[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 81 (Tuesday, June 2, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5922-S5941]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 FAMILY SMOKING PREVENTION AND TOBACCO CONTROL ACT--MOTION TO PROCEED--
                               Continued

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Tennessee.


                             Nuclear Power

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, 1 year ago I went to the Oak Ridge 
National Laboratory in Tennessee to propose a new Manhattan Project to 
put America on the path to clean energy independence. The project would 
focus on seven grand challenges: plug-in electric cars and trucks, 
carbon capture from coal plants, making solar power cost competitive; 
recycling used nuclear fuel, advanced biofuels from crops we don't eat, 
green buildings, and fusion. Last week I went back to Oak Ridge, spoke 
to a gathering, a summit of people from several States who were meeting 
to talk about how to attract and keep high technology jobs. I proposed 
that the United States should build 100 new nuclear plants during the 
next 20 years, while scientists and engineers figure out the grand 
challenges I discussed 1 year ago. This would double America's nuclear 
powerplants which today produce 20 percent of all of our electricity 
and 70 percent of our pollution-free, carbon-free electricity. This is 
an aggressive goal. But with Presidential leadership, it could happen. 
I am convinced it should happen. Conservation and nuclear power are the 
only real alternatives we have today to produce enough low-cost, 
reliable, clean electricity to clean the air, deal with climate change, 
and keep good jobs from going overseas. Climate change may be the 
inconvenient problem of the day, but nuclear power is, for many 
skeptics, the inconvenient answer. These nuclear skeptics cite 
regulatory delays and past problems with safety. They appoint 
commissions to slow walk decisions about recycling used nuclear fuel. 
They point to the shortage of welders for new plants. They complain 
that Japan and France are building most of the essential equipment for 
new nuclear plants. No surprise, since Japan is building 1 nuclear 
plant a year, and France is producing 80 percent of all of its 
electricity from nuclear powerplants. The skeptics say that carbon from 
coal plants contributes to climate change, which is true, and so they 
offer their solution: operate our big complex country, which uses 25 
percent of all of the energy in the world, on electricity generated 
from the wind, the sun, and the Earth. One day that might be possible. 
But today there is a huge energy gap between the renewable electricity 
we wish to have and the reliable, low-cost electricity that we must 
have. My guess is, it will be 30 or 40 or 50 years before these new 
sources of electricity are cheap enough and reliable enough to supply 
most of the power to our electric grid.
  The nuclear skeptics in Congress, urged by the President, reported 
last month an energy and climate change bill that would require 20 
percent of our electricity to be made from a very narrow definition of 
renewable energy. My visit to Oak Ridge was to a gathering to discuss 
how to attract and keep high tech jobs in the region. I tried to paint 
a picture for those attending about how this legislation would affect 
those who attended.
  To put things in perspective, the Tennessee Valley Authority produces 
an average of about 27,000 megawatts of electricity for industrial and 
household customers in our seven-State region. Sixty percent comes from 
coal, 30 percent from nuclear, 8 percent from hydroelectric power, and 
1 percent from natural gas. Across the country, it is 50 percent coal, 
20 percent nuclear, 20 percent natural gas, and 6 percent hydroelectric 
power. Nationally, only about 1\1/2\ percent of electricity comes from 
the Sun, the wind, and the Earth. Almost none of the TVA's power does. 
But the 40 percent of TVA power that comes from nuclear and hydro 
plants is just as clean as these narrowly defined renewables. It is 
free of pollution that dirties the air, and it is free of carbon that 
contributes to global warming. In that sense, TVA is the sixteenth 
cleanest utility in the country already.
  Here is another yardstick. The new nuclear powerplant at Watts Bar in 
Tennessee can produce 1,240 megawatts of electricity. The Bull Run coal 
plant produces about 870 megawatts; the Fort Loudoun Dam, 150 
megawatts. All three operate almost all the time. This is called base 
load power, which is important since large amounts of power can't be 
stored. Some forget that solar power is only available when the Sun 
shines and wind power is only available when the wind blows.
  So how much renewable electricity is available in our region? The new 
solar plant our Governor Phil Bredesen has proposed in Haywood County 
would cover 20 acres but produce just 5 megawatts. The 18 big wind 
turbines atop Buffalo Mountain, a few miles away from where I made my 
speech, have the capacity to produce 29 megawatts but actually produce 
only 6 megawatts. It may be also possible to squeeze a few hundred 
megawatts from turbines in the Mississippi River. The Southern 
Company's new biomass plant in Georgia--biomass is sort of a controlled 
bonfire of waste wood products--would produce 96 megawatts. All this 
for a utility that needs 27,000 megawatts to operate at any given time.
  Each of these sources of renewable energy consumes a lot of space. 
For example, the big solar thermal plants in the western desert where 
they line up mirrors to focus the Sun's rays take more than 30 square 
miles--that is more than 5 miles on a side--to produce the same 1,000 
megawatts that one can get from a single coal or single nuclear plant 
that sits on one square mile. Or take wind, to generate the same 1,000 
megawatts with wind, one would need 270 square miles. That is 16 miles 
on a side. An unbroken line of wind turbines 50 stories high from 
Chattanooga to Bristol would give us only one-fourth of the electricity 
we get from one unit of the Watts Bar nuclear powerplant which fits on 
one square mile, and we would still need the nuclear powerplant for the 
times when the wind doesn't blow. There is good reason why there is 
only one wind farm in the entire southern United States. In our region, 
the wind blows less than 20 percent of the time. Much of that time is 
at night when TVA already has several thousand megawatts of unused 
electricity.
  Biomass will be a renewable source that we will emphasize in the 
South, we are told. That's a good idea. It might reduce forest fires, 
and it will conserve resources. The National Forest Service told us 
last week that there are 2 million tons of wood scraps and dead trees 
in Tennessee's forests, and pulp and paper companies might produce 
another 2 million tons. That sounds like a lot. But let's not expect 
too much. We would need a forest the size of the entire 550,000-acre 
Great Smoky Mountain National Park to feed a 1,000-megawatt biomass 
plant on a sustained basis. That is a plant that would produce as much 
electricity as one nuclear power unit.
  Think of the energy it is going to take to haul this around. Georgia 
Southern says it will take 160 to 180 trucks a day to feed biomass into 
a 96-megawatt electrical plant. Remember, TVA uses at least 27,000 
megawatts of electricity every day.
  Of course, conservation and efficiency are the places to start when 
looking at America's and, especially, Tennessee's electricity futures. 
Tennesseans use more electricity per person than residents of any other 
State. If we reduced our use to the national

[[Page S5923]]

average, it would equal the electricity produced by four nuclear 
powerplants. We might still have to build some new powerplants, because 
our history and that of the country is that conservation only limits 
electricity growth. It usually doesn't reduce it. For example, 20 years 
ago we never would have guessed that computers would be using nearly 5 
percent of our electricity. One can see we will need some 
breakthroughs, something like a new Manhattan project, before we can 
rely very much on renewable electricity.
  Of all these forms of electricity in our region, solar has the most 
promise. It takes up massive space, but we can use rooftops. It only 
works when the Sun shines, but the Sun shines during peak times of 
electricity use. I believe our Governor is exactly right to try to make 
Tennessee a hub for solar power. The first grand challenge of my 
proposed Manhattan project is to try to make solar power cost 
competitive. According to TVA, in our region, it is far from that 
today. Solar costs four to five times as much as the base load 
electricity that TVA now produces. Wind power, on the other hand, can 
supplement electricity on the Great Plains and perhaps offshore. But 
for our region, it would be a terrible mistake.
  In Tennessee it is a waste of money, and it destroys the environment 
in the name of saving the environment. The turbines are three times as 
tall as Neyland Stadium, which is our great big football stadium in 
Knoxville. In our region they only work on mountaintops where the winds 
are strongest, and they barely work there. I haven't mentioned the new 
transmission lines that will be necessary from the mountaintops through 
backyards in Tennessee.

  Someone asked Boone Pickens if he would put any of these turbines on 
his 68,000-acre ranch in Texas. ``Hell no,'' he said. ``They're ugly.'' 
Well, if Boone doesn't want them on his ranch because they are ugly, 
why would we want them on the most beautiful mountaintops in America, 
in North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, 
all the way up to the White Mountains of New Hampshire?
  Some of the jobs that we will be growing and attracting to our region 
and across the country are so-called green jobs, created as scientists 
and engineers work on the grand challenges I propose. Please remember 
that nuclear power is also green. Electric cars and trucks are green. 
One-third of Tennessee's manufacturing jobs are auto related. Even 
green jobs need low-cost electricity. The two new polysilicon plants 
located in Cleveland and Clarksville, TN manufacture polysilicon for 
solar panels that go on roofs. Together these two plants use 240 
megawatts of electricity, about one-fifth of the production of the new 
nuclear unit at Watts Bar. Don't forget about places like the Aluminum 
Company of America in my hometown, which has closed its smelter and 
won't open until it can get a 20-year, low-cost electricity contract 
from TVA, or the steady stream of regional manufacturers who have been 
to my office saying that electric rates are already too high for them 
to keep jobs in our region.
  The point is, if we care about jobs of any color, the cost of 
electricity matters. Which is why it is especially galling to see 
France, a country we usually don't like to emulate, using the 
technology we Americans invented to give themselves some of the lowest 
electric rates and lowest carbon emissions in the European Union.
  So why is it that nuclear energy, perhaps the most important 
scientific advancement of the 20th century, was invented in America and 
yet we stopped taking advantage of it just when we most need it? 
Shortly after World War II, Glenn Seaborg, the great American Nobel 
Prize winner, said that nuclear energy had come along just in time 
because we were reaching the limits of fossil fuels. He was right. The 
succeeding decades proved that fossil fuels are not unlimited, and 
their supplies could seriously compromise energy independence. And that 
doesn't even address global warming.
  Yes, I do believe global warming and climate change are problems we 
must address. We can't go on throwing 3 billion tons of carbon dioxide 
into the atmosphere every year without running into some kind of 
trouble. Every session I have been in Congress, I have introduced 
legislation to cap carbon emissions from coal powerplants. But the way 
to deal with global warming and to keep our jobs is to encourage what 
has been called the ``Nuclear Renaissance'' and start making nuclear 
energy the backbone of a new industrial economy.
  Right now there are 17 proposals for 26 new reactors in licensing 
hearings before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. That is a start. I 
think we need to go well beyond that.
  I propose that from the years 2010 to 2030 we build 100 new nuclear 
reactors to match the ones we are already operating. That is what we 
did from 1970 to 1990. During that 20-year interval, we built almost 
every one of the 104 reactors that now provide us with 20 percent of 
our electricity. If we build another 100 by 2030, we will be able to 
provide well over 40 percent of our electricity from nuclear power. 
Clean hydropower provides 6 percent of our electricity today, and with 
the electrification of small dams around the country, we may be able to 
expand that to 8 percent. With diligent conservation, and some 
renewable resources, we can add another perhaps 10 or 12 percent. Then, 
my friends, we will really be talking about a clean energy economy.
  Still, that is only the beginning. The second largest source of 
carbon emissions--and the biggest source of our energy instability--is 
the 20 million barrels of oil we consume every day to run our cars and 
trucks. I believe we should make half our cars and trucks plug-in 
within 20 years. That would reduce by one-third the oil we import from 
foreign sources. The Brookings Institution scholars estimate we can 
power those cars and trucks by plugging them in at night without 
building one new powerplant. Let me repeat that. If we electrify half 
our cars and trucks in America, we can plug them in at night without 
building one new powerplant because we have so much unused electricity 
at night.
  As our fleet of electric vehicles grows, the most logical option for 
plugging in will be supplied by clean nuclear power. Until we make 
great advances in storage batteries, it cannot be electricity that is 
sometimes there and sometimes not. We cannot have Americans going to 
bed every night praying for a strong wind so they can start their cars 
in the morning.
  Still, when it comes to nuclear power, a lot of people worry about 
safety. They say: Well, nuclear power sounds great to me, but I am 
afraid one of those reactors is going to blow up and cause a holocaust.
  Well, let's make a few things clear. As Oak Ridgers--where I was last 
week--know better than almost anyone, a reactor is not a bomb. It 
cannot blow up. That is impossible. There is not enough fissionable 
material there.
  What a nuclear reactor can do is overheat if it loses its cooling 
water, just the way your car engine can overheat and break down if it 
loses its antifreeze. It is called a meltdown. Nuclear scientists have 
warned about this from the beginning and take many precautions so it 
will not happen.
  Nuclear skeptics like to bring up Three Mile Island, so let's talk 
about that. What happened at Three Mile Island was basically an 
operator error. A valve failed, and when the automatic safety mechanism 
kicked in, the operators overrode it because of a mass of flashing 
lights and sirens on the control panel, which confused them about what 
was happening.
  Three Mile Island completely changed the nuclear industry. The Kemeny 
Commission, appointed by President Carter, analyzed the problems and 
made many recommendations, most of which were put into practice. The 
valve that started the whole thing had failed nine times before in 
other reactors and the manufacturer had tried to keep it a secret. 
People in the nuclear industry were not talking to each other.
  Now all of that has changed. Nuclear operators train for 5 years 
before they can take over control rooms. They spend 1 week of out of 
every 5 in a simulator honing their skills. The nuclear companies have 
special SWAT teams that can be dispatched anywhere in the country at a 
moment's notice in case anything goes wrong. A Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission inspector practically lives on the site. What is more, every 
reactor in the country is on the

[[Page S5924]]

