[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 148 (Wednesday, October 14, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10436-S10438]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          STATEMENTS ON INTRODUCED BILLS AND JOINT RESOLUTIONS

      By Mrs. SHAHEEN (for herself and Mr. Vitter):
  S. 1778. A bill to amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act 
with respect to generic drugs, and for other purposes; to the Committee 
on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.
  Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce two health 
care bills that will help control health care costs and provide 
patients with better care. I believe these bills are easy to understand 
and reflect commonsense approaches to controlling health care costs.
  The first bill, the Reducing Emergency Department Utilization through 
Coordination and Empowerment, or REDUCE Act, S. 1281, would reduce 
costly and excessive emergency room visits by providing patients with 
more consistent and coordinated care.
  Emergency room overutilization is a source of wasteful spending in 
our health care system. Estimates show that $14 billion are wasted each 
year in unnecessary emergency room visits. It drives up the cost of 
health care and leads to overcrowding of our emergency rooms.
  Frequent users of emergency room services make up a small, but very 
costly portion of the population. These individuals tend to have 
multiple chronic illnesses and severe mental illness. They often live 
in poverty or are homeless. Many times they use the emergency room 
because they have nowhere else to go.
  In the most extreme cases, these individuals can cost the system 
millions of dollars. You heard right, one person can put a multi-
million dollar strain on our health care system. For example in Camden, 
NJ, one person cost taxpayers $3.5 million over 5 years in Medicaid and 
Medicare payments.
  We need to fix this problem, and I believe we can. The REDUCE Act is 
modeled after successful pilot programs across the country. It provides 
beneficiaries with a care management team consisting of a medical 
provider, a social worker and a community health worker that can 
provide medical care and support in any setting. The care management 
team also helps to ensure that these individuals are going to their 
primary care doctors and mental health providers on a regular basis.
  Research shows it works. In fact, after two years of enrollment in 
one pilot program, on average, individual emergency room visits were 
reduced by 61 percent and emergency room charges were reduced by 59 
percent for those that participated.
  There is a lot we need to do to reform our health care system, but as 
we work on reform broadly, we also need to focus attention on 
individuals, especially these high cost patients. Doing so will improve 
care for this vulnerable population and reduce costs.
  The second bill, the Access to Affordable Medicines Act, S. 1778, 
will increase access to lower cost generic drugs by closing a loophole 
some brand name drug companies exploit that needlessly and unfairly 
delays the entry of safe, lower-cost generic drugs to the consumer 
market.
  As the law currently stands, when brand name manufacturers make 
labeling changes, generic drug labeling must reflect this change prior 
to the drug being approved and introduced in the market.
  Too often, big pharmaceutical companies make last minute changes to 
the label. Many times the labeling changes are insignificant and do not 
deal with safety or warnings. In fact, these last minute changes are 
often used by brand name pharmaceutical companies to purposefully delay 
the introduction of cost-saving generic drugs by weeks or months. This 
can cost consumers and the federal government millions of dollars.
  My bill would stop these costly practices by providing a 60-day grace 
period for the generic drug company to submit the new labeling for 
approval and marketplace distribution, while preserving safeguards if 
the new labeling truly presents a safety issue.

[[Page S10437]]

  As we work to pass comprehensive health care reform in Congress, we 
do it with families and small businesses who struggle everyday with the 
high cost of health care in mind. These bills are the types of sensible 
reforms that we need to make so that the health care system is more 
affordable and more efficient. I look forward to working with my Senate 
colleagues on this legislation.
                                 ______
                                 
