[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 17]
[Senate]
[Pages 25634-25636]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                        LEGISLATION LEFT UNDONE

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I listened to my colleagues today--Senator 
Feingold, Senator Durbin, Senator Wellstone, and now the Democratic 
leader, Senator Daschle--talk about a number of different issues. I 
want to take a moment to discuss my disappointment, as we near the end 
of this legislative session, with what this Congress could have 
accomplished, what we could have done for the American people, and what 
we left undone.
  I note that in this Presidential campaign Governor George W. Bush 
talks about his desire to come to Washington, DC, to serve in the White 
House, and end the partisan bickering. As he says, he wants to ``end 
all of the partisan bickering.'' Well, it takes two to bicker and it 
takes two parties to bicker in a partisan way.
  We have almost, on occasion, had debate break out in the Senate on 
some very important issues. But we never quite had that happen this 
year because we can't get to an aggressive, robust debate on the things 
that really matter.
  My colleagues talked about the bankruptcy bill. How did they do the 
conference on the bankruptcy bill? One party goes into a room, shuts 
the door, handpicks their members, and writes it by themselves. It is 
hard to have bickering, and it is hard to be partisan when one party is 
doing the work behind a closed door and saying to the other party: Here 
it is; like it or leave it.
  The tradition of debate in this country is the sound of real 
democracy. The sounds of democracy results from bringing people from 
all around America into our centers of discussion and debate. From all 
of those areas of the country--from a different set of interests and 
concerns, from the hills and the valleys and the mountains and the 
plains and different groups of people--we have ideas developed and 
nurtured and then debated.
  Someone once said: When everyone in the room is thinking the same 
thing, nobody is thinking very much.
  We have people here who kind of like the notion that you must think 
the same thing. Apparently, Governor Bush thinks we must all kind of 
think the same thing; we ought to stop all this disagreement.
  Disagreement is the engine of democracy. Debate is the engine by 
which we decide what kinds of policies to implement and what course 
this country takes in the future. The issues on which we never quite 
had the aggressive, robust debate that we should have had in this 
Congress include education. Do you know that for the first time in 
decades this Congress didn't reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary 
Education Act? We didn't pass it. Why? Because it was feared that when 
the bill was brought to the floor, people would actually offer 
amendments. Then we would have to debate amendments and vote on 
amendments. God forbid a debate should break out in the Senate. So the 
bill was pulled after a short debate. So we let the Elementary and 
Secondary Education Act lapse. It just didn't get done.
  The Patients' Bill of Rights is another issue. We had sort of a mini 
debate here in the Senate on that because it was judged that there 
wasn't enough time to allow a robust debate. The Patients' Bill of 
Rights was not considered significant enough to allow a very robust 
debate on the different positions of the Patients' Bill of Rights. 
These, of course, are not just abstract discussions. The issue of 
whether we need a Patients' Bill of Rights is a very significant issue 
for a lot of American people who are not only battling cancer, but also 
having to battle their HMO or insurance company to pay for needed 
medical treatment.
  I have shown my colleagues many times during discussions on the floor 
of the Senate a picture of Ethan Bedrick. He was born with horrible 
difficulties. He was judged by his HMO to only have a 50-percent chance 
of being able to walk by age 5, which means that his HMO said a 50-
percent chance of being able to walk by age 5 was ``insignificant.'' 
Therefore, they withheld payment for the rehabilitative therapy that 
Ethan Bedrick needed.
  An isolated story? No, it goes on in this country all too often, day 
after day. I have told story after story on the Senate floor about it. 
We weren't able to get a final vote on this issue. We should have had a 
vote on the issue of a Patients' Bill of Rights toward the end of the 
Senate session because we would have had a tie vote, and the Vice 
President would have sat in that Chair and broken the tie. The Senate 
would have passed a real Patients' Bill of Rights if given the 
opportunity to vote again.
  Do you know why we weren't able to do that? Because those who run 
this place didn't want a debate to break out. So they managed the 
Senate in a way that blocked any amendment from being offered. Since 
September 22 until October 31, not one Member of the Senate on this 
side of the aisle was allowed to offer one amendment on the floor of 
the Senate that was not approved by the majority leader. That is why a 
real debate didn't break out on the issue of the Patients' Bill of 
Rights.
  The issue of fiscal policy is important in this country because we 
are now in the longest economic expansion in our country's history, and 
how to continue it is something we would want to have an aggressive, 
robust debate on. The majority party said: Well, all of this economic 
expansion is just all accidental. It didn't really result from anything 
anyone did.
  Well, of course, that is not true. We passed a new economic plan in 
this country in 1993.
  In 1993, we had the largest deficit in the history of this country. 
This country was headed in the wrong direction, and a new 
Administration, President Clinton and Vice President Gore, said let's 
change that; we have a new plan. It was controversial. It was so 
controversial it passed by one vote in the House and one vote in the 
Senate. Not one Republican voted for it.
  They stood on the floor and said: If you pass this, you will throw 
this country into a depression, and you are going to cost this country 
jobs, and you will just crater this country's economy.
  Well, we passed it and guess what happened? The longest economic 
expansion in our country's history. Unemployment is down, inflation is 
down, home ownership is up, personal income is up, welfare rolls are 
down, crime is down, every single aspect of life in this country is 
better because of what we did in 1993.
  Now comes George W. Bush and the Republican Party saying: Do you know 
what we need to do now? We expect budget surpluses in the next 10 
years. We need to take a trillion and a half dollars and use it for tax 
cuts. Let's lock those tax cuts into law right now.
  Well, a number of groups have provided some very interesting analyses 
of this plan. Do you know what the threat is? Providing substantial tax 
cuts, the bulk of which will go to the top 1 percent, will put us right 
back in the deficit ditch we were in 8 years ago.
  Don't take it from me. The risks of this kind of fiscal policy were 
described last week by the American Academy of Actuaries, which is one 
of the most respected nonpartisan organizations of financial and 
statistical experts. Their

