[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 2]
[Senate]
[Pages 2428-2466]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




           MOVING AHEAD FOR PROGRESS IN THE 21ST CENTURY ACT

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the 
Senate will resume consideration of S. 1813, which the clerk will 
report by title.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (S. 1813) to reauthorize Federal-aid highway and 
     highway safety construction programs, and for other purposes.

  Pending:

       Reid amendment No. 1730, of a perfecting nature.
       Reid (for Blunt) amendment No. 1520 (to amendment No. 
     1730), to amend the Patient Protection and Affordable Care 
     Act to protect rights of conscience with regard to 
     requirements for coverage of specific items and services.


[[Page 2429]]

  Mrs. BOXER. As the senior Senator from New York relinquishes the 
chair to his colleague from New York, I want to thank both of them for 
their amazing leadership in every issue we turn to today.
  Senator Schumer's work to help us bring this transportation bill to 
the floor is exemplary. And Senator Schumer knows, as Senator 
Gillibrand knows and every one of us knows, we cannot have a strong 
economy if we cannot move goods, if we cannot move people, if commerce 
comes to a halt. So we have to pass a transportation bill to make sure 
our highways are adequate, our bridges are safe, our commerce can move, 
and our transit systems can carry people from one place to another.
  I want to say to my colleague who is now sitting in the chair, 
Senator Gillibrand, that I listened to her remarks. I am very touched 
by them. She talked about women's voices, and she is dedicated to 
ensuring they are heard. Let me assure my friend that her voice has 
been heard on this and so many other important issues. And it is an 
effective voice. She was the one who came to me when the Republicans 
started to say they did not think it was necessary for women to have 
access to birth control with no copay through their insurance, and 
said: Barbara, do you understand that a full 15 percent of women are 
prescribed birth control pills because they want to avoid ovarian 
cancer, they want to make sure that a cyst on an ovary does not get out 
of control, they want to avoid debilitating monthly pain, and even it 
is used for terrible skin conditions?
  So when we hear our colleagues talk about birth control as if it is 
some unnecessary prescription--although you never hear them say it when 
it comes to Viagra, I would note--let me point out it is necessary. We 
will be on our feet day after day, month after month, hour after hour, 
and minute after minute, because we are not going to let them take away 
medicine from women. Oh, no. They are not. They will not. And the women 
of this country will not have it. They are engaged in this debate. They 
understand it. My friend from New York has been an incredible voice.
  So here we are. We are on the highway bill. You may wonder, why is it 
that the Senator from New York came and talked about the issue of birth 
control and women's health when we are on a highway bill? Well, here is 
the news: My Republican colleagues are so intent on taking away women's 
rights, rights to health care, that they insisted on having a vote to 
take away these rights before they would allow the highway bill to move 
forward. Can you imagine?
  I think it appropriate that at this point I pay tribute to my 
colleague, Senator Olympia Snowe, who has been an amazing colleague, 
who has been a voice of reason, a voice of progress, over the many 
years she has served. I have served with her in the House and the 
Senate, I do not know, decades. I will miss Olympia Snowe. But let's 
listen to what she said. She said: This place has become so polarized, 
so partisan we cannot move forward.
  I would submit to you that the situation we find ourselves in at this 
moment is exhibit A on why someone such as Olympia Snowe is saying this 
has been a privilege and a wonderful thing, but I think I am going to 
move on. Because here we have a highway bill that is completely 
bipartisan. And again, my colleague in the chair from New York, Senator 
Gillibrand, is a very important member of the Environment and Public 
Works Committee. We passed a bill out of our committee with a vote of 
18 to 0. We had 100 percent support in a polarized time because 
everybody understands we have to make sure we have a No. 1 
transportation system, a class A transportation system in this great 
country of ours, a vision that was first brought to us by Dwight 
Eisenhower in the 1950s when he said, we have to be able to have a 
network of national highways.
  So here is a bill that comes out of the EPW Committee 100 percent 
bipartisan. The section that dealt with banking comes out of the 
Banking Committee 100 percent bipartisan. It comes out of the Finance 
Committee very bipartisan, not 100 percent but very. And in Commerce it 
had a problem, which we have rectified, and it is now bipartisan.
  So four committees have done their work on the transportation highway 
bill, and all of them have been bipartisan. So we come to the floor--I 
think this is now the third week or the second week on the bill--the 
second week on the bill--and we have gone nowhere, because in order for 
us to move forward, the Republicans are insisting on a vote to take 
away women's health care. So Senator Reid said to them: Fine. We will 
vote on it Thursday morning. But let it be known throughout this land 
what is going on.
  Sometimes people tune in and they say: Oh, it is so complicated, I 
cannot follow it. It is not complicated. Here is where we are: We have 
a bipartisan bill, 2.8 million jobs are at stake. We have to do it. The 
transportation bill is going to expire, the authorization, so we will 
not have any program in place March 31. We have to do this work, and we 
cannot move forward unless we have a vote on a polarizing amendment--a 
polarizing amendment.
  How did it come about, this polarizing amendment? It came about 
because we passed the health care law that made some incredible 
breakthroughs. Two of the biggest breakthroughs, I think, in that bill 
is that we for the first time said to insurance companies and 
employers: When you provide insurance for your people, it must include 
a list of essential health care benefits and preventive health care 
benefits.
  Let me read you the list of essential health care benefits that 
people of America are going to have unless the Blunt amendment passes 
and takes this away. This is the list of essential benefits the Blunt 
amendment would take away: Emergency services, hospitalization, 
maternity and newborn care, mental health treatment, preventive and 
wellness services, pediatric services, prescription drugs, ambulatory 
patient services, rehabilitative services and devices, and laboratory 
services.
  These are categories of services that health insurance plans must 
cover under health care reform. But if the Blunt amendment passes--and 
we know it started because of birth control, but it has reached beyond 
that to every single essential health benefit that any employer in this 
Nation, if Blunt passes, could say: I do not want to do any of these. I 
do not want to do some of these, because I have a moral objection.
  So if you worked for an employer who believes that prayer is what we 
need to cure illness--and by the way, that is their right. I would 
fight for their right to believe that. They would be able, however, to 
tell you that that is your alternative, and they do not have to provide 
any of those essential health benefits in their insurance plan.
  The other thing the Blunt amendment does is it says that no more 
preventive health benefits will be required. Under the law, these are 
the preventive health benefits that are required to be offered to you. 
You do not have to take them if you are an employee who has an 
objection to any of these things. You do not have to do it, but they 
have to be offered to you: Breast cancer screenings, cervical cancer 
screenings, hepatitis A and B vaccines, measles and mumps vaccine, 
colorectal cancer screening, diabetes screening, cholesterol screening, 
blood pressure screening, obesity screening, tobacco cessation, autism 
screening, hearing screening for newborns, sickle cell screening, 
fluoride supplements, tuberculosis testing for children, depression 
screening, osteoporosis screening, flu vaccines for children and the 
elderly, contraception.
  Contraception is a preventive health benefit because we know it 
prevents unintended pregnancies and prevents abortion and prevents 
illness. Fifteen percent of people take it to prevent illness. Also, 
well-woman visits, HPV testing, STD screening, HIV screening, breast 
feeding support, domestic violence screening, and gestational diabetes 
screening--all of these have to be provided. But if you don't want to 
take contraception, you can say, no; I am not interested in that. If 
you don't

[[Page 2430]]