hook for $100 million if something goes wrong at another reactor. As 
you can imagine, they watch each other very closely.
  And it shows. Our entire nuclear fleet--104 reactors--is now up and 
running 90 percent of the time. There has only been one year-long 
shutdown for safety problems in the last decade. We have added the 
equivalent of 29 new reactors since 1990 by doing a better job of 
running the ones we already have. If the rest of America ran as well as 
the nuclear industry, we would be sitting on top of the world.
  ``But what about Chernobyl?'' someone will say? ``Wasn't that a 
nuclear catastrophe?'' Well, the Soviets did things very differently at 
Chernobyl than we know how to do in this country. For instance, they 
did not put a containment structure around the reactor, which is like 
not putting a roof on your house and then acting surprised when it 
rains and you get wet. In addition, they did something no American 
power reactor has ever done: They surrounded the core with carbon in 
the form of graphite. That is like building your reactor in the middle 
of a charcoal grill. When the graphite caught fire, it spewed 
radioactive smoke all over the world. That could never happen at an 
American reactor--and it will not happen again in Russia since they 
have made a lot of changes over there and now they are building 
reactors in the same way we build reactors.
  So let's build 100 new nuclear reactors during the next 20 years. Our 
new reactors have even better safety features--although it is never 
good to be overconfident. We have learned how to run the current fleet 
at its full potential. Most reactors are making close to $2 million a 
day. The attorney general of Connecticut proposed a windfall profits 
tax a few years ago when fossil fuel prices went through the roof. He 
said it was not fair that reactors could run so cheaply. So why not 
expand on our winnings? Why not build another generation of reactors?
  Well, a lot of people say it cannot be done. They say we do not 
manufacture anything anymore in America. We have to import all our 
goods from China. They say we do not have the nuclear engineers to 
design the new generation. They say we do not have the specialty 
welders to put them together on site. They say we cannot manufacture 
the steel vessel heads anymore, and our steel forges are not big 
enough. Right now, the only forge in the world big enough to make a 
reactor vessel is Japan Steel Works, and they are backed up. People say 
our new plants will spend a decade standing in line behind the 34 other 
reactors that are already under construction in the world, mostly in 
Asia. And you know something. They are right. They are right because 
all the things they are saying here are true. We do not have a nuclear 
construction industry. But then, they do not know America. America can 
respond to a challenge. Just as we rose to the occasion in 1943 when we 
began the Manhattan Project at Oak Ridge and at other sites in our 
country, so can we rise to the occasion today to build a new generation 
of nuclear reactors that will provide clean, reliable power for America 
for the rest of this century.
  It is not going to be easy. What we are talking about here is 
essentially a rebirth of Industrial America, and it is already starting 
to happen. Westinghouse is opening a school for training welders who 
can knit together a containment structure strong enough to protect both 
the environment from the reactor and the reactor from outside threats. 
Alstom, a French company, is investing $200 million in Chattanooga, in 
my State, to manufacture heavy turbines for nuclear plants.
  We also have to train nuclear engineers to take the place of the 
great generation that embraced the technology in the 1960s and 1970s, 
only to see their dreams come to naught when the Nation turned away 
from nuclear power. We have to find a steel manufacturer somewhere in 
this country that is willing to step up and say: ``Here, we can do 
those forgings right here in Pennsylvania or Ohio or Michigan or 
Illinois. We do not have to stand in line in Japan.'' And we have to 
find investors who are willing to put up their money and say: ``Yes, I 
have faith in America. I have faith in technology. I am ready to invest 
in building a cleaner, safer, more prosperous world.''
  With Presidential leadership, we could add more loan guarantees to 
accelerate construction, and could streamline the permit system to 
ensure that new reactors do not become ensnared in regulatory mazes or 
combative lawsuits. But we cannot sit on our hands because in America 
we do not sit around waiting for the Government to do things for us. We 
do things for ourselves.
  So the task we face here today is no less formidable than the task 
the Oak Ridge pioneers faced when they first arrived in Tennessee in 
1943. They were trying to save the world from Japanese militarism and 
Nazi totalitarianism. Now we are trying to save the world from the 
pending disaster of dwindling energy supplies, the uncertain dangers of 
a warming planet, and the stagnation and decay that can only follow if 
we do not revive American industry.
  So I propose today that we work together across the aisle, with the 
President, in the task of bringing about a Nuclear Renaissance in 
helping to generate the Rebirth of Industrial America.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BURR. 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. BURR. Mr. President, I come to the floor because the Senate this 
week is considering a new regulatory bill for the tobacco industry and 
there will be Members who will come to the floor to say: We have tried 
to do this for 10 years. This is well past due.
  Well, in part they are right. This bill was produced 10 years ago. It 
has not changed. It is exactly what was produced. But let me try to 
fill in some history for the Members of the Senate.
  In 1998, we passed the FDA Modernization Act. I was the lead sponsor 
of that bill in the House of Representatives. We spent 2\1/2\ years 
developing a bill to modernize the Food and Drug Administration.
  Most Americans do not even realize what the Food and Drug 
Administration is. It is an agency in the Federal Government that 
regulates 25 cents of every dollar in our economy. It is what assures 
every American that when you go to the pharmacy and you get a drug, 
there is a Federal agency that has determined that drug is, one, safe, 
and, two, effective; or that when you go to a hospital or a doctor's 
office, and they take a medical device--maybe it is something that 
permits them to go inside your body without cutting you open--that 
device has gone through an extensive review by the FDA.
  In some cases, pharmaceutical products take up to 12 to 14 years for 
approval--the amount of clinical trials to prove safety and efficacy 
that we go through, not just on animals but on humans--but it assures 
every American that the gold standard in the world exists right here in 
the United States of America. We put manufacturers and their products 
through a test at the FDA like no other country does. As a matter of 
fact, when the European Union was created and there were efforts to try 
to harmonize our approval process in the United States with that of 
Europe, what we found was that Europe's adoption, then, of 15 countries 
was that they take any of the 15 countries' approval process. What we 
found in the United States was it was hard for us to find one country 
that had as rigid a requirement as the United States of America; 
therefore, we didn't harmonize. For that reason, there are drugs that 
are approved in the European Union that are not approved in the United 
States because they either haven't met the test of the FDA or they have 
chosen not to go through the test.

  The reason I share all of that with my colleagues is that for 2\1/2\ 
years, there were two focuses of those of us who worked on FDA 
modernization: one was to make sure we had an agency that could perform 
its task of efficiency, and two, that we did nothing to change the gold 
standard--the assurance the American people had that every time they 
got a prescription, every time there was a device, that the gold 
standard was intact, that it was safe and effective.

[[Page S5925]]

  It says on the FDA's Web site--and this is just part of their mission 
statement:

       The FDA is responsible for protecting the public health by 
     assuring the safety, efficacy and security of human and 
     veterinary drugs, biological products, medical devices, our 
     Nation's food supply, cosmetics, and products that emit 
     radiation.

  For the most part, I think we would agree that we do set the gold 
standard on the approval of products. We do have some questions about 
the Nation's food supply. This body has taken up three or four 
different pieces of legislation because of the fact that the FDA has 
not had the preview process they needed, and because of that, there 
have been contaminated foods--some produced here in the United States, 
some things were shipped in from out of the country, but it was FDA's 
mission to make sure that did not happen. Well, when we passed that 
piece of legislation, we all of a sudden accelerated the application 
process, the review process of drugs and pharmaceuticals. In the next 
year, we approved 81 new applications because that FDA Modernization 
Act was in place but, more importantly, the gold standard was still in 
place.
  I wish to ask my colleagues, what are we here today to do? The 
legislation that is on the floor is to give the FDA the jurisdictional 
responsibility of regulating tobacco. I want my colleagues to think 
hard about this. The FDA's responsibility is for protecting the public 
health--well, tobacco is bad for the public health; it causes disease 
and it causes death--``by assuring the safety and effectiveness.'' 
Well, how in the world can you certify that tobacco is safe? It can't 
be done.
  So to say we are going to allow the FDA to become the agency of 
regulatory jurisdiction is to say to an FDA reviewer: We would like you 
to do this on drugs, we would like you to do this on devices, we would 
like you to do this on foods, and we would like you to do this on 
cosmetics and products that emit radiation, but when it comes to 
tobacco, we don't want you to hold tobacco to the core mission 
statement of the FDA. We want you to ignore that it kills people, we 
want you to ignore that it causes disease, and we want you to just 
regulate it based upon how Congress said regulate it.
  It is not making much sense to people who are listening. Why would 
you do this? You could find any agency or create an agency to do 
exactly what Congress laid out in law. But no, we are laying it out in 
law and we are saying to the FDA: We want you to take that on as your 
jurisdiction, as your responsibility.
  But what is the likelihood of this, that by putting this new burden 
on the FDA and surging reviewers who are currently working through 
applications on drugs and devices, working on food safety, and we surge 
them over to this new area of responsibility called tobacco, that we 
are going to put more junior employees working on applications of 
drugs? It might be the next lifesaving drug that is on the marketplace. 
It might be a device that is actually a device that is inserted into 
your body, and maybe a young reviewer either delays the approval of 
that device or that pharmaceutical or makes the wrong decision because 
the senior reviewer has gone over to do tobacco.
  Some will come to the floor and claim that tobacco has to be in the 
FDA. The FDA, since its inception, has never, ever regulated tobacco. 
We regulate it through what was the ATF, Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms; 
the Federal Trade Commission has regulated the labeling; and the 
industry on its own eliminated most of the concerns the American people 
had when they had a master settlement with States years ago.
  We are going to be debating this for days. I am going to be down here 
frequently until this debate is over with because what I want is for 
the Members of the Senate and the American people to understand that it 
is not as black and white as what some people would come to the floor 
and say: Just give it to the FDA and let them handle the 
responsibility. Feel comfortable doing that if you are willing to 
jeopardize drug safety, food safety, and device safety because they 
can't prove the safety and efficacy of this product. As a matter of 
fact, the bill that is being considered by the Senate doesn't do 
anything to regulate existing products that are on the marketplace. 
Think about that. Think of all of the cigarette brands you see behind 
the counter. The Kennedy bill actually says they are grandfathered. You 
can't touch them. You have to allow them to continue to be sold. But to 
a new product, one that might be a reduced-risk product, meaning less 
harm to the user, the pathway to try to be approved through the FDA is 
impossible.
  It is estimated that without doing anything, we will have a 2-percent 
reduction in cigarette usage per year in this country. That is a 
statistic the CBO came out with. But if we enact this bill, according 
to the--excuse me, CBO estimated that it is currently being reduced at 
2 percent annually. According to the Centers for Disease Control, 
smoking rates declined among Americans annually at 2 to 4 percent. 
Think about this: CBO says this bill will reduce cigarette smoking by 2 
percent annually. CDC says we are currently reducing cigarette smoking 
use 2 to 4 percent in the United States. In essence, what CDC says is, 
if you do nothing, we are going to reduce it more than what this bill 
is going to do. Why? Because CDC--the Centers for Disease Control and 
Prevention--realizes that when you grandfather all of these products, 
where FDA has no ability to go in and say, do this, do that, what you 
are doing is you are locking in the American people. When you say to 
the FDA: Have this jurisdiction, but we are not going to give you any 
real way to bring reduced-risk products or reduced-harm products to the 
marketplace, all you are doing is assuring that people are going to 
continue to smoke cigarettes.
  The marketplace at least has brought smokeless tobacco into the 
marketplace, and through that smokeless tobacco, it has generated a 2-
percent reduction in smoking. We can make the claim that smokeless 
tobacco is not good for the American people. It is certainly not good 
for our youth. But the statistics show it is not as bad as smoking. You 
don't have the degree of death and disease from smokeless tobacco. We 
will get into that because there are studies around the world, many of 
them done in the country of Sweden, where we find exactly that, that 
they have been able to reduce smoking drastically in Sweden by allowing 
new, reduced-harm products to come to the marketplace, and through the 
ability of the public to decide that they would like to switch, they 
have drastically gotten off of cigarette products.
  No, that is not the course we are going to take. We are going to take 
one that is typical Washington. We are going to pick an agency and we 
are going to say: Let's dump this responsibility on them, no matter 
what the cost is. We forget the fact that the FDA is the gold standard. 
It is responsible for protecting the public health. How are you 
protecting the public health when you grandfather every cigarette 
product that is currently on the marketplace to exist just as it is? 
How do you prove safety and efficacy? How can this be effective?
  We are headed in the wrong direction. As one of the authors of the 
1998 act, this troubles me greatly because I spent 2\1/2\ years trying 
to figure out how not to change the gold standard, that balance at the 
FDA that assured every American that it had gone through a grueling 
process of review, that it had passed every test that had been set to 
prove safety and efficacy. Why would we jeopardize this? Why would we 
risk the fact that we might change this gold standard?

  These are the questions that are going to be asked over the next 
several days. They are questions I hope to answer for people, not with 
what I believe but with the facts, with the truth about what is going 
on around the world, why we are headed in the wrong direction, and why 
we can have an effective regulatory entity in Washington without 
jeopardizing the future of drug and device safety, food safety, 
cosmetics, and products that emit radiation. These are things we need 
to take very seriously.
  I will make this last request, as I see my colleagues are headed to 
the floor and wish to speak as well. I only asked one thing a week and 
a half ago of the committee members, and that was to read the bill. 
Well, the fact that attitudes haven't changed much, that we are on an 
accelerated pathway, I can just about assure my colleagues they

[[Page S5926]]

didn't do what I asked. I didn't expect them to. I think the American 
people believe we read every bill before it is considered. I think most 
Members attempt to do that through staff or themselves. This is one 
that, quite frankly, had they read it, we wouldn't be here today. We 
wouldn't be doing what we are attempting to do.
  This is not about a quest of 10 years. In 1998, when we opened the 
Food and Drug Administration to do the Modernization Act, we opened the 
entire thing. Every Member of Congress had an opportunity to amend that 
bill in the House and the Senate at the time and to give the FDA 
jurisdiction over tobacco. No Member exercised that ability. So in 
1998, there were no Members who thought it was important enough to put 
that responsibility in the FDA.
  We have seen steady reductions in smoking among adults and, more 
importantly, smoking among youth. Youths are always the ones we point 
at and we say we have to make sure we do this because children 
shouldn't have cigarettes. They are right. They shouldn't. That is why 
we have age limits and advertising limitations.
  Can we do better? Yes, we can. Let me assure my colleagues, I will 
offer a substitute that not only is effective regulation, but it will 
protect the gold standard of the Food and Drug Administration. It won't 
put in jeopardy what we have established as the most crucial regulatory 
body we have that controls or regulates 25 cents of every dollar of our 
economy. I don't believe that is responsible of the Members of the 
Congress. They have already made the mistake in the House. I hope we 
don't make the mistake in the Senate. We can come up with effective 
regulation but not doing it through the Food and Drug Administration.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from New Hampshire.
  Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                           Health Care Reform

  Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I rise to speak about health care and where 
we are going on the issue of health care here as a government and as a 
nation. The health care train is beginning to leave the station, so to 
say. I wish to make sure it is on the right track, that it not be on 
tracks which will lead it over a cliff. So I want to lay out a few 
fundamental tests that I believe need to be passed for health care 
reform to be effective.
  First, everybody needs to be covered. Everybody should have the right 
to get insurance in this country. That is a reasonable request, and it 
is a reasonable thing to do. The fact that some people don't have 
adequate health care coverage is not acceptable.
  Secondly, we need to have a system which encourages the marketplace 
to produce better products, more quality, better health care. We also 
need a system that doesn't let the government become too intrusive into 
the health care administration so that we don't end up with the 
government between you and the doctor and we have a system where the 
government basically creates such a top-down bureaucracy that you end 
up with rationing or significant delays in the delivery of health care, 
as occurs in some of our sister countries such as Canada and England.
  Thirdly, we have to have a system that encourages innovation and 
gives those creative minds out there in the health care field who are 
discovering new drugs and new ways to treat very serious illnesses the 
opportunity to do that, to get a reasonable reward for what they are 
doing, both monetarily and, of course, the great satisfaction of 
helping to cure people.
  We also need a health care system which says to the American people: 
You are going to get quality health care when you go to get health 
care, and you are going to get it at a reasonable price.
  So these conditions, these standards are things we should follow.
  As this train starts to leave the station, we are seeing a great deal 
of talk around here about how any health care that is proposed, if it 
is coming from the other side of the aisle, must be heavily laden with 
new government restrictions and new government directions, the most 
significant of which is something called a public plan. A public plan--
no matter how it is dressed up or what costume is put on it--has the 
same effect. It is a statement by the government that it is going to 
compete in the marketplace with the private sector for the delivery of 
health care insurance in this country.

  That is not fair competition. There is no way the private sector will 
be able to compete with a public plan; we know that. What we know is 
that a public plan is essentially a stocking horse for a single-payer 
plan. It is more than the camel's nose under the tent, it is the 
camel's neck, and probably front legs, under the tent on the effort to 
produce a singer-payer plan.
  It doesn't make a whole lot of sense for us to go into a single-payer 
plan, which is essentially nationalizing the health care system. We 
have seen neighboring nations have this experience, and their 
experience is not good. In your nationalized health care systems, such 
as in England, for example, about 78 percent of the women who get 
breast cancer survive. Here that percentage is around 92 percent. The 
difference is because in the United States detection occurs early. In 
England, unfortunately, because they have a public health care system, 
which essentially involves delay in the ability to get treatment, 
people are not determined to have that illness early enough to cure it 
effectively. You see that with all sorts of diseases.
  In Canada, you may not be able to get hip surgery if you are over a 
certain age--certainly not in time to have your lifestyle improved. The 
simple fact is, a single-payer plan inevitably leads to delay in the 
delivery of care and also rationing. In addition, of course, it leads 
to massive bureaucracies, inefficiency, and a reduction in quality. It 
drives out of the market people who create new products, the new 
research, the new drugs, because you are basically setting a fixed 
return on what a person can make if they invest in producing a new 
drug, and the production of new drugs is a very expensive business. It 
costs almost $1 billion and 12 years to bring a new drug to the market. 
It is extremely expensive. If you cannot get a reasonable return on 
your money, you are not going to be able to get investors. If your 
investors are looking at that and saying the government may step in and 
fix my return and change the years of exclusivity and create a 
formulary to determine how and what drugs can be sold and who can buy 
them and ration those drugs, that does not work. It reduces research, 
and therefore quality, and it reduces the ability to get good health 
care.
  A public plan should be a nonstarter. It should never happen. I have 
proposed--and I think we should be proposing formal ideas; we have not 
heard formal ideas from the other side of the aisle yet and I hope we 
will get some soon--I have sat on a number of bipartisan groups, which 
have been constructive, especially the Baucus group has been very 
constructive, but we still don't have anything formal coming out of 
that group. The same is true with the HELP Committee, under Senator 
Kennedy--and from the administration, for that matter, we do not have 
anything formal.
  I think we have an obligation to lay down the specifics on what we 
want to do. I proposed ``CPR.'' That is the title I have given the 
proposal: Coverage, Prevention, and Reform. Essentially, it will set up 
a system where every American will be required to get health insurance, 
and we will have affordable health insurance for low-income Americans, 
people under 300 percent of poverty or less. They will have assistance 
to get health insurance. The insurance will be focused on the biggest 
concern for most Americans, which is when someone in your family gets 
sick or has a severe accident and your entire economic lifestyle has 
changed and, in fact, maybe you are wiped out and bankrupted by that 
event. Essentially, this proposal will make sure everybody in this 
country has meaningful health insurance, so they cannot be wiped out by 
a medical event.
  Secondly, this proposal is focused aggressively on the issue of 
prevention. It changes the HIPAA rules so employers can put more money 
into giving people incentives to live healthy lifestyles.