      By Mr. WHITEHOUSE (for himself, Mr. Leahy, and Mr. Sessions):
  S. 1782. A bill to provide improvements for the operations of the 
Federal courts, and for other purposes; to the Committee on the 
Judiciary.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Federal 
Judiciary Administrative Improvements Act of 2009 on behalf of myself 
and the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Judiciary Committee, 
Senators Leahy and Sessions. I thank them for their support. It has 
been a pleasure to work with them on this important bipartisan effort.
  The Federal Courts decide crucial issues of criminal and civil law 
every day, providing justice and protecting our constitutional rights. 
It is our responsibility in Congress to ensure that our governing 
technical issues of judicial administration will help them in this 
effort.
  The Federal Judiciary Administrative Improvements Act of 2009 takes 
up that responsibility by making nine technical fixes necessary for the 
better administration of the Federal courts. The bill will clarify the 
role of Senior Judges in the selection of Magistrate Judges, enable 
better workload distribution among the judges of the District of North 
Dakota, align the benefits received by territorial judges in Guam, the 
U.S. Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands with those of 
other term judges, equalize leave limits and pay scales for judicial 
executives with those for senior executive branch officials, protect 
individual privacy in connection with judges' role in the sentencing 
process, clarify the authority of pretrial service officers over 
juvenile offenders, amend requirements for the reporting of wiretap 
information to the Administrative Office of the Courts, and add an 
inflation adjustment for the case expenses that must be reviewed by the 
chief judge of a district court. The Administrative Office of the 
Courts supports each provision.
  I urge my colleagues to act promptly on this bipartisan legislation. 
I again thank Chairman Leahy and Ranking Member Sessions for their 
support.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, today, I am pleased to join Senators 
Whitehouse and Sessions to introduce the Federal Judiciary 
Administrative Improvements Act of 2009, a bipartisan bill that would 
improve the administration and efficiency of our Federal court system. 
This legislation would also provide the third branch of government with 
important assistance to the women and men who comprise the Federal 
judiciary.
  I thank Senator Whitehouse and Senator Sessions for their hard work 
on this critical issue. I previously introduced a court improvement 
bill in the 108th Congress. I hope the bill we introduce today will 
pass the full Senate with unanimous support, and will not be subjected 
to the objections of Senate Republicans as it was 5 years ago. I have 
also supported past legislative proposals from the Judicial Conference 
to improve the administration of justice in the Federal courts, 
including a similar measure last year, which was enacted into law.
  In recent years, the job of a Federal judge has changed considerably. 
Today, Federal judges at both the trial and appellate level are hearing 
more cases with fewer available judicial resources. We have a 
responsibility to pass legislation that helps them keep up with 
changing times and circumstances. Just as it is the judiciary's duty to 
deliver justice in a neutral and unbiased manner, it is the duty of the 
legislative branch to provide the requisite tools for the women and men 
who honorably serve on the judiciary to ably fulfill their critical 
responsibilities. I believe our independent judiciary is the envy of 
the world, and we must take care to protect it.
  The legislation we introduce today contains proposals that the 
Federal judiciary believes will improve its operations and allow it to 
continue to serve as a bulwark protecting our individual rights and 
liberties. It also contains additional technical and substantive 
proposals carried over from previous Congresses.
  The Judiciary Administrative Improvements Act of 2009 would 
facilitate judicial operations and improve judicial resource 
management. The bill would clarify existing law to ensure that senior 
judges with a minimum workload can participate in the selection of 
magistrate judges. The bill would also revise the statutory description 
of the District of North Dakota to eliminate unnecessary references to 
divisions and counties, while maintaining the present requirement that 
North Dakota constitutes one judicial district. I believe this 
technical change would improve the judicial workload distribution in 
that district and reduce travel time for litigants.
  Our legislation also contains critical provisions that would improve 
personnel and benefits for certain judges and their hardworking 
judiciary staff. The bill would authorize a cost-of-living adjustment 
for Federal territorial judges entitled to receive an annuity. It would 
also authorize territorial judges who are 65 years of age or older to 
collect, for the remainder of their lives, an annuity equal to the 
salary received when they left office. These changes would reduce 
existing inequities between Federal territorial judges and other term 
judges such as Federal magistrate and bankruptcy judges. The bill would 
extend to senior executives in the Federal courts, the Federal Judicial 
Center, and the Sentencing Commission the same ability to carry over 
annual leave hours as that enjoyed by senior employees in the Executive 
Branch and the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, AO. 
It would also allow the Federal Judicial Center to provide a modest 
increase in pay for certain division directors.
  The Judiciary Administrative Improvements Act of 2009 would also 
improve the administration of criminal justice. The bill would better 
protect confidential information about a defendant during sentencing by 
allowing the ``statement of reasons'' form that judges are required to 
issue upon sentencing to be filed separately with the court. This 
change would allow confidential information contained within the 
``statement of reasons'' to be more easily controlled and protected. In 
addition, the bill would clarify the scope of authority of Federal 
pretrial services officers to supervise and assist juveniles awaiting 
delinquency disposition in Federal court. Current laws regarding the 
duties of pretrial service officers focus solely on adults and thus it 
is unclear what duties those officers have to provide services to 
juveniles. This bill would fill that gap and ensure that pretrial 
services officers are fully authorized to arrange drug treatment and 
other critical services for juvenile offenders. The bill would also 
improve the statistical reporting schedule for criminal wiretap orders. 
It would eliminate burdensome monthly deadlines for state and Federal 
judges to report their wiretap data and unrealistic interagency 
deadlines for reporting that data to the AO. This change will allow for 
more comprehensive reporting of wiretap data.
  In addition, the legislation we introduce today would also conserve 
judicial resources over certain court requests from indigent 
defendants. Under current law, a certain statutory threshold exists at 
which the costs of hiring expert witnesses and conducting 
investigations for indigent defendants must be approved by the court. 
These thresholds do not account for inflation, however, which results 
in a waste of precious judicial resources. This bill would apply an 
inflationary index to the threshold amount to make them more cost-
effective. As a result, this change will allow judges to spend more 
time on less of these requests each year, which would better improve 
the overall administration of justice.
  I am glad that this important legislation has the support of the 
Administrative Office of the Courts, on behalf of the Judicial 
Conference, and Senators on both sides of the aisle. The Federal 
judiciary needs these improvements to increase its efficiency and 
administrative operations. I urge all Senators to support prompt 
passage of this noncontroversial legislation this year.

