[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 35 (Thursday, March 11, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1437-S1453]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    TAX ON BONUSES RECEIVED FROM CERTAIN TARP RECIPIENTS--Continued

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nebraska is recognized.
  (The remarks of Mr. Johanns pertaining to the submission of S. Res. 
452 are located in today's Record under ``Submitted Resolutions.'')
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah is recognized.


                           Health Care Reform

  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I rise, joined by my friend, the 
distinguished Senator from South Dakota and chairman of the Senate 
Republican Policy Committee, to discuss the health care legislation 
being considered in Congress. The current debate is primarily about 
process. But before addressing that, I wish to remind everyone that in 
the end, this is about the substance of the legislation that Washington 
liberals want to impose upon the country by any means necessary.
  This legislation is bad, both for what it represents and for what it 
would do. It represents a massive Federal Government takeover of the 
health care system. The health care and health insurance systems could 
be significantly improved with policies that respect individual choice, 
that embrace our system of federalism, in which the States can tailor 
solutions to their own needs and demographics. It could. But Washington 
liberals have rejected that path.
  What would this legislation do? As I have argued in the past, this 
legislation would bust the limits the Constitution places on Federal 
Government power. Liberty itself depends on those limits, it always has 
and it always will. Those limits mean Congress may exercise only the 
powers listed in the Constitution. None of those powers authorizes 
Congress to take such unprecedented steps as requiring that individuals 
spend their own money to purchase a particular good or service, such as 
health insurance, or face a financial penalty. This legislation would 
unnecessarily take this country into unchartered political and legal 
territory.
  We just heard from the Congressional Budget Office that President 
Obama's policies will add a staggering $8.5 trillion--that is trillion 
with a ``t''--to our already sky-high national debt.
  This is before passage of the health care tax-and-spend bill that 
would cost another $2.5 trillion. Claims that this boondoggle will 
lower the deficit result from some pretty impressive accounting tricks. 
This legislation, for example, would start taking money from Americans 
immediately but would not provide any benefits to them for years. How 
about that as a neat way to lower a bill's supposed cost?
  What do Americans get for all these trillions of dollars? They would 
be required to buy health insurance, but only 7 percent of Americans 
would receive any government subsidy to do so. Washington liberals say 
this bill cuts taxes, but 93 percent of all Americans would not be 
eligible for any tax benefit. Contrary to President Obama's explicit 
pledge, one-quarter of Americans making under $200,000 per year would 
see their taxes go up. Middle-class American families paying higher 
taxes will outnumber those receiving any government subsidy by more 
than 3 to 1.
  And after the higher taxes, increased government control, greater 
regulation, and paltry help in buying health insurance, this 
legislation would not control health care costs, which is the main 
reason for the concern about health insurance in the first place.
  It does nothing to rein in the junk lawsuits that drive up costs and 
drive doctors out of medicine. Instead, this legislation would cut $500 
billion from Medicare to pay for a massive new government entitlement 
system that would include 159 new boards and other bureaucratic 
entities.
  Last month, the White House released an 11-page document titled ``The 
President's Proposal.'' Calling it that, I suppose, was to make it 
appear to be a meaningful step in a genuine negotiation. It is nothing 
of the kind. One of the most obvious changes suggested in this document 
was elimination of the Medicaid subsidy that the Senate bill gave to 
only one State. That was for political rather than policy reasons. And 
I cannot forget to mention that this 11-page document's suggested 
changes would add at least $75 billion more to the cost of the Senate 
bill. That is around $7 billion a page. But it offered nothing to 
change the real defects in this legislation.
  For these and so many other reasons, this legislation is the wrong 
way to address the challenges we face in health care and health 
insurance.
  Let me turn to my friend from South Dakota, Senator Thune. Now that 
we have been debating these issues for the better part of a year, what 
do the American people think of these liberal Washingtonian proposals 
and how did we get where we are today?
  Mr. THUNE. I say to the Senator from Utah that he has made, over the 
course of the last year, many compelling arguments about the substance 
of this legislation and just now summarized what some of those are. The 
reason the American people have rejected this legislation is because 
they understand the substance of it. As the Senator pointed out, it has 
tax increases, Medicare cuts, and premium increases for most Americans. 
They figured that out a long time ago. That is why, if you look at the 
public opinion surveys that have been done with regard to the bill 
itself and to the process by which it got where it is, the American 
people reject it.
  The reconciliation process, which has been talked about as a way in 
which to ultimately pass this through the House and then through the 
Senate, there have been polls that have asked the American public what 
they think of using reconciliation to enact health care reform.
  The Gallup poll from February 25: 52 percent of Americans oppose the 
use of reconciliation. Last week's Rasmussen Report poll shows that 53 
percent of Americans are opposed to the health care plan. Perhaps the 
most telling poll is a CNN poll from February 24--if you can believe 
this--that says 48 percent of Americans want Congress to start working 
on a new bill, and 25 percent of Americans want Congress to stop 
working on health care. Added together, that is 73 percent of the 
American public that wants Congress to either stop working on health 
care altogether or start over.
  I am not among those who think we ought to stop working on this. This 
is a big, important issue to the American people. They want us to do 
it. But they want us to get it right. What is being proposed by our 
colleagues on the other side and what so far has been rammed through on 
a very partisan basis is a $2.5 trillion expansion of the Federal 
Government that expands the health care entitlement but does very 
little to reform health care in this county or to address the 
underlying drivers of health care costs in this country.
  So the Senator from Utah is absolutely right in describing why the 
American people are so opposed to this legislation; that is, because 
they understand it. They know what it does. They are concerned about 
the cost of their health care insurance in this country. They are 
concerned as well about those who do not have health care, and we have 
come up with solutions we think make sense to cover those who do not 
have coverage. But I think it is pretty clear where the American people 
come down on this issue.
  Incidentally, I think that is also what many of these elections we 
have had recently are about. If you look at

[[Page S1438]]

what happened in Virginia, New Jersey, and most recently in 
Massachusetts, many of those elections were referendums, if you go 
inside the numbers, on the health care issue. I think it is a clear 
message to Washington that these health care proposals are not 
acceptable to the American people. Yet it does not seem that those of 
us in Washington, DC--or at least some of us--are listening to that 
message. Frankly, I believe, I say to my colleague from Utah, this is a 
bad bill. It has been rejected by the American people, part of it 
because of the substance of it; part of it because the normal process 
has not been followed. We all know what was done to get that extra vote 
to try and pass this bill through the Senate, to get that 60th vote--
all these backroom deals that were put together at the last minute. We 
have heard the ``Cornhusker kickback'' chronicled, we have heard the 
``Louisiana purchase'' chronicled many times over the last several 
months.
  But I think the point, very simply, I say to my friend from Utah, is 
that, one, the American people understand this will lead to higher 
costs for most Americans, it is going to increase their cost of health 
insurance in this country; two, they want to see a bill that is put 
together in a way that elicits bipartisan support.
  The Senator from Utah has been here since 1977. He has been involved 
in a whole series of important bipartisan debates, where important 
legislation was acted on in the Senate, but it was done in a way that 
had support from both Republicans and Democrats. I think that is what 
the American people expect of this process. They also expect us to 
conduct ourselves in a way that is transparent.
  Doing legislation, 2,700-page bills behind closed doors, adding last-
minute backroom deals to try and get that illusive 60th vote to pass 
it, and now using reconciliation--something that clearly was not 
designed for this process--is another issue that is even worsening the 
American public's opinion not only of the substance of this legislation 
but also the process.
  I wish to ask my colleague about reconciliation. But before I do 
that, I wish to mention one thing because many of us--you and I both 
and others on our side--have talked a lot during the course of this 
debate about the cost and what we ought to be doing to address health 
care. If we wish to address health care in this country for most 
Americans--or reform health care--it means getting costs under control.
  We have been arguing for some time that most Americans--and I think 
the Congressional Budget Office has validated this, the Actuary for the 
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has validated this--that if 
you are buying in the individual market, you are going to see your 
insurance premiums go up above what they would normally go up, 10 
percent to 13 percent, and if you are someone who buys in the large 
employer or small employer market, you are still going to see your 
health insurance premiums go up; they are going to be going up at the 
rate they are today or maybe slightly higher, but the rate they are 
going up today is twice the rate of inflation.
  Yesterday, the Senator from Illinois, the distinguished whip in the 
majority, the Democratic whip, said on the floor of the Senate:

       Anyone who would stand before you and say, well, if you 
     pass health care reform, next year's health care premiums are 
     going down, I don't think is telling the truth. I think it is 
     likely they would go up, but what we're trying to do is slow 
     the rate of increase.

  So there you have it. We have been saying this all along--an 
acknowledgment by folks on the other side who are finally saying or 
reiterating what we have been saying all along; that is, health 
premiums are going to go up.
  I think if you are someone who, as I said, buys in the individual 
marketplace or who is in the large or small employer market, you are 
going to see your premiums go up. The question is How much? I think for 
most Americans, they would go up significantly.
  But I say to my colleague--and I would ask him because he has been 
here since reconciliation almost was put in place; you have to go back 
to 1974 and the Budget Act--but I am told it has been used 18 or 19 
times since then. Since the Senator came here in 1977, I think every 
time reconciliation has been used, the Senator has been part of that 
process, has had to vote on that. There probably is not anybody in this 
Chamber who is more experienced on the issue of reconciliation--what it 
was designed to do, what it can do--than the Senator from Utah.
  So I would ask the Senator if he could explain to those of us who 
have not been here as long exactly what reconciliation was designed to 
be used for, how it is designed to function, and why it is not 
applicable to the case of trying to restructure or reorder literally 
one-sixth of the American economy, which is what health care represents 
in this country.

  Mr. HATCH. I thank my colleague for his cogent remarks because my 
friend from North Dakota is absolutely right. The American people are 
not buying this, nor are they going to buy this misuse of 
reconciliation.
  Even with large majorities in the Senate and the House, the White 
House, and most of the mainstream media, Washington liberals have not 
been able to convince the American people this is the right way to go. 
The American people oppose this bill. They want us to start over, and 
they want us to adopt step-by-step, commonsense reforms.
  We could do that, but Washington liberals instead are determined to 
find some way to get their way. The latest procedural gambit, which has 
been raised by my colleague, is called reconciliation. Before talking 
about what reconciliation is, I have to emphasize what it is not. 
Reconciliation is not simply an alternative to the Senate's regular 
process for handling legislation. Instead, reconciliation is an 
exception to that process.
  While the House is about action, the Senate is about deliberation, 
and the rules in each body reflect its role. For more than 200 years, 
Senate rules have allowed smaller groups of Senators to slow down or 
stop legislation. The House is a simple majority vote body, but the 
Senate is not. This creates checks and speed bumps to legislation, but 
passing legislation is not supposed to be easy, especially something 
that affects one-sixth of the American economy.
  Reconciliation is the exception to that because it limits debate and 
amendments and requires only a simple majority. It allows for only 20 
hours of debate. It actually weakens the role the Senate plays in the 
legislative branch and, therefore, this exception to our regular order 
was created to handle a small category of legislation related to the 
budget. While thousands of public laws have been enacted since the 
reconciliation process was created, that process, as the distinguished 
Senator from South Dakota said, has been used only 19 times to enact 
legislation of any kind into law.
  Not only is reconciliation a rare exception to our regular 
legislative process, but using reconciliation to pass sweeping social 
legislation, as opposed to budget or tax legislation, is even more 
rare. Reconciliation has been used only three times to pass such major 
social legislation. Welfare reform passed in 1996 with 78 votes, child 
health insurance passed in 1997 with 85 votes, and a college tuition 
bill passed in 2007 with 79 votes. In each case, dozens of Senators in 
the minority party supported the legislation.
  The health care legislation before us is not the kind of budget or 
tax legislation that has been the primary focus of the reconciliation 
process in the past. It is much more like the welfare reform or child 
health insurance bills, except for one very important thing: The health 
care legislation is a completely, 100-percent, partisan bill--100 
percent. The reconciliation process, which from the start is a rare 
exception to our regular process, has never been used for such 
sweeping, major social legislation that did not have wide bipartisan 
support--never. It was never supposed to be used for that. You can 
criticize the three times social legislation was passed, and your 
criticism might be considered valid by some, but the fact is, those 
bills were bipartisan.
  Washington liberals obviously know this because their latest talking 
point is, reconciliation will not be used to pass the large health care 
bill only to change the big health care bill. My friends, that is a 
distinction without a difference. The bill Washington liberals want is 
the combination of the big Senate bill and the smaller fixer bill. In

[[Page S1439]]

fact, they cannot stomach the one without the other. The bill they 
want, whether passed in one piece or two, cannot pass Congress through 
the regular legislative process. The health care bill that Washington 
liberals want, if it can be passed at all, can only be passed through 
an illegitimate use of this extraordinary process called 
reconciliation.
  By the way, I would like to remind my friends on the other side of 
the aisle that the reconciliation process has been used only twice to 
pass a purely partisan bill on any subject, even those that 
reconciliation may have been designed for. In both cases--1993, when 
Democrats were in charge, and 2005, when Republicans were in charge--
the American people in the next election threw the majority party out 
and gave the other party a chance to run the Senate.
  Just as Washington liberals cannot convince the American people to 
support the substance of this legislation, they cannot make the case 
that reconciliation is a legitimate way to pass it.
  Let me also say, there are those in the House who want to distort 
this reconciliation process even further by devising a way so that 
House Members do not have to actually vote directly on the Senate-
passed bill. They want to create a rule that would deem the Senate bill 
as passed. Talk about distorting the process. Talk about the lack of 
guts to stand and vote for what they claim is so good. Talk about 
deceiving the American people. They have already distorted the 
reconciliation rules, but that would be a bridge too far.
  I ask my friend from South Dakota, Senator Thune, whether he has 
seen, as I have, the spin and misdirection that have been employed to 
give the impression that this is a legitimate process to pass this 
unpopular legislation.
  Mr. THUNE. Well, I would say to my friend from Utah, it is 
interesting how the semantics and terminology changes in Washington 
depending upon what point you are trying to make. But many of our 
colleagues who have weighed in heavily against the use of 
reconciliation on a range of subjects--more specifically now health 
care reform--are now referring to it as simply a simple majority: All 
we are asking for is a simple majority vote, which does represent a 
spin and misdirection.
  Because, as the Senator from Utah has noted, reconciliation, as a 
procedure, has a fairly special place in the history of the Senate, 
going back to 1974, when it was created. It is to be used for specific 
purposes: to reconcile spending, revenues, tax increases, tax cuts--
primarily to accomplish deficit reduction.
  As the Senator from Utah has pointed out, when it is used to enact 
significant legislation, generally it has broad bipartisan support. The 
Senator mentioned welfare reform. It had 78 votes for it. That is the 
most frequently cited example of the use of reconciliation for 
something that was policy oriented. But, remember, that had 78 votes in 
the Senate. A huge and decisive majority of Senators decided to vote 
for its use in that case.
  You also have, as I said, other examples where it was done to 
accomplish reducing taxes, increasing taxes. Those are all arguably 
legitimate uses under the procedure of reconciliation.
  But now what you are finding is legislation that literally would 
restructure and reorder one-sixth of the American economy that would 
have profound consequences and a profound impact on the American people 
for not only the near term but the long term. We are talking about 
using this ``go your own way,'' ``go it alone'' process of 
reconciliation simply because using regular order cannot accomplish the 
objective that is desired by the Democratic majority. So they have 
fallen back on the use of reconciliation for something that is 
unprecedented.
  It is interesting to me, if you look historically at what some of our 
colleagues have said, there are not many people who have more 
experience with this issue or more experience in the Senate than the 
Senator from Utah, but the Senator from West Virginia, a member of the 
Democratic majority, has been here even longer and is cited most often 
as being the author of the current budget process that we have, which 
includes this reconciliation procedure. He wrote a letter a year ago 
which I wish to submit for the Record, and I wish to quote the first 
paragraph from that letter of a year ago in April. He said:

       Dear colleague:
       I oppose using the budget reconciliation process to pass 
     health care reform and climate change legislation. Such a 
     proposal would violate the intent and spirit of the budget 
     process and do serious injury to the constitutional role of 
     the Senate.