[[Page S5927]]

That is critical to our society. We have diseases in this country that 
can be addressed through improving lifestyles. We have seen that, and a 
lot of companies have been successful in this area--in the area of 
obesity, which is a severe problem, and with diabetes and other huge 
costs to society, we can change the impact of those costs and those 
very detrimental health problems through a better lifestyle. We should 
incentivize that--monetarily incentivize that. That is what my proposal 
does.
  In addition, the proposal incentivizes people to take preventive 
action relative to screenings and to getting early health care 
intervention, rather than late health care intervention. It does it 
through financial incentives. That is the best way to do things--pay 
money for being thoughtful and healthy.
  Third, it looks at the system of reimbursement and says this is a 
chaotic system in this country, where we have stovepipes branching off 
everywhere. We need to have a system that reimburses, first, for 
quality, rather than simply for procedures, and one that says if you 
are delivering quality care, you will be reimbursed--especially if you 
are delivering quality care at less of a cost, and you are going to get 
a benefit for that--the providers will. We have seen study after study, 
now over a period of 20 years--most done by the group at DARPA--which 
has shown us it is not an issue of cost that produces quality, it is an 
issue of those who are performing the procedures.
  We know, for example, that in some parts of the country it can cost 
50 percent more to get a certain procedure, and you will have 20 
percent less of an outcome than if you go to other parts of the 
country. For example, if you go to Mayo Clinic, it will cost less to 
get one procedure, and you will get a better outcome than if you go to 
a hospital in southern California, where it costs more and you get less 
of an outcome. It is the same if you compare Florida and Washington 
State. If we incentivize quality and reasonable costs, we know we will 
get better quality and lower costs.
  We also know we have a haphazard procedure around here on how we have 
deductibles relative to Medicare and the various parts of it. Nobody 
knows what their deductible is because it changes depending on what 
type of treatment you are getting--Part A, B or D, whatever. We should 
standardize those and get more efficiency into the health care system.
  How do we accomplish this? If you are going to get everybody in the 
system, you have to basically require that everybody be in the system. 
We have 47 million uninsured people. Of that number, 20 million can buy 
their insurance. They have incomes up to $75,000 or more. But they 
choose, as a matter of lifestyle, not to insure themselves. A fair 
amount of people--the other 27,000 people--either don't have the 
wherewithal or they are with companies that are so small they don't 
have the wherewithal to supply health care.
  What I am suggesting is that everybody in America has to buy health 
insurance--the coverage I talked about--meaningful health insurance, 
with a heavy emphasis on prevention and reform. If you cannot afford 
it, then we will help you buy it. But you have to buy it. It is an 
individual mandate. This is an approach that I think will work. It 
doesn't require that we throw the baby out with the bathwater. It 
doesn't require that we entirely rewrite our health care system in this 
country to satisfy those who want to run the health care system out of 
the government.
  It is not a nationalization of the health care system, not a single-
payer or a public plan system. There will be innumerable competing 
insurance products out there for people to buy in order to meet these 
standards of coverage--innumerable. They will be settled by the 
marketplace. People will have choices. States will have an exchange 
program, and you will be able to see everything available to you and 
quickly decide what is best for you as a family or an individual. It is 
not an attempt to totally rewrite the health care system. It is an 
attempt to build on the present system, and it recognizes we have 
weaknesses, such as the fact that 47 million people are not covered and 
that we actually disincentivize preventive medicine and a healthy 
lifestyle under HIPAA and such that we have a reimbursement system that 
makes no sense and is chaotic and has grown up, over the years, as a 
result of the bureaucratic machine that would make Rube Goldberg seem 
simple. Take the strength of our system--we have private sector 
initiatives going on that are creating better health care, which 
doesn't cause people to have to suffer massive delays and doesn't 
create rationing in the marketplace, depending on your age, and doesn't 
put the government between you and your doctor. That is a good health 
care system, and we should not throw it out by going to a public plan, 
a single-payer system. We should build on the health care system we 
have and bring those who are not covered into it and bring all of us 
into an attitude of living healthier lifestyles and focusing on 
prevention, quality, and reform; thereby promoting research and better 
health care.
  That is my proposal. I don't expect this proposal to win the day, but 
I hope it will be listened to as we go down the road because this is a 
huge issue. Seventeen percent of the American gross national product is 
spent on health care. We don't need massive amounts of money in health 
care. We spend 6 percent more of our gross national product than the 
next closest nation. There is a huge amount of money moving around in 
our system. We need more quality at a more reasonable cost.
  In addition, a lot of people are quite happy with their health care 
system, with what they are provided by their employer--usually. Why 
should we throw them out the door too? Let's address that. What we need 
is to look at the system we have, its strengths, and build on those 
strengths. We need to look at its weaknesses and reform them. I know my 
proposal will help accomplish that, and I hope it will be taken 
seriously.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Udall of Colorado). The clerk will call 
the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I know we are on the 30 hours postcloture 
on the legislation that is the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco 
Control Act. I support that legislation. I applaud our colleague 
Senator Kennedy for his leadership on this issue. It gives the FDA the 
authority to regulate tobacco, including ingredients in tobacco 
products and tobacco marketing, which I think is an important step for 
our Nation's health.
  We talked a lot about this in the past. The fact is that smoking and 
the use of tobacco is dangerous to one's health. We know that. I had a 
doctor once say there are three things that will give you pretty good 
odds for a longer life. One is wear a seatbelt. The second is keep your 
weight down. And the third is don't smoke. Pretty sound advice. The 
``don't smoke'' piece is about the health consequences of smoking.
  We know especially the issue of marketing and marketing to children 
is a pernicious activity. We also know the best way you can get 
somebody hooked on cigarettes is to get them when they are kids, get 
them when they are young. Do you know of anybody who at age 35 is 
sitting in a La-Z-Boy recliner watching a color television set 
ruminating about life and thinking to themselves: What on Earth have I 
missed in life? What can I do to enhance my life? What should I be 
doing that I so far have been unable to do and they decide: I have to 
take up smoking. That just doesn't happen. If you don't get them when 
they are kids, you don't get them. That is why we pay a lot of 
attention to addiction to nicotine, marketing to children, and so on.
  Let me say again the leadership of Senator Kennedy and so many others 
on a bipartisan basis on this issue I think is very important. It deals 
directly with the issue of the health of the American people.
  I do want to say, however, that I intend to offer an amendment 
tomorrow when we get on the bill itself. I want to describe why I am 
offering an amendment and what the amendment does.
  The amendment is called the Pharmaceutical Market Access and Drug

[[Page S5928]]

Safety Act. This underlying bill deals with the FDA. So, too, will my 
amendment deal with the FDA. I will offer the amendment with Senator 
Snowe from Maine, the Dorgan-Snowe bill which we worked on for a long 
while. It has very wide support in this Chamber from Ted Kennedy, John 
McCain, Chuck Grassley, Debbie Stabenow. So many others in this Chamber 
on a bipartisan basis have supported this concept.
  Let us give the American people the opportunity that comes with the 
worldwide economy and the ability in the free market to choose your 
products. And here is the reason it is important to do that.
  The American people at this point understand the value of 
prescription drugs. They are enormously valuable, and I commend all of 
those who produce prescription drugs. Yes, the pharmaceutical 
industry--good for them. Yes, the National Institutes of Health and in 
so many other areas with public funding as well that develop the 
approaches that result in lifesaving prescription drugs. I commend all 
of them, including the pharmaceutical industry.
  But it is also the case that the pricing mechanism the pharmaceutical 
industry uses in this country is fundamentally flawed. They have a 
pricing mechanism that in most cases for major brand drugs, the 
American people are told: You get to pay the highest prices in the 
world. You, the American people, get to pay the highest prices in the 
world for the same pill put in the same bottle made by the same 
company. And it is not fair.
  I have an example of that, and I ask unanimous consent to show them 
on the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, this is the drug called Lipitor. Most 
people understand what Lipitor is. It is a drug that is used to lower 
cholesterol. This happens to be made in Ireland and sent all over the 
world. These two bottles were sent to two different places--one to the 
United States and one to Canada. The United States consumer got to pay 
twice as much as the Canadian consumer. It is the same bottle, same 
pill, same company, FDA approved, and the American people are charged 
twice as much. And it is not just Lipitor. It is drug after drug.
  The question is, why? Why should that be the case? It is not just 
Canada, it is virtually every other country in the world as well that 
enjoys lower cost prescription drugs, when, in fact, we pay a much 
higher cost for the identical drug.
  This happens to be the price--$4.47 per 20 milligram tablet of 
Lipitor to a U.S. consumer, and just north of the border, $1.82 for the 
same drug. I could have used other countries. It would have shown the 
same result.
  I have taken a busload of North Dakotans to Canada because I live in 
a State that borders Canada. In a one-room drugstore at Emerson, 
Canada, I saw individuals buy their prescription drugs and saw the 
savings drug by drug. I sat in a farmyard one summer afternoon with an 
old codger in his eighties from North Dakota. He was talking about 
health care. He said: You know, my wife has been fighting breast cancer 
for 3 years. He said: For 3 years every 3 months we have driven to 
Canada to buy Tamoxifen to fight her breast cancer. Why did we drive to 
Canada? Because we couldn't afford it in the United States. We couldn't 
afford to pay for the drugs for my wife's fight against breast cancer. 
It was 80 percent less costly for the identical drug just north of the 
border. That is not fair.
  Again, it is not just Canada. It is virtually every other 
industrialized country where drugs are sold for a fraction of the price 
they are sold in the United States. These are FDA-approved drugs, made 
in FDA-approved facilities, and sent all around the world. The only 
difference is pricing. We are charged the highest prices in the world.
  The Wall Street Journal had a piece on April 15 of this year, quoting 
some experts:

       These kinds of price increases--

  Speaking of prescription drugs--

     are way out of line with what's being experienced in the rest 
     of the economy.

  Said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, a consumer 
health care advocacy organization.
  Credit Suisse's Catherine Arnold said drug companies have increased 
prices so aggressively in recent months to wring sales out of products 
before any health care cost-cutting efforts eat into profits.
  That is not fair. One might ask: How can they do it? They can do it 
because there is something in law that prevents the importation of 
prescription drugs, even FDA-approved drugs, prevents the importation 
into this country by anybody except the drug manufacturer itself. That 
means the American people are not given the same opportunity to shop 
worldwide for an FDA-approved drug. It means it is a free-trade economy 
except the American people cannot participate in that free trade.
  What we propose to do is to offer a piece of legislation that gives 
the American people the opportunity to access FDA-approved drugs, the 
same drug made in the same place marketed differently but priced higher 
in the United States to access those same drugs. Do we do this because 
we want Americans to buy their drugs from other countries? No, that is 
not the point. The point is if they can access that same FDA-approved 
drug sold for a fraction of the price in another country, it will force 
the pharmaceutical industry to reprice their drugs at a lower cost in 
this country in a manner that is fair to the American people.
  The estimates of what this will save are $50 billion in 10 years--$50 
billion in savings in this country. That is not insignificant at all.
  One of the things that is always raised by those who support the 
practice of the pharmaceutical industry is this is going to cause all 
kinds of safety concerns. Can you imagine the counterfeit drugs that 
will come across?
  I just described this drug Lipitor. This is not made here. It is made 
in Ireland and then shipped in. How do we know this is real? The 
provisions in the legislation that we have created actually provide 
safety requirements that exceed those that now exist with respect to 
batch lots and pedigrees and all kinds of new resources for the FDA to 
do more audits than they now do, to do more inspections than they now 
do.

  Don't anybody come to the floor of the Senate raising those kinds of 
issues because they do not exist. This legislation is legislation that 
has very stringent safety requirements and will provide an opportunity 
for the American people for some basic fairness.
  Here is a quote from Mr. Hank McKinnell, former Pfizer CEO. He said:

       Name an industry in which competition is allowed to 
     flourish--computers, telecommunications, small package 
     shipping, retailing, entertainment--and I'll show you lower 
     prices, higher quality, more innovation, and better customer 
     service. There's nary an exception. OK, there's one. So far, 
     the health care industry seems immune to the discipline of 
     competition.

  That is exactly why the pharmaceutical industry can decide this 
afternoon behind a closed door: Here is what we are going to do to our 
prices, and if you don't like it, tough luck, because we have the 
capability to make it stick.
  I don't come to the floor of the Senate as someone who has some sort 
of grief against the pharmaceutical industry. As I said when I started, 
the pharmaceutical industry plays a very important role in health care 
in this country. I have a grief against their pricing policy, however.
  I held hearings on this issue long ago. A group of us on the floor of 
the Senate--Republicans and Democrats--has tried for some long while 
only to be blocked to pass legislation that would give the American 
people the opportunity to access the identical prescription drugs that 
are sold for a fraction of the price in the rest of the world and do it 
in a manner that is fair to the American people. We have been blocked 
in that opportunity.
  This is an FDA bill on the floor of the Senate. This is the place to 
offer this amendment.
  I visited with my colleagues this morning, Democrats and Republicans. 
I talked with Senator Stabenow, Senator Snowe, Senator McCain, and many 
others this morning about this amendment to this bill. On a bipartisan 
basis, we believe this will help the American consumer. It is long 
overdue. And at a time and during a year in which there is a lot of 
discussion about health care issues and the problems confronting this 
country in health care, one of the most significant problems is this 
dramatic march of price increases in health care.

[[Page S5929]]

  Look, we spend more money per person on health care than any other 
group. We spend more money than any group of people in the world per 
capita by far, and we rank 41st in life expectancy. Something is not 
working out quite so well there. One of the areas of these price 
increases in health care that leads the pack is the issue of 
prescription drugs. Prescription drugs allow us to manage disease, in 
many cases keep people out of an acute care bed, which is very 
expensive. We know the ability to manage health care conditions through 
the use of prescription drugs has been very helpful and has been 
lifesaving to many Americans and people around the world. We understand 
that completely.
  Those who oppose the amendment I am proposing would say: Look, all 
that will do then is shut down or at least reduce the revenue that the 
drug companies have, pharmaceutical companies have and, therefore, they 
will do less research and, therefore, have less opportunity to unlock 
the mysteries of these dreaded diseases and find the very next cure for 
Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, or some other disease.
  It is interesting to me that the costs or the amount of funds spent 
for marketing and promotion by the pharmaceutical industry, at least 
from information I have, exceed the amount of money they spend on 
research. How many people in the morning have a little television set 
somewhere near while they are brushing their teeth getting ready for 
work. The television set is on, and there is a voice on the television 
set and a really interesting picture and it is describing some awful 
symptom that you have that you want to get rid of, and they are 
describing the symptom and describe the 85 things that could go wrong 
if you take the pill they are pushing. Then they say: Go to your doctor 
and ask him if the purple pill is right for you. I don't know what the 
purple pill does; I don't know what it is about, but the commercials 
are so intriguing and so persuasive, you almost want to go ask someone 
if the purple pill is right for you.