want to have your child to have a vaccine--personally, I think that is 
terrible--but you don't have to. But that is what is required.
  Under the Blunt amendment, let's be clear. Any employer who simply 
says they have a moral objection can say: Sorry, see this list. We are 
not going to do 6, 7, 8, 9, or 10 things here. For example, obesity 
screening, we believe that is your problem, and we have a moral 
objection to that. Colorectal cancer screening, I have an objection to 
that because, again, my religion says it doesn't do any good.
  This is why Blunt is so dangerous. It is about denying women the 
absolute right to have contraception offered to them--it does that, but 
it does a lot more than that. Again, we are on a highway transportation 
bill. It is 2.8 million jobs. It came out of four committees, and it is 
bipartisan. It will keep this country moving. It will keep this economy 
going.
  Madam President, I want you to imagine one Super Bowl stadium filled 
with people. Think about what that looks like in your mind's eye. Every 
seat in that stadium is filled. Now imagine 15 of those stadiums 
filled. That is how many unemployed construction workers there are in 
this great country today.
  Yes, we are making progress. Yes, President Obama took us out of the 
worst recession since the Great Depression that he inherited. Yes, he 
turned it around. But he and we say, we have to do more. We cannot just 
say, because we are creating jobs now, it is enough. The President 
knows it; we know it. We were bleeding 800,000 jobs when he took over, 
and now we have stemmed it and we are creating a couple hundred jobs a 
month--100,000, 200,000--thank goodness. We have created, in the last 6 
months or so, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of jobs.
  Here is the point: Why on Earth would we take a U-turn as we are on 
the road to economic recovery, as we are on the road to a bill that is 
absolutely necessary, and take up the issue of women's health? I am 
telling you, I believe it is radical. I believe it is taking us 
backward. I believe it is hurtful to women. I call on every woman, 
regardless of political party, to make your voice heard against the 
Blunt amendment. You are being attacked.
  What the President did in dealing with the issue of contraception 
showed the wisdom of Solomon. He basically said: If you are a religious 
institution and you have an objection to offering contraception, you 
don't have to do it. So 335,000 churches are exempt. I feel sorry for 
the employees who may not agree with the church, but they work for the 
church and therefore that is the rule.
  Religiously affiliated hospitals and universities raised a question--
you know, they serve a broad array of people. They hire a broad array 
of people, not just people of one faith but of many faiths and of many 
points of view. They raised the question, saying: We don't feel 
comfortable. The President came up with a compromise that has been 
embraced by Catholic Charities, Catholics United, and the Catholic 
Health Association. The only group that doesn't support him are the 
bishops.
  If I could respectfully say to them, they don't deliver the health 
care services; Catholic Charities does, and the Catholic Health 
Association does. They represent thousands of providers. So they have 
embraced the President's compromise. But not my Republican friends. 
They didn't. They want to cause trouble and take away the ability for 
women to have access to contraception, without a copay--while they 
support supplying Viagra to men. It is stunning.
  I think this is rippling across the land. I don't know if we have the 
photo--I don't think we have it on the floor--of the last panel that 
was held in the House, and my friend from New York talked about it. We 
do have it.
  This is a picture. A picture is worth 1,000 words. This is a panel on 
women's health focused on contraception. Where are the women? Where are 
the women? One, two, three, four, five men; they are talking about 
women's health care. Not one of them ever had a baby. Not one of them 
ever had a monthly cramp. They are talking about women's health care 
like they know all about it.
  The chairman, Chairman Issa, didn't see immediately that there was a 
problem. There was a woman sitting there, and she asked to be heard. 
She said, ``I have a story to tell this panel.'' Oh, no, he didn't want 
to hear from her. He said she wasn't qualified. Do you know what her 
story was? It was about how a friend of hers who was denied the 
contraceptive pill and instead developed a terrible tumor on her ovary. 
He didn't think that was worthy of discussion.
  This issue is rippling through the land. It says everything to me. We 
women in the Senate are not going to allow this to go unnoticed. That 
is a symbol of what is happening to women in this country. In the very 
States that are passing legislation that some have dubbed ``State 
rape,'' because it would require a woman to be subjected to an invasive 
vaginal probe without her consent, now they are backing off. That was 
the bill that almost passed in the Virginia Legislature. Now they have 
said: OK, it is a sonogram. There is another way to do it. It took 
women crying out and saying: Wait a minute. Are you kidding? And they 
are backing off.
  Well, they better back up overall because this is the 21st century. 
Women should be trusted and respected and honored and believed. When 
you tell a woman she needs to be lectured by some stranger on her own 
personal decisions, right away you are questioning her worth. So the 
issue goes so far beyond the ability to obtain birth control pills. The 
issue goes so far beyond that. It really does. You can stand up here 
and say it is not about women's health, it is really about religious 
freedom, but as Patty Murray, my colleague from Washington, has said: 
When they say it is not about contraception, it is about contraception.
  Others have said: When they say it is not really about the money, it 
is really about the money. When they say it is not really about 
politics, it is about politics.
  This is about contraception, making it difficult for women who don't 
have the means to have some sense of control over their reproductive 
lives and to be able to access a pill that could help them live a 
healthier life and live longer and free of pain.
  So they will come and say: Oh, Senator Boxer, this isn't about 
contraception; it is about religious freedom. The President has taken 
care of the religious objection. I described how he did it, and I will 
say it again. He said if you are a religious institution, you don't 
have to provide contraception. If you are a religiously affiliated 
institution, there will be a way for a third party to deal with it. The 
Catholic health organizations support it, Catholic Charities. He has 
come up with a compromise. There is no reason to have this polarizing 
debate. Everybody should have religious freedom, including the 
employees, including the boss, including everybody. So no one under the 
President's plan is forced to do something they don't want to do. We 
just want to make sure when the Institute of Medicine tells us that 
availability to contraception saves lives and protects health, women 
get a chance to get it if they want. If they don't want it, they don't 
have to get it. Of course not.
  Again, I will end where I started, talking about my colleague Olympia 
Snowe, who is retiring, not running again, because she said we are so 
polarized. This is exhibit 1. We are on a transportation bill that is 
bipartisan, but the other side can't let it rest, cannot move forward 
on it, and cannot move to make sure our businesses and our workers have 
a brighter future. Oh, no, they have to delay it.
  By the way, it is not only with this birth control amendment and 
women's health amendment but with other amendments that have nothing to 
do with the subject. It is what makes the American people wonder what 
we are doing here.
  I want to show some charts that deal with transportation issues right 
now. I will continue talking about Olympia Snowe for a minute. I went 
through some of the issues that I worked on

[[Page 2431]]

with her. I want to talk about them. She and I wrote the Airline 
Passenger Bill of Rights Act. We were very strong because we knew our 
constituents were getting stuck on aircraft hour after hour, stuck on 
the tarmac, with no food, kids screaming, nightmare scenarios, 9, 10 
hours on the runway. We thought passengers deserved a bill of rights.
  We worked with outside groups, some wonderful people. Lo and behold, 
it passed as part of the FAA bill that finally got enacted. We didn't 
get 100 percent of what we wanted, but we got 90 percent. I was proud 
to work with her.
  In 2009, following a tragic Buffalo commuter plane crash, which I 
know the occupant of the chair remembers, Senator Olympia Snowe wrote a 
bill to implement the recommendations of the National Transportation 
Safety Board to make sure these pilots get enough rest and that they 
are well-trained. We were very pleased that moved forward. We worked 
together--Olympia and I--on the Purple Heart for POWs to make sure the 
Purple Heart included prisoners of war who died in captivity and they 
could get that to bless their memory.
  We worked together against the global gag rule.
  We worked together and wrote a letter to the President--President 
Obama--asking him to appoint a woman to replace Justice David Souter.
  I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record this letter I 
will be quoting from.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                                                  U.S. Senate,

                                     Washington, DC, May 11, 2009.
     The President,
     The White House,
     Washington, DC.
       Dear Mr. President: The announced retirement of United 
     States Supreme Court Justice David Souter--an outstanding 
     jurist--has left you with the crucial task of nominating 
     someone for a lifetime appointment to our nation's highest 
     bench.
       The most important thing is to nominate an exceptionally 
     well-qualified, intelligent person to replace Justice 
     Souter--and we are convinced that person should be a woman.
       Women make up more than half of our population, but right 
     now hold only one seat out of nine on the United States 
     Supreme Court. This is out of balance. In order for the Court 
     to be relevant, it needs to be diverse and better reflect 
     America.
       Mr. President, we look forward with great anticipation to 
     your choice for the Supreme Court vacancy.
           Sincerely,
     Barbara Boxer,
       U.S. Senator.
     Olympia J. Snowe,
       U.S. Senator.

  Mrs. BOXER. I am so proud of this letter we wrote together. In the 
letter, we said:

       The most important thing is to nominate an exceptionally 
     well-qualified, intelligent person to replace Justice Souter. 
     . . . Women make up more than half of our population, but 
     right now hold only one seat out of nine. . . . This is out 
     of balance. In order for the Court to be relevant, it needs 
     to be diverse and better reflect America.

  Then, of course, the President nominated Sonia Sotomayor and we were 
very excited about that.
  So it was wonderful to work with her on that, and we worked together 
on respecting human rights in Tibet and led 27 Senators in a letter to 
Chinese leader Hu Jintao asking that Tibetans be respected. Regarding 
women in Afghanistan, we worked together to ask Afghan leaders to 
revise a law that would legalize marital rape and impose other Taliban 
restrictions on Shiite women in Afghanistan.
  This is just a partial list of issues I have worked on with Olympia 
Snowe, and I will do a longer tribute for the record at a later time.
  But, again, as I heard this news, I was first filled with worry about 
her health, and I hoped she was OK. But she has clarified she 
absolutely is. So I wish her nothing but the best. I know she will 
always work on issues because she is so good at looking at a problem 
and solving it and not thinking first whether it is Democratic or it is 
Republican or where it falls on the political scales. So I have 
appreciated working with her on so many of these important issues that 
have come before us.
  I think the Senate should take a minute to think about this in 
relation to this bill. The whole world is watching us. When I say that, 
I don't mean the whole world literally, but I think the country is 
watching us. Why do I say that? Because 1,000 groups have endorsed our 
moving ahead with this bill--a coalition of 1,075 organizations from 
all 50 States. Here is what they said about this Transportation bill:

       There are few Federal efforts that rival the potential of 
     critical transportation infrastructure investments for 
     sustaining and creating jobs and economic activity.