  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                                                      U.S. Senate,


                                  Committee on Appropriations,

                                     Washington, DC, April 2, 2009
       Dear Colleague: I oppose using the budget reconciliation 
     process to pass health care reform and climate change 
     legislation. Such a proposal would violate the intent and 
     spirit of the budget process, and do serious injury to the 
     Constitutional role of the Senate.
       As one of the authors of the reconciliation process, I can 
     tell you that the ironclad parliamentary procedures it 
     authorizes were never intended for this purpose. 
     Reconciliation was intended to adjust revenue and spending 
     levels in order to reduce deficits. It was not designed to 
     cut taxes.It was not designed to create a new climate and 
     energy regime, and certainly not to restructure the entire 
     health care system. Woodrow Wilson once said that the 
     informing function is the most important function of 
     Congress. How do we inform? We publicly debate and amend 
     legislation. We receive public feedback, which allows us to 
     change and improve proposals. Matters that affect the lives 
     and livelihoods of our people must not be rushed through the 
     Senate using a procedural fast track that the people never 
     get a chance to comment upon or fully understand.
       Reconciliation bills are insulated from debate and 
     amendments. Debate is limited to twenty hours, and a majority 
     vote can further limit debate. The rules are stacked against 
     a partisan Minority, and also against dissenting views within 
     the Majority caucus. It is such a dangerous process that in 
     the 1980s, the then-Republican Majority and then-Democratic 
     Minority adopted language, now codified as the Byrd Rule, to 
     discourage extraneous matter from being attached to these 
     fast-track measures.
       The Senate cannot perform its Constitutional role if 
     Senators forgo debate and amendments. I urge Senators to 
     jealously guard their individual rights to represent their 
     constituents on such critical matters as the budget process 
     moves forward.
       With kind regards, I am
           Sincerely yours,
                                                   Robert C. Byrd.

  Mr. THUNE. That is what the author of reconciliation said a year ago 
about trying to do health care reform through this process that the 
majority has decided to use.
  There are lots of other examples of our colleagues in the Senate on 
the other side of the aisle--and I could go on and on. The majority 
leader, Senator Reid, in November of 2009 said: ``I am not using 
reconciliation.''
  Senator Conrad, the chairman of the Budget Committee, said in March 
2009 on the Senate floor:

       I don't believe reconciliation was ever intended for the 
     purpose of writing this kind of substantive reform 
     legislation such as health care reform.

  Even the President, when he was a Senator at that time, and now 
President said reconciliation is a bad idea.
  So we could go on and on and we can find these statements of our 
colleagues on the other side who, in the past, have expressed 
opposition, and not just timid, tepid opposition but, I would argue, 
very aggressive opposition to the use of reconciliation for something 
this consequential and are now sort of falling back.
  I have 18 Democrats on the record who have said they oppose 
reconciliation and are now saying they think this could be used for 
this purpose and now is being referred to as a simple majority.
  So, again, I would say to my colleague from Utah that I think the 
spin that is going on now to try to confuse the American people about 
what is happening is something we need to end. We need to be 
transparent and clear with the American people about what is being done 
here.
  I would simply ask my colleague from Utah whether he thinks the 
process of using reconciliation, the process that has led us to this 
point, or, for that matter, the underlying substance of this bill, is 
something the American people would be proud of and would want to see 
us pass in the Senate.
  Mr. HATCH. My friend from South Dakota hit the nail on the head. I 
appreciate his remarks. If this legislation were sound policy, if it 
incorporated consensus ideas, if it had any level of real support among 
the American people, Washington liberals would not

[[Page S1440]]

need to use the gimmicks they are using. They wouldn't have to use the 
tricks that are being used. They wouldn't have to use the spin that the 
Senator from South Dakota so accurately described.
  I mentioned earlier that the reconciliation process has never been 
used to enact sweeping social legislation that did not have wide 
bipartisan support.
  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Would the Senator yield?
  Mr. HATCH. I am happy to yield for a question because I do want to 
finish my remarks.
  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. As I understand it--and I am presiding over the 
Federal Aviation Administration legislation, so this is a little 
offtrack, but it is very hard for me to listen to this kind of dialogue 
week after week without having these thoughts and questions.
  Mr. HATCH. OK.
  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. The Senate passed with 60 votes the health care bill 
which is now----
  Mr. HATCH. Sixty partisan votes.
  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Right--which is now on the way over to the House. 
The House has it.
  Mr. HATCH. Right.
  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. The question is, is the House going to pass it. If 
there is going to be any health care reform at all, the House has to 
pass it. Now, if the House does pass it, it will then constitute about 
85 to 90 percent of the entire health care bill.
  I listened to my good friend and the Senator from South Dakota talk 
about 16 percent of the gross national product. But the bill that will 
come out of the House--hopefully passed--and, therefore, will not have 
to come back to the Senate will, No. 1, be nowhere--will be the vast 
majority of the 16 percent, if that is an accurate figure. But one 
thing that is even more clear to me is it will have absolutely nothing 
to do with reconciliation, just the regular legislative process.
  The only question about reconciliation and the only place where it 
applies from this Senator's point of view is on that particular add-on 
that would be done to include some Republican ideas and include a few 
more things that the House wants to do.
  I ask the Senator from Utah, why does he say this is reconciliation 
affecting 16 percent of GDP when, in fact, it affects 14 percent or 15 
percent of GDP, which is simply in the regular order of Senate process 
and has nothing to do with reconciliation?
  Mr. HATCH. Well, I have already said that it is the combination of 
these bills that Washington liberals want and that combination cannot 
pass without reconciliation. First of all, we know the House doesn't 
like the bill that passed in the Senate. If they had the votes to pass 
it over in the House, it would already be passed. So what they have 
done is come up with some cockamamie misuse of reconciliation to do a 
smaller bill.
  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. I have stipulated that.
  Mr. HATCH. Let me finish--doing a smaller bill that, assuming they 
can pass the large bill, would then come over here.
  I submit to you--and I know it is absolutely true--they can't pass 
the larger bill. I have also indicated that they may abuse the rules 
further by getting a special rule over there that would would have to 
deem the Senate bill as having been passed by the House even though 
there never was a vote on it.
  So the key vote would be the vote on the rule to deem the Senate bill 
as passed. That is a really, really mixed up and messed up version of 
the reconciliation process. There is only one reason they are doing 
that, and that is because it is the only way they can possibly get the 
health care reform they want.
  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Then I would further inquire: I don't see any 
possibility of the House changing a bill, which would have to come back 
over to the Senate, because it would be highly unlikely the Senate 
would be able to pass that bill. So I don't think that will be the 
process. I think what the House will do--and they said they haven't 
done it; therefore they can't do it--well, they said that about the 
Senate bill in the Senate, too, and we did, and it was very close for 
reasons that it got no votes from your side. But that is not the point.
  The point is, reconciliation on 16 percent of the GDP, if they pass 
it--and this is all in the full time of working out the process on the 
House side the Senate bill, which is what they want to try to do, and 
then the reconciliation is not done on their side, it is done on our 
side, in which we put in a few things to--whatever will be attractive 
to Republicans as well as some things which will help with liberals on 
the Democratic side in the House because they are more liberal than we 
are.
  That, I would say to my good friend from Utah, is not reconciliation, 
but it is put that way for months now. I am on the floor and I have 
this microphone and you are being kind enough to be patient with me, 
but it isn't reconciliation. The Senator from South Dakota said it is 
16 percent of the gross domestic product. It isn't. It is probably 
about 5 percent, 6 percent.
  Mr. HATCH. Well, I wish to finish my remarks.
  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. I thank the Senator.
  Mr. HATCH. I am happy to do it. I wish to finish my remarks, but the 
real problem is that the House is having difficulty passing the Senate 
bill because an awful lot of liberals don't like it, and an awful lot 
of conservative Democrats don't like it--if there are any conservative 
Democrats in that body; there may be a few, although there aren't any 
over here in this body. The only way they can get the bill back over 
here with their small reconciliation package that they talked about--
the only way they can do that is by abusing the rules.
  Frankly, if they had the votes to pass it, it would have been passed 
by now. The Senator from West Virginia and I both know they don't have 
the votes.
  Let me just continue on with my remarks. I mentioned earlier that the 
reconciliation process has never been used to enact sweeping social 
legislation that did not have wide bipartisan support, but I also wish 
to emphasize that such major legislation has had wide bipartisan 
support even when passed through the regular legislative process. That 
is the best way to achieve such significant change that can impact so 
much of our economy and virtually every American family.
  The Senate, for example, passed the Social Security Act in August 
1935 by a voice vote. The legislation creating the Medicare Program in 
July 1965 received 70 votes, a bipartisan vote. Legislation such as the 
Americans with Disabilities Act, in which I played a significant role, 
passed in 1990 by a vote of 94 to 6, and a revision in 2008 passed the 
Senate and the House unanimously. That is the best way to enact 
sweeping social legislation with wide bipartisan support and the deep 
consensus of the American people.
  If you look at the meeting down at the White House of Republicans and 
Democrats and the President, I think it was shocking to many who had 
been blaming Republicans for not coming up with a bill, knowing that 
there was no chance it would even be considered, to see that 
Republicans had a lot of ideas and were willing to work with Democrats, 
would have worked together. We could have started by doing the things 
we can agree on and then go from there and see what we can do to bring 
about a bipartisan consensus. But, no, that wasn't good enough.
  So whether our regular legislative process is used or the exception 
to that process called reconciliation is used, major social legislation 
has had wide bipartisan support. This one does not. Legislation with 
much less impact on the health care bills before us had to have wide 
bipartisan support. But rather than compromise or deviate in any way 
from their big government, federally controlled, one-size-fits-all 
approach, Washington liberals have insisted that they know better than 
the American people, and the American people have caught on to them. 
These liberals are determined to have their way by any means necessary, 
even by the illegitimate use of an extraordinary process such as 
reconciliation.
  I ask unanimous consent that a column by this body's former majority 
leader, Dr. Bill Frist, appearing in the February 25 edition of the 
Wall Street Journal be placed in the Record following my remarks.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (See exhibit 1.)

[[Page S1441]]