  There is so much advertising relentlessly pushing prescription 
medicine at consumers--who can only get it if a doctor prescribes it in 
the first instance--how about cutting back on some of that advertising? 
So don't tell me that if they have to charge a price that is 
competitive with other prices around the world for the prescription 
drugs they sell in the United States that somehow it will injure their 
research.
  Let me say that a fair amount of the research goes on here at the 
Federal Government level through the National Institutes of Health and 
the contracts all across the country, and we are substantially 
increasing that investment. I believe in that and I support it. I am 
one of those who has pushed and pushed because there are so many things 
that we can unlock with respect to these mysterious diseases, and we 
can make this a much better future if we invest in the research 
necessary.
  When we find the capability and research to address these diseases, 
very often we see that research available to pharmaceutical industry 
companies that then market a pill or market some medicine as a result 
of it. And they do some research themselves--not insignificant, by the 
way--and find opportunities in their own companies as well to introduce 
and provide life-saving medicines. So my hat is off to all of them. It 
is just that I insist on fair pricing for the American people, and that 
has not been the case for a long time.
  I am offering an amendment that is going to save this country $50 
billion over the next 10 years. My colleague, Senator Snowe, and I, 
along with many other colleagues, have introduced this piece of 
legislation--with more than 25 colleagues now, but we have had far more 
than that many in previous Congresses--and we are impatient. This has 
been a long tortuous trail and we are impatient to get this done on 
behalf of the American people.
  I wanted to come today, even during the 30-hour postcloture period, 
to say that when we are on the bill tomorrow, I intend to offer this 
legislation and to do it in a way that advantages the American consumer 
to be able to access the same quality prescription drugs that other 
consumers around the world are accessing for similar prices. At the 
moment that is not the case. We are overcharged. The drugs are 
overpriced. It is unfair to the American consumer, and it is past 
time--long past the time--for this Congress to do something about it.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BURR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BURR. Mr. President, as I stated earlier today, I will be back 
time and time and time again to help my colleagues, one, understand 
what bill is being considered this week in the Senate but, more 
importantly, the ramifications of doing the wrong thing.
  I think most Americans would agree that we should do everything we 
can to regulate tobacco products as relates to the youth of our 
country. By the same standard, I think that we have an obligation as 
Members of the Senate to make sure we don't in fact limit the choice of 
adults who choose a tobacco product. I believe that you don't limit 
that if you responsibly regulate the product. I believe you do limit it 
if in fact to make something fit you design a regulatory scheme that by 
default limits the future options adults might have.
  I left off earlier talking about the core mission of the Food and 
Drug Administration being to protect the public health by ensuring the 
safety and efficacy of pharmaceutical products, biologics, medical 
devices, cosmetics, and the food supply. God knows we have been 
challenged over the last couple of years with the food supply. Whether 
you talk about contaminated peanut butter or spinach in California, a 
number of things have come into play, and I think many of us would 
agree the Food and Drug Administration has been deficient in the area 
of food safety. As a matter of fact, the people now authorizing bills 
to dump on the FDA the responsibilities for tobacco were very critical 
of the FDA as it related to their food safety oversight, so it 
shouldn't shock any of us that I think they are misguided in where they 
have chosen to focus their efforts toward regulating this industry.
  Let me add to that the former--just recently former with the change 
in administration--FDA Commissioner's statements about this bill.

       The provisions in this bill would require substantial 
     resources, and FDA may not be in a position to meet all of 
     the activities within the proposed user fee levels. As a 
     consequence of this, FDA may have to divert funds from its 
     other programs, such as addressing the safety of drugs and 
     food, to begin implementing this program.

  This is not something I have schemed up. This comes from the former 
Commissioner of the FDA, who says that within the framework of the 
Kennedy bill, the user fee levels alone may not be enough for us to set 
up this regulatory framework and, therefore, we might have to divert 
funds from other programs, such as addressing the safety of drugs and 
food to begin this program.
  Let me explain. To implement this program, it will cost $787 million 
a year--$787 million a year. I will propose, along with Senator Hagan, 
a substitute--that when HHS was asked to tell us how much they needed 
to absolutely fund that new entity to regulate the tobacco industry 
they told us they would need $100 million. So there is already an 
option on the table that allows us to take user fees from the industry 
to fund a $100-million-a-year program to regulate the entirety of 
tobacco; or we can choose to put it at the FDA, where we are basically 
going to do the same thing and the former FDA Commissioner said the 
$787 million devoted to user fees may not be sufficient to meet the 
regulatory requirements set forth in this legislation.
  It is actually a little bit worse than that, because the CBO stated 
that before the Kennedy plan can be implemented--which is paid for by a 
shell game of requiring military servicemembers to mandatorily 
participate in TSP, the savings plan, the 401(k) of the Federal 
Government--to pay for the program you have to come up with $200 
million to kick the program off. You know, it is a catch-22. The 
Kennedy program can't even be implemented from the shell game of 
funding they

[[Page S5930]]

have set up, but more importantly it is going to cost almost eight 
times more than if we were to regulate tobacco in a separate entity 
under the guidance of the Secretary of Health and Human Services--the 
same person who has the guidance of the FDA; the same Secretary.
  What we are going to propose is that we set up a new agency to in 
fact regulate the tobacco product, but not get it confused with other 
core missions, such as the safety and efficacy of drugs and biologics 
and devices. That would be a huge mistake, I believe.
  Let me, if I could, quote Jack Sullum's April 2008 op-ed in Reason 
Magazine in talking about the Kennedy bill. He said:

       A consumer protection bill that reduced competition, raised 
     prices, restricted choice, blocked information, and made 
     products more hazardous could not really be counted as a 
     success. The act imposes new regulatory burdens and 
     advertising restrictions. The compliance costs and reduced 
     competition are likely to raise prices. The bill not only 
     authorizes the prohibition of safer tobacco products in 
     the censorship of potentially lifesaving information about 
     relative risks; it gives the FDA permission to make 
     cigarettes more dangerous by ordering reductions in 
     nicotine content. Such a mandate aimed at making 
     cigarettes less attractive to new smokers would force 
     current smokers to absorb higher levels of toxins and 
     carcinogens to obtain their usual doses of nicotine. 
     According to supporters, this bill, backed by the biggest 
     tobacco company, will enable the FDA to protect smokers 
     from big tobacco. But who will protect smokers from the 
     FDA?

  That doesn't come from Richard Burr or any other Member, this comes 
from an individual who has had an opportunity to read the bill, 
something a majority of the Members in the Senate have not done. If 
Members of the Senate read the Kennedy bill, they would never put the 
jurisdiction of tobacco with the FDA. They would never jeopardize the 
safety of drugs, of cosmetics, of devices and biologics. In fact, the 
Kennedy bill authorizes the prohibition of safer tobacco products.
  Let me say that again, because I don't think everybody realizes what 
I said. The bill prohibits safer tobacco products and the censoring of 
potentially lifesaving information about relative risks among tobacco 
products. But this is being sold as a public health bill. This is being 
sold as a bill that reduces youth access, youth usage of tobacco 
products.
  Let me tell you what we did in 1998. It really wasn't what we did. We 
were, I guess, smart enough to stay out of it. The tobacco companies, 
understanding that there was a tremendous health cost that resulted 
from their products, came up with a settlement with all the States. It 
was called the Master Settlement Agreement--the MSA--and we will talk 
about the MSA a lot over the next few days. How much was the MSA? It 
was a guaranteed award of $280 billion over a period of time, and every 
year the companies make that payment to the States. These funds were to 
be used for health care costs and programs associated with tobacco use, 
mainly cessation programs. The industry was actually paying States to 
run cessation programs to get people to stop smoking--to stop using 
tobacco products.
  If States spent the MSA money the way the CDC recommended to them 
every year, trust me, we wouldn't be here today. We would not be 
talking about the FDA taking over the jurisdiction of the regulatory 
responsibilities of tobacco, because had States used the money that was 
devoted for these cessation programs, the reduction in smoking would 
have been dramatic.
  Let me add that, according to the CDC, smoking rates among Americans 
decline annually 2 to 4 percent currently--2 to 4 percent a year. The 
CBO, when looking at the Kennedy bill, estimated that, when 
implemented, this legislation would only decrease smoking by 2 percent 
annually. In other words, doing nothing versus the Kennedy bill, we 
have a trend line that gets us to a 15.97 percent usage of tobacco 
products in the year 2016; under the Kennedy bill, as scored by CBO, 
you would have a usage of cigarettes--of smoking products--of 17 
percent in 2016. That is almost a 2-percent difference--a 2-percent 
additional decline, if we do nothing. And I am not here proposing that 
we do nothing. I am here proposing we do a new regulation, but we don't 
do it in a way that necessarily jeopardizes the safety, the gold 
standard of the Food and Drug Administration.
  I think it is shocking in talking about the MSA, the $280 billion 
over these number of years designed to help States with their health 
care costs and with cessation programs. What have the States been 
doing? Let me pick a few of them, if I could. Of the amount the CDC 
recommended to the State of Connecticut that they spend on cessation 
programs--programs designed to get people to stop using tobacco 
products--how much did Connecticut spend? It is easy, 18.9 percent of 
what the CDC recommendation was--18.9 percent. I don't know whether 
they built sidewalks or highways or paved roads or what they did with 
it, but they certainly didn't do it to try to get people to quit 
smoking.
  It is easy to come up here and pass something that you can turn 
around and say: Well, this should work, rather than to actually devote 
money to actually doing something that matters. As a matter of fact, 
let me say that the smoking prevalence among youth in Connecticut is 
21.1 percent.
  The alcohol prevalence in youth in Connecticut is 46 percent. The use 
of marijuana prevalence among youth is 23.2 percent. The use of 
marijuana in youth in Connecticut is 23.2 percent; alcohol, it is 46 
percent; of tobacco, it is 21.1 percent. Why aren't we addressing the 
real problems? Alcohol usage prevalence among youth is twice what 
tobacco is. Marijuana is 2 percent higher than tobacco.
  Illinois. Of the CDC recommended amount to go to cessation, how much 
did they spend of the recommended amount? Mr. President, 6.1 percent--6 
percent of what CDC said they ought to be spending of the FSA money on 
programs to reduce the rate of smoking. They used 6 percent. And 19.9 
percent of the prevalence among youth in the use of tobacco; 43.7 
percent of alcohol; 20.3 percent of marijuana. Again, alcohol and 
marijuana are higher in youth prevalence than tobacco usage. Six 
percent of the CDC recommendation devoted to programs to try to reduce 
the use of tobacco products.
  Massachusetts. Of the CDC recommendation as to how much should go to 
programs to get people to stop the use of tobacco products, 15 percent; 
85 percent devoted to something else--building sidewalks, filling in 
budget gaps--but not to reduction in the use of tobacco products.
  But this is such a prevalent issue, we are going to spend a week or 
longer of the Senate's time talking about how we jeopardize the gold 
standard of the FDA when States that have had the funds since 1998 to 
reduce the problem chose to use them on something else because it 
wasn't a big deal.
  In Massachusetts, 17.7 percent prevalence in youth usage of tobacco 
products; 46.2 of alcohol; 24.6 of marijuana.
  Missouri. Of the CDC recommendation for cessation programs, how much 
did they spend? They spent 3.7 percent. For 96-plus percent, they said: 
We are not going to spend this on what the CDC recommended that we do 
to reduce tobacco consumption. We are going to spend it on what we 
want. Mr. President, 23.8 percent youth prevalence of tobacco usage; 44 
percent for alcohol; 19 percent of marijuana usage. Thank goodness 
marijuana usage in Missouri is lower in the rate of prevalence among 
youth than tobacco.
  Nevada. Of the CDC recommendation of how much they devote in Nevada 
to reduce tobacco usage, 12.6 percent. And 13.6 percent youth 
prevalence--they do a tremendous job with making sure the usage by 
youth is minimal, 13.6 percent; 37 percent for alcohol; 15.5 percent 
for marijuana.
  New Hampshire. Of the CDC recommendation, they spent 5.7 percent on 
programs to get people to stop smoking. Nineteen percent youth 
prevalence for smoking; 44.8 percent youth prevalence for alcohol; 22.9 
percent youth prevalence for marijuana.
  New Jersey. Of the CDC recommendation, 8.5 percent; 19.8 percent for 
smoking prevalence in youth; 46.5 percent alcohol prevalence for youth; 
19.9 percent marijuana prevalence for youth.
  Ohio. How much of the CDC recommendation for programs to actually 
reduce consumption of tobacco products? It is 4.9 percent. Tobacco use 
prevalence among youth, 21.6 percent; alcohol, 45.7 percent; marijuana, 
17.7 percent.

[[Page S5931]]

  Texas. Of the CDC recommendation, 4.7 percent. Over 95 percent of the 
recommendation of the CDC, if you wanted to reduce youth prevalence of 
smoking, 95 percent went somewhere else. Twenty-one percent prevalence 
in youth smoking; 48 percent alcohol; and 19 percent in marijuana.
  This is a sampling for now 11 years during which they have had the 
funding to do the programs. They have seen a greater need in the 
States, a greater need to the tune in some cases of 96-plus percent 
that they were going to devote to something else because the prevalence 
of youth smoking wasn't that big a concern to those States. They 
diverted the money. Now, all of a sudden, this is such a pressing issue 
even though the trendline says doing nothing actually reduces the use 
of tobacco products, of smoking, more than the bill that is being 
considered. If we did nothing, it would do better, but all of a sudden 
we have religion in the Senate.
  Here is an opportunity to actually pass something and to go home and 
say: Here is what we have done. Ten years ago, we promised you the FDA 
would have jurisdiction, and we didn't do it.
  What they forget is, 11 years ago, when we passed the FDA 
Modernization Act, we opened up the entirety of the FDA as we 
redesigned how they functioned, and no Member of Congress offered an 
amendment to give the FDA--11 years ago--the responsibility for 
tobacco. Every Member focused, over 2\1/2\ years in crafting that 
legislation, on making sure that this mission statement, the 
responsibility for protecting the public health by assuring the safety 
and efficacy of drugs, devices, cosmetics, food safety, that we didn't 
do anything to diminish this. Now, all of a sudden, 11 years later, we 
are claiming that for 10 years we actually wanted FDA to have 
jurisdiction of tobacco, and we are willing to jeopardize the mission 
of FDA on drugs, devices, biologics, and food safety just because we 
want to give them this new jurisdiction.
  Read the bill. Actually spend the time to sit down and read the bill. 
You will find out how we are jeopardizing the future of the American 
people relative to drug safety.
  Let me quote from the American Association of Public Health 
Physicians in its white paper on the case of harm reduction. We will 
talk about reduced-risk products and harm reduction a lot of over the 
next several days.
  From the white paper:

       Tobacco harm reduction is taken to mean encouraging and 
     enabling smokers to reduce their risk of tobacco-related 
     illness and death by switching to less hazardous smokeless 
     tobacco products. In practical terms, enhancement of current 
     policies based on the premise that all tobacco products are 
     equal risk will yield only small and barely measurable 
     reductions in tobacco-related illness and death. Addition of 
     harm reduction components, however, could yield a 50 to 80 
     percent reduction in tobacco-related illness and death over 
     the first 10 years and a likely reduction of up to 90 percent 
     within 20 years.

  That is from the American Association of Public Health Physicians. 
That basically says what you are getting ready to do is a huge mistake. 
You are getting ready to grandfather every tobacco product on the 
market today and you are ruling out these new products that might come 
to market in the future that would have a devastating impact on the 
reduction of death and illness among the American people, which has a 
direct impact on health care costs.
  From the Royal College of Physicians in Sweden:

       In Sweden, the available low-harm smokeless products have 
     been shown to be an acceptable substitute for cigarettes to 
     many smokers, while ``gateway'' progression from smokeless to 
     smoking is relatively uncommon.

  Why is this important? You will hear people say these new smokeless 
products shouldn't come to the marketplace because that is an 
opportunity for youth to get hooked on nicotine and then to turn to 
smoking. Smokeless product has an age limit, just like cigarettes. As a 
matter of fact, I quoted the numbers on marijuana prevalence for youth. 
Marijuana is illegal. It does not have an age limit to it. It is 
illegal. Yet, for most of the States I referenced, the prevalence among 
youth of marijuana usage was higher than that of tobacco. Where is the 
outrage?
  Dr. Coburn will come to the floor at some point before the end of 
this debate. He will offer a recommendation that we give the 
jurisdiction to the FDA for smoking marijuana. Why? Because smoking 
marijuana does more health hazard to one's lungs than smoking tobacco. 
I will let him make the case because he is a doctor and deserves the 
credibility of his profession.
  There are 14 doctors in the 111th Congress, with two of those doctors 
in the Senate: Dr. Coburn and Dr. Barrasso.
  One of the House M.D.s, Michael Burgess, a member of the Health 
Subcommittee of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, felt 
compelled to explain why he voted against this bill in the House, a 
doctor who voted against the companion bill to the Kennedy bill. He 
practiced medicine in North Texas for 25 years and lost both parents to 
tobacco-related illness. He said:

       The FDA is a beleaguered agency that cannot do what we 
     currently require it to do with food and drugs. Agency 
     officials have stated the FDA is badly understaffed and 
     underfunded. Yet, with this bill, we are giving the agency an 
     entire new group, tobacco. This is hardly a logical 
     rationale, let alone safe for the American public. Until the 
     agency is able to demonstrate on a consistent basis that they 
     have the capacity to do all we currently require them, we 
     should not give them additional responsibilities.