  This is what they wrote. So they know this is the way to sustain and 
revive economic activity. This is what is at stake: Right now, 1.8 
million jobs are created because we have a transportation bill. That 
bill ends March 31. So 1.8 million jobs are at stake if we don't act. 
Because of the way we wrote our bill, we leveraged funding, and this 
gained great bipartisan support. We have greatly increased the TIFIA 
Program, which is the transportation infrastructure financing program, 
which leverages funds by 30 times. Because of this, we believe we will 
see another 1 million jobs created. So we are talking 2.8 million jobs 
that are at stake. Yet we have an amendment on women's health. I just 
keep coming back to how insane that is.
  I also wish to note again the many unemployed construction workers. 
Remember, I said 15 stadiums could be filled with unemployed 
construction workers. This is the number: 1.48 million construction 
industry workers unemployed. The unemployment rate is 17.7 percent 
among construction industry workers; whereas, the national unemployment 
rate is 8.3 percent. We know the housing sector is still having major 
problems getting out of the funk it is in. It is tough. So we have to 
do this bill.
  I have a picture, just in case your mind's eye wasn't able to conjure 
it up. Here is a picture of a stadium filled with about 100,000 people. 
So 15 of these stadiums would basically reflect all the unemployed 
construction workers.
  Which are the groups that are supporting us and are they bipartisan? 
Oh, my goodness. I don't think I could share with everyone a more 
bipartisan list of organizations than the AAA, the American Association 
of State Highway and Transit Officials, the American Bus Association, 
the American Concrete Pavement Association, the American Council of 
Engineering Companies, the American Highway Users Alliance, the 
American Moving & Storage Association, the American Public 
Transportation Association, the American Road and Transportation 
Builders Association, the American Society of Civil Engineers--and it 
goes on and on--the trucking association, the Metropolitan 
Transportation Organizations, Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, 
Governors Highway Safety Association, International Union of Operating 
Engineers, Motor & Equipment Manufacturers Association, National 
Asphalt Pavement Association, National Association of Development 
Organizations, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Stone, Sand & Gravel 
Association, National Construction Alliance.
  Oh, it goes on. That is just a partial list of those 1,000-plus 
organizations.
  When we started our bill the Presiding Officer will remember we made 
history because we had Richard Trumka, the head of the AFL CIO, sitting 
next to Tom Donohue, the head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Donohue 
and Trumka, the odd couple. They are fighting and arguing on 
everything. Yet they came together in front of our committee because 
they know we will all benefit. All of America benefits when we do a 
bill such as this.
  I think I have shared a lot, but there is one more point. If we allow 
this bill to go away, and we are stuck with an extension because the 
transportation fund is not collecting enough gas tax revenues--and 
there is a good-news reason for that, which is we are getting better 
fuel economy and we are using public transit a lot more, so the gas tax 
is not coming in at the rate it normally does--we will be down 35 
percent in the fund. So right away--right away--631,000 jobs are gone. 
But what

[[Page 2432]]

is so great about our bill is that four committees, including the 
Finance Committee, filled the gap in a way that was bipartisan.
  Our story is a great story to tell. If I had to tell my grandkids a 
story, I would say: Once upon a time in America, we didn't have a 
national road system. But a Republican President named Dwight 
Eisenhower had a vision. He was a general. He knew it was important to 
move things in a reliable way, and he had a vision of a national 
transportation system, and everybody in the country said: What a great 
idea. So we started to have a bill every few years to authorize a 
highway fund. Then somebody came up with the notion of it being funded 
by the users, so that the gas tax would go--part of it--to this fund 
and we would have enough in that fund to build our highways and our 
bridges, and then, later on, our transit systems. People said: We have 
a lot of wear and tear on the roads. What if a lot of people took 
public transit and got out of their cars? It would be better for the 
air quality. It would be better for everybody and for the state of the 
roads, and so they were married up, highways and transit and bridges.
  Now we have to live up to that legacy and not bog this bill down with 
birth control amendments and women's health amendments and amendments 
about Egypt or anything else. There is time for that. We don't mind 
those battles but not on this bill. Infrastructure is the name of the 
game. We all know it--Republicans and Democrats.
  So I say, let's stop playing games with this bill, please. Let's 
dispose of this birth control amendment, this women's health amendment. 
It doesn't belong on here. But if that is what it takes to get us off 
dead center, fine, let's go. To coin Olympia Snowe's phrase, it will be 
polarizing. It will not be pretty, but we will dispose of that and then 
we will move on and dispose of this bill.
  I hope we will not have to face 5, 10, 20, 30 unrelated amendments. I 
hope we can get it down to a small number and move on. Let's pass this 
bill, lift the workers and lift our businesses. Every dollar, almost--
most of the dollars--goes straight to the private sector through our 
States, through our local entities.
  Then let's hold our head up high when we go home. So when I go to the 
supermarket I don't have people coming to me and saying: What is going 
on over there? Birth control on a highway bill. What, are you kidding? 
I don't want to have those conversations every time I go to the 
supermarket. What are these guys thinking, they say. I say: I don't 
know. I can't speak for them. I think it is an agenda that appeals to 
the far right of this Nation. It is not a mainstream way to go.
  In closing now, for those who say Republicans and Democrats never 
work together, that is not true. Senator Inhofe and I are as far away 
from each other politically as two human beings can get, but we teamed 
up and put aside our ideologies, put aside our pet peeves, put aside 
things that, perhaps in our hearts, we truly wanted to do on this bill, 
and we met in the middle. He was over here and I was over here and we 
ended up right in the middle. We said: We can do this, and we proved we 
could do it. It was a challenge that was put to us by the leadership of 
both our parties and we met that test and other committees met that 
test.
  So here we are. Are we now to say to committee chairs and ranking 
members, Republicans and Democrats alike, forget about it? It is not 
worth it. Work your heart out.
  I pay tribute to my staff, my Democratic staff, and to Senator 
Inhofe's Republican staff. They worked night after night after night to 
come together on this bill. Then we were given an assignment 2 weeks 
ago to resolve the germane amendments and they have come together and 
they have resolved I don't know how many but dozens of amendments. So 
is the message, work your little hearts out, have your staff give up 
their nights with their families and come up with a bipartisan bill and 
all of a sudden have it subjected to some polarizing amendments that 
have nothing to do with the subject?
  Please, let's not see this bill go down. Because if this bill goes 
down, let me tell you, I, for one, will go to as many cities as I can 
and counties in this country and tell the truth about what happened. 
There is no reason for us not to get this done, especially when we have 
the Chamber of Commerce working with the AFL CIO, we have Republican-
leaning business organizations working with Democratic-leaning worker 
organizations all throughout this country--over 1,000 of them. I talk 
to them every week to say thank you to them for keeping the pressure on 
all of us to keep moving forward. When we have that kind of 
bipartisanship in our committees, when we have that type of bipartisan 
bill on the floor, when we have that type of bipartisan support in the 
country, it is time to move forward and get the job done for the 
American people.
  I thank the Chair, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
quorum calm be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                            A Second Opinion

  Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I come to the floor today as I do week 
after week to talk about the health care law and offer a doctor's 
second opinion about this health care law. I do that as someone who has 
practiced medicine in Wyoming, taking care of families across the 
Cowboy State for about a quarter of a century, and I do it today 
because we are now approaching the second anniversary of the 
President's health care law, and, as predicted by many on my side of 
the aisle, the negative results continue to roll in and billions of 
taxpayer dollars continue to roll out.
  Each week we learn more about how this law is going to break another 
one of the President's promises. He made a lot of promises, one of 
which is he said it would not add a dime to the deficit. It is now 
clear that the White House and Democrats in Congress completely 
underestimated--possibly intentionally but certainly vocally 
underestimated--how much the President's new entitlement program is 
going to cost the American people.
  I come week after week because Nancy Pelosi said, ``First you have to 
pass it before you get to find out what is in it.'' This past week a 
story came out that talks about the high-risk pools, designed and 
established to cover people who were not able to buy health insurance 
in the individual market prior to the health care law. The goal was 
admirable. The plan, though, they came out with was horrible.
  First, the new Obama high-risk plans created more bureaucracy, more 
government, and undermined what States like mine, Wyoming, were already 
successfully doing.
  Next, the White House and the Democrats who crammed this bill through 
Congress and down the throats of the American people set aside $5 
billion for this program. The money was supposed to last, they said, 
until 2014--no problems. The bad news is that the Medicare's Chief 
Actuary, the official who actually tracks the spending that goes on as 
a result of this law, estimates now that the funding could run out much 
earlier than expected.
  Last week the Washington Post explained how this could happen. It 
reported that ``medical costs for enrollees in the health-care law's 
high-risk insurance pools are expected to more than double initial 
predictions''--more than double the initial predictions by the 
Democrats who voted for this health care law. So the cost for enrollees 
are expected to be more than double what the White House and the 
Democrats predicted when they drafted the law, as the American people 
remember, behind closed doors.
  The President promised this would be open--C-SPAN--people would be 
able to see the discussions and the debates. Everything was done behind 
closed doors. Yet our debt as a nation continues to skyrocket. It is 
completely unsustainable, and it is irresponsible.