  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, Senator Frist cogently argues that using 
reconciliation for this health care legislation would be a historic and 
dangerous mistake.
  There is still time to turn back from this path. There is still time 
to do what nearly three-quarters of Americans want us to do and that is 
start over and work together. I hope we do. I told the President 3 days 
after the inauguration, when I was down there at their request, that I 
would be happy to work with him, and I know a lot of other Republicans 
would be happy to. We were never even called on it.
  I wish to thank my distinguished colleague from South Dakota, Senator 
Thune, for his leadership in this body and his articulate arguments 
here today. I have appreciated them. He does a great job leading our 
policy committee and is a real advocate for sound ideas and 
conservative principles. I hope he feels as I do, as we have outlined 
today, that on both substance and process the Senate is heading in the 
wrong direction on health care reform. We need to pull back and do it 
right.
  Mr. THUNE. If the Senator will yield for just one final point.
  Mr. HATCH. I am happy to yield.
  Mr. THUNE. I think it is an important one point. I hear articulated 
by our colleagues on the other side the whole process by which the 
House is acting on this legislation. I served for three terms in the 
House of Representatives. I still have colleagues and friends over 
there, and I know they have a way, through the rules process, of doing 
a lot of things that aren't allowed in the Senate.
  The Senate was designed by our Founders to be more free flowing, to 
slow things down, and to be more deliberative. The Rules Committee 
allows them to put together what is called a self-enacting, self-
executing rule and, as you said, to ``deem as passed'' the Senate bill 
without a rollcall vote or without a recorded vote on it, which tells 
us right there that there are a lot of House Members who don't want to 
vote on the Senate-passed bill. They don't want to go on the record.
  The only way that bill can pass in the House of Representatives is 
with an accompanying reconciliation vehicle that makes the fixes that 
most of those House Members want to make.
  My point simply is this: Health care reform cannot pass absent this 
reconciliation process that is being promised on the House side, and 
also being promised to House Members is that if they vote for it over 
there, the Senate will follow suit. With all the points of order that 
will lie against this legislation when it comes to the Senate, in all 
likelihood the House Members are being asked to take an incredible leap 
of faith that the Senate is going to be able to maintain many of the 
provisions they added to the reconciliation bill in the House.
  The point--and I come back to the dialog the Senator from Utah had 
with the Senator from West Virginia because I think it is an 
interesting point of discussion and one criticism I heard from our 
colleagues on the other side--but, frankly, the House of 
Representatives could not pass health care reform absent this 
reconciliation vehicle. It is about one-sixth of our economy. It is 
about reordering, restructuring, literally, something that is personal 
and important to every American. When you are talking about doing 
issues of that consequence and that impact, it ought to be done, as the 
Senator from Utah has mentioned, as has been done in the past, in a 
bipartisan way that elicits the best suggestions and ideas of both 
sides and gets a broad bipartisan vote in the Senate.
  I thank the Senator from Utah for his leadership.
  Mr. HATCH. I appreciate the Senator's remarks. Make no bones about 
it, they know they cannot pass the bill that has been sent over there, 
so they are going to attempt this extraordinary rules gimmick.
  Frankly, it really disturbs me that on something this important, 
something that affects one-sixth of the American economy, they are 
willing to play games with this in order to get their will when a vast 
majority of the American people are against what they are doing. Only 
about 24 percent are for it. Frankly, they want their way no matter 
what. If they pull this off, and I question whether they can, but if 
they do, I believe they are going to pay a tremendous price.
  It is not the way we should be legislating, especially since a number 
of us have been willing to work with them on issues we agree on first--
and there is a lot we could agree on first--and then go from there and 
battle it out on the issues on which we cannot agree. That is a pretty 
good offer, and it has been on the table from the inauguration on.
  There is something more to this. It is a question of power. If they 
get control of the health care system of this country and they move it 
more and more into the Federal Government and more and more people 
become dependent on the Federal Government, then it is a question of 
power.
  I want to make fewer and fewer people dependent on the Federal 
Government. I would like to have people have freedoms. This is going to 
take away freedoms. Not only that, in order to arrive at this $2.5 
trillion bill, they have had to use accounting gimmicks like imposing 
taxes first and then 4 years later implementing other parts of the 
bill. Some of it will not be implemented until 2018, long after 
President Obama, assuming he is elected to two terms, is gone. That is 
to accommodate their union friends, knowing that otherwise they will 
never have the guts to enact that part of the bill.
  This bill is going to cost a lot more. We are already spending $2.4 
trillion on our health care system in this country. They want to add 
another $2.5 trillion to it. They say it is $1 trillion, but they use 
gimmicks for the first several years. Can you imagine $5 trillion for 
health care? And they still do not cover everybody in our society. 
There is a real issue of whether they are covering a lot of people the 
American taxpayers are going to have to pay for who should not be 
covered.
  To use this process to slip such a bill through, it is abysmal. They 
should be ashamed of themselves. They act as if the American people are 
so doggone stupid, they cannot figure it out. They have already figured 
it out. They know it is not a good thing.
  Mr. THUNE. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. HATCH. Yes, I yield.
  Mr. THUNE. I think they have figured it out, which is why the last 
survey I quoted was the CNN survey which said 48 percent of the people 
want us to start over and 25 percent want Congress to quit working on 
the issue altogether. That is literally three-quarters of Americans who 
have rejected the substance of this legislation--higher taxes, expanded 
government, Medicare cuts, higher premiums for most Americans--and some 
who flatout do not want anything done, which, as I said, is not the 
view to which I subscribe. Three-quarters of Americans understand what 
this bill is about. They know how it was put together, and they reject 
both.
  Mr. HATCH. I know the distinguished Senator knows as well as I know 
that there are 1,700 provisions in this bill that turn the power over 
to make decisions on our health care matters to the Secretary of Health 
and Human Services. I don't care whether the Secretary is a Democrat or 
a Republican. Naturally, I prefer a Republican, but I don't care 
whether they are either. That kind of power should not be turned over 
to the bureaucracy.
  I think Republicans are willing to stand up and have the guts to do 
it. My gosh, there has not been a hand extended to us at all during 
this process. They just said: Take it or leave it.
  I was in the Gang of 7 on the Finance Committee. I thought that the 
chairman was trying his best but was not given enough power to really 
come up with a health care bill, except within the parameters they had 
already decided. He was so restricted. I decided that I could no longer 
continue in those talks.
  The bill turned out as I thought it would. They took the HELP 
Committee bill and then they took aspects of the Finance bill and in 
one office, with even very few Democrats--no Republicans--they came up 
with this monstrosity of a bill on which the House now does not want to 
vote. They are going to do anything they can to avoid that vote, even 
gimmicking up the whole process. That is disgraceful, in my eyes.
  I do not need to go on any further. I think we ought to start over. 
We ought to do it right. We ought to work together and start with the 
issues on

[[Page S1442]]

which we can agree. I think there would be a number of considerable 
issues we can agree on, starting with people who have preexisting 
conditions. They ought to be able to get health insurance. We all agree 
on that. There are a number of other things on which we can agree.
  I thank my dear colleague from South Dakota. I thank him for the 
excellent remarks he made on the floor. I appreciate him answering some 
of the questions I had.
  I yield the floor.

                               Exhibit 1

             [From the Wall Street Journal, Feb. 25, 2010]

A Historic and Dangerous Senate Mistake: Using `Reconciliation' To Ram 
       Through Health Reform Would Only Deepen Partisan Passions

                            (By Bill Frist)

       Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has announced that while 
     Democrats have a number of options to complete health-care 
     legislation, he may use the budget reconciliation process to 
     do so. This would be an unprecedented, dangerous and historic 
     mistake.
       Budget reconciliation is an arcane Senate procedure whereby 
     legislation can be passed using a lowered threshold of 
     requisite votes (a simple majority) under fast-track rules 
     that limit debate. This process was intended for incremental 
     changes to the budget--not sweeping social legislation.
       Using the budget reconciliation procedure to pass health-
     care reform would be unprecedented because Congress has never 
     used it to adopt major, substantive policy change. The 
     Senate's health bill is without question such a change: It 
     would fundamentally alter one-fifth of our economy.
       The first use of this special procedure was in the fall of 
     1980, as the Democratic majority in Congress moved to reduce 
     entitlement programs in response to candidate Ronald Reagan's 
     focus on the growing deficit. Throughout the 1980s and '90s, 
     reconciliation was used to reduce deficit projections and to 
     enact budget enforcement mechanisms. In early 2001, with 
     projected surpluses well into the future, it was used to 
     return a portion of that surplus to the public by changing 
     tax rates.
       Senators of both parties have assiduously avoided using 
     budget reconciliation as a mechanism to pass expansive social 
     legislation that lacks bipartisan support. In 1993, 
     Democratic leaders--including the dean of Senate procedure 
     and an author of the original Budget Act, Robert C. Byrd--
     appropriately prevailed on the Clinton administration not to 
     use reconciliation to adopt its health-care agenda. It was 
     used to pass welfare reform in 1996, an entitlement program, 
     but the changes had substantial bipartisan support.
       In 2003, while I was serving as majority leader, 
     Republicans used the reconciliation process to enact tax 
     cuts. I was approached by members of my own caucus to use 
     reconciliation to extend prescription drug coverage to 
     millions of Medicare recipients. I resisted. The Congress 
     considered the legislation under regular order, and the 
     Medicare Modernization Act passed through the normal 
     legislative procedure in 2003.
       The same concerns I expressed about using this procedure to 
     fast-track prescription drug expansions with a simple 
     majority vote were similarly expressed by Majority Leader 
     Reid, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, Finance 
     Committee Chairman Max Baucus, and others last year when they 
     chose not to use the procedure to enact their health-care 
     legislation. Over the past several months, an additional 15 
     Democratic senators have expressed opposition to using this 
     tool.
       The concerns about using reconciliation to bypass Senate 
     rules which do not limit debate reflect the late New York 
     Democratic Sen. Pat Moynihan's admonishment--that significant 
     policy changes impacting almost all Americans should be 
     adopted with bipartisan support if the legislation is to 
     survive and be supported in the public arena.
       Applying the reconciliation process is dangerous because it 
     would likely destroy its true purpose, which is to help enact 
     fiscal policy consistent with an agreed-upon congressional 
     budget blueprint. Worse, using reconciliation to amend a bill 
     before it has become law in order to avoid the normal House 
     and Senate conference procedure is a total affront to the 
     legislative process.
       Finally, enacting sweeping health-care reform through 
     reconciliation is a mistake because of rapidly diminishing 
     public support for the strictly partisan Senate and House 
     health bills. The American people disdain the backroom deals 
     that have been cut with the hospital and pharmaceutical 
     industries, the unions, the public display of the 
     ``cornhusker kickback,'' etc. The public will likely--and in 
     my opinion, rightly--rebel against the use of a procedural 
     tactic to lower the standard threshold for passage because of 
     a lack of sufficient support in the Senate.
       Americans want bipartisan solutions for major social and 
     economic issues; they don't want legislative gimmicks that 
     force unpopular legislation through the Senate. Thomas 
     Jefferson once referred to the Senate as ``the cooling 
     saucer'' of the legislative process. Using budget 
     reconciliation in this way would dramatically alter the 
     founders' intent for the Senate, and transform it from 
     cooling saucer to a boiling teapot of partisanship.
       Mr. Reid was right to rule out this option when this saga 
     began last year. He would be wise to abandon it today.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.
  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BURRIS. 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.


                           Health Care Reform

  Mr. BURRIS. Madam President, I just heard an interesting colloquy 
between two distinguished friends from across the aisle in reference to 
health care. Although I found that back-and-forth dialogue very 
interesting, one problem with the dialogue was it was misinformation 
that my distinguished colleagues are putting out on this floor and to 
the people of America. They keep saying we should start over on health 
care. They are saying we didn't incorporate any of their proposals. And 
that is the farthest thing from the truth.
  The work on this bill took over a year, and they had all the input. 
Even the President of the United States incorporated their ideas into 
the bill we passed from this distinguished body, in the bill that is 
now lying between the House and the Senate. So while I found their 
colloquy very interesting, I hope the American people will begin to 
look at what is being put out here, what is being said here, and 
realize that our distinguished colleagues across the aisle don't want 
to see health care reform enacted. Evidently, they want to continue 
with the same old ways, with the insurance companies controlling this 
health sick system, not health care system. It is a profit-making 
system for them. I hope the American people will see right through 
their comments.
  I want to talk today about whether there are real winners and losers 
in this health care debate. Since the beginning of the debate over 
health care reform, we have heard an awful lot about the political 
problems associated with taking on this issue. It is difficult, it is 
divisive, and there are no easy answers, and for those reasons, it is 
no wonder our elected leaders have been unable to solve this problem 
for almost 100 years. This is nothing new. We have been working on this 
in this body for over 97 years.
  There will never be a shortage of reasons to put off the tough 
questions, to avoid the tough issues and kick the can down the road. 
There will never be a shortage of roadblocks and excuses. Over the last 
century, we have heard an awful lot of them. But we must not settle for 
that any longer. We must reject the tired politics of the past and the 
tired politics of right now--and the politics we just heard from my 
distinguished colleagues from across the aisle. It is now time to lead. 
It is time to say: Enough is enough--to stop shrugging off the 
difficult problems and to meet them head on. It is time to 
fundamentally change the conversation.
  We have heard far too much about the political winners and losers in 
the health care debate and not enough about the real winners and losers 
in America's health care system. So let us refocus the terms of this 
discussion and keep the perspective where it should be: on the ordinary 
Americans who need our help, the ordinary Americans who need health 
care coverage now.
  Because this isn't about electoral math. It is not about poll numbers 
or partisan talking points or cold statistics. It is about hard-working 
folks who are suffering and dying every single day under a system that 
is badly in need of repair. It is about the people whose lives and 
livelihoods are on the line. Our success or failure at passing reform 
will have political consequences for some of the people in this 
Chamber, but I believe those concerns are insignificant compared to the 
real consequences it will have for ordinary Americans all across this 
country.
  So I call upon my colleagues in the Senate and my friends in the 
media to focus our attention on what matters. Let's talk about what 
reform means for regular folks, not politicians or special

[[Page S1443]]

interests or even insurance lobbyists. This is bigger than politics. 
This is about addressing a national problem that has touched untold 
millions of lives over the past 100 years.
  As we debate this legislation today, there are 47 million people in 
this country without any insurance coverage at all, and there are 
another 41 million people who lack stable coverage. For every year we 
fail to pass reform, another 45,000 Americans will die because they do 
not have health insurance and can't get access to the care they need. 
These are the people who are depending on us--folks in Illinois and 
every other State in this Union. These are the people who stand to 
benefit from our reform proposals and who continue to suffer every 
single day that we fail to take action; for example, people such as 
Linda and her husband, back in my home State of Illinois. In 2008, they 
were paying $577 per month for health insurance under the COBRA 
program. They each had a clean bill of health and had no reason to fear 
illness or injury. But when their COBRA coverage ran out on the first 
day of 2009, their premiums jumped up to over $1,000 per month. They 
had no idea why the change was so drastic. They were perfectly healthy. 
Yet their monthly bills had almost doubled. So to try to save money, 
Linda and her husband switched to the individual insurance market and 
got a plan with a $5,000 deductible and a large copay. The switch was 
easy. They didn't even have to get a physical exam. Like many 
Americans, they had every reason to believe their coverage was secure.
  When Linda's husband got sick in October of 2009, he had a successful 
bypass surgery. The insurance provider approved the procedure ahead of 
time. But once the surgery was complete, the company simply changed its 
mind. Even though Linda and her husband had never been treated for 
previous heart problems, and even though he had not even been diagnosed 
with anything, Blue Cross/Blue Shield suddenly decided he had a 
preexisting condition and they rescinded his policy. His coverage ended 
on the spot, and he and his wife were left out in the cold. Today, they 
owe medical bills that add up to $208,000, with $89,000 about to go 
into collection.
  Linda and her husband are just like millions of us in this country; 
they were perfectly healthy; they thought they had stable insurance; 
they paid for quality coverage. And then, when they needed it most, 
their insurance company walked away from them. That is absurd. That 
should not happen to anybody in the United States of America.
  I think Linda said it best when she said:

       They did nothing but take our money, and now they're 
     sticking us with the bill.