  That is a doctor of 25 years who is basically looking at the work of 
the FDA and saying: Nobody in their right mind, especially a medical 
professional, would consider this to be a wise thing, to offer the FDA 
additional jurisdiction.
  Until they can prove that they understand the responsibility of the 
FDA, which is to protect the public health by assuring the safety and 
efficacy and security of human and veterinary drugs, biological 
products, medical devices, our Nation's food supply, cosmetics, and 
products that emit radiation, until they do that, why would we even 
consider giving them any more?
  That is a medical doctor of 25 years making that statement when he 
voted against this bill in the House.
  This bill is going to pass, make no illusions about that. Why? 
Because Members haven't read it. If they did, there is no way they 
would vote for it. The truth is, this is going to be popular at home. 
They will go home and say: I gave the FDA regulation of tobacco 
products. They will not go home and say: We had an opportunity since 
1998 to reduce youth usage of tobacco and our State decided not to even 
meet the recommendations of the CDC, much less the others. We thought 
it was more important to build sidewalks or fill budget gaps than to 
meet these new targets. Now we have the answer to it because giving it 
to the FDA, no child will ever smoke again. Baloney. If they are under 
18 today, they are finding some way to buy tobacco. It is illegal, but 
it should not surprise us when we look at marijuana usage, where we 
have a product that is not age limited, it is illegal, and more youth 
use marijuana than use cigarettes.
  We really have to focus on this, if, in fact, we want to make sure we 
don't do the wrong thing.
  Let me, at this time, cite part of a letter from Elizabeth Whelan. 
Dr. Whelan is the president of the American Council on Science and 
Health. This letter was sent to Congressman Steve Buyer and Congressman 
Mike McIntyre in the House. She writes:

       (H.R. 1256) will not only fail to reduce the ravages of 
     cigarette induced disease and death--it will likely worsen 
     it. The new regulation of tobacco additives will not lower 
     the toxic and carcinogenic mixture induced by the combustion 
     and inhalation of cigarette smoke. The enhanced restrictions 
     on lower risk tobacco products such as smokeless tobacco and 
     clean nicotine which have been shown to assist addicted 
     smokers in quitting will condemn the over 40 million addicted 
     smokers to the same old quit or die pair of options.

  Limit 40 million addicted smokers to the same old quit or die 
options.
  We are going to see, over the next several days, people come to the 
floor and say this is about public health, this is about reducing youth 
usage, this is about addressing the health risks of tobacco. Yet every 
professional who has written on this issue has said: What we are 
getting ready to do in the Senate is the worst thing we could do. It is 
going to make the problem worse. It is going to raise the cost of 
health care, not lower it. It is going to lock more people into 
choosing cigarettes

[[Page S5932]]

versus smokeless products or other nicotine products that might get 
them off of cigarettes as an addiction.
  In addition to not advancing the public health, I firmly believe this 
bill will further overburden the FDA and doom the FDA at its core 
mission of safety and efficacy of drugs and devices and biologics and 
food safety.
  Again, Mr. President, I plan to visit the floor a lot, as will some 
of my colleagues, over the next several days as we have an opportunity 
to continue to talk about this bill but also to offer amendments on 
this bill.
  The FDA grew out of a single chemist in the U.S. Department of 
Agriculture in 1862 to a sprawling agency today of nearly 10,000 
employees comprising chemists, pharmacologists, physicians, 
microbiologists, veterinarians, pharmacists, lawyers, and many others. 
Let me assure you, they are some of the most talented people we have in 
this country--the most dedicated professionals--to make sure this core 
mission is met every day. The worst mistake we could make is to give 
them something that does not fit in the mission of FDA because I do not 
care how much you try, you just cannot prove that tobacco is safe and 
effective. It just cannot happen.
  If the effort is to get more Americans to make the choice of giving 
up the habit, then do not create a system that does not allow new 
products that Sweden and other countries have experienced reduce the 
amount of usage. Certainly, do not fall prey to the belief that if we 
pass this legislation we are going to reduce drastically the use of 
tobacco products. As a matter of fact, as CDC proved, doing nothing 
reduces the use of tobacco products 2 percent more than if we pass the 
Kennedy bill. CBO estimate for the Kennedy bill; CDC estimate if we do 
nothing.
  If the effort is to get it right, one would suggest we are doing it 
wrong. If the effort is to make sure we address public health to reduce 
the prevalence of youth usage, not to limit the choice of adults, why 
in the world would you give it to an agency, jeopardizing its core 
mission by prescribing to the agency an impossible task of bringing 
new, reduced-risk products to the marketplace?
  Where would you create a new regulatory body where you grandfathered 
every product that currently contributes to death and disease and say: 
If new products are created that reduce the risk, that reduce the harm, 
we are going to make it unbelievably difficult for you to be able to 
market those products. I do not think that is what the term ``only in 
America'' was meant to portray. The insanity of what this institution 
is getting ready to do--why, the American people, they must think we 
are crazy by now. If they do not today, they will by the time this bill 
passes.
  Again, Mr. President, I will be on the floor frequently between now 
and then. I am committed to not only point out the difficulties and 
challenges of the legislation that serves as the base bill but am 
committed early on to present a substitute bill that brings every bit 
as much regulatory oversight and responsibility to the tobacco industry 
but will allow new, less harmful products to come to the market that 
will allow adults--people of legal age--to choose to use those 
products, if they choose to, and especially to use them if they are 
trying to reduce their dependency on smoking. That is the way you 
reduce the risk of death and disease. You reduce the cost of health 
care in this country. It is not necessarily by allowing the FDA to have 
jurisdiction. If I was wrong, I would not point to these States that 
underfunded the commitment needed to successfully do cessation programs 
that were paid by the tobacco industry and in most cases found that the 
prevalence of marijuana use among youth is higher than the prevalence 
of tobacco use. Marijuana is illegal. Tobacco does have an age 
limitation.
  Our belief that we can just wave a magic wand, give it to a new 
agency, and that youth numbers are going to go down--well, we might be 
lucky enough to get them to go down, probably not more than they are 
naturally going down. I wish we were here debating why the prevalence 
of marijuana use--an illegal drug--is higher among America's youth than 
tobacco is. I think the country would be better served if that were the 
debate we were having on the Senate floor and not a debate about how we 
jeopardize the safety and efficacy of drugs and devices and cosmetics 
and food safety in the future.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Kaufman). The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I rise in strong support of the Family 
Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. This legislation has been a 
long time coming, and for millions of Americans affected each day by 
tobacco addiction and the hazards of secondhand smoke, for hundreds of 
thousands diagnosed each year with lung or throat cancer, it provides 
potentially lifesaving protections that are long overdue.
  I wish to commend Senator Kennedy for his leadership of the HELP 
Committee in crafting this comprehensive bill. It will give the U.S. 
Food and Drug Administration the legal authority to regulate tobacco 
products, curb sales to children, and restrict misleading tobacco 
advertising.
  For many years, the Federal Government has known about the addictive 
nature of tobacco products and the damaging effects of cigarettes on 
smokers. We have seen the seductive and deceptive advertisements that 
have targeted children, women, minorities, and even smokers suffering 
from tobacco-related illnesses. We have read the evidence spelling out 
the numerous carcinogens added over the years to increase consumers' 
dependency on cigarettes. Despite overwhelming data showing the 
products' destructive effects, the industry's representatives, under 
oath, refuted well-documented scientific findings about the additives 
in their products and concealed their own internal research reports.
  So far, the Federal Government has been powerless to effectively 
regulate the industry. The bill before us tackles this obstacle head-on 
and gives the FDA the power it has lacked in years past to make 
Americans aware of tobacco's dangers and to reduce tobacco use. It is a 
much needed and responsible approach to the epidemic of smoking 
addiction in this country.
  The toll taken by tobacco use in our Nation is devastating. State 
data compiled by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids outlines the 
effects in my own State of Maryland. More than one in seven Maryland 
high school students smoke cigarettes, and each year 22,000 Maryland 
children try cigarettes for the first time. Of these, 6,600 become new 
daily smokers each year. Although the sale of cigarettes to those under 
18 is illegal, 12.5 million packs of cigarettes are smoked by children 
in my State each year. It is clear that better tools and stronger 
enforcement of our laws are needed.
  The mortality data shows why we must be alarmed by these numbers. 
More than 6,800 Marylanders die each year from their own smoking, and 
780 nonsmokers die each year from exposure to secondhand smoke. For 
every person in Maryland who dies from smoking, approximately 20 more 
Marylanders are suffering from serious smoking-caused diseases and 
disabilities or other tobacco-caused health problems.
  The Senate will begin to consider health reform legislation this 
month. A major goal of that effort will be to reduce health care costs 
in this Nation. Well, the legislation on the floor today is a good 
place for us to start.
  It is estimated that the annual health care expenditures in Maryland 
that are directly caused by tobacco use totals almost $2 billion, and 
expenditures from secondhand smoke exposure another $79 million. Our 
State's Medicaid budget alone spends $476 million each year to address 
tobacco-related illnesses. We can save health care costs and save lives 
by passing a strong tobacco regulation bill and sending it to the 
President for his signature.
  Perhaps the best case I can make for the passage of this bill comes 
from Ms. Geraldine Lloyd, who lives in nearby Frederick, MD. She is a 
courageous woman who has asked that her story be shared with Congress 
so we can take the necessary actions to protect the

[[Page S5933]]

American people. Geraldine started smoking at the age of 15 and became 
a pack-a-day smoker within the first year. Geraldine spent 15 years 
trying to quit smoking but was unable to do so.
  Finally, Geraldine was diagnosed with throat cancer. After radiation 
and 17 surgeries, she has been left speechless and has to breathe 
through a hole in her neck. After 11 years of not smoking, she was 
diagnosed with lung cancer in 2004. In her own words, this is her 
story:

       I was born in 1943, into generations of smokers. Both my 
     grandfathers were North Carolina tobacco farmers, and my 
     mother's father was a lobbyist for Liggett & Myers Tobacco 
     Company. Although they died before I was born of heart 
     disease and lung cancer, they remained vivid symbols of my 
     roots, until four years ago, when I discovered that my 
     mother's grandfather coined the term ``I'd walk a mile for a 
     Camel'' and was paid royalties for the slogan until he died. 
     It was also the last cigarette I smoked.
       I'm absolutely certain that I was addicted as a child to 
     secondhand smoke. I was constantly sick with chest infections 
     and spent the best years of my life coughing and struggling 
     to breathe. I loved sports, but never had the lung capacity 
     to participate because I was in a futile cycle of withdrawal. 
     I found no relief until I started smoking at the age of 15, 
     escalating to a pack a day within a year.
       I didn't try to quit until my mother died in 1975 from 
     brain and lung cancer. But I couldn't. My father died four 
     short years later, from cancer of the throat and the lung. 
     They were both pack-a-day smokers.
       Witnessing what smoking had done to them, I was determined 
     to stop. I spent the better part of 15 years trying to quit, 
     using every imaginable over-the-counter treatment as a way of 
     escape. I underwent hypnosis, therapy, acupuncture, patches, 
     gum, and could never remain abstinent for more than a few 
     weeks. Each and every time I quit and began again, the 
     addiction became more ruthless, leaving me less and less 
     capable of coping without them.
       I was diagnosed with throat cancer in 1993, and through the 
     next four years I underwent radiation and surgery, and 
     sixteen subsequent surgeries to save my esophagus. Lengthy 
     stays in hospitals, and the stress of breathing through a 
     stoma (a hole in my neck), relieved me of the physical 
     addiction. Looking at myself in the mirror took care of the 
     rest.
       Since then, I have been speechless, with the aid of 
     electro-larynx, and dedicated to helping children understand 
     addiction to nicotine. In 2004, after a lengthy recovery, and 
     11 years of not smoking, I was diagnosed with another cancer, 
     in the lung.
       I'm in remission, but my life has been drastically changed. 
     The compromised life I lived while smoking was a vacation 
     compared to the life I've been forced to live since surviving 
     cancer.
       The collective and unspeakable horror of allowing an 
     industry to run with a free license to kill is finally being 
     heard. We represent lives of freedom and happiness robbed 
     from nicotine addiction due to an industry that remains 
     unregulated, with rampant freedom to manipulate their product 
     to suit their greed. I have survived, but so many do not. 
     Sometimes survival is the cruelest joke against tobacco's 
     victims. The tobacco industry has been laying down a genetic 
map of pain, suffering, sorrow, and unconscionable human injustice for 
decades, and it is time for it to stop.

  Mr. President, I want Geraldine Lloyd to know we have heard her 
message and we take it to heart. It is time to empower the Federal 
Government, through the FDA, to put an end to the tobacco industry's 
longstanding practices and to begin to eliminate the threat of tobacco-
related illnesses that have taken so many American lives and harmed so 
many others.
  I am proud to be a cosponsor of this legislation. I urge my 
colleagues to support it overwhelmingly. We owe it to our children, we 
owe it to our Nation, and we owe it to Geraldine Lloyd.
  With that, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mrs. HAGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mrs. HAGAN. Mr. President, I know we are going to have a lot to say 
about the pending business, the FDA tobacco bill, over the course of 
the week. I have a number of amendments, and I know many of my 
colleagues also have amendments they wish to offer as well.
  Those amendments and the specific concerns they seek to address we 
will have an opportunity to discuss when we get to that stage of the 
process. For the moment, I simply want to lay out some of my general 
concerns about this legislation.
  This broad, sweeping legislation will have a devastating impact on 
the economy in my State of North Carolina and on the lives of many of 
my constituents. In my State, we have 12,000 tobacco farmers. We also 
have over 65,000 jobs in North Carolina tied to the tobacco industry. 
North Carolina generates about $587 million annually in farm income 
from tobacco. The economic impact of tobacco in North Carolina is $7 
billion.
  As you know, we are in the midst of an economic crisis, and the bill 
before us today is further going to devastate our economy in North 
Carolina by putting thousands of people out of work and exacerbating 
the already high level of unemployment throughout the State.
  First, we are going to hear about how this bill will prevent youth 
from taking up smoking. I fully support that goal. In fact, I know that 
every day probably about 3,500 youth across the United States try their 
first cigarette, and another thousand become regular, daily smokers. 
Clearly, we have to do something to prevent youth smoking.
  But the bill before us goes much further than that. It grants the FDA 
extremely broad authority to take actions that it considers to be in 
the interest of public health. That is an interesting standard--
especially when you consider that cigarettes, when used as intended, 
are a dangerous, unhealthy product. I know that and you know that.
  Given that cigarettes are an unhealthy product, asking the FDA to 
take actions in the interest of public health puts them in a very 
difficult position. It creates a practically unprecedented regulatory 
conundrum for the FDA that will require them to go much farther than 
the stated mission of reducing youth smoking.
  Another issue is the product standards. Under the bill we are going 
to be considering this week, not only can the FDA take actions that 
reduce smoking, but they would also have the authority to change what 
actually constitutes a cigarette. I will discuss that point in more 
detail later, but I will state now that, unequivocally, this bill gives 
the FDA the authority to set standards for tobacco products, whether or 
not the technology actually exists today to meet those changing 
standards.
  If we are, one, asking the FDA to set standards in the interest of 
public health and, two, we are giving them the authority to require the 
removal of harmful components from tobacco products--including 
components that are native to the tobacco leaf itself--and, three, if 
we are allowing them to move forward with these regulations even if the 
technology doesn't exist today, what do we expect the FDA to do? What 
would any of us do if we were in that position? This legislation puts 
the FDA in an impossible situation.
  I will close by saying that I have many friends in North Carolina who 
are wonderful tobacco farmers. Many of their families have been growing 
tobacco for generations. I am very concerned about the impact this bill 
will have on their livelihood. I think that a reasonable compromise can 
be found on this bill, and I look forward to discussing some of the 
ways this legislation can be improved as we move forward in the 
process.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I rise to speak about an amendment that 
my friend from Kansas, Senator Brownback, and I will be introducing at 
the appropriate time, to this very important underlying bill that we 
have in front of us. I want to particularly thank our majority leader 
for supporting this effort, given the important timing of this 
particular legislation to the economy and to those involved in our auto 
industry--our dealers in communities across the country. I thank him 
for allowing us to put this forward and hopefully have the support of 
colleagues to be able to place this on this bill so it can be moved to 
the President as quickly as possible. Timing is very much of the 
essence on this amendment.