[[Page 2433]]

You know, it could have been prevented if the White House and Congress 
had just let the American people participate in the process.
  So here we are, 2 years later, a second anniversary coming up of a 
health care law, a law that the American people are now learning what 
is in it because, as Nancy Pelosi said, ``First you have to pass it 
before you get to find out what is in it.''
  The American people also know that this administration and this 
President and this Congress used about every budget trick and 
accounting gimmick in the book to turn it into law. They ignored the 
real costs, they ignored the red flags, and they ignored reality. Two 
years later, the American people understand that we cannot afford the 
high cost of the President's health care law and health care mandates. 
The longer it stays in place, the more expensive it will get.
  That is one of the reasons Americans from both sides of the aisle are 
speaking out against this health care law. When I say both sides of the 
aisle, I want to talk about a recent USA TODAY/Gallup Poll. This was 
Monday's--Monday, February 27--USA TODAY, front-page story, right at 
the top: ``Health Care Law Hurts Obama.''
  My concern is that the health care law is hurting the American 
people. That is what the impact of this law is. It is hurting the 
American people.
  What the poll shows is that a clear majority of registered voters 
call the bill's passage ``a bad thing.'' They support its repeal if a 
Republican wins the White House in November.
  Eleven percent of voters in battleground States have said the law has 
actually helped their families, but 15 percent say it has hurt them. 
Looking ahead, they predict by a number of 42 percent to 20 percent, so 
two to one, that the law will make things worse rather than better for 
their families and for their lives.
  Americans overwhelmingly believe the individual mandate, which is a 
key part of the Obama health care law, is unconstitutional, the mandate 
that every American must buy insurance. Americans believe it is 
unconstitutional by a margin of 72 percent to only 20 percent. An 
overwhelming number of Americans believe that what this Senate and the 
House, under Democratic control, and the President in the White House, 
Barack Obama, have forced on the American people--they believe, and I 
agree with them--is unconstitutional. Even a majority of Democrats and 
a majority of those who think the health care law is a good thing 
believe that provision--that people across the country be forced to buy 
health insurance or to buy any product--is unconstitutional.
  Instead of heaping more debt on the backs of the American people, we 
need to repeal the law. We need to replace it with health care reform 
that allows Americans to have a bigger say, a patient-centered health 
care approach.
  It is interesting. When you look at this USA TODAY article, there is 
a picture of a family, a father and mother and three children. Robert 
Hargrove of Sanford, NC, said: You have to have insurance or pay a 
penalty? ``That is not the way the country was set up.''
  That tells the story I heard around the State of Wyoming last week as 
I traveled, as other Members traveled around their home communities, 
their home States. They remember the President's promises. He promised, 
No. 1, that the cost of insurance for families would go down. The 
President promised it would go down by $2,500 per family per year. That 
is not what the American people have seen in the last 2 years since it 
has been passed. They remember the President promising that if you like 
the care you have and the insurance you have, you can keep it. That is 
not what American families are finding. Broken promise after broken 
promise.
  Now, with the Chief Actuary coming out this past week in the 
Washington Post, reporting that the high-risk pool is doubling the 
costs that were predicted--once again, the President promised that it 
would not add a dime to the deficit--another broken Obama promise.
  Here we are. I go to townhall meetings, visit with people, and ask 
for a show of hands: How many of you believe that under the President's 
new health care law, your costs are going to go up? Every hand goes up. 
Obviously, they do not believe what the President has told them.
  How many of you believe that as a result of the new health care law, 
actually the quality of your care and the availability of your care 
will go down? Again, every hand goes up.
  It is not what the President promised the people of this country.
  That is why, when the USA TODAY headline on Monday says ``Health Care 
Law Hurts Obama,'' my concern is that it is hurting the American 
people. People asked for health care reform in this country. What they 
asked for was the care they need, from the doctor they want, at a cost 
they can afford. This health care law has provided none of those 
things. This health care law is bad for patients, it is bad for 
providers--the nurses and the doctors who take care of those patients--
and it is terrible for the American taxpayers. That is why I come to 
the floor week after week with a doctor's second opinion, saying it is 
time to replace this health care law with reforms that will put health 
care under the control of patients--not insurance companies, not 
government, but under the control of patients.
  Madam President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Franken). The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. BROWN of Massachusetts. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent 
that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                              Crowdfunding

  Mr. BROWN of Massachusetts. Good morning to you, Mr. President, and 
everybody in the gallery. I wanted to thank Majority Leader Reid for 
highlighting next week's Banking Committee hearing on small business 
growth. It is something all of us have a very dear and great concern 
with. One of the issues that will be discussed is a concept called 
crowdfunding. People may be saying: What is crowdfunding? Well, if you 
ever wished that you had the opportunity to invest in a Facebook or a 
Google or new idea before they hit it big, wouldn't that be nice? We 
would all be multibillionaires. My Democratizing Access to Capital 
bill, S. 1791, would expand entrepreneurs' access to capital by 
democratizing access to startup investing so they can have the funds to 
grow and create jobs.
  The House passed a crowdfunding bill 407 to 17. So you know they must 
be on to something when they can pass something in such a bipartisan 
manner. The President referenced it in his State of the Union. He 
supports crowdfunding, and public support for crowdfunding is, in fact, 
exploding.
  On Monday I hosted a roundtable in Boston at City Hall on small 
business access to capital, and I listened to small business owners and 
entrepreneurs and investors to get their thoughts and concerns about 
business growth, about investing, about the access to capital, and it 
was a very successful event. They all had one thing to say and that 
was: If we can't get behind the bipartisan, commonsense idea of 
crowdfunding, then what can we actually agree upon and how can we 
expect small businesses to grow?
  With such strong support, I believe we should put, once again, 
partisan politics aside and focus on what we can do to help small 
businesses as we have done with the 1099 fix, the 3-percent 
withholding, the Hire a Hero Act, the most recent insider trading STOCK 
Act. All of my bills, all the things I have worked on, we did in a 
bipartisan manner. When the leader let them come to the floor and 
allowed us to work them through, they passed 96 to 3 and 100 to 0. It 
shows that the Senate can work together regardless of our political 
differences, our geographical locations, our belief on where we are 
because we are Americans first. These are things the business 
communities are

[[Page 2434]]

looking at to move our country forward.
  Next Monday I am hosting a roundtable with an entity called Wefunder, 
a group of innovators who started a petition for my bill to discuss 
crowdfunding. Their petition currently has 2,500 supporters who would 
invest over $6 million today if businesses had the opportunity to 
participate in crowdfunding, but right now it is illegal.
  My bill is a commonsense bill, and I want to note that Senator 
Merkley has also introduced a different crowdfunding bill. It is a good 
start, but we can do a little bit more. I have reached out to his 
staff, and I have asked my staff to continue to do that. So I think we 
can work together as Senator Gillibrand and I have, and Senator Cochran 
and Senator Collins worked on the recent insider trading bill. We can 
do the same with Senator Merkley if he is willing and if the leader 
allows us to put those political party differences aside and actually 
work on something for the benefit of our country.
  Today I am going to talk about some important principles that I 
believe are critical to making crowdfunding legislation a success. For 
crowdfunding to actually work, we need a national framework, which my 
bill creates. If we require entrepreneurs to comply with every separate 
State securities law mandate, filing the appropriate paperwork alone 
would cost over $15,000. That is the reason we don't have this type of 
situation. In my bill we don't have small business owners being able to 
give up to $1,000 per person, up to $1 million to invest in that next 
new idea with minimal SEC filings and minimal secretary of state 
filings. It is something that makes sense. We should not be burdening 
our startup businesses, which is where the largest growth is in this 
country right now, with costly quarterly reporting requirements. We 
might as well go through the whole process of the full SEC filings. It 
is not appropriate, especially until they are fully off the ground.
  The point of crowdfunding is to allow entrepreneurs to flourish, not 
to bog them down in an avalanche of paperwork and bureaucracy and 
redtape. That is why we are in this mess somewhat, because of the 
overregulation, the continued regulatory and tax uncertainty when it 
comes to planning and growing businesses.
  In addition, I believe our existing fraud laws are solid; we just 
need to enforce them. Exposing startup founders to new personal 
liability is not going to work. It will create a real wet blanket on 
everything we are trying to do here from thousands of investors who are 
investing only a maximum of $500 to $1,000 and to have them also put in 
a personal guarantee for a $500 investment. How does that make any 
sense whatsoever, a quarterly filing, a personal liability guarantee 
for a $500 investment? This makes no sense at all. This will cause 
investors to use crowdfunding only when there is no other option 
available and will leave them to switch out crowdfunding investors for 
venture capital firms at the first opportunity, therefore, I believe, 
stifling that crowdfunding opportunity.
  There was a recent article I read in which Canada's Government is 
deeply concerned about us actually doing this because they are fearful 
that Canadian money will be flowing into the United States. Wouldn't it 
be nice for once to have money flowing into the United States on 
something that will actually create small business growth in our great 
country? So recognizing that investors need protection, my bill does 
require entrepreneurs to offer their securities through regulated 
crowdfunding intermediaries.
  In addition, my bill requires intermediaries to facilitate 
communication between investors and the offerors. I believe Senator 
Merkley and I have the same concerns in this regard which I believe can 
be addressed without creating a private right of action. It is not 
necessary especially for the amount of money we are talking about and 
the new business growth opportunities we can actually stimulate.
  Crowdfunding depends on small investments by many, which is why we 
must exempt crowdfunding securities from the 500 shareholder cap so we 
don't create additional redtape for startups. It makes total sense. 
Everyone talks about overregulation of small business and how that is 
hurting their growth. I see it, you see it where you live, Mr. 
President, and in legalizing--let me repeat--in legalizing crowdfunding 
I believe we can still provide for the appropriate level of regulation 
but also give small businesses the access to capital they so 
desperately need.
  This is a home run all over the place, and once again I am very 
pleased the majority leader has taken an additional step to call for 
the hearing on crowdfunding. When he talked about this issue, he 
referenced Senator Merkley's bill. I also have a bill. So why don't we 
do it as we did it with the insider trading bill, the Hire a Hero, the 
3-percent withholding, the 1099, the Arlington Cemetery bill? All of 
those things, when we were allowed to work in a truly bipartisan 
manner, we were able to get done. With all due respect, there is no 
Republican bill that is going to pass right now, and I know that shocks 
some people. There is no Democratic bill that is going to pass either. 
It needs to be a bipartisan, bicameral bill that the President is going 
to sign. That is what I offer, is that olive branch, that one good deed 
that begets another good deed and moves us forward to addressing our 
very real problems in a truly bipartisan manner as Americans first and 
not as Republicans or Democrats.
  I would ask the majority leader to also include my bill when he is 
moving forward because otherwise I am fearful nothing will move 
forward. So I am looking forward to not only working with Senator 
Merkley but working with the majority leader and his team. When I was 
working on the insider trading bill, which was my bill and Senator 
Gillibrand's bill that we combined, we found that common ground. We 
worked together, we managed the floor, we had an open amendment 
process. Everybody walked out of here saying: That was nice. When was 
the last time we did that? Remember? That was unbelievable. Everyone 
had a role. Even Senator Kirk, who is recovering, had a role to play 
and it was good to see him. We can even do it in this bill.
  Mr. President, I thank you for the time. I yield the floor at this 
time. I see that we have a speaker all ready to go as well.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.


