[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 12]
[Senate]
[Pages 16135-16137]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   SENATE ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND AGENDA

  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, as we conclude our first week back from 
recess, having 2 more weeks in this block of time before our August 
recess, I want to take a moment to reflect on how far we have come and 
what accomplishments have been made during this 109th Congress and to 
briefly talk about the tasks that are ahead of us.
  With the prospect of a Supreme Court nomination looming, some people 
are predicting the Senate is going to get tied up and balled up in 
partisan conflict and we are not going to be able to simultaneously 
advise and consent--our constitutional responsibility--on the 
President's nominee and, at the same time, address the Nation's other 
business, the normal business that comes to this body.
  But I think if we reflect on the way the Senate has moved ahead over 
the past 6 months, we will see that even in the heat of an appellate 
judges debate over the springtime we were able to get our business done 
and deliver meaningful solutions for the American people.
  From lawsuit abuse reform, to trade, to energy policy, we tackled key 
issue after key issue after key issue to make America stronger, to 
create jobs, to make America more prosperous, and to make America more 
secure.
  Last night, we passed the Homeland Security bill, critical 
legislation that provides over $31 billion to strengthen America's 
borders, to strengthen our ports and our transit systems from a 
homeland security standpoint. It will boost our emergency preparedness, 
including our first responders. And most importantly, it will 
strengthen our ability to intercept those who wish to enter this 
country and do us harm.
  The London bombings remind us, once again, of the determination of 
our enemy to strike us here on our own soil and of our responsibility 
to remain vigilant and alert. We are taking action. The Homeland 
Security bill we passed last night reflects that appropriate both 
response and leadership.
  When we began the 109th Congress 6 months ago, America faced a number 
of structural problems that were threatening our safety, our security, 
our prosperity, and our freedom. America was drowning in lawsuit abuse. 
Our highways and ports were falling into disrepair. We were hitting our 
tenth year with no comprehensive energy plan, becoming more and more 
dependent, day by day, on foreign sources of oil. Partisan obstruction, 
in large part inherited from the last Congress, was tearing apart our 
judicial confirmation process. Our troops overseas needed our support 
and, over the Christmas holiday period, the tsunami disaster struck. 
Looking at that environment, we needed to take bold action, and we did. 
We did it by laying out a specific plan. If you review what we have 
done

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over the last 6 months and where we are today and where we are going, 
we are fulfilling that specific plan.
  We began by passing the fifth fastest budget in Senate history. That 
allowed us to move on the issues, starting with class action. Frivolous 
lawsuits were so out of control that litigation in America had become 
the most expensive in the world. In 2003, the tort system alone cost an 
incredible $246 billion, more than the overall economic output of my 
own State of Tennessee. Frivolous lawsuits have a huge impact. They 
dull our competitive edge. They clog up our State courts. They waste 
taxpayers' dollars, and they lead to outrageous settlements that award 
the trial lawyers multimillion dollar fees while their clients or the 
victims get pennies. Reform was long overdue. So we pulled together and 
finally passed comprehensive class action reform to curb existing 
lawsuit abuse, with nearly three-quarters of this body--bipartisan--
voting in favor of that long overdue class action reform, which in the 
past had been locked up, which had become a partisan issue. We broke 
through that. One week later, that bill was signed into law by the 
President. We delivered in that bill to the American people a victory 
of fairness.
  With this success at our backs, we moved to bankruptcy abuse. 
Bankruptcy reform is another issue that had been locked up for years 
and years. Again, with bipartisanship, similar bills had passed, not 
all the way through Congress, not to become law, but similar bills had 
passed the 105th, 106th, and 107th Congresses. In this Congress, we 
passed the most comprehensive, sweeping overhaul of bankruptcy law in 
25 years, with the purpose of restoring integrity, responsibility, and 
fairness. Like class action, the bankruptcy bill passed this body in 
this Congress with broad, bipartisan, overwhelming support.
  I mention all this because I want to thank my colleagues for their 
participation, recognizing bills that have been locked up in Congress 
are now being addressed in a way that respects the institution with 
civility and bipartisan support. There is still a lot we need to do in 
terms of curbing the whole lawsuit abuse culture. Gun liability, I 
mentioned. I have talked to the leadership on both sides of the aisle. 
It is an issue I would like to address in the next several weeks. We 
have asbestos reform that is a huge issue, where the victims, patients 
such as my former mesothelioma patients or cancer patients, are not 
getting appropriately compensated because the trial lawyers are running 
away with the settlement money and putting it in their pockets. We have 
to address that reform.
  We have colleagues who are leaving the medical profession, surgeons 
leaving the practice of medicine because of skyrocketing medical 
liability premiums they simply cannot afford. You can't just pass it on 
to the patients. The patients can't afford it, and it drives up our 
health care costs. Plus, it drives my doctor colleagues out of what 
they love to do; and that is deliver babies or be a neurosurgeon to 
respond to that traffic accident you might be in.
  The highway bill was another area where we were able to come together 
and keep America moving forward, another area we were unsuccessful in 
the last Congress but that we were successful in this Congress. It was 
a long process, a bipartisan process, but it was based on more than 3 
years of work, over a dozen hearings, testimony from more than 100 
witnesses, countless hours of negotiation, supported by a deep and 
broad coalition from State and local highway authorities to national 
safety advocates. As every commuter knows, America's roads have become 
locked up, choked with traffic. In many cities, rush hours now last not 
minutes but, indeed, hours.
  Worse yet, from a safety standpoint, car crashes are the No. 1 cause 
of death for every age. From 3 to 10 to 15 to 20, 30, up to 33 years of 
age, car crashes are the No. 1 cause of death. Nearly 43,000 people 
died on our Nation's highways last year. Transportation Secretary Norm 
Mineta rightly observed that:

       If this many people were to die from any one disease in a 
     single year, Americans would demand a vaccine.

  This year we responded. This year we were able to provide relief. By 
an overwhelming vote of 91 to 11 in this body, we passed the long 
overdue SAFETEA bill. As communities improve their roads and their 
ports, America's drivers will face less time sitting in traffic jams, 
burning up gas, burning up time.
  That brings me to energy. Like the highway bill and the lawsuit abuse 
reform, energy policy had languished in this body for years. For over a 
decade, we have lacked a comprehensive energy policy. While Congress 
had been dithering about, we have watched oil prices soar. We watched 
our dependence on foreign sources of oil increase day by day to the 
point that about 59 percent of our oil is imported. Because of high 
natural gas prices, manufacturing jobs and chemical jobs have been 
steadily moving off our shores overseas. Farmers are taking a pay cut. 
Consumers are paying too much to heat their homes, to cool their homes. 
Communities across the country have been suffering. As many as 2.7 
million manufacturing jobs have been lost because of soaring energy 
prices.
  All the while, we have had that dangerous dependence on foreign 
sources of oil increase. So we had all this as a backdrop, and we 
responded. We were finally able to act, and we were able to pass a 
comprehensive Energy bill. It took 10 years, but we made it. It has 
passed the Senate and House. It is in conference, and I am hopeful. I 
would like to see it, in the next 2 weeks, come back for the final vote 
on the floor of the Senate. It is an energy plan that will make America 
safer. It will create jobs, and it does make America more secure.
  Another area where we simultaneously strengthened America's national 
and economic security was the passage of the Central American Free 
Trade Agreement. That agreement, which President Bush signed in May of 
2004, will eliminate most trade barriers between the United States, 
Costa Rica, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras, and the 
Dominican Republic. New consumers of American goods and more sales to 
Central America mean more jobs at home. It means more shared values.
  It is fascinating that 20 years ago, only two of the CAFTA nations 
were established democracies, Costa Rica and the United States. Today, 
all seven can be counted among the free nations of the world. By 
linking their economies with democratic capitalism, CAFTA will help 
these nations against the threats posed in their neighborhood, mainly 
Venezuela and Cuba. It will strengthen their democracies and provide a 
model for freedom seekers around the world.
  That does bring me to the world stage. In April, by a near unanimous 
vote, we passed the Emergency Defense War Supplemental and Tsunami 
Relief Act. On the morning of December 26, the world woke up to that 
terrible disaster of the tsunami in Southeast Asia. Deep in the Indian 
Ocean, an enormous earthquake, estimated at a magnitude of 9.0 on the 
Richter scale, possibly one of most powerful earthquakes in history, 
caused a devastating tsunami which killed over 155,000 people, 
seriously injured half a million, and displaced as many as 5 million 
from their demolished homes. Thousands of people were literally washed 
out to sea as this enormous wall of water, traveling at speeds of over 
500 miles an hour in the open ocean, struck the coast of that Indian 
Ocean realm.
  As the waves receded, they took with them whole towns and villages. 
In the face of this terrible tragedy, America took swift action, and we 
responded on the floor of the Senate. We immediately dispatched 
military ships, planes and helicopters to deliver aid. Twelve thousand 
of our men and women in uniform worked around the clock to reach 
survivors, and Americans at home responded through the Internet, 
through donations, through their churches, through their mosques, moved 
by the terrible images and stories, and gave millions from their own 
pockets to help.
  I had the opportunity to travel with Senator Landrieu to survey the 
damage in Sri Lanka. We met with local doctors and local orphanages and 
government officials and nongovernment