[[Page S5934]]

  I also thank Senators Durbin, Voinovich, Levin, Brown, Mikulski, 
Lieberman, and others who are cosponsoring the legislation we have 
introduced, and those who are cosponsoring this amendment as well.
  This is the Drive America Forward Act. It will save jobs in America. 
It will help our dealers across the country, both those who are going 
forward as dealers and those who, under Chrysler and GM bankruptcies, 
have been told that they will have to either liquidate or look for 
other options as business people. It will help stimulate the economy. 
This is very much a stimulus. It will save money for consumers. And it 
will also lower carbon emissions--all of that in one amendment. We are 
very hopeful that we will have a strong bipartisan vote at the 
appropriate time when this amendment comes forward.
  Under the program that we are outlining in our amendment, consumers 
may trade in their older vehicles and receive vouchers worth up to 
$4,500 toward the purchase of a new vehicle that is more fuel 
efficient, a car or truck that is, in fact, more fuel efficient.
  I thank colleagues in the House who have done terrific work on this 
particular piece of legislation. Chairman Waxman and Congressman 
Markey, and Congressman Stupak and Congressman Dingell from Michigan, 
worked together through the Energy and Commerce Committee in the 
context of the bill that was reported out a couple of weeks ago from 
Energy and Commerce on energy and climate change. They had this 
provision in their legislation. I thank them.
  We have taken their language, working with them every step of the 
way. We have addressed some issues to allow dealers to make sure this 
is operationally going to work best in terms of the administrative side 
of it. We have combined those efforts into this amendment. It is 
critical that we pass it at this time.
  It goes, really almost without saying, when we look at what happened 
yesterday with General Motors, when we look at what happened in terms 
of Chrysler--and we are looking for some very good news either by the 
end of this week or next week on Chrysler, hopefully to come out of 
bankruptcy--wouldn't it be a wonder that, as they do, we have in place 
an incentive program for purchasing new vehicles, turning in older 
vehicles and purchasing new ones?
  We will get people back into these dealerships. We will be able to 
help communities across the country, neighborhoods, large and small, 
where the local dealership is, where, because of the economy, because 
of the lack of financing for too long--and we appreciate President 
Obama and the auto team in helping create the financing mechanisms for 
people to finance the purchasing of a vehicle and for dealers to 
finance their floor plans--for too long everyone was hit by the global 
credit crisis, the economy and the economy at large. We found an 
extremely difficult situation for dealers as well as the automakers and 
suppliers.
  Obviously, there are still many challenges. We know that thousands of 
dealerships across the country are currently in peril. This is an 
opportunity to immediately stimulate auto sales, to bring people back 
into the dealerships, to turn in vehicles that are worth $4,500 or 
less--and this is a program where you are taking the old vehicle off 
the road, so we know we are not talking about somebody turning in a 
vehicle that is worth $10,000 or $15,000 for a $4,500 voucher--older 
vehicles, vehicles that we know are less fuel efficient, to turn those 
in, get them off the road, buy a new vehicle and, at the same time, 
have the other benefits that go with it.
  We know that across the country it is not only the automakers about 
which I care deeply, as do others, and the great suppliers of the 
industry but the dealers, and from sales to administrative staff, to 
advertising outlets, to the local suppliers. Many dealerships are being 
forced to close or cut back because vehicle sales are down. This will 
help immediately. It couldn't come at a more important time.
  The Drive America Forward Act will send buyers back to showrooms, 
keep people working in cities and towns across America.
  President Obama called on us yesterday to pass a fleet modernization 
bill, to increase demand and get buyers back into the showrooms. Our 
bill does exactly that. Sometimes it is called cash for clunkers. 
Sometimes it is called fleet modernization. We call it a good old-
fashioned jobs bill. This is Drive America Forward. That is exactly 
what we want to do with this amendment. It will stimulate the economy.
  New vehicle sales are down nearly 40 percent compared to last year 
due, in large part, to the credit crisis, to job losses, and dwindling 
consumer confidence. It has affected every automaker, not only GM, 
Ford, and Chrysler, which I am very proud to have as part of Michigan's 
economy, but every single automaker has been affected which is why 
other countries have responded with similar plans.
  If we look right now, auto sales are down 40 percent from last year. 
If we look at January to May of this year and January to May of last 
year, there is a 40-percent reduction. Imagine a dealer, an automaker 
or supplier trying to keep the doors open and 40 percent of their 
business is down. GM is down 41.8 percent; Toyota, 39 percent; Ford, 
36.8 percent; Chrysler, 46.3 percent; Honda, 34.4 percent. We could 
keep right on going across the board as we look at auto companies and 
what is happening. This would be available to all the dealers, all the 
auto companies.
  At this point, we want to make sure we are providing stimulus across 
the board in the economy. The average dealership employs 53 people, so 
we are talking truly about small businesses. That is almost 160,000 
people nationwide, more than the combined workforce of GM and Chrysler. 
That is how many people work for dealerships. This is about getting 
people into the dealership, getting people back into a position to buy 
automobiles and to keep those folks working and keep the economy going 
in communities across the country. Moreover, local dealerships have cut 
spending on advertising, as companies have, which hurts newspapers and 
radio and television revenue at a time when local businesses are 
suffering. We know the stories. We have heard of the ripple effect. We 
have heard from those dealerships that are being given notice about 
closing, the impact of that.
  I have said before, I grew up in one of those dealerships. My dad and 
grandfather, in a community of about 2,500 people in Clare, MI, had the 
Olds dealership. We were very proud of that. One of the side benefits 
for me is I always had an automobile to drive. That made me pretty 
popular among my friends, although they only let me drive the old ones. 
But the reality is, this is a part of the fabric of America. When we 
talk about my dad and grandpa's dealership, they were the ones 
sponsoring the Little League team and buying the ads in the newspapers 
and the nonprofits that were doing fundraising drives and so on. This 
bill, the Drive America Forward Act, will help places such as my dad's 
and grandpa's. That is what this is all about.
  It is going to save money for consumers. The Department of Energy 
estimates that a consumer who drives a vehicle that gets 30 miles per 
gallon will save approximately $780 a year compared to a vehicle that 
gets 18 miles per gallon. We are saying under this program that if you 
have a car that gets 18 miles per gallon or less, you qualify. You turn 
it in, you can get a higher mileage vehicle and get from $3,500 to 
$4,500. We are saving consumers money by that.
  In Michigan right now, everybody I know who is in Michigan could find 
a lot of ways to use $780 more as a result of that savings.
  In addition to saving jobs, the program will save fuel. As buyers 
turn in their older, less-efficient cars, more fuel-efficient vehicles 
will take their place, and the fuel savings could exceed 1 billion 
gallons per year.
  Finally, the bill helps lower carbon emissions. If the program 
removes 10 percent of the V-8 engines from the road, carbon dioxide 
emissions will be reduced by tens of millions of metric tons annually. 
It can take up to 20 years to replace most cars on the road today with 
new, more efficient cars. That could take longer because of the 
economic downturn. People are waiting to buy a new car. Automotive 
purchases are way down, about 40 percent. This will turn that around. 
This will help incentivize turning that around.

[[Page S5935]]

  The oldest cars on the road are also the ones that pollute the most. 
The dirtiest 10 percent of the cars account for more than 50 percent of 
the smog and carbon monoxide. The dirtiest one-third of the fleet 
accounts for more than 80 percent of the pollution. The dirtiest one-
third of the automobiles account for 80 percent of the pollution. I 
talk about these issues because they are very important. I also go back 
to the beginning. This is about a stimulus. This is a terrific thing, 
that we are adding cost savings and fuel economy savings and getting 
rid of carbon pollution. This is all very good. There will be others 
who talk about other ways to do this that would have more savings on 
that end. Unfortunately, it would sacrifice our ability to help the 
auto industry.
  Right now what we have is the ability to do both. It is critically 
important that whatever we do, we make sure our American automakers can 
benefit. We have to make sure we are not putting in place something 
where the fuel efficiency standards, the goals are so high or written 
in a way that creates an incentive for foreign automakers, while 
curbing those folks right now who need our help the most.
  This is a balanced bill. This gives us the ability to benefit from 
increased fuel efficiency. It gives us the ability to deal with cost, 
to deal with carbon pollution. But it does so in a way that, at the end 
of the day, treats American automakers fairly and gives them the 
opportunity fully to participate, so the Chrysler dealers we have been 
hearing from, the GM dealers, as well as the great Ford Motor Company 
will be able to benefit as much as the other companies. That is what 
this does. That is why there has been a tremendous effort put into 
this. It doesn't seem like it would take that much to put this 
together, but in order to make sure we are complying with our trade 
laws, so we were allowing any company to participate under our trade 
laws but making sure we were being fair to our own companies that have 
been here and created the middle class of this country and are going 
through so much right now, every single line has been reviewed and 
discussed and reviewed again.
  The House did terrific work, putting together language that is fair 
for everybody. That is what this bill is all about.
  In the context of talking about all the hard work, I thank my key 
staff person, Colleen Briggs, who has lived and breathed this issue for 
several months. I told her I would name this after her, at least in my 
office, because there has been so much work that has had to go into 
this effort. I thank her for her hard work. I thank also the White 
House auto task force that has been so committed to doing whatever we 
can to support jobs here, manufacturing jobs, auto jobs, and every way 
we can to incentivize, whether it is being able to get the financing 
one needs, supporting the industries as they go through the bankruptcy 
process or this incentive. I thank them for their support in doing 
that.
  I also, once again, thank my friend from Kansas who has been a 
stalwart on this issue. We have had a true partnership on this which I 
appreciate very much. I very much appreciate that both of us are 
leading this effort, as well as other colleagues on both sides of the 
aisle who are cosponsoring this amendment.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas.
  Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I am delighted to join my colleague 
from Michigan in support of this bill. This is the right way forward. 
She has outlined most of the provisions, and I will add a few points, 
if I may.
  It is a humbling time for auto manufacturers globally. She went 
through the figures for all auto manufacturers, and there has been a 
huge falloff in the market. As the global credit crisis has impacted 
the world, maybe the industry hit the most has been automobile 
manufacturing on a global basis. We saw the numbers in the United 
States. One of the ways other countries have responded is with what 
they call scrappage programs. We have heard it referred to in different 
terms but several countries have looked at doing a type of scrappage 
program. It has been very successful. I was looking at the numbers. In 
March, Germany, France, and China saw increases in car sales--all three 
did scrappage programs--of 40 percent, 8 percent, and 8 percent, 
respectively.
  During the same period of time, the United States and the United 
Kingdom did not have scrappage programs, and we saw declines in car 
sales of 37 percent here and 30 percent in Great Britain. That is the 
difference these programs are making on a global basis because the 
credit crisis has hit this industry the most. A lot of things one has 
to buy on a regular basis. We have to buy gasoline, food, shoes for the 
kids. But often, for a lot of people, they look at their car or pickup, 
and they say: I am not sure what is going to take place. I will hold 
off on this one. So they hold off and the sales tank. That is what has 
taken place. People say: I am not sure what is going to take place; 
therefore, I am going to hold off.

  I have a brother who is a veterinarian who was saying to me the other 
day--he has an old pickup in his business. He is doing just fine in his 
business. He said: I am just going to wait a while. I said: No. This is 
the time we need you in the marketplace. This gets him back to the 
marketplace. It has been proven effective in other countries to get 
people back in the marketplace. It has worked in other places. We now 
see that the United Kingdom--that did not do the scrappage program--has 
enacted their own scrappage program. That is another reason why I think 
we should do that one here.
  There is another point, and I think it is an important one to make. 
It is often very difficult to find ways to support manufacturing 
without breaking international trade rules because we have a number of 
international trade rules that restrict what governments can do to help 
a particular industry.
  As to the World Trade Organization, this is a legal and consistent 
way for us to help automobile manufacturing without breaking any trade 
rules. That is important because we cannot be getting into some sort of 
trade sanctioning or there being offsets to it. This one is consistent 
with that.
  Another thing I think is very important--and my colleague from 
Michigan was very good to talk about this--this is a balanced approach 
that helps the environment, helps the economy, and helps our energy 
sector as well with us being more efficient with energy.
  I think as we move forward with concerns about CO2, 
concerns about the environment, concerns about the economy, concerns 
about domestic energy production and the need for domestic energy 
production, we have to balance the three Es: energy, the environment, 
and the economy. This bill does that. So here you are stimulating the 
economy, reducing your energy demand, and improving your environment--
all at the same time.
  And this bill--and this, to me, as a fiscal conservative, is the key 
point--also uses funds that have already been appropriated. There is no 
new money on this bill. These funds have been appropriated. They are 
going to be reprogrammed. I believe they will be reprogrammed. We are 
being told by the Obama administration that if this passes, this will 
be implemented with reprogrammed funds. So those funds--having already 
been approved by the Congress--would be used in a more effective way 
for a consumer-driven economic stimulus that helps the local 
dealerships, that helps the car manufacturers, that helps the 
environment, that helps our energy dependency in a very positive way.
  It has worked around the world. It will work in the United States. It 
will get people such as my brother back in the showroom, I hope. I am 
certainly going to push him to do that, as all of us will. We have seen 
an unprecedented falloff in car sales. It helps in a State such as mine 
where there are a lot of work trucks being used. This voucher program 
is targeted for use and utility by businesses that use trucks, and they 
can use that on this one as well. It works, and it helps out there.
  For all those reasons, I urge my colleagues to support this bill. It 
is balanced. We have worked a long time on it.
  Senator Stabenow recognized her staff member. I have had Landon 
Fulmer in my office working for some period of time on this issue to 
get it to where it would work. It would be simple, it would be direct, 
it would hit, and it would hit quickly. He has