[[Page 25635]]

report says the Bush plan would probably signal a return to Federal 
budget deficits around 2015.
  I encourage anybody to read their analysis. This is an independent, 
nonpartisan, respected group that says this tax cut proposal doesn't 
add up at all; it doesn't add up.
  One of the questions is, Do we want to jeopardize the economic 
expansion that has been going on in this country, the progress we have 
made in this country, an economic plan that turned this country around? 
Do we want to jeopardize that with a fiscal policy that doesn't make 
any sense, that will put us back into the same deficits? Or what about 
having a debate on the question of Governor Bush's proposal of taking 
$1 trillion out of the Social Security surplus and using it for private 
Social Security accounts for younger workers?
  This is what Governor Bush said about that:

       . . . and one of my promises is going to be Social Security 
     reform. And you bet we need to take a trillion dollars out of 
     that $2.4 trillion surplus.

  I don't know whether Governor Bush knows this, but the trillion he is 
talking about is already pledged. The reason we talked earlier about 
putting Social Security surpluses in a lockbox is we need them. The 
largest group of babies ever born in this country will retire in the 
next 10, 15, and 20 years. We are saving to meet their retirement 
needs. That is the $1 trillion. You cannot use it twice. It has been 
saved to meet the needs of the Baby Boomers, which is what it was 
designed for, or you can take it away and use it for private accounts 
for younger workers, which is what Governor Bush suggests. If that is 
the case, you will short change Social Security by $1 trillion. You 
can't count $1 trillion twice.
  I simply make the point that on the issue of fiscal policy, we should 
have had a real debate on the floor of this Senate on fiscal policy. 
When Governor Bush and others say they don't like the partisan 
bickering, I don't suppose anybody likes it in those terms. I like 
robust, aggressive debate. I think that is the sound of democracy in 
this country.
  When people say they have plans to take $1 trillion out of Social 
Security, I say let's debate that. When they say let's have tax cuts 
that go to the upper income people and I think that will put the 
country back in a deficit ditch once again, I say let's debate that. 
When they say we don't have time to reauthorize the Elementary and 
Secondary Education Act because somehow it is not important enough, I 
say that ought to be the subject of aggressive debate in the Senate.
  Let's not shy away from debate. Let's understand what good, 
aggressive, honest debate does for this democracy, and let's have a few 
debates from time to time on things that really matter.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa has 10 minutes.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I was going to speak about the bankruptcy 
bill and how bad it is for working families, especially the elderly, 
and talk about how most of the people who are getting into bankruptcy 
situations are families who have unusually high medical bills. That is 
true in my State of Iowa, and many of these are elderly people. I will 
talk about that as we go along.
  However, I have to take a few minutes today to follow up on what our 
minority leader, Senator Daschle, just spoke about a few minutes ago. 
That is the status of the most important bill we have to pass, the 
education bill.
  One day has passed since Republican and Democratic negotiators came 
to agreement on the health and education appropriations bill for this 
year. As I said on the floor yesterday, the agreement we reached was a 
product of long and difficult bipartisan negotiations. Senator Stevens, 
Senator Byrd, Senator Specter, and I, along with Congressmen Bill 
Young, Dave Obey, and John Porter, worked for months to craft this 
agreement. We worked past 1:30 yesterday morning to hammer out the last 
remaining differences. As I said yesterday, as with any honorable 
compromise, both sides gave and got. At times, the negotiations got a 
little heated, but both sides hung in there.
  In the end, we came up with a good compromise. Chairman Stevens and 
Chairman Young led these final negotiations. They have been charged by 
their leadership to come to closure so we can conclude our business and 
pass the bill. That is exactly what they did.
  Less than 12 hours after we reached an agreement and our staffs were 
busily writing the final conference report, a faction within the House 
Republican leadership, led by Congressman DeLay and Congressman Armey, 
decided to renege on our bipartisan compromise. As I said yesterday, I 
hope, in the interests of our children and our country, they will 
reconsider and let the bill go forward.
  None of us is happy with everything in this bill. That is what 
bipartisan compromise is all about. Overall, passing this bill is in 
our Nation's best interests.
  Right now, I will mention a few more details of the agreement we 
reached to demonstrate to my colleagues and the American people why it 
is so important. There is a 16-percent increase overall in education; 
class-size reduction, 35 percent more. That means 12,000 new teachers 
will be hired across America this next year.
  There is a provision I have been working on for 8 years called school 
modernization. There is $1 billion included for school modernization, 
the first time we have ever had it. If the Iowa experience is any 
standard--and I think it will be--this should generate somewhere 
between $7 and $9 billion in needed school repairs around the country.
  Individuals with disability education grants go from $4.9 billion to 
$6.9 billion, a 40-percent increase, the largest in history, to help 
our local school districts educate our kids with special needs; also, 
$250 million in funds to increase accountability and to turn around 
failing schools. That is almost double what it was before. We had the 
largest increase ever in Pell grants, to make college affordable to 
working families. In this bill, 70,000 more kids will be able to get 
Head Start, bringing the total in our Head Start Program to 950,000 
kids.
  There is money in there for youth training and youth opportunity 
grants; a 66-percent increase in money for child care; community health 
centers, up $150 million to $1.2 billion, meaning 1.5 million more 
patients can be served next year; the important low-income heating and 
energy assistance program, $300 million more; Breast and cervical 
cancer screening, so that women can get the needed preventive health 
care they need, an $18 million increase; NIH, a $1.7 billion increase, 
the largest in our Nation's history. Afterschool care is almost double; 
it means 850,000 children will be served by afterschool programs. Also 
in the health end, 9,600 more research projects, one of which could 
bring major medical breakthroughs in cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's 
disease, or Parkinson's disease. That is what is in this bill. Forty-
two thousand more women would be screened for breast and cervical 
cancer. That is cost effective and saves lives.
  There are a lot of things in this bill that are too important to be 
destroyed by last-minute partisan politics. As I said, nothing is 
perfect. The conference agreement has a number of items about which I 
have concern. For example, at the insistence of Republicans, an 
important regulation protecting workers from workplace injuries such as 
carpal tunnel syndrome was delayed yet again. We have delayed these 
worker protections for 3 years now, and last year's conference report 
contained explicit language that they would not be delayed any further. 
Yet as part of the give and take of the final negotiations, language 
was included to delay implementing this regulation until June 1.
  Each year over 600,000 American workers suffer disabling, work-
related muskoloskeletal disorders, like carpal tunnel syndrome and back 
injuries. Employers spend $15 to 20 billion a year just for workers 
compensation related to these injuries. The estimated annual total cost 
to workers and the Nation due to ergonomics is a high as $60 billion, 
according to the Department of Labor. So this is a major problem.