  This is outrageous and it is totally unacceptable. Yet this is the 
reality faced by millions of Americans every single day. Insurance 
companies should no longer be allowed to pull this kind of bait-and-
switch action on anybody. That is why we need to pass reform that will 
give people like Linda the ability to hold insurance companies 
accountable so they can stop abusing their customers. That is why we 
need to restore robust competition to the market, so people can shop 
around if they don't think they are getting a fair deal with their 
insurance provider. That is why we need reform that will provide real 
cost savings, so coverage is affordable for Linda and her husband, 
along with millions of others like them. These are the people our 
legislation is designed to help.
  I think we have heard enough talk about the political winners and 
losers in the health care debate. We have heard enough about 
Washington. Because across America, the only real winners are the big 
insurance corporations that continue to rake in the cash, making record 
profits. We saw the reports given on their income for 2009--record 
profits for the insurance companies, with less coverage, and millions 
of Americans being denied coverage. The only real losers are the hard-
working Americans who can't afford coverage and can't get treatment.
  It is our duty to fight for these folks, and I would urge my 
colleagues to honor this sacred trust. The other day President Obama 
gave a stern speech that captured the spirit of this fight. He called 
for bipartisan cooperation and urged regular Americans to get angry and 
to get fired up and to say: We aren't going to take it anymore. He 
asked them to get involved in this process so we can pass this bill and 
make reform a reality for Linda and millions of others.
  My colleagues, let us take President Obama's speech as a wake-up 
call. Let us listen to the will of the American people. We have moved 
this legislation further than any other Congress. At this time, we 
cannot let this legislation not become effective. It should become 
effective, it will become effective, and we must finish the job.
  Madam 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. SPECTER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                Amendment No. 3485 to Amendment No. 3452

  Mr. SPECTER. Madam President, I have sought recognition to discuss an 
amendment I intend to offer.
  The U.S. shipyards play an important role in supporting our Nation's 
maritime presence by building and repairing our domestic fleet. The 
industry has a significant impact on our national economy by adding 
billions of dollars to our annual output. The commercial shipbuilding 
and ship repair industry is a pillar of the American steelworker labor 
force, employing nearly 40,000 skilled workers.
  In the year 2000, the Philadelphia shipyard was rebuilt on the site 
of the U.S. Navy shipyard. The Philadelphia Naval Shipyard was a 
historical institution in Philadelphia, employed upwards of 40,000 
during the height of the war. At the time of its closing, it employed 
about 7,000. We fought the case to retain the Philadelphia Naval 
Shipyard all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States because 
the government on the BRAC had concealed information from admirals that 
the yard ought to be kept open. But the case was too difficult, argued 
on the grounds that there was an unconstitutional delegation of 
authority to the base-closing commission. But the Supreme Court would 
have had to have overturned some 300 decisions to leave the 
Philadelphia Naval Shipyard intact.
  The Aker Philadelphia Shipyard employs some 1,200 highly skilled 
professional workers. Since 2003, it has built more than 50 percent of 
the large commercial vessels produced in the United States. 
Additionally, the shipyard contributes over $230 million annually to 
the Philadelphia region--$5 to $7 million per month in local purchases, 
$8.5 million in annual revenues to the city of Philadelphia--and 
supports over 8,000 jobs throughout the region. Today, the Aker 
Philadelphia Shipyard is one of only two companies producing large 
commercial vessels in the United States and is a critical asset to the 
economic vitality of the mid-Atlantic region of the domestic 
shipbuilding industry.
  Since the economic downturn, shipyards such as the Aker Philadelphia 
Shipyard do not qualify for loan guarantees under existing programs at 
the Department of Transportation. Without assistance, shipyards will be 
forced to begin reducing their highly skilled workforce.
  As the economy recovers, so will the need for ships and our domestic 
shipbuilding capacity. There will also be an additional need for ships, 
as almost $5 billion worth of double-hull construction and conversion 
work will need to take place by the year 2015 to meet the double-hull 
requirement under the Oil Pollution Control Act of 1990.
  To address this dire situation facing our domestic shipbuilding 
industry, I am seeking the establishment of a loan guarantee program 
where the Secretary of Transportation can issue a loan guarantee for 
$165 million to qualifying shipyards. Because loan guarantees leverage 
funding, the program would require only $15 million to leverage the 
$165 million. The $15 million is offset by reprogramming previously 
appropriated funds, so there is no additional spending associated with 
this program. The Federal assistance would be short-term financing, 
bridge financing, to enable shipyards to remain in operation and meet 
the future anticipated demand for domestically produced ships.

[[Page S1444]]

  I ask unanimous consent to have the full text of my statement printed 
in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

       Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I seek recognition to speak on 
     an amendment I am offering to H.R. 1586, which is the 
     legislative vehicle for the FAA Air Transportation 
     Modernization and Safety Improvement Act.'' This amendment 
     would create a loan guarantee program to maintain the 
     domestic manufacturing capacity for shipbuilding.
       With the U.S. economy still struggling to recover, 
     manufacturing investments can have an immediate impact. 
     Manufacturers have lost more than two million jobs since the 
     recession began in December of 2007, so there is an 
     opportunity to create a large number of jobs in the industry 
     and to simultaneously revitalize our economy and overall 
     global competitiveness. One area where benefits can 
     immediately be seen is the shipbuilding industry. U.S. 
     shipyards play an important role in supporting our Nation's 
     maritime presence by building and repairing our domestic 
     fleet; and the industry has a significant impact on our 
     national economy by adding billions of dollars to U.S. 
     economic output annually.
       These shipbuilding investments are vital to the United 
     States, creating thousands of good-paying jobs across the 
     country. The commercial shipbuilding and ship repair industry 
     is a pillar of the American skilled labor workforce employing 
     nearly 40,000 skilled workers; and the ships produced 
     domestically are an integral part of commerce, international 
     trade, the Navy, Coast Guard, and other military and 
     emergency support. With more than 80 percent of the world's 
     trade carried in whole or part by seaborne transportation, 
     the shipbuilding industry has always had and will continue to 
     have a large industrial base that can support significant job 
     creation and economic growth.
       Since the mid 1990s, the industry has been experiencing a 
     period of expansion and renewal. The last expansion was 
     largely market-driven, backed by long-term customer 
     commitments. Those new assets created much more productive 
     and advanced ships than those they replaced. For example, 
     articulated double-hull tank barge units replaced single-hull 
     product tankers in U.S. coastal trades, and new dual 
     propulsion double-hull crude carriers replaced 30+ year-old, 
     steam propulsion single-hull crude carriers. The new crude 
     carriers are larger, faster, more fuel-efficient and have a 
     four-fold increase in efficiency over the vessels they 
     replaced.
       During the last expansion, the Department of 
     Transportation's Maritime Administration touted the success 
     of Aker Philadelphia Shipyard as a great achievement for the 
     American shipbuilding industry. In 2000, Aker Philadelphia 
     Shipyard was rebuilt on the site of a closed U.S. Navy 
     shipyard. In a few short years, the shipyard became the 
     country's most modern shipbuilding facility employing 1,200 
     highly skilled professional workers. Since 2003, it has built 
     more than 50 percent of the large commercial vessels produced 
     in the United States. Additionally, the shipyard contributes 
     over $230 million annually to the Philadelphia region, $5 
     million to $7 million per month in local purchases, $8.6 
     million in annual tax revenues to the City of Philadelphia, 
     and supports over 8,000 jobs throughout the region. Today, 
     Aker Philadelphia Shipyard is one of only two companies 
     producing large commercial vessels in the United States and 
     is a critical asset to the economic viability of the mid-
     Atlantic region and the domestic shipbuilding industry.
       Despite these successes, the economic collapse has stalled 
     the shipbuilding industry by delaying planned ship 
     acquisitions, constraining the credit markets, and making 
     large vessel acquisitions impossible to finance. The long-
     term customer driven commitments that drove the last 
     expansion are not a possibility in this economic climate. As 
     a result, this industry, which is a part of the national 
     security industrial base, supports thousands of highly 
     skilled jobs, and is critical to the industrial fabric of our 
     nation, is struggling to survive.
       Since the economic downturn, shipyards such as the Aker 
     Philadelphia Shipyard do not qualify for loan guarantees 
     under existing programs at the Department of Transportation. 
     Without assistance, shipyards will be forced to begin 
     reducing their highly skilled workforce, apprentice programs, 
     and vendor and supplier contracts, at a time when we can 
     least afford additional job losses. If this situation 
     persists and companies like Aker were to cease operations, 
     our nation's ability to construct commercial vessels would be 
     severely limited and the investments we made to build this 
     state-of-the-art facility would be lost.
       At the same time, there is a strong and direct correlation 
     between the performance of shipbuilding and the global 
     economy and trade. Shipbuilding activities rise when global 
     trade and the economy grow. Likewise, shipbuilding will be 
     among the first activities to suffer when trade slumps and 
     the economy stutters. This puts shipbuilding at the forefront 
     of one of the world's key and most important economic 
     activities, and a reliable barometer of economic performance.
       As the economy recovers, so will the need for ships and our 
     domestic shipbuilding capacity. The Maritime Administration 
     has recognized that construction of vessels for the Nation's 
     marine highway system could result in significant new 
     opportunities for U.S. shipyards. The shipbuilding industry 
     is also developing vessel portfolios that can be leveraged by 
     the government including military vessels to meet the 
     nation's needs in time of national emergency. For example, 
     the Navy's Littoral Combat Ship and Joint High Speed Vessel 
     programs are based on commercially designed and available 
     vessels. There will also be a need for additional ships as 
     almost $5 billion worth of double hull construction and 
     conversion work will need to take place by 2015 to meet the 
     double hull requirement under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990.
       To address the dire situation facing the domestic 
     shipbuilding industry, I am seeking the establishment of a 
     loan guarantee program, where the Secretary of Transportation 
     can issue a loan guarantee for $165 million to qualifying 
     shipyards. Because loan guarantees leverage funding, the 
     program would require only $15 million to leverage $165 
     million. This $15 million is offset by reprogramming 
     previously appropriated funds, so there is no additional 
     spending associated with this program.
       The federal assistance would be a short-term financing 
     ``bridge'' to enable shipyards to remain in operation and 
     meet the future anticipated demand for domestically produced 
     ships. I encourage my colleagues to help maintain the 
     commercial shipbuilding capacity of the United States through 
     the inclusion of a loan guarantee program.

  Mr. SPECTER. It is my intent to offer this amendment when the time is 
right. I know the distinguished majority leader is now arranging a 
schedule of pending amendments for votes. So I will not offer it at 
this time but will seek to have all of the relevant record and all of 
the relevant information included in the Record as I have stated.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
  Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, the legislation on the floor of the 
Senate is the FAA reauthorization bill. Senator Rockefeller is here, 
Senator Hutchison has been here, and we are working now, trying to find 
a way to move the legislation. It has attracted a lot of amendments 
that have nothing at all to do with the subject. It is as if some 
believe this is not urgent or important. Of course, nothing could be 
further from the truth. There is an urgency to this legislation.
  I know it is not, perhaps, the highest profile legislation in the 
Congress these days, but we have a requirement to reauthorize the 
activities of the FAA. We have now failed to do that and instead had to 
extend their authorization 11 successive times. But because we extend 
it, we then do not improve the authorization and do the things that are 
necessary for improving airline safety, the things that are necessary 
to include the passenger bill of rights which is in this bill, airport 
improvement funds, and particularly modernization of the air traffic 
control system.
  I mentioned yesterday the urgency of moving on what is called 
NextGen; that is, next-generation air traffic control.
  In this country, we now fly to ground-based radar. We have all of 
these airplanes in the sky. Most of them have a transponder or 
something that puts a mark on a controller's screen somewhere in an air 
traffic control sector, and it says, this is where the airplane is. 
Well, that is technically right at that nanosecond, that is where the 
airplane is, but instantly thereafter the airplane is somewhere else, 
and for the next 7 seconds or so, as the sweep of the radar occurs, 
that airplane, particularly if it is a jet, is long gone from that 
little spot. So because we do not know exactly where the airplane is--
we know about where the airplane is--we have routes that are flown that 
are much less direct than they should be. We use more fuel than we 
should. Rather than have direct flights, we cost the passengers time 
and we pollute the air by keeping that airplane in the sky longer 
because we cannot fly direct routes because we do not fly by GPS. Our 
children can operate by GPS with their cell phones, but we cannot fly 
or we do not fly a system of GPS. We fly a system of ground-based radar 
for our navigation, and that has been around forever.
  I mentioned yesterday the circumstances of being able to control air 
traffic in this country. When people began to learn how to fly and they 
started flying airplanes and figured out they could make money by 
carrying the mail, they could only do that when the Sun was up because 
they could not figure out how to fly at night. So they started building 
bonfires, and then they would fly to a bonfire, put a big-

[[Page S1445]]

