of 
a huge abscess, infection, in his thigh. I remember it so vividly. By 
that very simple procedure, very, very simple procedure, this man's 
life was saved. In fact, as a surgeon, it was a very easy procedure, 
but there was a medic--we called him a medic; a medicine man--no formal 
training, who was responsible for the villagers. Because of 
superstition and because he had never done it, he did not know how far 
he could actually cut with the knife and the patient still be able to 
live. By grabbing his hand and my hand wrapped around his hand, it gave 
him confidence to go a little bit deeper. When we went a little bit 
deeper, the infection was released. I remember the joy in his face 
because he realized that action, indeed, had in essence saved this 
patient's life.
  In Bapong, I was told by regional leaders that the government was 
deliberately targeting civilians and denying them basic medical needs. 
Ten days after my visit, government forces attacked Bapong and killed 
2,000 people.
  It is long past time for the Sudanese Government to cease and desist 
activities that have resulted in civil war and punishment. Countless 
innocent people have died. Now the crisis is risking--I hope it does 
not occur--but there is a risk of it spilling over into neighboring 
countries.
  This fall, the Senate and House unanimously passed resolutions 
pressing for the immediate suspension of Sudan's membership on the 
United Nations Commission on Human Rights. All 535 legislators, 100 in 
this body and 435 in the House of Representatives, agreed that Sudan's 
membership on a commission to protect human rights is a travesty, a 
cruel trick at the same time that such oppression and death is going on 
in the Darfur region. It defies all decency that a nation that is 
actively engaged in genocide against its own people could occupy a 
position of honor and authority on a commission in the United Nations 
devoted to human rights. It does not make sense. It is wrong.
  I applaud the President and Secretary Colin Powell for their effort 
to bring accountability to the Khartoum Government. This administration 
has shown immense leadership in addressing the crisis in Darfur. The 
United States is providing over 80 percent of the supplies flowing to 
Darfur in eastern Chad. It is something that we as a Nation should be 
proud of, we are proud of.
  Since February of 2003, we, this body, our Government, have provided 
$218 million for Sudan. The Senate foreign operations bill provides 
$611 million more for fiscal year 2005 and an additional $75 million 
for African Union peacekeeping activities.
  In September, Secretary Powell came before the Senate Foreign 
Relations Committee and unflinchingly declared the situation in Darfur 
to be government-sponsored genocide.
  Last month, the President authorized the use of three C-130 transport 
planes to convey 3,300 Rwandan and Nigerian peacekeeping troops into 
Darfur. We have much to be proud of, but there is much more to do.
  The United Nations Security Council is concluding its 2-day meeting 
in Nairobi, Kenya, right now. During this week's meeting, council 
members discussed all sorts of approaches, mainly carrot-and-stick 
approaches, to bringing Khartoum into compliance with those 
international human rights standards.
  U.N. Ambassador Jack Danforth, a former colleague of ours from this 
body, has worked hard to press the U.N. to take bold and concrete 
action. I support him with every fiber in my body for this critical 
work, for this difficult work, for this challenging work.
  As you can tell, I am deeply committed to the future of the Sudanese 
people. I will be back there on a regular basis. What I learn, I do 
bring back to this floor. And whether it is translating it into our 
Sudan Peace Act of years ago, or into our observations and declaration 
of genocide in the Darfur region, or increasing aid to that part of the 
world to facilitate peace, or to support the tremendous leadership and 
tremendous work of Ambassador Danforth, we must be there as a nation. 
And we will be there as a Senate.
  The plight of the Sudanese people calls out to all freedom-loving 
nations, not just to the United States. So I encourage other nations to 
look, to observe, but then to act, and to assist or work side by side 
with the United States of America as we address these challenges.
  As a Senator speaking on this floor, as a physician, as a doctor, as 
a human

[[Page S11773]]

being who cherishes life, I believe it is our duty to answer that call.

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