[[Page S5936]]

worked to do that, as her staff has. I think we have got a good product 
here, and it is not any new appropriated money.
  I would say particularly to my colleagues on my side that I am very 
concerned about where our deficit and debt is going. This is no new 
appropriated money to do this, which I think is key.
  For those reasons, I urge the backing of this bill.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CHAMBLISS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. CHAMBLISS. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss the Family 
Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act.
  Let me be clear from the outset. Thanks to public information 
campaigns that have been waged for decades, the 45 million Americans 
who smoke already know that cigarettes are dangerous. If you smoke, 
chances are you could die from smoking.
  This legislation does little, if anything, to change that. The 
proponents of the bill say it is public health legislation that will 
lower the cost of medical care. That is a very noble goal. Everyone is 
in favor of saving lives and bringing down health care costs.
  But this bill will not accomplish that. Instead, it engages in 
overregulation with no practical effect on smoking rates. The 
Congressional Budget Office says it would only result in a 2-percent 
reduction in smoking rates over 10 years and would have a minimal 
impact on health care savings.
  Meanwhile, according to the Centers for Disease Control and 
Prevention, smoking rates are already declining an average of 2 to 4 
percent over that same period of time. So according to the CDC, if we 
do nothing, we will still have a decline in smoking rates equal to or 
greater than what CBO says this bill will do.
  The goal of any Federal tobacco regulation should be to keep children 
from smoking or using tobacco products and to help adult users stop or, 
at a very minimum, to use a less harmful product. But the bill does 
just the opposite. If this bill passes, cigarette manufacturers such as 
Philip Morris and Reynolds America will be prevented from using the 
terms ``light'' and ``low tar.'' That means their cigarettes will still 
be on the market but under different names, not leading to fewer 
smokers, but leading to consumer confusion.
  Just as bad is the overregulation that this bill will put on the 
already beleaguered tobacco farmer, in effect, helping put those who 
are left out of business. It would allow the FDA to enter just about 
any tobacco farm in the country. And it would indirectly require 
tobacco manufacturers to dictate production methods to farmers. It 
would also require the development of a new, unnecessary regulatory 
process at the FDA to set pesticide residue tolerances. This would 
duplicate a process that already exists at the Environmental Protection 
Agency. It makes no sense to pile these new responsibilities onto the 
FDA since the agency is barely able to keep up with its present duties.
  Oddly, under this bill, the FDA--an agency that is designed with 
ensuring the safety of drugs--would be given regulatory authority over 
an inherently dangerous product.
  Again, cigarettes will kill you. We have known that for decades. Even 
if the FDA managed to cut smoking-related deaths in half, it would 
still be vested with regulating a product that kills 200,000 people 
each year.
  The American Association of Public Health Physicians has said that 
even if the FDA has the authority to remove some harmful ingredients in 
cigarettes, changing the chemical nature of tobacco itself or lowering 
nicotine levels will not measurably reduce tobacco-related illness and 
death.
  This bill is slated to spend $5.4 billion taxpayer dollars to provide 
even more Federal regulation which will have no real effect. About a 
quarter of that money will be raised off the backs of our men and women 
in uniform, who will be forced into a mandatory thrift savings plan 
program to pay for yet another Government program that simply does not 
work.
  This legislation mandates TSP participation for new Government and 
military personnel. This may sound good in theory, but even with an 
opt-out provision--which the legislation does call for--it is bad 
policy for our soldiers, our sailors, our airmen, and marines, who, at 
junior ranks, frankly, earn very little money and are often under 20 
years of age. That is why the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff 
opposes this provision and says if you are going to have any revenue-
raising money, it should be an opt-in provision with respect to TSP for 
our military men and women.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the letter from Admiral 
Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, be printed in the 
Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:
                                      Chairman of the Joint Chiefs


                                                      of Staff

                                     Washington, DC, May 29, 2009.
     Hon. John McCain,
     Ranking Member, Committee on Armed Services, U.S. Senate, 
         Washington, DC.
       Dear Senator McCain: Thank you for your letter of concern 
     regarding H.R. 1256, the Family Smoking Prevention and 
     Tobacco Control Act.
       I have reviewed the legislative language and the Services' 
     views on the pending legislation. I disagree with the 
     language contained in H.R. 1256, Division B, Title I, Section 
     102(a)(2)(E)(ii). While this language allows for Services to 
     suspend automatic enrollment, which is the preference of the 
     Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps, I disagree with placing 
     the onus on the Service Secretaries to ``opt-out'' of 
     automatic enrollment.
       My recommendation is that the language should be written to 
     reflect that the Service Secretaries must ``opt-in'' if they 
     desire to make enrollment in TSP automatic for Service 
     members.
       Thank you for your concern regarding the financial well 
     being of our Service members. I am sure you will agree with 
     me that financial education by our senior leaders is 
     paramount, and I have every confidence in their abilities.
           Sincerely,
                                                     M. G. Mullen,
                                               Admiral, U.S. Navy.
  Mr. CHAMBLISS. Mr. President, we may not like smoking, and we should 
do everything we can to keep cigarettes away from children. But adults 
in this country have a choice, and many of them, aware of the inherent 
dangers, still choose to smoke. Spending billions of taxpayer dollars 
on an ineffective program to convince them otherwise, while regulating 
our farmers out of business, and taking away more of our troops' 
paychecks, is not good policy. It is more shortsighted government.
  With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence 
of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. COBURN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Shaheen). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. COBURN. Madam President, I wish to speak for a few minutes on the 
bill we are proceeding toward and to ask a few questions of the 
American public.
  We have a bill that is going to regulate tobacco, and I am OK with us 
regulating tobacco. I do not have any problems with it. I think we 
should do it. What we should be doing is banning tobacco. Nobody up 
here has the courage to do that. It is a big business. There are 
millions of Americans who are addicted to nicotine. And even if they 
are not addicted to the nicotine, they are addicted to the habit.
  But we have a bill, we are trying to do something positive, and we 
find ourselves constrained by our own shortsighted vision. We have an 
agency called the Food and Drug Administration. I have had a lot of 
experience with them. I manufactured medical devices in the 1970s and 
had several investigational new drug permits under them. I know the 
rigors under which INDs are managed and the care that is put forth by 
the employees of the Food and Drug Administration, as well as their 
advisory councils, as we go through that.

[[Page S5937]]

  But if we go back and look at the charge of what the Food and Drug 
Administration is, the Food and Drug Administration is about safety and 
efficacy--``safety,'' meaning they are responsible to make the judgment 
that if we are going to approve this medicine or this device that is 
within an acceptable risk--there is always going to be down sides to 
anything they approve, but within an acceptable risk, in total, it is 
going to be better for the country.
  In this bill, we allow existing tobacco products not ever to be 
eliminated. So we are going to take products that we know are not safe 
and we know are not efficacious and we are going to apply the resources 
of an agency that is having trouble meeting its demands right now, as 
well as meeting the demands of food safety right now, and we are going 
to take resources and put them there.
  The first problem with that is we send a totally mixed message to the 
Food and Drug Administration: Your job is no longer about safety and 
efficacy; your job now is to warn everybody about the downside of 
tobacco.
  We know that. What we have to do is stop new addiction. We know that. 
If we really want to make a difference in health and we want to 
eliminate dependence on tobacco, what we have to do is to stop the 
addiction. We have had all of these lawsuits through the years where 
billions of dollars have gone into attorneys' coffers, and about 40 
percent of it has gone into, supposedly, stop-tobacco-use programs, and 
we are going to say to the Food and Drug Administration: Your job is 
about safety and efficacy, making sure that what it says it does, it 
does, and we are going to turn them into a different kind of agency. I 
believe that is where this bill is misdirected.
  We ought to have an agency that does control tobacco, that does 
heavily regulate its advertising in terms of the warnings on the 
packages, in terms of limiting what young people can get to, so we can 
actually stop this trend toward addiction. But to do it in the Food and 
Drug Administration sends a mixed message: No longer is our job 
efficacy, no longer is our job safety; our job is to control 
advertising, we are going to control packaging, we are going to control 
and have them report to us on the contents of all of these thousands of 
bad products that are associated with tobacco, that are in tobacco--not 
just nicotine and not just the effects of the tobacco, whether it be 
inhaled or chewed or sucked on. The fact is, we are going to change the 
direction of the agency.
  So what should we do? We should regulate tobacco. We should set up a 
way for us to do that which will effectively stop new addiction, 
especially among young people because that is where it starts. It 
starts with the young, and there are certain personality types as well 
as certain genotypes that, even with some of the medicines we have 
today, cannot wean themselves from the addiction to nicotine.
  So why wouldn't we go another way? We have the Department of Health 
and Human Services, of which FDA is a part. Why wouldn't we create a 
smaller agency that is just about tobacco, just about regulating 
tobacco, so that we can see clearly--and we can also do it, by the way, 
for about a fourth of the cost of what it is going to cost to do it 
under the FDA. So for one-fourth of the cost, we can create a new 
agency within HHS that will be solely focused on this and this only, 
that will have one primary objective, and we will force and guide and 
direct and measure whether they are accomplishing their purpose. 
Instead, we are going to hide it in another agency that is struggling 
today.
  We are at $400 million to get a new drug through the FDA right now. 
That is the cost of processing. That doesn't even talk about the 
research costs, but the new drug. That is just the cost to get it 
through the trials and get it through the FDA. We have all of these 
drugs today that aren't approved, that could be saving people's lives, 
because we can't get it through the FDA. And now, what are we going to 
place on the FDA? We are going to place the regulation of tobacco on 
the FDA.
  Tobacco is not safe. In no way is it efficacious for any individual. 
Yet we are going to put a segment within the FDA and say: Run it the 
way you are running the rest of the business. It makes absolutely no 
sense to me. It doesn't mean that the goal behind this legislation 
isn't a good goal. It is. It is a good goal, but how we are doing it 
and where we put the control of this is totally counterintuitive.
  I think if you would ask anybody in America, you want the people who 
are approving the drugs that are good for you to also control--why 
don't we put alcohol under them? Why don't we put the DEA under them, 
under the FDA? If, in fact, we want a controlling agency, then let's 
move it to the DEA--the Drug Enforcement Agency--or Alcohol, Tobacco 
and Firearms, right? Why don't we put it in ATF? We already have other 
agencies. But to put it in the FDA, when the total goal of the FDA is 
to approve new products for our benefit, our safety, and to cure health 
needs--tobacco creates health needs; it doesn't cure them. The only 
thing I know that it cures is if you get a wasp or a red hornet sting 
and you take some chewing tobacco and put it on the sting, it takes the 
pain away. I experienced that a lot as a young boy. My grand dad would 
pull it out and put that plug right there, and the pain would go away 
very quickly. That is the only efficacious thing I know about tobacco.
  So I would just ask my colleagues to think again about what we are 
doing. Let's do the intent of the bill, but let's do it in a way that 
makes sense, that doesn't send a cross signal, and either put it into 
one of the other organizations we already have that is handling 
products that are bad for Americans--not products that are good for 
Americans--or let's put it into a separate agency where we can see it 
transparently and clearly.
  I wish to make one other point. Inside this bill is the banning of 
any new nicotine products. I wish to tell my colleagues that is totally 
shortsighted. If you are a smoker today and we could get you off of 
smoking even though we still give you nicotine and we can do that 
through a new product, such as a dissolvable flavored lozenge, where we 
supply the nicotine addiction to your body but you are no longer 
creating lung disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, bolus 
emphysema, or increasing your chances for heart disease and 
hypertension, markedly increasing your chances for lung cancer, if we 
could convert that to something that would satisfy the demand yet 
wouldn't harm the rest of your body--we ban that in this bill. We stop 
all positive movement through commercial products to create a nicotine 
source that is other than chewing tobacco or cigarettes or cigars.
  So why would we want to do that, especially if, in fact, we could 
take these millions of smokers today who, most of them, their habit 
is--there are two addictions they have. One is the nicotine craving 
that actually hits at the intercellular level. It is called a 
nicotinergic interface in terms of receptors on certain parts of the 
body. If we could do that in a way that would allow us to put nicotine 
in there to solve it but not cause all of the other disease, why would 
we say with this piece of legislation that we are never going to let 
that happen? Yet we are. I don't understand it. We could do that in a 
way where that could be highly restricted to only people who had a 
prescription, where they were already nicotine addicted.
  So there are things we are missing in here from a general health 
standpoint that are going to be very harmful because what we are saying 
is: You can use the nicotine patch, you can take some of the new drugs 
that work in the brain to relieve the nicotine addiction, but rather 
than supply something in a harmless way that has no other ill health 
effects--I don't understand why we would not do that.
  So I would appreciate my colleagues considering my comments. I 
believe the FDA is the last place we ought to put this. I think we 
ought to do it. We ought to change some of the things on how we are 
going to do it. We ought to create a capability to have nicotine 
supplied other than through chewing tobacco or cigars or cigarettes so 
that we can take the effects of it that we know are very harmful today 
and lessen them for the citizens who are addicted to nicotine.
  My hope is that we wake up before we pass this bill because what we 
are really going to do is we are kind of shooting ourselves in the 
foot. If we really want to stop and help those people who are already 
addicted and really want to prevent new addictions, then

[[Page S5938]]

we have to allow for some of these new products, and we ought to do it 
at an agency that doesn't have purposes counter to what the charge of 
that agency is.
  With that, I yield the floor to my friend from Oregon. I also thank 
him for being so kind to allow me to go first.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, before he leaves the floor, let me tell 
the distinguished Senator from Oklahoma that I very much appreciate 
working with him on health care legislation. We did it in the House, 
and we are going to do it again. I think this time the Senate is going 
to make history and have comprehensive health reform, and I look 
forward to working with my colleague on it.
  I come here today to express my strong support for the Family Smoking 
Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. The lead sponsor of this 
legislation is, of course, Senator Kennedy. I say ``of course'' because 
the fact is, for four decades Senator Kennedy, often against great 
odds, has consistently come back again and again to lead the fight to 
improve health care for the people of our country. Sometimes it was for 
children. Sometimes it was for seniors. Sometimes it was for the 
disabled. Sometimes it was for those who have suffered mental illness. 
I could go on and on, and we would be here until breakfast time if I 
were to try to itemize all of the major pieces of health reform 
legislation Senator Kennedy has authored over the last four decades. It 
is very appropriate that he is the lead sponsor of this legislation. 
The fact is, after Congress passes this important bill and takes steps 
to improve public health, we will be very fortunate that Senator 
Kennedy is going to lead the Senate once more on comprehensive health 
reform. I wish to make clear as a member of the Senate Finance 
Committee that I am very much looking forward to Senator Kennedy's 
involvement in this issue and his championing of the cause of fixing 
American health care. He has been the leader on this issue for four 
decades.
  I come to this topic with I think a personal perspective that also 
affects my role as a policymaker. In 1994, when I was a Member of the 
House, I served on the Health and Environment Subcommittee. It was 
chaired by Henry Waxman, a great champion of trying to protect children 
against the dangers of tobacco. Chairman Waxman had the CEOs of major 
tobacco companies before his subcommittee. He put all of the CEOs under 
oath, and as expected, Chairman Waxman did a tremendous job in terms of 
laying out the case for public health. In fact, he was so effective, 
that by the time it came to my turn, I was hard-pressed to find a 
question he hadn't already asked the tobacco CEOs. Just as I was 
thinking about packing up, I turned to some of Chairman Waxman's staff, 
who are wonderful public servants, and I asked whether any of the 
members of our committee had asked the tobacco executives if they 
thought nicotine was addictive. The staff all told me nobody had. They 
said: You ought to ask them. I wish to take a minute to lay out that 
historical record of what happened.
  I asked each one of the tobacco executives that day back in April of 
1994 whether they thought nicotine was addictive. The president of 
Philip Morris spoke first and said:

       I believe nicotine is not addictive, Yes.

  Then the chairman and CEO of Reynolds Tobacco Company spoke and said:

       Mr. Congressman, cigarettes and nicotine clearly do not 
     meet the classic definition of addiction. There is no 
     intoxication.

  Then the president of U.S. Tobacco spoke. He said:

       I don't believe that nicotine or our products are 
     addictive.

  The chairman and CEO of Lorillard said:

       I believe that nicotine is not addictive.

  The chairman and CEO of the Liggett Group said:

       I believe nicotine is not addictive.

  The chairman and CEO of Brown & Williamson said:

       I believe nicotine is not addictive.

  Finally, the president and CEO of American Tobacco said:

       I, too, believe that nicotine is not addictive.