old bonfire out there 50 miles away and fly to a bonfire and then land. 
Then they put up light stanchions with the lights into the air so they 
could fly toward the lights. Then they invented radar. Then they fly 
based on and guided by ground-based radar.
  But we are way beyond ground-based radar right now. That is what we 
still use. But you do not drive a car out here with ground-based radar; 
you drive a car with GPS. Talk about all of the people who are driving 
their vehicles using this little monitor--that is GPS. Your kids have 
GPS on their cell phones, but if you are on a 757 with 250 people 
behind the cockpit flying from Washington, DC, to Seattle, you are not 
flying by GPS because they do not have the technology, they do not have 
the equipage in the planes, in most cases, and they do not have the 
capability on the ground through the FAA to convert from ground-based 
radar to GPS and something called Next Generation, modernization of the 
air traffic control system.
  If we pass this legislation, finally, at long last, we will move in 
that direction aggressively. I have met with the Europeans and others 
who are moving aggressively on Next Generation, and we just keep 
extending--11 times--the FAA reauthorization bill.
  So we bring it to the floor. It includes safety, which I will talk 
about in a moment, it includes investment in the airport infrastructure 
in this country, which means jobs, putting people back to work. But we 
bring the bill to the floor at long last, I think 3 years after it 
should have been done but we could not do it because it got extended.
  Now we have amendments that have nothing at all to do with this--
earmark moratoriums, discretionary spending limits, school vouchers for 
Washington, DC, coastal impact programs for drilling. They do not have 
the foggiest thing to do with the bill that is on the floor of the 
Senate, which is why it is so hard to get things done.
  I have often said, you know, the difference between a glacier and the 
Senate is at least you can see a glacier move from time to time. It is 
so hard to get things done. And this is a demonstration of it right 
now. People come trotting to the floor of the Senate and say: Oh, we 
are working on aviation safety. You know what. Why don't I offer an 
amendment on something that has nothing to do with it at all and then 
go back to my office. It is unbelievable to me.
  Let me talk for a moment about safety because that also represents 
the urgency in this bill.
  I chaired the hearing--several of them now--on the tragic crash that 
occurred in Buffalo, NY, 1 year ago. It took 50 lives--the captain, the 
copilot, flight attendants, passengers, and 1 person died on the 
ground. This is a case where, when we investigate it, as we have, a lot 
of things went wrong. We have a very safe system, very few accidents, 
but if you investigate what happened that night flying into Buffalo, 
NY, you understand we are not far away from another accident unless we 
fix some of these things.
  Here is a Dash 8 airplane, propeller airplane, flying at night in icy 
conditions in the winter, about to land in Buffalo, NY.
  Here is what we have learned. I don't know whether it is just this 
case, just this cockpit, just this airplane, but I doubt it. What we 
learned is the captain of the plane had not slept in a bed 2 nights 
previous. The copilot had not slept in a bed the night before. Two 
people in the cockpit had not slept in a bed the night before the 
flight. Why? The copilot flew from Seattle all the way to Newark to be 
at the duty station because that is where she went to work. She flew 
all night long on a plane that stopped in Memphis to get to the duty 
station. This is a young woman making between $20,000 and $23,000 a 
year in salary. Do we think a young pilot making $20,000 or $23,000--
which raises another question about compensation, low compensation--do 
we think that person, if that person travels all night, is going to 
have the money to pay for a hotel? I don't think so. Two people in that 
cockpit flying at night in the winter with icing conditions.
  We now know that what are supposed to be sterile conditions in the 
cockpit, speaking only below 10,000 feet and only about what is 
happening with that airplane, that sterile condition was violated 
repeatedly, talking about other things, careers and so on. We know now 
there was a training deficiency with respect to the issue of the stick 
push and the stick shaker which engaged when the icing became 
significant. We now know that the most wanted list of airline safety 
requirements from the NTSB, they have had on their most wanted list 
several things that deal with fatigue, with icing that have been there 
for 10, 15 years. All of these things come together and raise questions 
about how do you fix this, how do you make sure this doesn't happen 
again.
  I am not suggesting that regional airlines are unsafe, although I 
think evidence suggests that the most recent crashes have been regional 
carriers. There are questions about the number of hours required to be 
able to sit in the right seat on a regional carrier. There are 
questions about whether the majors that hire a regional carrier to 
carry passengers have some responsibility for that. I believe they 
should. But when someone gets on a regional carrier, which carries 50 
percent of the passengers in the country, all they see is the fuselage 
and the marking that says United, Continental, Delta, USAIR. That is 
all they see. But that may not be the company that is transporting 
them. It may be a very different company, a regional airline company.
  The question is, that trunk carrier whose brand exists on the 
fuselage, have they required the same set of standards? Is there one 
level of safety? That is a requirement dating back at the time in the 
mid-1990s, one level of safety. When you step on an airplane, you 
should have the opportunity to believe that in that cockpit, on that 
plane, with the training and so on, there is one level expected. I 
think this crash in Buffalo raises serious questions about whether that 
exists.
  I had a chart that describes a combination of a couple of issues. One 
is duty time. The other is fatigue. The third is commuting. In this 
case, with this tragedy, I want to show what has occurred. It requires 
us to address this issue. I want to show a chart that shows Colgan Air 
pilots. This could be a chart of virtually any airline, the major 
carriers or the regional carriers. What it shows is where the Colgan 
pilots were commuting from in order to get to the work station at 
Newark, living in Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and 
commuting to work all the way across the country. It is not unusual. 
Commuting has been going on for a long time. But the issue of commuting 
is a reasonable issue for us to try to understand and do something 
about.
  It also relates to the issue of fatigue. Do you think in that cockpit 
on that airplane, with a pilot who hadn't slept in a bed for 2 nights 
and a copilot that hadn't slept in a bed the night previous, there was 
not fatigue? It seems pretty unlikely that that group was not fatigued. 
We don't in this bill address the issue of commuting. Randy Babbitt, 
the FAA Administrator, now has sent to OMB a rulemaking on fatigue 
which is important.
  My point is, this crash, this tragedy a year ago raised so many 
questions. You can make the point that this is a very safe system. All 
of us fly all the time. Most every weekend we get on airplanes 
believing that we are being transported safely. I am not trying to 
scare anybody to say that is not the case. I am saying you can decide 
to ignore some of the things we have discovered about the Colgan crash, 
but we do that at our risk, at the risk of reducing that margin of 
safety.
  Here is what a pilot said in a Wall Street Journal article on the 
subject. This is an 18-year veteran pilot describing the routine of 
commuter flights with short layovers in the middle of night: Take a 
shower, brush your teeth, then pretend you slept.
  An important issue for those who fly airplanes, an important issue in 
terms of the question, are pilots fatigued? This shows a pilot watching 
a movie on his computer at a crash house in Sterling Park, VA. It 
houses up to 20 to 24 occupants and is designed to give flight crews 
from regional airlines a quiet place to sleep near their base. Many 
can't afford hotels.
  The copilot made between $20,000 and $23,000 a year. That was her 
salary. She had a part-time job working at a coffee shop. She got on 
the airplane in Seattle to fly to Newark to begin her

[[Page S1446]]

workday because that is where her duty station was. She flew all night 
long to do it. The fact is, crews who are making that amount of money, 
particularly those who are flying right seat in an airplane, did not 
have the funding to get a motel room.
  My point is, Senator Rockefeller and I and others have worked on this 
FAA reauthorization bill to try to address a wide range of issues. This 
is one, the issue of safety.
  In addition, the captain of this plane had failed a number of 
different exams along the way to getting accredited. But the airline 
that hired the pilot was not able to have the information to understand 
that. This legislation changes that. This airline has said: Had we 
known about the failure of those exams, this pilot would not have been 
hired. But he was because the company didn't know. This legislation 
fixes that. If you want to hire a pilot, you know everything there is 
to know about the record of that pilot.
  My point is, Senator Rockefeller and I, Senator Hutchison and others, 
have brought this bill to the floor of the Senate at long last hoping 
that perhaps we can get a bill passed. There is an urgency here with 
respect to safety and other things. I hope Senator Rockefeller and 
others can expect some cooperation. It is very hard to get cooperation 
here on the floor of the Senate, but if ever there is something we 
might decide to cooperate on, how about making certain there is an 
extra margin of safety in the skies by passing legislation that 
addresses, among other issues, aviation safety. If we do that, we will 
give the American people some measure of confidence on this important 
subject.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
  Mr. McCAIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the 
pending amendment and call up amendment No. 3475.
  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  Mr. McCAIN. I understand that is the process right now. However, I 
will discuss the amendment. It is very simple. It would place a 
moratorium on all earmarks in years in which there is a deficit. I am 
pleased to be joined in this effort by my good friend from Indiana 
Senator Bayh. I thank him for his leadership and courage.
  I am sure I don't need to remind my colleagues about our Nation's 
fiscal situation. But let's review the facts anyway. This morning the 
Treasury Department announced that the government racked up a record 
high monthly budget deficit of $220.9 billion last month. We now have a 
deficit of over $1.4 trillion and a debt of over $12.5 trillion. I 
recently have seen a bumper sticker in Arizona that says: Please don't 
tell the President what comes after a trillion.
  Unemployment remains close to 10 percent. According to Forbes.com, a 
record 2.8 million American households were threatened with foreclosure 
last year. That number is expected to rise to well over 3 million homes 
this year. Even with all of this, we continue to spend and spend and 
spend. Every time we pass an appropriations bill with increased 
spending loaded up with earmarks, we are robbing future generations of 
their ability to obtain the American dream. I believe that is immoral. 
That is why I have been pleased and somewhat surprised over the last 
several days to hear about the renewed bipartisan interest in banning 
earmarks. I am thankful for the attention. I welcome the Democratic 
House leadership to the fight against earmarks.
  According to today's Washington Post:

       Facing an election year backlash over runaway spending and 
     ethics scandals, House Democrats moved Wednesday to ban 
     earmarks for private companies, sparking a war between the 
     parties over which would embrace the most dramatic steps to 
     change the way business is done in Washington.

  I applaud the Democrats in the other body for this step. It is a 
small step, but it is a step in the right direction. As House 
Appropriations Committee Chairman Obey pointed out, the fiscal year 
2010 budget included more than 1,000 earmarks for private companies. So 
the effect of the moratorium proposed by the other body would be a 
reduction of about 1,000 earmarks. The problem with this is that there 
were over 9,000 earmarks loaded onto just one of the bills we passed 
last year.
  According to Taxpayers for Common Sense, last year's earmarks funded 
by Congress but not requested by the administration totaled $15.9 
billion. So we spent $15.9 billion on earmarks while we are facing the 
highest national debt in history. Additionally, according to today's 
Congressional Quarterly, ``there are several significant catches'' to 
the House Democrats' earmark moratorium. They note:

       If a program is not formally considered an earmark, 
     according to congressional rules, for instance, it could 
     escape any ban. Billions of dollars in spending for the 
     defense industry could end up slipping through that caveat 
     alone, analysts say.

  So why am I not surprised. Thankfully, the House Republican caucus 
recognized the fact that the Speaker's proposal did little to seriously 
address the problem so they upped the ante and voted unanimously to 
impose an across-the-board earmark ban on their conference. I 
congratulate Mr. Boehner and especially Congressman Flake of Arizona 
for taking this bold step. It was the right thing to do.
  Unfortunately, this newfound zeal for attacking earmarks is not 
shared by their Senate counterparts. According to today's Congressional 
Quarterly:

       Senate Democrats signal that they would not follow suit, 
     even as senior House Republicans responded that all earmarks 
     should be banned.

  Congressional Quarterly also noted:

       It is not clear where Majority Leader Harry Reid stands. 
     His office declined to comment on the House appropriations 
     move. But the Senate appropriators' opposition does not bode 
     well for a ban's prospects in that body.

  Again, I am not surprised. The Washington Post article I cited 
earlier also noted that:

       The latest earmark reform efforts follow a wave of 
     investigations focusing on House appropriators' actions. The 
     Justice Department has looked into the earmarking activities 
     of several lawmakers and, relying on public documents, the 
     House Ethics Committee investigated five Democrats and two 
     Republicans on the Appropriations defense subcommittee, 
     finding that the lawmakers steered more than $245 million to 
     clients of a lobbying firm under federal criminal 
     investigation.
       The lawmakers collected more than $840,000 in political 
     contributions from the firm's lobbyists and clients in a 
     little more than two years.

  The battle over earmarks has been waged over many years--I have been 
engaged in it for 20 years--and I am under no illusions that it will 
end anytime soon. I was encouraged in January 2007 when the Senate 
passed, by a vote of 96 to 2, an ethics and lobbying reform package 
which contained, meaningful earmark reforms. I believed that at last we 
would finally enact some effective reforms. Unfortunately, that victory 
was short lived.
  In August 2007--some 8 months later--we were presented with a bill 
containing very watered-down earmark provisions and doing far too 
little to rein in wasteful earmarks and porkbarrel spending. I find 
myself encouraged by what I have heard over the last several days, but 
I have been around here long enough to know not to get my hopes up. I 
do not look at this as being cynical, just practical.
  Let's take a look at some of the things we have spent hundreds of 
billions of taxpayers' dollars on over the last several years: $165,000 
for maple syrup research in Vermont; $150,000 for the Polynesian 
Voyaging Society in Honolulu; $250,000 for turtle observer funding; 
$500,000 for the Bellevue Arts Museum in Washington; $2 million for the 
algae research in Washington; $500,000--one of my all-time favorites; 
it comes back all the time--to the National Wild Turkey Federation in 
Nebraska; $799,000 for soybean research; $349,000 for pig waste 
management in North Carolina; $819,000 for catfish genome research in 
Alabama; $250,000 for gypsy moth research in New Jersey; $1 million for 
potato research at Oregon State University--and the list goes on--a 
$250,000 earmark for the Iowa Vitality Center at Iowa State University. 
The list goes on and on.
  For over 20 years, I have fought vigorously against the wasteful 
practice of earmarking. The fight has been a lonely one and has not won 
me friends in this town over the years. But it is an important fight, 
and I am confident that, in the end, the opponents of this practice 
will be victorious. The corruption which stems from earmarking has 
resulted in current and former Members of both the House and the Senate

[[Page S1447]]