                           Amendment No. 1520

  Mr. WEBB. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time from 2 
to 4 p.m. be equally divided, with Senator Blunt or his designee in 
control of the first hour and the majority side controlling the second 
hour.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. WEBB. Mr. President, I wish to say a few words today about the 
amendment that is being called the Blunt amendment, the purpose of 
which I will read from the amendment, to amend the Patient Protection 
and Affordable Care Act, to provide rights of conscience with regard to 
requirements for coverage of specific items and services.
  I oppose this amendment, and I wish to be very clear today as to why 
I oppose this amendment. This is not a bill that attempts to address 
the necessary divide between church and state.
  Let me say that a little more specifically. This is not an amendment 
that addresses the necessary divide between the establishment of 
religion or the free exercise thereof as outlined in the first 
amendment of our Constitution, which is a concept I care deeply about.
  This amendment, by definition, attempts to widen the restrictions on 
our laws from the necessary divide between church and state into the 
unknown and often indefinable provinces of an individual's personal 
definition of conscience. The amendment is clear on this point. It is a 
preamble in which it lists its findings, talks repeatedly about the 
rights of conscience, not the separation of church and state. It 
invokes Thomas Jefferson's view of the rights of conscience against the 
enterprise of civil authority. It addresses the purported flaws of the 
current health care law in terms of governmental infringement on the 
rights of conscience of insurers, purchasers of

[[Page 2435]]

insurance, planned sponsors, beneficiaries, and other stakeholders. It 
then mandates that the right to provide, purchase, or enroll in health 
care coverage must be consistent with the religious beliefs or the 
moral convictions of these stakeholders.
  Again, let me be clear: This language goes well beyond the 
constitutional requirement of separation of church and state into the 
area of legislative discretion. Quite frankly, it would be the same 
thing as Congress saying that not only should religious establishments 
be exempted from taxation under the doctrine of separation of church 
and state, but also that anyone who has a moral objection that they can 
define to paying taxes should not be required to pay them either. There 
is a place for this type of conduct in our legal framework. It has a 
long history. It is called civil disobedience. The act of civil 
disobedience is protected by our Constitution, but the ramifications 
are not. Unless there are clear constitutional protections, legal 
accountability remains.
  The effect of this amendment on its face would be that any 
stakeholder could decide to deny health care benefits to any individual 
on the very loose definition that to provide such care somehow would 
violate a personal definition of one's moral convictions. In other 
words, any provider could potentially deny a wide range of benefits to 
anybody.
  This is a vaguely drafted and potentially harmful amendment. It is 
not about protecting religious institutions or protecting the clear 
objective and understandable parameters of religious belief. It should 
not be approved.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana.
  Mr. TESTER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                               Farm Labor

  Mr. TESTER. Mr. President, I thank the Presiding Officer. I also 
thank the floor managers of the highway bill for allowing me a couple 
minutes and to let them know how appreciative I am of their efforts to 
move forward on an important piece of legislation--the highway 
legislation. Nothing creates jobs and makes our economy stronger in the 
long run than responsibly investing in our infrastructure. So I thank 
Senator Boxer and Senator Inhofe for their good work and, hopefully, 
that good work will come to fruition very soon.
  Last September, the Department of Labor published new child labor 
regulations. They would have the effect of restricting how young folks 
are able to work on farms. I am deeply concerned about these new rules 
which will keep teenagers from working on farms and ranches.
  As the Senate's only working farmer, I know how important it is for 
young people to have the opportunity to work on farms and ranches. I am 
not alone in that belief. There are many folks here who understand the 
value of family farm agriculture. Growing up on the same farm that my 
grandparents homesteaded nearly a century ago--well, it was a century 
ago this year--my brothers and I were expected to bail the hay, pick 
rocks, feed the livestock, do field work, and the list goes on and on. 
That work ethic that was instilled in us as youngsters is a big part of 
my success today. It was that work ethic that built this Nation and 
that work ethic which I think is critical to the future of America. The 
skills young people learn from working on a family farm translate into 
a healthy work ethic that will serve them their entire lives, whether 
they choose to be in agriculture or in some other business.
  Family farm agriculture is one of the foundations of this country, 
and irresponsibly regulating the ability of young people to fully 
experience and grow from it will be detrimental to this country's 
future. I know firsthand that agriculture is uniquely a family industry 
in the United States, in Montana, and throughout rural America. Young 
people are expected to help out on the family farm or ranch. That is 
part of the economics of family agriculture. For smaller farms and 
ranches to survive, it has to be everybody pitching in. By 
participating in production agriculture, young people learn the value 
of a day's work. They also learn that grain doesn't come from a box or 
vegetables don't come from a bag or meat doesn't come from a package. 
They truly get educated about where our food comes from while they 
build that work ethic.
  These new rules get in the way of that education. That is because 
these rules were not written with a solid understanding of how family 
production agriculture works today. We are losing family farms every 
day in my hometown of Big Sandy, for example. In that community, I went 
to school with about 40 kids or so in my high school class. Today there 
are about 60 kids in the entire high school. That is because family 
farms are getting bigger, and there are fewer folks living in rural 
America. We ought to encourage beginning farmers and ranchers, 
preparing them to be our next generation of food producers in this 
country.
  The proposed rules would expand restrictions on what duties teenagers 
can perform on farms, limiting them. Under these new rules, all animal 
operations would be off limits until a person reaches 16 years of age. 
That is a sad day, a missed opportunity, and a loss of an opportunity 
for our young folks to learn.
  I am calling on the Department of Labor to withdraw this proposal as 
it applies to family farm agriculture and allow this country's youth to 
learn a solid work ethic. The common sense that goes with that work 
ethic is so critically important to our Nation's future.
  With that, I yield the floor, and 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. VITTER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Udall of New Mexico). Without objection, 
it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Louisiana is recognized.
  Mr. VITTER. I thank the Chair.
  (The remarks of Mr. Vitter pertaining to the introduction of S. 2138 
are located in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills 
and Joint Resolutions.'')
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana is recognized.
  Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, I would ask, what is the pending business 
before the Senate?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Blunt amendment No. 1520.
  Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, I rise to object to the Blunt amendment. I 
believe this amendment is extreme and it would undermine the delicate 
balance between religious freedom and a woman's health. It would be a 
mistake. It goes too far. It would allow any employer to prevent a 
woman's access to mammograms, prenatal care, even vaccinations or any 
other form of preventive care. In Montana, my State, 62,000 women could 
lose access to preventive care. I am here to say that is wrong, and I 
am going to go to bat for them. I think a woman should decide for 
herself and her family what preventive care makes the most sense for 
her.
  As Americans, we believe in individual liberties and equal access to 
health care. Current policy upholds those values. It preserves the 
integrity of a woman's freedom and the right to access all health care 
services. It protects the religious liberties that so many Americans, 
including myself, value. And that is why both faith-based and health 
communities support this policy--not the Blunt amendment but the 
current policy. The Blunt amendment would overturn this. It would allow 
any corporation or health plan to deny women and their families access 
to preventive health care for almost any reason. It is written so 
broadly that an employer or an insurance company could deny access to 
preventive care for virtually any reason. That is not right.
  I urge my colleagues to vote against the Blunt amendment. I urge them 
to protect the health of all Americans. That includes our mothers, 
wives, sisters, and daughters in Montana and across the country.

[[Page 2436]]

  In Montana, we are very proud to have sent the first woman to 
Congress--Ms. Jeannette Rankin--in 1916. We have a very strong 
tradition in our State of respecting women--women who are not only the 
hearts of our families but are also those providing the fabric of our 
communities. When we support women's health, we are supporting healthy 
communities that could be strong for our kids and our grandkids.
  Let's uphold our values of liberty. Let women choose for themselves 
individually. It is their responsibility what preventive care they 
think makes the most sense for them. And let's treat all Americans 
fairly. Let's defend against discriminatory health insurance practices, 
and let's do so while protecting everyone's fundamental rights.
  Mr. President, on another matter, I ask unanimous consent to speak as 
in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BAUCUS. In ``Common Sense,'' the American patriot Thomas Paine 
wrote in 1776 as follows:

       The landholder, the farmer, the manufacturer, the merchant, 
     the tradesman, and every occupation, prospers by the aid 
     which each receives from the other, and from the whole. 
     Common interest regulates their concerns, and forms their 
     law. Common interest produces common security.

