[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 124 (Thursday, September 29, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10688-S10689]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  AMENDMENT NO. 1886 TO THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE APPROPRIATIONS BILL

  Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I wish to continue the discussion we were 
having. I cannot tell you how disappointed I am that the first 
amendment on the Department of Defense appropriations bill is one 
dealing with avian flu. If that is the most important amendment the 
other side of the aisle has for the Department of Defense bill, we 
ought to go ahead and vote on the appropriations bill as a whole right 
now. That is not the appropriate place to put it.
  To make it sound as though nobody is working on this issue and no 
money is available is a total disservice to the agencies that work on 
it and this body as a whole. We have been working on it. We have been 
working on it partly through the Katrina episode, making sure vaccines 
and other items that were needed for whatever would be available down 
there in a timely manner. Fortunately, we already had some laws in 
effect that allowed the Secretary of Health and Human Services to take 
some emergency action to put items in place and get things done. We 
will be reviewing that to see if they worked as well as they could.
  We have had a bioshield fund in place for a while. That bioshield 
fund has money in it to do what needs to be done on any kind of 
terrorism or pandemic that comes up. What we have lacked is the plan. 
Actually, the plan falls under the jurisdiction of my committee, and we 
have been working on it. I divided the committee up--and Senator Harkin 
is on the committee--to more closely follow the acronym of our office. 
We are the HELP Committee, and we are in charge of health and education 
and labor and pensions.
  Of course, we have been devoting a tremendous amount of time recently 
to getting a pensions bill ready so it can be debated on the floor on a 
moment's notice. It is ready to go. There is a lot of agreement on both 
sides of the aisle, so we can get that out of here pretty

[[Page S10689]]

fast and protect hard-working Americans' pension funds. But we need to 
do the Department of Defense appropriations bill first.
  A more appropriate place to debate this issue would be on almost 
anything that comes up later. As the Senator from Iowa knows, if there 
is a lot of debate on a bill that comes up, it probably is not going 
anywhere at this time of the year and with the crises we face. So 
perhaps that is why he decided he would put it on this bill.
  We are working on it. Again I assure everybody we are working on it 
in the subcommittee that deals with public health and bioterrorism, 
under the jurisdiction of Senator Burr. He has been doing an 
outstanding job with that subcommittee. He hired some spectacular 
people who have a depth of understanding that I don't think we have 
seen for a long time in regard to those particular issues. He has held 
hearings on those issues and gathered valuable information. He has gone 
pretty far afield to make sure we are covering all of the things that 
could happen.
  He has a bill that is virtually ready to go. It will include the 
capability and the plan for handling a pandemic, as well as any 
unexpected event. It greatly compresses the time for dealing with those 
issues from anything we have had before. It provides a coordination 
basis that is necessary for unexpected events.
  I congratulate him for his efforts and for how widely he has 
researched it, and for the number of fellow Senators he has involved in 
it.
  Yesterday, there was a briefing he helped set up so we would know 
more about, particularly, avian flu. That kind of thoroughness should 
be congratulated. We ought to be working with him to make sure we are 
getting the bill done.
  I have to say, whether the threat is made by man or one that occurs 
naturally, we need to be prepared, and I agree with Senator Harkin on 
that point.
  Senator Harkin, Senator Burr, and I serve on the Senate Committee on 
Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. All of us also serve on the 
Subcommittee on Bioterrorism and Public Health Preparedness. As I said, 
Senator Burr is chairman of that subcommittee. He has held six hearings 
and roundtables on what we need to do to have a strong national 
biodefense.
  As chairman of the full committee, I am looking forward to working 
with Senator Burr, Senator Harkin, and the rest of the committee 
members to pass a bill this fall that will develop our capabilities to 
develop defenses against avian flu and a host of other biological 
threats we face--some known and some unknown--regardless of whether 
they are manmade or naturally occurring.
  Senator Burr has been working on that comprehensive bill to build on 
Project BioShield. His bill will address everything from liability 
protection to biosurveillance, from the threat of terrorism to the 
threat of a normal disease.
  As committee chairman, I fully intend to report that legislation to 
the floor this year to create a viable and innovative biodefense 
industry. We do need to create incentives and eliminate barriers to 
develop this industry because we cannot count on the Government alone 
to supply us with the countermeasures, the antidotes, and the detection 
tools we have to have to ensure our safety against biological threats.

  Most importantly, we already have billions of dollars available in 
Project BioShield to do what Senator Harkin wants to do. What we need 
to do is create an environment that will encourage business into this 
industry before we discourage them out of the industry. We need to get 
them back in. We need the innovativeness of small business and big 
business, and we need to make it more attractive so the drug and 
biotechnology companies will want to be engaged.
  We have the money. What we need is a plan, and that plan is what we 
have been working on diligently. I do ask Senator Harkin to work with 
me, to work with Senator Burr, to work with our majority leader, and to 
work with Senator Kennedy, the ranking member on the HELP Committee, to 
make that happen. We have the capability to do it. We should be able to 
put together a package that should take relatively short debate on the 
floor, the House can match up to it, and we can do a conference and get 
it into effect. That would be better than having a full-blown debate on 
the Department of Defense appropriations bill, holding that bill up 
interminably when the money is needed, and creating difficulty in the 
conference committee, which will undoubtedly result in this measure 
being thrown out of the conference committee because it is not 
applicable to this bill and, therefore, that conference committee.
  I appreciate the attention he has brought to the issue. It has 
brought attention to the issue. We need to do it the right way, and 
that is to include it in the development of a comprehensive bill that 
will deal with public health and bioterrorism.
  Again, I congratulate Senator Burr and all those who have been 
working with him on developing that bill. I don't think anybody could 
have put it together in a shorter time period than he has. We are just 
9 months into this term, and he is already delivering. That is a 
tremendous statement on our part of his capability. Again, I cannot 
express how thorough it has been. Let's do it right. Let's do it 
through a stand-alone bill on which both sides of the aisle can join. 
Let's get this done, solved, and eliminate it as a problem under the 
Department of Defense.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Indiana.

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