either under investigation, under indictment, or in prison.
  Again, I was pleased to see that the Speaker of the House and the 
chairman of the House Appropriations Committee have recognized earmarks 
for what they are: a corrupting influence that should not be tolerated 
in these times of fiscal crisis--or ever. I applaud my Republican 
colleagues in the House and Senate, especially Senators Coburn and 
DeMint, who have called for a yearlong moratorium on all earmarks. I 
fully support and join them in those efforts.
  But I also think we need to do more. We need a complete ban on 
earmarks until our budget is balanced and we have eliminated our 
massive deficit. This amendment, if considered--and I will make it 
considered at one point or another--will have a proposal to do just 
that, and I encourage my colleagues to join me in this effort. It is 
what the American people want, and we have an obligation to give it to 
them.
  We, as Members of Congress, owe it to the American people to conduct 
ourselves in a way that reinforces, rather than diminishes, the 
public's faith and confidence in Congress. An informed citizenry is 
essential to a thriving democracy, and a democratic government operates 
best in the disinfecting light of the public eye. By seriously 
addressing the corrupting influence of earmarks, we will allow Members 
to legislate with the imperative that our government must be free from 
corrupting influences, both real and perceived. We must act now to 
ensure that the erosion we see today in the public's confidence in 
Congress does not become a complete collapse of faith in our 
institutions. We can and we must end the practice of earmarking.
  I have traveled around the country and all around my home State of 
Arizona. I have seen the Tea Party participants. I have met citizens in 
my State who have never ever been involved in the political process 
before. They are angry, they are frustrated, and they want change. They 
want the change that was promised them last November, which they have 
not gotten. They want us to act as careful stewards of their tax 
dollars.
  Just the other night, my colleague from Arizona, Senator Kyl, and I 
were on a teleconference call to the citizens of our State, and many 
thousands of them were on the call, and we responded to their 
questions. A guy on the phone--he was from Thatcher, AZ--said: I've 
never been involved nor cared much about politics before. But you have 
gotten me off the couch.
  ``You have gotten me off the couch.'' We have lots of people ``off 
the couch'' because they are saying: Enough. They are saying: Enough of 
a $1.4 trillion debt this year and an increase in that debt for next 
year of some $1.5 trillion and an accumulated debt of $12.5 trillion. 
They believe we have spent too much and we have taxed too much.
  So I hope we can send a message by completely banning earmarks and go 
through the appropriate process for the funding of sometimes much 
needed projects; that is, the authorization and then appropriation 
route. Many people believe I am saying--I and those of us who oppose 
earmarks--that we are against any projects for anyone's State or much 
needed help.
  It is not the case. What we are saying is that we want any project 
and expenditure of taxpayers' dollars authorized and then appropriated. 
That way, by authorizing, the authorizing committees can compare all 
the virtues or the necessities of every project and match them up 
against one another rather than an appropriation being added in the 
middle of the night that is directly related to a position on the 
Appropriations Committee or a position of influence rather than merit. 
We cannot afford to continue that practice which has led to the anger 
and cynicism of the American people, and also has led over time to the 
investigation, sometimes indictment, and even incarceration of Members 
of Congress in Federal prison.
  So I urge my colleagues to now stand up and do the right thing; that 
is, to ban the earmarks, at least until we can tell the American people 
we have eliminated this debt we have laid on our children and our 
grandchildren.
  I say to the distinguished chairman of the committee, I did have an 
amendment on bicycle storage facilities, and one other. Perhaps at the 
appropriate time--I will be glad to brief the chairman and his staff--
it would be appropriately in order.
  Madam President, 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. ROCKEFELLER. 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. ROCKEFELLER. Madam President, a primary emphasis I have put into 
this Federal aviation bill over the last number of years is modernizing 
our air traffic control system. I have heard myself talk about it so 
much that I am tired of listening to myself. But, on the other hand, I 
am not sure other people have heard it enough, it is so important.
  One way of explaining it is that most cars use a more sophisticated 
global positioning system than do our air carriers, our legacy 
airlines. That is kind of pathetic and it has to end. The only way we 
can do that is by modernizing the air traffic control system. It is 
doable. There is money in the bill to do it on an annual basis. It 
should be completed by the year 2025. In fact, it has already begun. In 
one of the Gulf States, it is completed and they are using it. Mongolia 
is using it, and we just would think it is not too much to ask to catch 
up to Mongolia on air traffic control.
  We have a very safe air system, but it is not safe enough. By that I 
mean we move 30,000 flights a day in America. More than half of all the 
air traffic in the world is American. Nearly 700 million people per 
year use our airplanes. So how you position airplanes and how you guide 
them and how they know where they are and where they are going and how 
they can most quickly and safely get there is very important.
  The FAA's recent forecasts say there will be probably a 50-percent 
increase in the foreseeable future. That will be well over 1 billion 
passengers per year. But we are already stretched too thin in the air 
traffic control system that we have, which is antiquated and which is 
owned by no other industrialized country in the world, obviously, 
including Mongolia, which probably is not fully industrialized.
  So the Next Generation Air Transportation System--and the word for it 
is NextGen; we just use that word--will create the capacity, will save 
us millions of dollars, it will help clean up our air because airplanes 
will be able to go from one place to the other because they will be 
able to see in real time what the weather patterns are, where other 
planes are. It will help the air traffic controllers on the ground 
position them. Airplanes will be able to fly more closely to each 
other's tail, so to speak. In all ways, it will be much more efficient, 
much more manageable--all in real time. We do it with our automobiles, 
and we ought to be able to do it with planes.
  It is very good environmentally, which to the Presiding Officer, the 
Senator from New Hampshire, may sound like a reasonable prospect. Jet 
fuel is not inexpensive, and it is not carbon free. This will produce a 
lot less carbon emissions. It will also lower another kind of emission, 
which is noise, which affects people, and not just in this city but 
everywhere.
  Most importantly, NextGen will dramatically improve safety, and that 
is the whole point. It will provide pilots and air traffic controllers 
with better situational awareness. It is what we do for our troops, it 
is what we do for ourselves, and we need to do it for our airplanes.
  If you can see weather maps in real time--and you just know airplanes 
are going this way and that way to avoid what they visually see in the 
way of clouds or rain or whatever--if they can get it in real-time GPS, 
then they can cut right through and go from point to point much 
quicker.
  So our bill, S. 1451, takes a lot of steps right away to do that. We 
will be spending $500 million a year--that is in the bill--on this. We 
expect it to be finished by 2025. It seems like a long time. We are not 
going to pay for all of it. We are going to ask the airlines to pay for 
equipage, which is their electronic response to what is on the ground, 
which is what we will pay for. Obviously,

[[Page S1448]]

every airplane will have to have that. They will want to do that. They 
will not like paying for it, but they will not like not having it when 
everybody else does.
  The bill takes further steps to make certain about NextGen. This is 
one of those items that does not sound very good, but if it is done 
properly, it will be very good. We create an air traffic control 
modernization oversight board within the FAA, and they will be active. 
We establish a chief NextGen officer at the FAA. That is a person and a 
group to be responsible simply for seeing that progress is on schedule, 
pushing people who have to be pushed, and we will include 
representatives of Federal employees in the planning of the NextGen 
projects. It is appropriate that we include people who fly airplanes in 
this.

  So we need to begin implementing this technology now, and we need to 
get to the day when we can know we are as safe as we are in our car. 
Actually, I am not sure that is the right encouraging statement, but it 
is dangerous up there and we take a lot of chances. I have been in an 
airplane that was struck by lightning, a single-engine plane with one 
pilot. I did a lot of praying, and here I am.
  Senator Dorgan was speaking about safety. The grieving families from 
flight 3407, that accident in Buffalo, NY, are never to be forgotten, 
and we can never allow a tragedy such as that to happen again. That is 
the problem when you have commuter airlines. Fifty percent of all our 
air traffic is now commuter airlines. As I am sure the Presiding 
Officer understands, in West Virginia and New Hampshire, we don't get--
you get a lot more than we do of major jet flights. We don't get those 
very much. So we make do with the propellers, and I squeeze my 6-foot-7 
frame as best I can usually next to the exit door because there is more 
room there.
  But that accident in Buffalo, NY, was avoidable. It didn't have to 
happen, and it shouldn't ever happen again. We have an important 
opportunity to make serious changes, and we need to make sure these 
changes put safety first. Safety is always the No. 1 consideration.
  So a few ideas. Our bill includes measures to strengthen the Nation's 
aviation safety system and takes great strides to promote something 
called one level of safety. As I stand here speaking to the Presiding 
Officer, I can't believe that one level of safety is going to be 
achieved within 6 months, but that is the objective of the bill--that 
nobody gets to be more safe than somebody else.
  When the Senator from North Dakota was talking about--and this is 
airline pilot folks. They pay their senior people a great deal. But if 
you pay somebody who did not land in Buffalo, NY, in that tragic 
flight, he was being paid between $20,000 and $25,000. Neither the 
Presiding Officer's State nor mine pay teachers that little. It is 
shocking. It is absolutely shocking that an airline pilot would be 
subject to those wages and, therefore, can't stay in a motel overnight 
and, therefore, may go one or two nights without sleep and then fly a 
plane. We can't do that. We can't allow that. That is why we want to 
get to this bill, and we ought to pass this bill instead of waiting 
year after year and postponing it 11 times, as we have, by extending 
the authorization.
  So in recent years we actually have seen the safest period in 
aviation history, even with the busiest system in the world. The air 
traffic controllers oversee over 30,000 flights a day--I think it is 
closer to 36,000 flights a day--and, again, 800 million people each 
year. But there are ways we can do better. Our passengers and the 
dedicated airline workforce deserve better.
  As chairman of the Commerce Committee and as former chairman of the 
Aviation Subcommittee for more than 10 years--I have been into this a 
lot--I appreciate the work Senator Dorgan, who is now chairman of the 
Aviation Subcommittee, has done to continue to focus on safety, using 
flight 3407 that crashed in Buffalo as his sort of emotional touch 
point but simply driving and driving and driving--we have had actually 
eight safety hearings in the committee since that time, since that 
accident.
  One could say, well, so what. But that is what galvanizes us. That is 
what allows us to put together a better safety section in this bill 
which, in fact, we have done.
  So in the bill, we strengthen greatly the training and certification 
of commercial aviation pilots, two vague words with two very sharp 
meanings.
  Our bill requires the FAA to reevaluate pilot training and 
qualifications and issue a new rule to make certain flight crew members 
have the proper skills and experience. They either do or they don't. 
They have to be evaluated, and if they don't make it, they are out. I 
don't know what the union will say about that, but that is what we have 
to do. If the FAA fails to do this and do so by the end of 2011, then 
all air carrier pilots must have at least 1,500 flight hours, and now 
it would be more at the 800 level. In other words, that is a jolt. That 
is a real stick which we are holding out there in this bill to make 
them better in their certification and the rest of it.
  We focus a lot on pilot fatigue. That is a human phenomenon, but it 
is a dangerous one if you are flying an airplane. It requires the FAA 
to revise the flight and duty time regulations for commercial airline 
pilots and issue the final rule within 1 year. No, that is not tomorrow 
but within 1 year, they will have a schedule that will hopefully stop 
this kind of thing, where pilots fly in from San Francisco, don't get 
any sleep, have to sleep in a little bunk house.
  We also require some other key changes. We require an electronic 
database that the FAA must develop and that carriers must consult to 
obtain a full picture of a pilot's experience and skills before giving 
them such enormous responsibility. They have to pass that database 
examination.
  The FAA will also require air carriers to implement a formal remedial 
training program for underperforming pilots. The underperforming is a 
hard thing to evaluate, but it is doable, and the remedial training is 
not hard to do. That is just time in simulated cockpits or in real 
cockpit situations.
  In conclusion, we all must understand the reality we are living with; 
that our utmost priority is always safety, but that is easier said than 
accomplished. The National Transportation Safety Board recently 
determined pilot error was the primary cause of that accident in 
Buffalo, flight 3407. To put it even more clearly, this tragedy simply 
did not have to happen and could have been avoided, and by passing this 
bill, we can do more to make sure we don't repeat that kind of history.
  Safety is always important. I don't know of anyplace where it is more 
important than in the skies.
  I thank the Presiding Officer. I yield the floor and note the absence 
of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                    Amendment No. 3453, as Modified

  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
Sessions amendment No. 3453 be modified with the changes at the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment (No. 3453), as modified, is as follows:

       At the end, insert the following:

     SEC. _01. DISCRETIONARY SPENDING LIMITS.

       (a) In General.--Title III of the Congressional Budget Act 
     of 1974 is amended by inserting at the end the following:


                    ``discretionary spending limits

       ``Sec. 316.  (a) Discretionary Spending Limits.--It shall 
     not be in order in the House of Representatives or the Senate 
     to consider any bill, joint resolution, amendment, or 
     conference report that includes any provision that would 
     cause the discretionary spending limits as set forth in this 
     section to be exceeded.
       ``(b) Limits.--In this section, the term `discretionary 
     spending limits' has the following meaning subject to 
     adjustments in subsection (c):
       ``(1) For fiscal year 2011--
       ``(A) for the defense category (budget function 050), 
     $564,293,000,000 in budget authority; and
       ``(B) for the nondefense category, $529,662,000,000 in 
     budget authority.
       ``(2) For fiscal year 2012--
       ``(A) for the defense category (budget function 050), 
     $573,612,000,000 in budget authority; and

[[Page S1449]]

       ``(B) for the nondefense category, $533,232,000,000 in 
     budget authority.
       ``(3) For fiscal year 2013--
       ``(A) for the defense category (budget function 050), 
     $584,421,000,000 in budget authority; and
       ``(B) for the nondefense category, $540,834,000,000 in 
     budget authority.
       ``(4) With respect to fiscal years following 2013, the 
     President shall recommend and the Congress shall consider 
     legislation setting limits for those fiscal years.
       ``(c) Adjustments.--
       ``(1) In general.--After the reporting of a bill or joint 
     resolution relating to any matter described in paragraph (2), 
     or the offering of an amendment thereto or the submission of 
     a conference report thereon--
       ``(A) the Chairman of the Senate Committee on the Budget 
     may adjust the discretionary spending limits, the budgetary 
     aggregates in the concurrent resolution on the budget most 
     recently adopted by the Senate and the House of 
     Representatives, and allocations pursuant to section 302(a) 
     of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, by the amount of new 
     budget authority in that measure for that purpose and the 
     outlays flowing there from; and
       ``(B) following any adjustment under subparagraph (A), the 
     Senate Committee on Appropriations may report appropriately 
     revised suballocations pursuant to section 302(b) of the 
     Congressional Budget Act of 1974 to carry out this 
     subsection.
       ``(2) Matters described.--Matters referred to in paragraph 
     (1) are as follows:
       ``(A) Overseas deployments and other activities.--If a bill 
     or joint resolution is reported making appropriations for 
     fiscal year 2011, 2012, or 2013, that provides funding for 
     overseas deployments and other activities, the adjustment for 
     purposes paragraph (1) shall be the amount of budget 
     authority in that measure for that purpose but not to 
     exceed--
       ``(i) with respect to fiscal year 2011, $50,000,000,000 in 
     new budget authority;
       ``(ii) with respect to fiscal year 2012, $50,000,000,000 in 
     new budget authority; and
       ``(iii) with respect to fiscal year 2013, $50,000,000,000 
     in new budget authority.
       ``(B) Internal revenue service tax enforcement.--
       ``(i) In general.--If a bill or joint resolution is 
     reported making appropriations for fiscal year 2011, 2012, or 
     2013, that includes the amount described in clause (ii)(I), 
     plus an additional amount for enhanced tax enforcement to 
     address the Federal tax gap (taxes owed but not paid) 
     described in clause (ii)(II), the adjustment for purposes of 
     paragraph (1) shall be the amount of budget authority in that 
     measure for that initiative not exceeding the amount 
     specified in clause (ii)(II) for that fiscal year.
       ``(ii) Amounts.--The amounts referred to in clause (i) are 
     as follows:

       ``(I) For fiscal year 2011, $7,171,000,000, for fiscal year 
     2012, $7,243,000,000, and for fiscal year 2013, 
     $7,315,000,000.
       ``(II) For fiscal year 2011, $899,000,000, for fiscal year 
     2012, and $908,000,000, for fiscal year 2013, $917,000,000.

       ``(C) Continuing disability reviews and ssi 
     redeterminations.--
       ``(i) In general.--If a bill or joint resolution is 
     reported making appropriations for fiscal year 2011, 2012, or 
     2013 that includes the amount described in clause (ii)(I), 
     plus an additional amount for Continuing Disability Reviews 
     and Supplemental Security Income Redeterminations for the 
     Social Security Administration described in clause (ii)(II), 
     the adjustment for purposes of paragraph (1) shall be the 
     amount of budget authority in that measure for that 
     initiative not exceeding the amount specified in clause 
     (ii)(II) for that fiscal year.
       ``(ii) Amounts.--The amounts referred to in clause (i) are 
     as follows:

       ``(I) For fiscal year 2011, $276,000,000, for fiscal year 
     2012, $278,000,000, and for fiscal year 2013, $281,000,000.
       ``(II) For fiscal year 2011, $490,000,000; for fiscal year 
     2012, and $495,000,000; for fiscal year 2013, $500,000,000.