  In the 240 years since Paine's pamphlet helped define who we are as 
Americans, our transportation system has become the cornerstone of our 
common interest. There are few things under the Sun that are not 
impacted by our highways, our roads and bridges, and our transit 
systems, yet we can too easily take our network for granted.
  A recent Rockefeller Foundation survey found that two-thirds of all 
respondents believe America should invest more in infrastructure. It is 
a common interest. That same survey found that two-thirds of all 
Americans believe they should not have to pay any more for this 
increase in infrastructure investment. That means we have to rise to 
the challenge in Congress to come up with a highway bill that invests 
in infrastructure without asking folks to pay more than their fair 
share.
  According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Transportation Performance 
Index, we could lose nearly $340 billion in potential economic growth 
over the next 5 years if we do not pass a highway bill and provide the 
certainty our economy needs. Let me make that statement again. We could 
lose $340 billion in potential economic growth over the next 5 years if 
we do not pass a highway bill and provide the certainty our economy 
needs.
  Our transportation system depends on substantial investments from the 
Federal Government. This investment consistently yields a big return 
for American jobs. In my home State of Montana, the last highway bill 
created or sustained more than 18,000 good-paying jobs, and nationwide 
it put approximately 35,000 people to work for every $1 billion 
invested. So for every $1 billion invested, it created 35,000 jobs. 
These are not just statistics, these numbers represent families able to 
put food on the table. They are good jobs. These numbers represent 
small businesses able to attract new customers.
  I know these types of investments work because I spent a day working 
alongside a road construction crew on Amsterdam Road in Bozeman. They 
showed me the ropes of running a road grader, a paver, and an 
excavator. I might say, the grader was really up to date. All I had to 
do was get in the grader, move forward, and it was guided by a GPS 
system that raised the blade, turned the blade, tilted the blade at 
exactly the right location, and it was a perfect line I made down that 
road, whereas if I had had to do it by myself, it would have been a 
mess. The GPS made it work. During the workday, I talked to about a 
dozen workers who said their families depended on the project for their 
livelihood. It was very impressive. Their work also had a major impact 
on the community because Amsterdam Road is one of the most traveled 
roads in the area.
  Investing in our transportation infrastructure is investing in our 
families and our economy. It is an investment. It yields great returns. 
It pays dividends. This bill seeks to maintain that investment through 
2013; that is, the underlying bill that is before us--not the Blunt 
amendment but the underlying bill. I would prefer a longer period of 
time in the underlying bill to provide greater certainty. We are 
already 2 years past due. We have had lots of extensions. We must work 
together now to get something done at least until the end of next year, 
and a 2-year bill provides the compromise we need to get there.
  I have worked on this bill for about 4 years from the leadership 
perspective of two different Senate committees: the Environment and 
Public Works Committee, which provided the authorization for roads, 
highways, bridges, and various forms of nonmotorized transportation, 
and the Finance Committee, which provided the money so we can have the 
proceeds and the resources to pay for these highways.
  From the perspective of investment, I can tell you firsthand that 
this bill specifically focuses on those programs that are truly in our 
shared national interest. It consolidates nearly 90 road programs down 
to approximately 30. Consolidating 90--lots of individual, separate 
programs that kind of divide our country, didn't bring us together--to 
30--30 programs that rely on the highway trust fund.
  This bill also focuses on dramatically improving our national 
capacity for data-gathering and data-sharing--desperately needed. We 
sought to enable States to address safety and mobility difficulties by 
seeing what solutions have worked in other States. More data will help 
them better answer those questions. For example, why in some States--my 
State of Montana--is the highway fatality rate 2\1/2\ times the 
national average? There are a lot of ideas, but what are the real 
reasons? We need data to find out.
  This bill creates for the first time a dedicated freight program to 
address interstate commerce.
  The bill extends a program called TIFIA. That is a lending program 
that leverages private sector investment, good investment, building 
roads and bridges. History tells us that every $1 we put in can 
leverage $30 in private sector investment.
  This bill has no earmarks--no earmarks. Senators Boxer, Inhofe, 
Vitter, and I worked hard to achieve agreements, and I thank my 
colleagues who serve on the Environment and Public Works Committee for 
unanimously approving this bill and its reforms--unanimously.
  I especially would like to applaud Chairman Boxer and Ranking Member 
Inhofe for their leadership. They worked very hard, and they worked 
together. Sometimes people think Washington can't work together. Let me 
tell you, I have watched these two people work very closely together. 
They were a team to get a highway bill here before the Senate.
  Next, from the perspective of the Finance Committee, the bill 
provides the highway trust fund with sufficient funding to last at 
least until the end of fiscal year 2013. The highway trust fund simply 
does not bring in enough revenue from traditional funding sources, such 
as the fuel tax, to meet our national needs. As a result, Democrats and 
Republicans on the committee had to look elsewhere to ensure for the 
short term that we could maintain current levels of Federal investment. 
In the long term, we should use the opportunity to decide what we want 
for a transportation network in the 21st century. So we are going to 
pass this short-term bill, and while we are passing this short-term 
bill, we have to give a lot of thought to what we want to do for the 
long term. We should use that opportunity to decide what makes the most 
sense for the 21st century. Where we could apply unused fuel tax money 
that currently goes to the leaking underground storage tank trust fund 
surplus, the Finance Committee did so with support from Democrats and 
Republicans. And where we transferred money from the general fund to 
the highway trust fund, we sought to backfill the general fund by 
closing tax gaps or focusing on tax scofflaws.

[[Page 2437]]

  It is important that we make sure the highway bill stays focused on 
supporting the economy. In Montana, our highways are our lifeblood. We 
are a highway State. We log a lot of hours at the wheel. It is a part 
of who we are. We are the fourth largest State in the Nation for land 
mass, but we have fewer residents than Rhode Island, the smallest State 
in size.
  My friend the former Senator Mike Mansfield said in 1967:

       Montanans are formed by the vastness of a state whose 
     mountains rise to 12,000 feet in granite massives, piled one 
     upon another as though by some giant hand. To drive across 
     the state is to journey, in distances, from Washington, DC, 
     north to Toronto, or south to Florida. In area, we can 
     accommodate Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania and 
     New York, and still have room for the District of Columbia. 
     Yet, in all this vastness, we are . . . less than a million 
     people.

  A few weeks ago, we just tipped the needle on 1 million residents. I 
might say, I am not sure we are happy about that. Some of us want to be 
under 1 million in population and some kind of like 1 million. It is a 
big debate in our State: Should we be 1 million or less than 1 million? 
Nonetheless, we lack the population to make the necessary investments 
in Federal aid roads and interstates by ourselves, and we shouldn't 
have to do so. Montana alone could not support the Interstate Highway 
System--we couldn't do it--or the other national highways in our State. 
We don't have the people. With more than 10 million visitors annually 
and with the majority of our truck traffic originating and ending out 
of State, we rely on the Federal program with good reason: It is in our 
common interest--in the interest of Montana, in the interest of all 
those folks who transport freight across our State, and in the interest 
of people who want to visit Glacier Park or Yellowstone Park. It is in 
our common interest.
  I am here to say that the more we keep our eye on the ball, with a 
transportation bill that keeps our common interests in mind, the more 
successful we will be.
  Mr. 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.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The assistant majority leader.
  Mr. DURBIN. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum 
call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                             Midwest Storms

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, overnight and early this morning parts of 
my home State of Illinois and our adjoining State of Missouri were 
pummeled by severe storms and tornadoes. While the total extent of the 
damage is not yet known, it is clear that southeastern Illinois was hit 
hard by at least one tornado and heavy storms. The towns of Harrisburg 
in Saline County and Ridgway in Gallatin County have suffered terrible 
damage. Several people in Harrisburg have died as a result of these 
tornadoes. The earliest reports suggest 10 deaths. The exact number 
will not be known for some time. More than 100 other people in this 
area are reported to have suffered serious injury.
  This is an indication of some of the damage and devastation in 
Harrisburg. Between 250 and 300 homes in nearby Gallatin County have 
also been damaged. An estimated 25 Harrisburg-area businesses are 
damaged or destroyed, including a Walmart and a strip mall that were 
hit by the tornado.
  This next photograph is an indication of some of the terrible 
devastation that took place. Three bodies have been recovered from the 
field behind the Walmart, and survivors are still being pulled from the 
wreckage of the building. Most roads in Harrisburg have been closed. 
People are going door to door to check. The reports are positive in 
terms of the accountability.
  The Harrisburg Hospital has received damage itself. Yet the personnel 
have done a heroic job in setting up triage stations throughout the 
hospital after this devastation. Hospital officials are asking that all 
nonemergency cases that are unrelated to the severe weather go to other 
hospitals. The hospitals are only taking in those who are injured and 
asking family members to wait outside because of the limited facilities 
available. Patients in the hospital's B wing, which suffered heavy 
damage, are being evacuated to Evansville, Indiana's Deaconess 
Hospital, which has called in all available staff.
  The First Baptist Church in Harrisburg is being used as a shelter, 
and I am sure everyone in that community--a wonderful community in 
southern Illinois--is pitching in to give a helping hand. Harrisburg 
schools, obviously, are canceled for the week. Ridgway is nearby, and 
no one is being allowed to visit the town at this point. Between 50 and 
60 homes in Gallatin County have been destroyed.
  I have an early photograph of some of the scenes there that show the 
damage to this historic church. Historic St. Joseph Church, and at 
least one business, the Gallatin County Tin Shoppe, have been leveled 
by this tornado.
  This last photograph is of the same church before the storm, which is 
an indication of what happened. This is an historic church which many 
of us are well aware of. It has served the Catholics in this community 
for many years.
  Between 9,000 and 13,000 people are without electricity because of 
the storm damage. The Illinois Emergency Management Agency is hard at 
work clearing debris and roads. Governor Pat Quinn has activated a 
state emergency operations center to help with the damage, and he and 
Jonathan Monken of the Illinois Emergency Management Agency are on 
their way to the scene this afternoon.
  My heart goes out to all of the people in Harrisburg who have lost 
loved ones. We are keeping in close contact with the people on the 
ground, working together with my colleague Senator Mark Kirk's office 
here in Washington. They share our concern for the devastation, damage, 
suffering, and death associated with this, and both Senator Kirk and I 
have extended to the State of Illinois our willingness to help in any 
way possible.
  My thoughts are with the residents of these hard-hit towns, with the 
first responders, and the Red Cross volunteers who are always on the 
scene and who are working to assess the damage and help those who have 
been injured. Jonathan Monken had a conference call with many members 
of the Illinois congressional delegation a short time ago. He assures 
us that all requests for State and FEMA assistance are being met at 
this moment. We will continue to make the promise that that will be 
true in the future as well.
  My staff and I are in contact with local officials, including 
Harrisburg Mayor Eric Gregg; the mayor of Ridgway, Becky Mitchell; 
State Senator Gary Forby; and State Representative Brandon Phelps. I, 
along with Senator Mark Kirk, am committed to help do everything 
possible to help communities respond to and help with this disaster.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cardin). The Senator from Missouri.
  Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, my colleague, the Senator from Illinois, 
and I live in a part of the country where these terrible weather 
events--tornadoes and other things--are not unusual for us. But as 
Senator Durbin has pointed out, we did have them last night in a number 
of places in southern Missouri, including Branson, the tourism strip, 
at one theater and one tourism location after another, as well as in 
Branson, Lebanon, Dallas County, and other places in southern Missouri. 
We had way too much experience with this last year.
  As my friend has pointed out, the Federal Emergency Management people 
are quickly there. We had a year of experience with this, particularly 
after the Joplin tornado. They were terrific. We want to remember too 
the first responders are always our neighbors, and neighbors are coming 
forward to help families whose houses were lost and possessions were 
scattered, and even in this particular case where there are occasions 
where people are injured and lives have been lost as well.