[[Page 25636]]

  This proposal was initiated under Labor Secretary Elizabeth Dole in 
the Bush administration 9 years ago. This is not a partisan issue. It 
is a worker protection issue plain and simple.
  Apparently, that is not good enough for Mr. DeLay. He wants to kill 
this important worker protection outright. I do not see how we can face 
the 600,000 people who are injured each year and say, ``No, your health 
and your safety just aren't important enough to be protected.'' How can 
you say, with a straight face that protecting these workers from 
serious injury is a ``special interest provision.
  So I again urge the House Republican leadership to reconsider their 
decision to kill this important bill. We had a good, honest bipartisan 
agreement. Nobody loved every part of it, but it was decided upon 
honorably and in good-faith.
  This is what the American people want and need. They want us to work 
together in good faith and to come up with a product that is in their 
best interest. A lot of sweat and debate and compromise went into doing 
just that. It is late, but it is not too late to bring back our 
agreement.
  I am confident we would have more than enough votes in the House and 
Senate to pass it. And I have personally been assured by President 
Clinton that he would sign it as it come out of committee.
  We ought to do what is right.
  I just learned a few minutes ago that there is a possibility we are 
going to renege on the agreement that we reached in conference; that 
the language we adopted there is now being changed to reflect original 
language that we conferees talked about, fought over, discussed, 
changed, modified over a period of about--over a period of a couple of 
months but finally, Sunday night, over a period of about 2 or 3 hours. 
We finally reached language with which everyone agreed. I am now being 
told that language is being thrown out. It is being thrown out and we 
are going back to the initial language that was the source of the 
contention.
  If that is so then, indeed, we have reached a very bad situation in 
this Congress. If this is what happens, what it means is when we go to 
conference with the House and we come up with our compromises and we 
shake hands on it, we sign our names to it, if you happen to be in the 
majority, and you want to change it, then tough luck; it means 
absolutely nothing. We operate on our word around here.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senator has expired.
  Mr. HARKIN. Our word is our bond. When you can't trust people to keep 
their word, this institution goes downhill. I am afraid that is what is 
happening now.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.

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