       ``(iii) Asset verification.--

       ``(I) In general.--The additional appropriation permitted 
     under clause (ii)(II) may also provide that a portion of that 
     amount, not to exceed the amount specified in subclause (II) 
     for that fiscal year instead may be used for asset 
     verification for Supplemental Security Income recipients, but 
     only if, and to the extent that the Office of the Chief 
     Actuary estimates that the initiative would be at least as 
     cost effective as the redeterminations of eligibility 
     described in this subparagraph.
       ``(II) Amounts.--For fiscal year 2011, $34,340,000, for 
     fiscal year 2012, $34,683,000, and for fiscal year 2013, 
     $35,030,000.

       ``(D) Health care fraud and abuse.--
       ``(i) In general.--If a bill or joint resolution is 
     reported making appropriations for fiscal year 2011, 2012, or 
     2013 that includes the amount described in clause (ii) for 
     the Health Care Fraud and Abuse Control program at the 
     Department of Health & Human Services for that fiscal year, 
     the adjustment for purposes of paragraph (1) shall be the 
     amount of budget authority in that measure for that 
     initiative but not to exceed the amount described in clause 
     (ii).
       ``(ii) Amount.--The amount referred to in clause (i) is for 
     fiscal year 2011, $314,000,000, for fiscal year 2012, 
     $317,000,000, and for fiscal year 2013, $320,000,000.
       ``(E) Unemployment insurance improper payment reviews.--If 
     a bill or joint resolution is reported making appropriations 
     for fiscal year 2011, 2012, or 2013 that includes 
     $10,000,000, plus an additional amount for in-person 
     reemployment and eligibility assessments and unemployment 
     improper payment reviews for the Department of Labor, the 
     adjustment for purposes paragraph (1) shall be the amount of 
     budget authority in that measure for that initiative but not 
     to exceed--
       ``(i) with respect to fiscal year 2011, $51,000,000 in new 
     budget authority;
       ``(ii) with respect to fiscal year 2012, $51,000,000 in new 
     budget authority; and
       ``(iii) with respect to fiscal year 2013, $52,000,000 in 
     new budget authority.
       ``(F) Low-income home energy assistance program (liheap).--
     If a bill or joint resolution is reported making 
     appropriations for fiscal year 2011, 2012, or 2013 that 
     includes $3,200,000,000 in funding for the Low-Income Home 
     Energy Assistance Program and provides an additional amount 
     up to $1,900,000,000 for that program, the adjustment for 
     purposes of paragraph (1) shall be the amount of budget 
     authority in that measure for that initiative but not to 
     exceed $1,900,000,000.
       ``(d) Emergency Spending.--
       ``(1) Authority to designate.--In the Senate, with respect 
     to a provision of direct spending or receipts legislation or 
     appropriations for discretionary accounts that Congress 
     designates as an emergency requirement in such measure, the 
     amounts of new budget authority, outlays, and receipts in all 
     fiscal years resulting from that provision shall be treated 
     as an emergency requirement for the purpose of this 
     subsection.
       ``(2) Exemption of emergency provisions.--Any new budget 
     authority, outlays, and receipts resulting from any provision 
     designated as an emergency requirement, pursuant to this 
     subsection, in any bill, joint resolution, amendment, or 
     conference report shall not count for purposes of this 
     section, sections 302 and 311 of the Congressional Budget Act 
     of 1974, section 201 of S. Con. Res. 21 (110th Congress) 
     (relating to pay-as-you-go), and section 311 of S. Con. Res. 
     70 (110th Congress) (relating to long-term deficits).
       ``(3) Designations.--If a provision of legislation is 
     designated as an emergency requirement under this subsection, 
     the committee report and any statement of managers 
     accompanying that legislation shall include an explanation of 
     the manner in which the provision meets the criteria in 
     paragraph (6).
       ``(4) Definitions.--In this subsection, the terms `direct 
     spending', `receipts', and `appropriations for discretionary 
     accounts' mean any provision of a bill, joint resolution, 
     amendment, motion, or conference report that affects direct 
     spending, receipts, or appropriations as those terms have 
     been defined and interpreted for purposes of the Balanced 
     Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985.
       ``(5) Point of order.--
       ``(A) In general.--When the Senate is considering a bill, 
     resolution, amendment, motion, or conference report, if a 
     point of order is made by a Senator against an emergency 
     designation in that measure, that provision making such a 
     designation shall be stricken from the measure and may not be 
     offered as an amendment from the floor.
       ``(B) Supermajority waiver and appeals.--
       ``(i) Waiver.--Subparagraph (A) may be waived or suspended 
     in the Senate only by an affirmative vote of three-fifths of 
     the Members, duly chosen and sworn.
       ``(ii) Appeals.--Appeals in the Senate from the decisions 
     of the Chair relating to any provision of this paragraph 
     shall be limited to 1 hour, to be equally divided between, 
     and controlled by, the appellant and the manager of the bill 
     or joint resolution, as the case may be. An affirmative vote 
     of three-fifths of the Members of the Senate, duly chosen and 
     sworn, shall be required to sustain an appeal of the ruling 
     of the Chair on a point of order raised under this paragraph.
       ``(C) Definition of an emergency designation.--For purposes 
     of subparagraph (A), a provision shall be considered an 
     emergency designation if it designates any item as an 
     emergency requirement pursuant to this paragraph.
       ``(D) Form of the point of order.--A point of order under 
     subparagraph (A) may be raised by a Senator as provided in 
     section 313(e) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974.
       ``(E) Conference reports.--When the Senate is considering a 
     conference report on, or an amendment between the Houses in 
     relation to, a bill, upon a point of order being made by any 
     Senator pursuant to this paragraph, and such point of order 
     being sustained, such material contained in such conference 
     report shall be deemed stricken, and the Senate shall proceed 
     to consider the question of whether the Senate shall recede 
     from its amendment and concur with a further amendment, or 
     concur in the House amendment with a further amendment, as 
     the case may be, which further amendment shall consist of 
     only that portion of the conference report or House 
     amendment, as the case may be, not so stricken. Any such 
     motion in the Senate shall be debatable. In any case in which 
     such point of order is sustained against a conference report 
     (or Senate amendment derived from such conference report by 
     operation of this subsection), no further amendment shall be 
     in order.
       ``(6) Criteria.--

[[Page S1450]]

       ``(A) In general.--For purposes of this subsection, any 
     provision is an emergency requirement if the situation 
     addressed by such provision is--
       ``(i) necessary, essential, or vital (not merely useful or 
     beneficial);
       ``(ii) sudden, quickly coming into being, and not building 
     up over time;
       ``(iii) an urgent, pressing, and compelling need requiring 
     immediate action;
       ``(iv) subject to clause (ii), unforeseen, unpredictable, 
     and unanticipated; and
       ``(v) not permanent, temporary in nature.
       ``(7) Unforeseen.--An emergency that is part of an 
     aggregate level of anticipated emergencies, particularly when 
     normally estimated in advance, is not unforeseen.
       ``(e) Limitations on Changes to Exemptions.--It shall not 
     be in order in the Senate or the House of Representatives to 
     consider any bill, resolution, amendment, or conference 
     report that would exempt any new budget authority, outlays, 
     and receipts from being counted for purposes of this section.
       ``(f) Point of Order in the Senate.--
       ``(1) Waiver.--The provisions of this section shall be 
     waived or suspended in the Senate only--
       ``(A) by the affirmative vote of two-thirds of the Members, 
     duly chosen and sworn; or
       ``(B) in the case of the defense budget authority, if 
     Congress declares war or authorizes the use of force.
       ``(2) Appeal.--Appeals in the Senate from the decisions of 
     the Chair relating to any provision of this section shall be 
     limited to 1 hour, to be equally divided between, and 
     controlled by, the appellant and the manager of the measure. 
     An affirmative vote of two-thirds of the Members of the 
     Senate, duly chosen and sworn, shall be required to sustain 
     an appeal of the ruling of the Chair on a point of order 
     raised under this section.
       ``(3) Limitations on changes to this subsection.--It shall 
     not be in order in the Senate or the House of Representatives 
     to consider any bill, resolution, amendment, or conference 
     report that would repeal or otherwise change this 
     subsection.''.
       (b) Table of Contents.--The table of contents set forth in 
     section 1(b) of the Congressional Budget and Impoundment 
     Control Act of 1974 is amended by inserting after the item 
     relating to section 315 the following new item:

``Sec. 316. Discretionary spending limits.''.

  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Madam President, I yield the floor and note the 
absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Franken). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                       International Women's Day

  Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I rise to express my disappointment, and 
frankly bewilderment, over the blocking of a resolution to recognize 
International Women's Day. This week, on Monday, March 8, the world 
commemorated International Women's Day, a day for people around the 
world to celebrate the economic, political, and social achievements of 
women--past, present, and future.
  We have made significant progress over the years in advancing women's 
rights and these should be celebrated. However, International Women's 
Day is also a day to recognize how much work there is yet to do in the 
struggle for equal rights and opportunities.
  But last week, I, along with three of our colleagues--Senator Cardin, 
Senator Gillibrand, and Senator Boxer--submitted a resolution to do 
that, to recognize and honor those women in the United States and 
around the world who have worked throughout history to ensure that 
women are guaranteed equality and basic human rights and to recognize 
the significant obstacles women continue to face. Our resolution 
garnered 15 cosponsors from both sides of the aisle, so both our 
Republican colleagues and Democrats cosponsored this resolution.
  I think it is important to note that over the last several years, 
Congress has unanimously passed similar statements supporting the goals 
of International Women's Day and encouraging people across the country 
to observe this important day with appropriate programs and activities.
  But this year, while this day was celebrated and recognized around 
the world, it was not recognized by the Senate. This noncontroversial, 
bipartisan resolution was blocked and the blocking of this resolution, 
is inexplicable and indefensible. But, sadly, it is not surprising 
because obstruction seems to have become a way of doing business around 
here no matter how innocuous the issue.
  Because we were not able to get agreement from the other side in 
passing this resolution, I would like to read into the Record some of 
the statements that are in the resolution so we can honor, at least in 
our Record, the contributions of women around the world.

       Whereas women around the world participate in the 
     political, social, and economic life of their communities and 
     play the predominant role in providing and caring for their 
     families;
       . . . Whereas although strides have been made in recent 
     decades, women around the world continue to face significant 
     obstacles in all aspects of their lives including 
     discrimination, gender-based violence, and denial of basic 
     human rights;
       Whereas women are responsible for 66 percent of the work 
     done in the world, yet earn only 10 percent of the income 
     earned in the world;
       Whereas women account for approximately 70 percent of 
     individuals living in poverty world-wide;
       . . . Whereas women in developing countries are 
     disproportionately affected by global climate change;
       . . . Whereas according to the Department of State, 56 
     percent of all forced labor victims are women and girls;
       Whereas according to the United Nations, 1 in 3 women in 
     the world will be beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise 
     abused in her lifetime;
       . . . Whereas, the United Nations theme for International 
     Women's Day 2010 is ``Equal rights, equal opportunities: 
     Progress for all'': Now, therefore, be it
       Resolved, That the Senate . . .
       recognizes and honors the women in the United States and 
     around the world who have worked throughout history to strive 
     to ensure that women are guaranteed equality and basic human 
     rights;
       reaffirms the commitment to end gender-based discrimination 
     in all forms, to end violence against women and girls 
     worldwide; and
       encourages the people of the United States to observe 
     International Women's Day with appropriate programs and 
     activities.

  That is a brief version of the full resolution, but I think you can 
tell by what I read, this is a resolution that recognizes the 
challenges that still face too many women, not only in this country but 
especially in developing countries around the world. I hope next year 
when International Women's Day comes around, this body, the Senate, 
will be willing to recognize that day and recognize what is happening 
with women across the country and around the world.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I thank Senator Shaheen for her leadership 
on S. Res. 433. I thank her for coming to the floor this evening to 
explain what this resolution does, that it would have the Senate go on 
record in support of recognizing March 8 as International Women's Day. 
I appreciate Senator Shaheen reading into the Record what is included 
in this resolution. The resolution supports the goals of International 
Women's Day. It recognizes that the economic growth and empowerment of 
women is inextricably linked with the potential of nations to generate 
economic growth in sustainable democracies. It recognizes the women in 
the United States and around the world who have worked throughout 
history to strive to ensure that women are guaranteed equality and 
basic human rights. It reaffirms the commitment to end gender-based 
discrimination in all forms, to end violence against women and girls 
worldwide, and encourages the people of the United States to observe 
International Women's Day with appropriate programs and activities.
  I think it is important, as Senator Shaheen has done, to point out we 
have not been able to adopt this resolution because of the objection of 
a Senator. This should have been done. There is nothing controversial 
in this resolution. It has 15 cosponsors. It is bipartisan.
  But most important, it points out a very important fact about women 
around the world; that is, that they are being discriminated against; 
they are being abused; they are being treated unjustly, and we should 
go on record as to what we need to do in order to recognize that fact. 
It is beyond dispute. These are the facts. These are facts stated by 
respected international organizations about how women and girls are 
abused.
  We know about the trafficking of young women and girls. We know about 
the lack of maternal health care. We know about the lack of health care 
for children. We know about the discrimination in education. In Sub-
Saharan

[[Page S1451]]

Africa, only 17 percent of girls are enrolled in secondary schools. We 
know about that. We know about the abuses in the workforce, the fact 
that Senator Shaheen mentioned--66 percent of the work done by women 
and only 10 percent of the income. These are facts, and we know we need 
to go on record to say we will not allow this to continue.
  I am disappointed we are not going to be able to approve this 
resolution because of the objections. I think it is an inappropriate 
use of a Senator's right to object. I think it is important the 
American people understand that. I thank my colleague from New 
Hampshire for bringing to the attention of our colleagues in the 
Senate, bringing to the attention of the American people, that we stand 
for gender equality. Unfortunately, one Senator is preventing us from 
passing a resolution that should have been passed unanimously by this 
body.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.