[[Page 2438]]

  Senator McCaskill and I join with Senator Kirk and Senator Durbin in 
their efforts in this regard.


                           Amendment No. 1520

  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to engage in a colloquy with 
my Republican colleagues for 60 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I wish to talk about an amendment that has 
had lots of attention. It is an amendment that I offered on the floor a 
couple of weeks ago. We weren't able--the leader didn't want to get to 
it at the time, but the majority leader brought it up for me yesterday, 
and I am glad he did. I am glad we are able to talk about it.
  This is an amendment that would allow religious belief or moral 
conviction to be an important factor in whether people comply with new 
health care mandates. We have long had this exemption for hiring 
mandates. In fact, when I served in the House of Representatives, I had 
been the president of a Southern Baptist university and I understood 
the importance of these institutions, I thought, in maintaining their 
faith distinctions as part of why they provide education and health 
care and daycare and other things. So I have long been an advocate of 
the principle that the Supreme Court upheld a few weeks ago 9 to 0 that 
there is a difference in these faith-based institutions. Now that we 
have health care mandates being complied with by these institutions, 
all this amendment does is extend the same privilege to them and others 
who have a religious belief or a moral conviction so that they would be 
able to defend their moral conviction.
  We don't do anything about the mandate itself. It is important to 
understand that the administration--this one or any other--if the 
Affordable Health Care Act is still in force, can issue all the 
mandates that the act would allow. In fact, if a person doesn't comply 
with those mandates, they would have the penalties that the act would 
allow. But the difference is if the government wouldn't recognize a 
person's religious belief or moral conviction, as I think they would 
likely do. For example, the archdiocese in Washington, DC, is saying 
this is something we have long held as a tenet of our faith that we 
don't believe should happen, we shouldn't be a part of, and we don't 
want it to be a part of the insurance policies of our schools, our 
hospitals. My guess is if we pass this amendment, without any question, 
the Justice Department would say, Well, you are certainly going to be 
able to defend that because that has been your belief for centuries, 
the belief of your faith.
  This amendment doesn't mention any procedure of any kind. In fact, 
this morning we had a reporter call the office who said we can't find 
the word ``contraception'' in this amendment anywhere. How is this a 
vote on contraception? Of course we were able to say, as we have said 
for 4 days, the word ``contraception'' is not in there because this is 
not about a specific procedure, it is about a faith principle that the 
first amendment guarantees.
  This exact language of religious belief or moral conviction was first 
used in 1973 in the Public Health Services Act. It was brought to the 
Senate floor by Senator Church from Idaho, who I believe was considered 
one of the liberals of the Senate at the time, protecting health care 
providers from having to be involved in procedures they didn't agree 
with. It is part of the Legal Services Corporation limitation in 1974, 
the foreign aid funding limitation in 1986, the refusal to participate 
in executions or prosecutions of capital crimes in 1994, the 
vaccination bill wherein a person comes to this country as a 
nonresident and they don't want to have vaccinations that are otherwise 
required, they don't have to have them if they have a religious belief 
or moral conviction against them.
  The list goes on and on: The Medicare and Medicaid Counseling Act, 
the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan of 1998, the contraception 
coverage for federal employees in 1999, the DC contraception mandate in 
2000, the United States Leadership Against AIDS Act in 2003.
  Then this exact same language even more specifically has been in 
bills that weren't passed. In 1994, Senator Moynihan from New York 
brought a bill to the floor that Mrs. Clinton--later Senator Clinton, 
now Secretary Clinton--was very involved in, this 1994 health 
discussion. That bill said: Nothing in this title shall be construed to 
prevent any employer from contributing to the purchase of a standard 
benefits package which excludes coverage for abortion or other services 
if the employer objects to such services on the basis of religious 
belief or moral conviction.
  This is Senator Moynihan less than 20 years ago in what was 
considered a liberal piece of legislation, putting what the country had 
thought since the beginning of government-paid health care was a 
natural part of every health care bill. In fact, the bill we are 
talking about that this amendment would impact is the first time the 
Federal Government has passed a health care bill that didn't include 
this language--the first time it didn't include this language. If one 
is not offended by the current mandate that some religions are, I think 
it is important to think of what one would be offended by. What in 
one's faith would be an offensive thing to be told one had to be a part 
of, and then imagine the government saying, no, a person has to be a 
part of that? Even if a person doesn't do it themselves, they have to 
pay for it, or they have to be sure that a person's employees, their 
associates, are a part of this thing that is offensive to that person 
because of religious belief or moral conviction.
  Before I yield to my good friend Senator Johanns, who understands 
this issue so well, let me also say that, as I said, we didn't 
eliminate a mandate, so we can still have a mandate. The Federal 
Government can still come in and say: You are not offering these 
services so you have to pay a penalty, and then you have to go to court 
and prove that you have a long-held belief that this is wrong. The 
Court, in 1965, when this particular phrase became the boilerplate 
language for the law, said, You can't become a conscientious objector 
the day you get your draft notice, in essence; you have to have these 
two principles. You have to have a religious belief, a strong moral 
conviction, and you have to be able to go to court and prove that.
  All of the fiction writers out there, in fundraising letters and 
otherwise, saying things such as women who have contraceptive services 
today wouldn't have them, of course that is not true. Of course that is 
not true. The women who have those services today either have them 
because they have found a way to pay for them themselves or they have 
an employer who is providing that as part of health care. That employer 
is not going to be able to turn around and say, I am not for that 
anymore because I object for some religious reason that I didn't have 
all the time I was providing it.
  This is an important issue. It is a first amendment issue. It is an 
issue that group after group after group thinks violates the Religious 
Freedom Act--RFRA. There are six lawsuits already. I suspect they have 
a good chance of prevailing because it does exactly what the religious 
freedom law says you can't do and it needlessly forces people to 
participate in activities that are against their moral principles, 
their religious principles.
  The circumstance in the country is we have 220 years of history on 
this. We have almost 50 years of history of government-paid health care 
for one group or another that always included an exemption such as this 
exemption. To not do this assumes that the government can make people 
do things that Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and others 
specifically said were among the rights we should defend the most 
vigorously; that we should hold the most dear; that we should not let a 
government interfere in these basic rights of conscience, a phrase of 
Thomas Jefferson when he wrote the New London Methodist in 1809. These 
rights of conscience are an area that we should not let the government 
get between the American people and their religious beliefs. Our laws 
since then, whether it is for hiring or in the case of any health care 
discussion, have always anticipated the protection of this