  I made a vow after I had asked that question that during the time I 
would have the honor of serving in the House and later the Senate, to 
make an effort to do everything I could to hold tobacco companies and 
other companies that mislead the American people accountable. Today, we 
are able to do that because of the outstanding leadership of Chairman 
Kennedy. He is giving us the opportunity to hold accountable the 
tobacco companies that mislead the public with respect to their 
marketing practices and with respect to advertising. The Kennedy 
legislation is, in my view, very much needed to protect the public 
health--particularly the health of our young people--because it will 
give us the authority to hold the tobacco companies accountable for 
their actions.
  This is also relevant to the next major health bill that we will be 
dealing with in the Senate which will take the form of comprehensive 
health reform--health reform that ensures all Americans have good, 
quality, affordable coverage and, particularly, does so in a way that 
holds costs down.
  I, gratefully, had a chance to meet with the President today at the 
White House. The President, who has clearly signaled this will be a top 
priority for him, has now sent the message that history, to a great 
extent, is going to judge us on our ability to hold down runaway health 
costs and cut costs for American families.
  In my home State alone, $1.1 billion in health care costs are 
directly attributed to smoking per year, and it costs the Oregon 
Medicaid Program nearly $287 million per year. Nationwide, $96 billion 
in health care costs are directly attributed to smoking. This includes 
$24.7 billion in smoking-caused Medicare expenditures.
  There are enormous financial costs specifically associated with 
people at an early age getting addicted to tobacco use. Then, of 
course, there is the extraordinary loss of life that comes about as a 
result of tobacco. According to the Centers for Disease Control, in the 
United States, over 400,000 deaths each year are directly attributable 
to tobacco use. The FDA has given the authority to regulate food and 
prescription drugs, and it certainly makes sense that the FDA regulates 
tobacco, which is responsible for the death of over 400,000 Americans 
per year.
  The Senate, because of the leadership of Senator Kennedy, has the 
unique opportunity to reduce the financial and human toll of tobacco. I 
wished to recount, briefly, that hearing in 1994, because ever since 
that time, when the tobacco executives said under oath that nicotine 
wasn't addictive, I have wished to be part of an effort to hold the 
tobacco companies accountable when they mislead the American people. As 
a result of the outstanding leadership of Chairman Kennedy, it is 
possible for the Senate to finally hold these companies accountable by 
passing this legislation. I hope that Senators on both sides of the 
aisle will join me and Chairman Kennedy in supporting this long overdue 
bill.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, this week the Senate takes up a bill 
that is long overdue. It is a historic opportunity for us to finally 
protect our children in this country from tobacco addiction. I didn't 
realize, when I was elected to the House of Representatives, in 1982, 
that the issue of tobacco would be a major part of my congressional 
activity. My family, similar to virtually every family in America, has 
been touched with tobacco death. My father died when he was 53 years 
old of lung cancer. I was 14 years old. He smoked two packs of Camels a 
day back in the 1950s, when even doctors were saying in magazines how 
safe it was to smoke. His cough was a sound I will carry to the grave 
in my memory. When I hear that smoker's cough, I can pick it out of a 
crowd. As a kid, I heard it over and over, night after night, day after 
day, until he passed away on November 13, 1959. That is my story on 
tobacco. Every family in America has a story to tell.

[[Page S5939]]

  Tobacco products are some of the deadliest products sold in America 
but, unfortunately, the least regulated.
  The tobacco industry has been successful in keeping tobacco products 
outside the regulatory authority of the FDA. They said it is not food 
and it is not a drug; therefore, we are exempt. That specious argument 
continues until this day, when we are finally facing reality. Tobacco 
is, in fact, a carrier of a drug--nicotine--which is addictive. That 
addiction is what leads to more smoking, more tobacco exposure, and 
more death.
  The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act is a strong 
bill that will protect the public health and reduce tobacco use, 
especially among kids.
  Forty-three million American adults currently smoke. That is one in 
five. Ninety percent of them started smoking in their teenage years, 
before they were adults. You wonder why. Well, I remember, when I was a 
kid, the first time my cousin, Mike Peterson, and I decided to sneak 
out behind the garage with cigarettes and try them out. It was an 
adventure. We were being like the grownups whom we wanted to be like 
someday. Luckily, for me, I stopped. Mike didn't. Mike passed away 10 
days ago. He was a year younger than I, but, unfortunately, the ravages 
of tobacco and the addiction lead to cancer, COPD, and ultimately cost 
him his life at the age of 63. That happens a lot. Some kids quit, some 
kids don't quit; those who don't quit get addicted. Their addiction can 
lead to death, as it did for my cousin and childhood friend, Michael 
Peterson.
  Every day in the United States more than 3,500 kids try smoking for 
the first time. A thousand of them become regular daily smokers.
  In Illinois, almost 20 percent of the kids smoke, and together they 
consume about 34 million packs of cigarettes a year. We know tobacco is 
the largest preventable cause of death in America. For the longest 
time, the tobacco lobby held Congress in the grip of its hands. It 
would not allow the passage of any significant legislation. It was too 
powerful.
  We knew their power meant they would be able to continue to sell 
their products, leading to devastating results. A few years back, I 
decided to take them on. It wasn't to get even for my own family 
circumstance, but I thought there was an unfair and unjust situation. 
It resulted in a change in the law, which changed a lot of things in 
this country. Mine was the first bill to pass the ban smoking on 
airplanes. At the time, it was considered a fool's errand to try to 
defeat the tobacco lobby. When I offered the bill in the House of 
Representatives, it was opposed by the leadership on both sides of the 
aisle, Democrats and Republicans. Somehow or another, through faith and 
good luck and the help of people such as former Senator and Congressman 
Claude Pepper of Florida, I was able to bring this matter to the floor 
for a vote, and I won, to my great amazement. We banned smoking on 
airplanes for flights of 2 hours or less.
  Eventually, Senator Lautenberg picked up the issue in the Senate, and 
he showed amazing leadership in passing it in the Senate. The two of us 
managed to make this the law of the land. I don't want to take too much 
credit, but once people started thinking: If secondhand smoke is unsafe 
in an airplane, why is it safe in a train or in a bus or in an office 
or in a school or in a hospital or in a hallway? Pretty soon, the 
dominoes started falling across America. Laws were passed--local, 
State, and Federal laws--which have made smoking the exception in 
closed quarters and have changed the way we look at smoking today, from 
the time just 15 or 16 years ago, when it was considered to be the 
normal thing to do and objecting to it was considered out of normal.
  That has changed, but still there is a lot to do. The tobacco 
industry hasn't stopped. They are still selling and marketing their 
product. As they do, more and more people become addicted, get sick, 
and many of them die. Tobacco companies, it was found in 2006 by Judge 
Kessler in the U.S. Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia, 
issued a final opinion finding that the tobacco companies had engaged 
in a decades-long scheme to deceive and defraud the American public.
  Last month, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 
District of Columbia issued a unanimous opinion upholding Judge 
Kessler's finding of liability. Let's review some of Judge Kessler's 
findings. He found the tobacco industry falsely denied, distorted, and 
minimized the significant adverse health consequences of smoking for 
decades. The tobacco companies were aware that smoking and nicotine are 
addictive, but they publicly denied it.
  Just 15 years ago, the CEOs from seven major tobacco companies stood 
before a committee of the House of Representatives, raised their hands, 
and swore under oath that nicotine was not addictive. That was the 
death knell of their credibility. People knew better. I knew better. My 
dad died from lung cancer. He couldn't stop smoking. My friend Mike 
Peterson died of COPD. He smoked a cigarette the night before he died. 
He just couldn't stop. It is a terrible addiction.

  The tobacco industry falsely denied that they can and do control the 
level of nicotine delivered in order to create and sustain addiction. 
They knew they were piling that chemical into their product, and they 
knew that as long as they could, they had you hooked and it would be 
darn tough to quit.
  Tobacco companies falsely marketed so-called light and low-tar 
cigarettes. They turned out to be just as harmful as the others.
  From the 1950s to the present day, tobacco companies have 
intentionally marketed to kids. Of course you want to convince kids to 
smoke because they are not mature enough to make the right judgment. If 
a kid waits until he becomes an adult to decide to smoke, he is not 
going to do it. He will be a lot smarter. He will not be addicted. 
Tobacco companies track youth behavior and preferences and use 
marketing themes that resonate with kids.
  The list goes on and on and clearly demonstrates that this industry 
cannot be trusted to do the right thing. That is why we need the bill 
that is on the floor of the Senate.
  The tobacco industry has a long and disturbing history of marketing 
its products to kids and young people. The financial reasons are 
obvious. Ninety percent of adult smokers began smoking cigarettes when 
they were teenagers or younger.
  In the 1980s, R.J. Reynolds was looking for a way to revitalize its 
Camel brand, which was primarily popular with older smokers. To 
increase Camel's appeal to younger smokers, it created the Joe Camel 
cartoon character. Joe Camel became as recognizable as Mickey Mouse 
with a lot of kids--just what the folks who made Camel cigarettes 
wanted. While Joe Camel is no longer around, the problem of marketing 
to young people still remains.
  Tobacco companies doubled their marketing expenses between 1998 and 
2005. They now spend over $13 billion a year on marketing. They claim 
they don't market to kids, but just look at this ad. How about this 
one: Great Camel cigarettes. They are offering a back-to-school 
special. That certainly is marketing to kids. We know as parents and 
adults exactly what they are trying to do. This picture was taken from 
a shop in Camden Wyoming, DE. They knew what they were trying to do--
lure these kids into tobacco at an early age--and their advertising did 
its best to draw them in. These companies are not going to waste a 
penny advertising on groups they don't think they can win over. So they 
go after the kids.
  This bill recognizes the importance of curbing marketing to kids. It 
would empower the Food and Drug Administration for the first time to 
establish reasonable marketing restrictions that adhere to our first 
amendment guarantees under the Constitution. For example, the bill bans 
outdoor advertising near schools and playgrounds, prohibits colorful 
and alluring images used to appeal to young people. It limits ads to 
only black-and-white text in newspapers and magazines with significant 
teen readership. It ends incentives to buy cigarettes by prohibiting 
free giveaways with the purchase of tobacco products. Remember all the 
stuff they used to peddle in the name of cigarettes? Backpacks and 
caps--you name it. That kind of stuff is going to end. It gives the FDA 
the authority to respond to the inevitable innovative attempts by 
tobacco companies to get around these restrictions. It strengthens 
restrictions on youth access to tobacco

[[Page S5940]]

products by requiring retailers to verify the age of all over-the-
counter sales of tobacco products and prohibits vending machines and 
self-service displays unless they are in adult-only facilities.
  In addition to restricting marketing and youth access, the bill lifts 
the shroud of secrecy the tobacco industry has used to hide the 
contents of its products for decades. For virtually all other consumer 
products, manufacturers are required to disclose what is in their 
product. Walk into any grocery store, take a product off the shelf, and 
you will see a list of ingredients. But cigarettes and other tobacco 
products, some of the most dangerous products American consumers can 
buy, do not have to follow the same rules as other consumer products. 
The tobacco industry does not want you to know what is in its products, 
and for good reason.
  Cigarettes are not just tobacco leaves rolled up in paper; they are 
sophisticated, highly engineered products. In addition to tobacco leaf, 
cigarettes contain additives and chemicals that increase the kick of 
nicotine and mask the harshness of tobacco smoke. The act of lighting a 
cigarette creates a toxic soup of more than 4,000 known chemical 
compounds, all carefully added to that little cigarette in the hope 
that you will enjoy it so darn much you will become addicted for life. 
According to the National Cancer Institute, there are 69 known and 
probable carcinogens in cigarette smoke. Is it any wonder people 
develop cancer from smoking?
  Researchers at Harvard University School of Public Health have also 
discovered that tobacco companies increased nicotine levels in 
cigarettes by nearly 12 percent between 1997 and 2005. They were 
pumping nicotine into these cigarettes knowing it was more addictive, 
knowing they had these folks hooked for life.
  This bill ends the special treatment of the tobacco industry by 
requiring manufacturers to disclose to the FDA the ingredients, 
including substances in the smoke, of each brand of tobacco product. It 
requires the Secretary of Health and Human Services to publish a list 
of harmful and potentially harmful constituents in each brand of 
tobacco products and requires tobacco companies to provide information 
they have on the health effects of existing and future tobacco 
products. Why did it take us so long to do this? We knew for decades 
what was going on here. But the tobacco companies were just too 
powerful. They stopped us. Now we have a chance to change that. This 
bill on the floor will finally give consumers across America the 
information they need, the information which researchers need to stop 
this insidious addiction.
  For a product as deadly as tobacco, public disclosure of ingredients 
is not enough. The FDA should be able to require the industry to reduce 
or eliminate harmful ingredients or additives to protect the public 
health. For decades, the industry has manipulated its products at the 
expense of American consumers. No other industry in America is allowed 
to freely choose the types and amounts of toxic substances that are in 
their products--only tobacco companies, and that is going to end with 
this bill. This bill gives the Food and Drug Administration the 
authority to set standards to reduce these harmful ingredients, to 
reduce nicotine levels, and to ban those candy and fruit-flavored 
cigarettes popular with kids.
  Another long overdue reform is to establish a credible process for 
ensuring that health claims about tobacco products are scientifically 
proven. Almost as soon as cigarettes became a widely used product, 
companies started making false claims.
  In the 1920s, Lorillard came up with a slogan: ``Not a Cough in a 
Carload.''
  In the 1930s, Philip Morris said smoking their cigarettes was less 
irritating than other brands and ran ads advising the public to ``Ask 
Your Doctor About a Light Smoke.''
  In the 1940s, R.J. Reynolds ran an ad campaign for Camel cigarettes 
with the slogan ``More Doctors Smoke Camels than Any Other Cigarette.''
  In the 1950s and 1960s, tobacco companies introduced ``light'' and 
``low tar'' cigarettes to ease the growing concern about the harmful 
effects of smoking. The marketing of these light and low-tar cigarettes 
was so successful that they quickly dominated the market. Some 
advertisements explicitly encouraged smokers to switch to these new 
products instead of quitting. But the tobacco companies never had to 
demonstrate these new products would actually reduce harm. In fact, 
scientific evidence has shown light and low-tar cigarettes have not 
lowered health risks.
  Tobacco companies continue to develop new products and make health 
claims that cannot be validated. This bill will prohibit tobacco 
companies from using misleading descriptors such as ``light,'' 
``mild,'' and ``low'' to describe their products. It gives the FDA 
authority to review a product before it can be marketed as a ``reduced 
harm'' product to ensure sound science is behind that claim. These are 
reasonable requirements for any product in America and certainly for a 
deadly product such as cigarettes and tobacco.

  The warnings currently displayed on cigarettes and smokeless tobacco 
products are more than 20 years old. Let's be honest about this. The 
warnings on cigarette packages are widely ignored. They have been 
virtually the same for decades. People don't even read them or pay 
attention to them. But that is going to change. This legislation 
requires large, clearly visible warning labels on 50 percent of the 
front and back of a pack of cigarettes, with graphic and textual 
messages such as ``Warning: Cigarettes Cause Cancer.'' You will not be 
able to miss it. You may miss some of the advertising and colorful 
photographs, but the message is going to be clear for anyone who can 
read. Warning messages are to comprise at least 20 percent of an 
advertisement. That is a big change.
  This is something we introduced 20 years ago to finally change these 
warning labels. Congressman Henry Waxman has been a great champion and 
advocate on this subject. We just could not pull it off. The tobacco 
companies were too powerful. Now we have a chance to beat them with 
this bill on the floor. These reforms will start to reduce the terrible 
toll tobacco has taken on families across the Nation.
  I used to say from time to time when I would reflect on this and 
people would say: You are going too far, Durbin, just too much 
regulation, I have yet to meet the first parent who has said to me: I 
have great news. I just learned last night that my daughter started 
smoking. I never heard that said. We know intuitively as adults it is a 
terrible thing when a child takes up smoking and use of tobacco. It can 
lead to an addiction that can harm them.
  The FDA is the right agency to do this. It is the only agency with 
the science, the regulatory experience, and the public health mission 
to get this job done. Through a user fee on the industry, the bill 
gives the agency the funding it needs to get this job done.
  This is a strong public health bill and a bipartisan bill. After more 
than 10 years and, in my case, more than 20 years, we have never been 
so close to giving the FDA the authority to regulate tobacco products. 
I urge my colleagues to resist efforts to weaken this bill or to add 
provisions that jeopardize its enactment. FDA regulation of tobacco 
products is long overdue. The time for Congress to act is now.
  I would like to say in closing that it is a shame that my colleague 
and friend, Teddy Kennedy, is not here. He is recovering, as we know, 
from his own battle with a brain tumor. I talked with him a couple 
weeks ago, and he sounded just great. I wish he could be on the floor 
with us because I know how much this bill means to him personally. 
Teddy Kennedy, on this issue and so many others, stood there and fought 
that lonely battle, faced rollcall after rollcall when he could never 
get enough votes. And now the moment is at hand to come up with the 
votes necessary. In his name and in the name of all the people over the 
years who have fought so valiantly for tobacco regulation, people such 
as Congressman Mike Synar of Oklahoma and Teddy Kennedy--all of them 
dreamed of the day when this would pass. We now have a chance, this 
Senate in this Congress this year, to finally do something to start 
saving lives across America and bring the kind of sensible regulation 
of tobacco that has been long overdue.
  Madam President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.

[[Page S5941]]

  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. UDALL of Colorado. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that 
the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________