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organizations. We saw firsthand the tragedy and the human suffering the 
tsunami left. It was clear to us at the time exactly what we are seeing 
now, 6 months later, play out. It is going to take months and, indeed, 
years to respond to this tragedy. Many families with the loss of life 
never will be able to respond.
  The legislation we passed in April provided an additional $880 
million to help the victims recover and rebuild. The tsunami story may 
no longer be grabbing the headlines, but America is still hard at work 
right now in responding to this disaster.
  We are also hard at work fighting the war on terror. The emergency 
defense bill provides $75.9 billion in support for our brave soldiers 
in Afghanistan and Iraq, hunting down the enemy, helping to rebuild and 
to spread freedom and democracy. As the President has reminded the 
Nation, we are engaged in an epic struggle. The terrorists want to deny 
the Iraqi people the freedoms that are the right of all mankind. They 
want democracy in Iraq to fail so they can seize power, so they can 
spread their poison.
  But they are not going to succeed. We will win this war. To do so, we 
must continue to stand together, united in our support of our troops 
and in support of our values. The terrorists are no match for the will 
of the American people, and they are no match for a world that is 
united against this terror.
  The dastardly attack on London last week was an attack on the 
civilized world. I speak for all when I say that America stands 
shoulder to shoulder with the British people. We are in this together. 
Together we will win.
  Over the past 6 months, the Senate has shown real leadership 
confronting a variety of priorities. We also have had some tense and 
dramatic moments; probably none more dramatic than the battle to 
confirm the President's judicial nominees. We appear to have begun to 
repair the confirmation process and to restore the dignity and the 
fairness and the respect to our debates over judicial nominees. As we 
have said all along, each of these candidates was amply qualified and 
enjoyed the majority support of the Senate. Each would be confirmed if 
brought to the Senate floor, and each of them were--Priscilla Owen, 
Janice Rogers Brown, William Pryor, Richard Griffin, David McKeague, 
Tom Griffith--confirmed to the Federal bench.
  Unfortunately, in the process, they had to endure many unfair attacks 
on their character. Some of the nominees in the last Congress found the 
process that we put them through so painful that they dropped out and 
said: Don't consider me any more. That character assassination is too 
much. Therefore, they withdrew from consideration, at a loss for the 
American people. So it is no wonder that we now hear reports that 
smart, qualified judges don't even want to be considered for the 
Federal bench because of the process. We have put that process behind 
us. So many of them have concluded that Washington is no place to risk 
your reputation because you may never get it back.
  As we look ahead to the Supreme Court nomination process, things are 
going very well.
  I do urge my colleagues to make sure that our deliberations are fair 
and dignified and respectful of that nominee when the nominee is 
presented.
  This last Tuesday, I mentioned that the President is not obligated to 
consult with Senators before making a nomination. In fact, he is not 
obligated to consult with anyone; consultation is a courtesy, not a 
constitutional mandate. But the President has reached out to both sides 
of the aisle, the Judiciary Committee, individual Senators, with one-
on-one meetings, and his highest staff are continually listening and 
taking suggestions. I commend the administration and the President for 
reaching out in an inclusive and bipartisan manner, in a manner that 
really is unprecedented.
  Mr. President, let me just say that I believe what we have seen is a 
promising start to what can and should be a thoughtful and 
statesmanlike debate as we prepare for that nominee coming from the 
President for the Supreme Court. In that debate, I want to continue to 
encourage my colleagues to place principle before partisan politics and 
place results before rhetoric. We owe it to the American people to 
conduct this nominations process, which involves the major institutions 
of our Government, the three grand institutions of justice, 
legislation, and the executive branch coming together. We owe it to the 
American people to continue to move forward with those meaningful 
solutions to real problems.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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