                         Tribute to Kate Puzey

  Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, I rise on a very sad moment for me, but a 
very poignant moment as well. This morning at 6:30, when I got up in my 
condominium in Washington, I lit a candle. When I return there this 
evening, I will relight that candle. If you go on YouTube and look to 
``Light A Candle for Kate Puzey,'' you will understand why I lit it, 
because 12 months ago today, March 11 of last year, Katherine ``Kate'' 
Puzey was murdered in Benin, Africa. Two years of volunteer teaching in 
a school in Benin and she was brutally murdered, her life was taken.
  I didn't know Kate Puzey in life, but I have come to know her well in 
death. When I read the article in the Atlanta newspaper about her 
death, I was compelled to go to the funeral that day, to a family I did 
not know in a neighborhood I had not visited. I sat at the back of the 
church, and I listened for 2 hours to the tributes of young person 
after young person, minister after minister, teacher after teacher, 
Peace Corps volunteer after Peach Corps volunteer, talking about this 
wonderful woman of the world, this wonderful light to the world. Kate 
Puzey graduated at the top of her class in Cumming, GA, Forsyth County, 
in high school. She went on to William and Mary College, graduated with 
distinction and honors, was president of student government in high 
school, was everything you would like to see in a young person.
  But she was not just a citizen of America, she was a citizen of the 
world.
  She cared about the less fortunate. She cared deeply about troubled 
children. She committed her life to the Peace Corps immediately upon 
her graduation from college.
  She was assigned to Benin, in west Africa. I am on the Africa 
subcommittee and travel to Africa every year. Last year I was in 
Rwanda, Tanzania, Sudan and Darfur, Kenya. I understand the wonderful 
work of the Peace Corps volunteers in Africa. They are bringing hope 
out of despair, love out of tragedy. That was Kate's mission in life.
  To listen to those Peace Corps volunteers who served with her--and 
they came to visit me and tell me about her--she was a shining star for 
America, she was a shining star for the children of Benin, Africa, she 
was everything John Kennedy intended the Peace Corps to be around the 
world when he created it 49 years ago this month.
  Tragically, though, Kate was murdered. She was brutally murdered at 
the hands of an alleged person who is pending trial in Benin now, a 
person who is alleged to have murdered her because Kate Puzey did what 
is right. You see, Kate, as a teacher in this school, learned there was 
an individual who was sexually abusing young African children in Benin.
  Benin is not like Washington. You do not pick up the phone and call 
the main desk and order something; you don't pick up a newspaper and 
read it; you do not send an e-mail, because it does not exist. To 
communicate is very difficult.
  But Kate, at risk to herself, communicated back to the central office 
what she had learned was taking place in the abuse of these children. 
The next day she was murdered at night in her hut.
  The trial has not taken place yet. I am never going to convict 
anybody until they have had their day of justice. But from all the 
evidence that has been seen, Kate Puzey died because she did what is 
right. It caused me to think, when I met with her folks a few weeks 
ago, and listened to their concerns about other young people around the 
world volunteering in the Peace Corps, that maybe there is something we 
ought to do as a tribute for the sacrifice of Kate Puzey's life; that 
is, find a way to provide for these volunteers a protection, such as 
whistleblowers receive every day in government.
  You see, whistleblower protection for those who would report 
something that is being done wrong keeps them from being abused. But 
Peace Corps people are not employees, they are volunteers. I met with 
Aaron Williams not too long ago, the new Director, who is doing a 
wonderful job at the Peace Corps. He agreed to meet with Kate's 
parents, Lois and Harry Puzey, who suggested to him some of the things 
that could be done as a tribute to Kate, and hopefully preventing 
something like this from ever happening again. I know Aaron Williams is 
looking at that. I commend him for the investigation he is doing.
  Christopher Dodd from Connecticut, in this body, a Peace Corps 
volunteer himself many years ago, and I have met. He has some 
legislation coming soon on the Peace Corps. I spoke to him about 
incorporating a protection similar to whistleblower protection that 
government employees have for these volunteers who are in the Peace 
Corps, and immediately he seized on the idea, because he recognized 
what I know: Peace Corps volunteers are not in the luxury spots around 
the world. They live in danger and with very little support. They live 
way out, but they live there because they want to help. They want to 
protect. They want to right the wrongs.
  When I travel to Africa every year, in every country I go, I invite 
Peace Corps volunteers for breakfast or lunch or dinner. I am always 
struck, first, that it usually takes them a couple of days to get to 
me, because they have to hitch rides or literally walk, because there 
is no transportation. I realize how remote their service is. But I also 
realize how wonderfully received their service is in the countries 
where they serve. We are blessed as a nation to have had a President 
who created the Peace Corps. We are blessed as a nation to have 7,600 
Americans right now volunteering around the world, 155 of them from my 
home State of Georgia.
  But periodically we face great tragedy. A year ago, Kate Puzey's life 
was taken away from her and her family, tragically. As sad as that 
tragedy is, we need to bring hope from that tragedy. From the despair 
that her family feels, we need to have a sense of love, and the best 
way to do it is to see to it that we pass legislation to protect or add 
protection to Peace Corps volunteers for providing information that is 
critical to be known and protect them from retribution.
  I will work with Chris Dodd on that as a tribute to Kate Puzey, and 
when I go home tonight, I am going to relight that candle, a candle 
that pays tribute to the life and the love and the many successes of 
Kate Puzey.
  While taken from us at the age of 24, she has left us with a legacy 
of everything that is right with America, everything that is right with 
our youth, everything that is right with the Peace Corps; that is, to 
deliver the message of hope to people around the world who have no 
hope, promise to those who have despair and hope for the future of 
mankind.
  I pay tribute to the life of Catherine ``Kate'' Puzey, of Cumming, 
GA.
  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. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                              Health Care

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, more than a year ago I came to the 
Senate floor to share stories I had heard from Rhode Islanders who are 
struggling in our broken health care system. Since then I have been 
here on many occasions continuing to share

[[Page S1452]]

those stories and continuing to urge Congress to get to work on 
legislation to transform our health care system so all Americans can 
receive the health care they deserve.
  Over the past year, with my colleagues in the Senate on the HELP 
Committee, our colleagues on the Finance Committee--the many colleagues 
who were active in preparing this legislation and working on the Senate 
floor--we have worked through differences, ironed out details, and 
slowly but surely moved toward creating a reformed health care system 
that will lower costs, cover millions of the uninsured, and deliver the 
care we need when we need it.
  Today, we stand on the brink, on the doorstep, just a few short steps 
away, from achieving this landmark reform. As we move forward to take 
those welcome final steps, let's not forget that the deliberate failure 
to act--as our Republican colleagues recommend--would leave millions of 
Americans mired in a status quo that consistently--consistently--fails 
them.
  I recently heard from Valerie, a working mother in Warwick, who 
carried the health insurance coverage for her entire family until she 
lost her job. The double blow of losing her job and her insurance left 
Valerie and her husband with very few choices. The choice they faced 
was a difficult one. Here is what they decided: After paying for costly 
individual plans for their teenagers, they could not afford coverage 
for themselves. So they went ahead, covered their kids, and have left 
themselves exposed to the devastating financial consequences of getting 
sick while uninsured.
  Here is what Valerie wrote to me:

       Looking back on our lives, major life decisions have been 
     based upon the availability and affordability of health 
     insurance for our family. I have had to pass up job 
     opportunities and make other major sacrifices to ensure we 
     had affordable insurance. Now that isn't even possible.

  Valerie is one of the 14,000 Americans who lose their health care 
coverage every day we do not act. Mr. President, 14,000 is a very big 
number, but it is just a number. Behind each one of those 14,000 people 
is a story like Valerie's and a family who is worried and anxious, 
perhaps even frightened.
  For Emily, a resident of Barrington, the continuation of the status 
quo would prolong the endless runaround she and her husband have 
endured to get just one health insurance claim resolved.
  Last March, Emily's husband required back surgery. The insurance 
company preapproved the coverage, assuring him the surgery would be 
paid for. With this assurance, Emily's husband went to the hospital and 
went through with the surgery.
  Months later, however, the insurance company still had not paid. They 
began to ask for more information. Emily resubmitted lengthy paperwork, 
but she heard nothing back. Nine months have now passed--9 months--and 
the insurer has yet to pay the $17,000 charge for her husband's 
surgery.
  Nationally, insurance company overhead has more than doubled in the 
past 6 years. It is up more than 100 percent in the past 6 years. It is 
now estimated to cost America $128 billion. What do you suppose they 
spent that money on when they doubled their overhead and their 
bureaucracy? More people to take cases such as Emily's and find more 
ways to deny and delay their payment.
  If we do not change the status quo, there will be even more insurance 
bureaucracy, even more fighting to delay or deny claims, and even more 
people such as Emily and her husband who are on the short end of the 
stick when the insurance companies engage with them.
  For Christine, a concerned mother in Providence, the status quo has 
left her worried sick about her son. Christine has always provided 
health insurance for her family, but when her son turned 23 years old 
he became ineligible for coverage under her insurance policy.
  In this difficult economy, Christine's son has only been able to find 
part-time work, like so many other Americans, so many Rhode Islanders. 
Christine writes this:

       It breaks my heart when he expresses to me that he feels 
     insecure and strange that he is not covered medically.

  Christine prays that nothing goes wrong with her son that would 
require medical care, and asks me: ``What is he to do?''
  Well, when this bill passes, Christine's son will have something to 
do. He will be able to stay on her family coverage until he turns 26.
  These stories I have shared today--stories from anxious families of 
fear, uncertainty, and frustration--are the direct result of the 
rampant dysfunction in the broken status quo of our health care system. 
I know the Presiding Officer, who comes from Minnesota, sees this in 
his home State every day.
  The legislation we passed in the Senate on Christmas Eve will begin 
to correct this rampant dysfunction. It will begin to make our system 
start to work for the American people and not support the insurance 
companies working against them.
  To our Republican colleagues who seek to delay and obstruct this 
historic reform, I have to say we need to pass comprehensive health 
care reform so people like Valerie never have to make the choice 
between health insurance for herself and health insurance for her 
children. We need to pass comprehensive health care reform so that 
people such as Emily and her husband can't be denied care or denied 
payment or get the runaround from profit-driven insurance companies. We 
need to pass comprehensive health care reform so that children such as 
Christine's son can stay on their parents' insurance policies, 
particularly during this tough economy, until the age of 26, helping 
them get by during those exciting, challenging, tumultuous years when a 
young person gets out of college and starts to find their way in the 
workforce, those years between college and an established career.

  These changes will make a real difference in the lives of millions of 
Americans. I hope all of my colleagues will hit the reset button on 
their opposition and will think of the Emilys and the Valeries and the 
Christines in their home States, the thousands of Americans whose lives 
will be made better in real and important ways by this reform. I urge 
them to join us in supporting this historic effort.
  I yield the floor, and I note the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Burris). The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                      Unanimous Consent Agreement

  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the list 
that I will send to the desk shortly be the only first-degree 
amendments in order to H.R. 1586 other than any pending amendments; 
that the first-degree amendments be subject to second-degree amendments 
which are relevant to the amendment to which offered; that managers' 
amendments be in order if they have been cleared by the managers and 
leaders and, if offered, they be considered and agreed to and the 
motion to reconsider be laid upon the table; further, that upon 
disposition of all amendments, the substitute amendment, as amended, if 
amended, be agreed to and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the 
table; the bill, as amended, be read a third time and the Senate 
proceed to vote on the passage of the bill; that upon passage, the 
title amendment, which is at the desk, be considered and agreed to and 
the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The list of amendments is as follows:

                          Democratic List--FAA

       Baucus: 1. Relevant to any on list.
       Begich: 1. Alaska Native training, 2. Oxygen cylinders, 3. 
     NextGen Avionics.
       Bingaman: 1. EAS.
       Cantwell; 1. Increase number of beyond perimeter exemption 
     DCA, 2. Bond financing fixed wing emergency medical aircraft 
     (#3477), 3. Study natural soundscape preservation, 4. 
     Required navigation performance improvements, 5. 
     Implementation NextGen, 6. Rollover treatment IRAs airline 
     carrier bankruptcy, 7. Shipping investment withdrawal rules.
       Cardin: 1. Worker safety, 2. Passenger bill of rights, 3. 
     EAS, 4. Relevant.
       Durbin: 1. Study airline and intercity rail codeshare 
     arrangements, 2. Development best practices/metrics/design/
     maintenance.
       Feingold: 1. Transportation earmarks (pending), 2. Airport 
     development funds.
       Feinstein: 1. Cabin air quality.

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       Landrieu: 1. Passenger rights.
       Lautenberg: 1. Newark Airport Traffic study #3473, 2. 
     Transportation terminal fees #3484.
       Lieberman: D.C. Schools (pending).
       Menendez: 1. Transparency of fees, 2. Fuel surcharges, 3. 
     Monitoring of air noise in NYC/NJ air space, 4. Pilot 
     distraction study.
       Nelson (NE): 1. Passenger fare charges.
       Nelson (FL): 1. General Aviation/Military airport program 
     #3479.
       Rockefeller: 1. Relevant to any on list, 2. Relevant to any 
     on list.
       Reid: 1. Clark County lands #3467, 2. Airport improvement 
     land lease #3468, 3. Flood mitigation #3469, 4. Relevant to 
     any on list.
       Schumer: 1. Rules relocation #3478, 2. Transfer off peak 
     slots #3480, 3. Pilot qualifications.
       Shaheen: 1. Expansion New Hampshire site.
       Specter: 1. Qualified shipyards loan guarantees.
       Warner: 1. DCA slots/perimeter rules, 2. DCA slots/
     perimeter rules, 3. DCA slots/perimeter rules, 4. Volunteer 
     pilot organization (medical airlift).
       Wyden: 1. Regulating air tours in national parks.
       Sessions: 3453.
       Vitter: 3458.
       DeMint: 3454.
       McCain: 3472, Bicycle storage facilities, Grand Canyon 
     Overflights, NextGen, Earmarks moratorium.
       Ensign: 3476, DCA perimeter rules.
       Johanns: FAA.
       Inhofe: 3464, Volunteer Pilots.
       Coburn: Audit Airports with 10,000 Enplanements, Offset 
     National Park Tour Management Plans, Repeal an Essential Air 
     Service Alternative Program, Reform the Essential and Small 
     Air Service program, Prioritize Aviation national priorities 
     over earmarks, Cap subsidy rate per passenger for certain 
     programs.
       Collins: FAA hearing in Maine.
       Murkowski: FAA trainee program, flight service stations.
       Bunning: Pilots.
       Crapo: 3457, Boise TRACON.
       Barrasso: 3474.
       Bennett: 3462.
       Hutchison: 3481, 2. relevant to list.
       Grassley: 1. relevant to list.
       McConnell: 1. relevant to list.
       Wicker: 3494, Amtrak technicals.

                          ____________________