[[Page S10438]]

                                 ______
                                 
      By Mr. FRANKEN (for himself, Mr. Feingold, and Mr. Brown):
  S. 1783. A bill to amend the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1946 to 
provide for country of origin labeling for dairy products; to the 
Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry.

  Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, all across the country, family dairy 
farms are in dire straits. In Minnesota alone, 200 dairy farms have 
closed this year. There is no single cause for this crisis. Family 
dairy farmers are confronting an unprecedented global recession, 
consolidation in the market, high feed prices, and unpredictable price 
swings--all at the same time.
  Since arriving in Washington, I have been proud to work with my dairy 
State colleagues in order to give our family farmers the tools they 
need to weather this storm. In July, Senators from the midwest, the 
northeast, and the southwest worked together with Secretary Vilsack to 
raise price supports. Just last week we provided the Department of 
Agriculture with another $350 million for price supports in the annual 
agriculture spending bill. Unfortunately, raising price supports alone 
won't calm the economic storm.
  Just as there is no single cause for this, there is no single 
solution. Our family farmers need multiple tools in their shed. Today, 
I am introducing a bill with Senator Feingold and Senator Brown to give 
our family farmers another tool.
  The Dairy Country Of Origin Labeling Act, or Dairy COOL, is really 
pretty simple--it would extend mandatory country of origin labeling to 
dairy products. The current country of origin labeling law, which went 
into effect last year, applies to meats, produce, and nuts, but it 
doesn't include dairy products. Our bill would simply add dairy 
products--such as milk, ice cream and cheese--to the list.
  Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Ohio dairy farmers, as well as family 
farmers across the Nation, have the right to distinguish their products 
from imported products. As families do their weekly grocery shopping, 
they should have the option of putting milk, cheese, and ice cream from 
our own family farms into their cart. It is more than ``from farm to 
table''--it's really ``from one family to another.''
  Families are what this is about. Hardly a week goes by where you 
don't hear another story of contaminated food and toys coming in from 
foreign shores. Labeling our dairy products lets parents make smarter 
choices at the grocery store.
  This bill isn't a silver bullet, but it does give family farms 
another tool that will help them weather the current storm, grow a 
little stronger, and keep our families a little safer.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be 
printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the text of the bill was ordered to be 
printed in the Record, as follows:

                                S. 1783

       Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of 
     the United States of America in Congress assembled,

     SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

       This Act may be cited as the ``Dairy COOL Act of 2009''.

     SEC. 2. COUNTRY OF ORIGIN LABELING FOR DAIRY PRODUCTS.

       (a) Definitions.--Section 281 of the Agricultural Marketing 
     Act of 1946 (7 U.S.C. 1638) is amended--
       (1) in paragraph (2)--
       (A) in subparagraph (A)--
       (i) in clause (x), by striking ``and'' at the end;
       (ii) in clause (xi), by striking the period at the end and 
     inserting ``; and''; and
       (iii) by adding at the end the following:
       ``(xii) dairy products.''; and
       (B) in subparagraph (B), by inserting ``(other than clause 
     (xii) of that subparagraph)'' after ``subparagraph (A)'';
       (2) by redesignating paragraphs (3) through (9) as 
     paragraphs (4) through (10), respectively; and
       (3) by inserting after paragraph (2) the following:
       ``(3) Dairy product.--The term `dairy product' means--
       ``(A) fluid milk;
       ``(B) cheese, including cottage cheese and cream cheese;
       ``(C) yogurt;
       ``(D) ice cream;
       ``(E) butter; and
       ``(F) any other dairy product.''.
       (b) Notice of Country of Origin.--Section 282(a) of the 
     Agricultural Marketing Act of 1946 (7 U.S.C. 1638a(a)) is 
     amended by adding at the end the following:
       ``(5) Designation of country of origin for dairy 
     products.--
       ``(A) In general.--A retailer of a covered commodity that 
     is a dairy product shall designate the origin of the covered 
     commodity as--
       ``(i) each country in which or from the 1 or more dairy 
     ingredients or dairy components of the covered commodity were 
     produced, originated, or sourced; and
       ``(ii) each country in which the covered commodity was 
     processed.
       ``(B) State, region, locality of the united states.--With 
     respect to a covered commodity that is a dairy product 
     produced exclusively in the United States, designation by a 
     retailer of the State, region, or locality of the United 
     States where the covered commodity was produced shall be 
     sufficient to identify the United States as the country of 
     origin.''.

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