[[Page 2439]]

first amendment right--not a specific thing but, again, if you are not 
offended by the things that some people are concerned about today, it 
is important to think about what you would be offended by, what your 
religious belief leads you to believe would be wrong and how you would 
feel if the government says now you have to be a part of that activity.
  I wish to turn to my good friend from Nebraska who has been a real 
advocate in understanding the importance of the first amendment and the 
role it plays in our society.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nebraska is recognized.
  Mr. JOHANNS. Mr. President, let me start this afternoon by thanking 
my colleague from Missouri for taking on this issue and putting this 
legislation together. Let me also thank my colleague for telling the 
real story of this legislation. It is critically important we 
understand the history that brings us here this afternoon and, 
ultimately, to a vote on this legislation I am proud to cosponsor.
  My colleague just so ably pointed out that what has changed is, the 
Obama administration, working with our colleagues on the other side of 
the aisle, took this important language out of this health care 
legislation. For decades--for decades--this important protection was in 
legislation, and it was supported by Democrats, Republicans, 
Independents, liberals, conservatives. That was the history of our 
country until all of a sudden this change came about where that 
conscience protection was taken out of the health care legislation that 
was passed a couple years ago.
  But let's look back even further in our history. The first freedom in 
our Bill of Rights is the liberty to exercise any religion we might 
choose, or for that matter not participate in any religion whatsoever. 
That is what this United States of America is based upon, this concept 
that we have the freedom to choose what faith we will belong to, what 
teachings we will follow, and, as I said, we have the choice to not 
participate at all, if we choose, in this country.
  Yet the President and my colleagues from across the aisle want to 
force--want to force--religious institutions, for the first time in the 
history of our country, to violate their strong moral convictions. And 
they go even further. They want to somehow shroud this and veil it as a 
woman's health issue.
  Let me set the record straight. This debate is not about that, as 
some would have us believe. It certainly is not about contraceptives. 
What this debate is about is fundamental to our freedom as citizens of 
this great country. It is religious liberty we are talking about.
  It is an American issue that dates back to our very Founders who 
looked at the war they had just fought and said to themselves: We are 
never going to allow our country to force us to attend a certain church 
or to participate in a certain faith--not at all. And it was written in 
one of our most sacred documents, the Bill of Rights. Yet the President 
of the United States is trampling on this religious freedom and 
attempting to convince Americans that it is something else.
  His power grab is forcing religious institutions to go against their 
deeply held beliefs. If they stay true to their beliefs, the 
Congressional Research Service reports these religious insurers and 
employers may face Federal fines of $100 per day per plan.
  So let me give an example of how that will work in my State. For a 
self-insured institution such as Creighton University in Nebraska, a 
Jesuit institution--I happen to have graduated from there--they have 
about 6,000 health care plans. So the cost to Creighton University in 
Omaha, NE, to exercise their religious liberty will be an annual 
pricetag of $24 million. That is the price of exercising their 
religious liberty in the President's world. Unbelievable.
  Well, I went on the Internet. I ask unanimous consent to have printed 
in the Record an open letter to the President that is being signed by 
women all over this country.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

   Open Letter to President Obama, Secretary Sebelius and Members of 
                                Congress


                   Don't Claim to Speak for All Women

       We-are women who support the competing voice offered by 
     Catholic institutions on matters of sex, marriage and family 
     life. Most of us are Catholic, but some are not. We are 
     Democrats, Republicans and Independents. Many, at some point 
     in our careers, have worked for a Catholic institution. We 
     are proud to have been part of the religious mission of that 
     school, or hospital, or social service organization. We are 
     proud to have been associated not only with the work Catholic 
     institutions perform in the community--particularly for the 
     most vulnerable--but also with the shared sense of purpose 
     found among colleagues who chose their job because, in a 
     religious institution, a job is always also a vocation.
       Those currently invoking ``women's health'' in an attempt 
     to shout down anyone who disagrees with forcing religious 
     institutions or individuals to violate deeply held beliefs 
     are more than a little mistaken, and more than a little 
     dishonest Even setting aside their simplistic equation of 
     ``costless'' birth control with ``equality,'' note that they 
     have never responded to the large body of scholarly research 
     indicating that many forms of contraception have serious side 
     effects, or that some forms act at some times to destroy 
     embryos, or that government contraceptive programs inevitably 
     change the sex, dating and marriage markets in ways that lead 
     to more empty sex, more non-marital births and more 
     abortions. It is women who suffer disproportionately when 
     these things happen.
       No-one speaks for all women on these issues. Those who 
     purport to do so are simply attempting to deflect attention 
     from the serious religious liberty issues currently at stake. 
     Each of us, Catholic or not, is proud to stand with the 
     Catholic Church and its rich, life-affirming teachings on 
     sex, marriage and family life. We call on President Obama and 
     our Representatives in Congress to allow religious 
     institutions and individuals to continue to witness to their 
     faiths in all their fullness.

                                          Helen M. Alvare, JD,

                                       Associate Professor of Law,
                                     George Mason University (VA).

                                              Kim Daniels, JD,

                                                   Former Counsel,
                                      Thomas More Law Center (MD).

  Mr. JOHANNS. Women have signed this, and one of the things they say 
is, they are proud to work for institutions that contribute to their 
community.
  Let me quote from that letter. They value ``the shared sense of 
purpose found among colleagues who choose their job because, in a 
religious institution, a job is . . . also a vocation.''
  These women are Americans who believe this mandate by the Federal 
Government, interfering with religious liberty, is wrong.
  I will wrap up my piece of this colloquy by again thanking the 
Senator from Missouri for his leadership in this area. The President 
has said he offered an accommodation. The accommodation is, woe, lo and 
behold, this is going to be free.
  Now, I would like to know what legal authority he relies upon that 
the President could ever order anyone to offer a service or an item for 
free. He has no such authority. This is not the Soviet Union; this is 
the United States of America. We do not believe that for a moment. Of 
course we are going to be paying for this through our insurance 
premiums.
  Well, my hope is we will read our Constitution and we will stand as a 
united front upholding religious freedom, which is being violated by 
this mandate.
  I thank the Chair.
  Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I thank my friend for those good additions 
to what we are talking about.
  I might say, also, even if there is some accounting issue that makes 
this appear that maybe someone you are hiring is paying for it instead 
of you, if this is something you are opposed to for religious grounds, 
it is not about the cost; it is about the fact that this is something 
you do not believe you should be part of.
  In my particular faith, the contraception part of this is not 
troublesome for me. But it does not mean I should be less troubled that 
it bothers others or that I should care less about their religious 
freedom than I do mine or that I should not care about the government 
using the heavy hand of these fines to force people to do something.
  The other point I would like to make, before I go to my friend from 
Idaho, is,

[[Page 2440]]

if the government chooses to fine people, people actually have to go to 
court and prove they have a deep religious belief. I do not think that 
would be very hard for Creighton University. The entire history of the 
university is founded on the principles of faith that would say: This 
is something we do not want to be part of. If that is the case, maybe 
that Justice Department would not take them to court or would not make 
them go to court rather than pay the fine. But they could. We are not 
saying that anybody can do anything they want to do. We are just 
creating a way that we can assert your first amendment rights if we 
choose to do that.
  As the Governor of Idaho, Senator Risch was responsible for lots of 
people who worked for the State of Idaho. He knows about this both from 
a faith perspective and an employer's perspective, and I am glad he 
came down to the floor.
  Mr. RISCH. Mr. President, I thank the Senator very much.
  Fellow Senators, I am going to speak briefly on this issue, and I 
thank those who have actually put this on the table for us to talk 
about.
  Every single American should watch the debate on this issue. This 
debate strikes to the heart of the freedoms we as Americans enjoy. Why 
do we have these freedoms? We have them because in 1776 the people 
decided they were sick and tired of the King telling them they had to 
do this and they had to do that and had totally wiped out a number of 
freedoms they had--not the least of which was speech and religion.
  We will remember, these people operated under a King who was so 
powerful--the Monarchy was so powerful, it established a religion and 
said: You must belong to this religion if you are a citizen of this 
country.
  When we fought to be free of that, when we fought to be a free 
people, the Founding Fathers put together a document that specified 
very clearly the freedoms we would have.
  We have come many years since then, but we will lose these freedoms 
if we do not guard them when even a little chip comes out of it. That 
is what they are doing here. Think about this for a minute. We have 
gotten to the point where this government has gotten so big and so 
powerful that it has said: Look, we do not care about what you believe 
in your religion because what we are doing is a good thing and, 
therefore, you must do what we are telling you because the ends justify 
the means--the means is to chip away at the religious freedoms we as 
Americans enjoy.
  It is wrong. It is the way we lose our freedoms. If we turn our back 
and let a government do this to us, this is how we lose our freedoms.
  This government is big. It is getting bigger by the day. It is 
getting more powerful by the day. When they sat around the table in 
1776, they had just fought with a government that had been terribly 
oppressive. They argued amongst themselves: Well, what are we going to 
do? We are going to create a government.
  They knew from a historical perspective, and they knew from their 
recent experience, that any government they create needed to be 
distrusted, needed to be watched, needed to have shackles on it because 
if they did not, that government would abuse them--just as every 
government had throughout history.
  So that is why they drew the document we live under today, the 
Constitution we have. They not only gave us one government, they gave 
us three governments. They gave us a legislative branch, an executive 
branch, and a judicial branch--each with the duty to watch the other 
and beat the other over the head if, indeed, they got out of line. They 
were so afraid of a government that they did everything they possibly 
could to see that government did not abuse them.
  Well, we learn frequently that their fears were well founded. Today 
we see, once again, their fears were well founded. What we have is a 
government that is saying: We do not care what your religious beliefs 
are; you must do what we are telling you to do because we think it is 
the right thing to do regardless of your religious beliefs.
  It is wrong. It has to be fought. It must be reversed.
  I thank the Senator for bringing this issue to the attention of 
everyone.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I thank the Senator.
  There are a number of waivers on this. The administration has given 
over 1,700 waivers to 4 million people. If you have a plan that is 
better than the government plan, if you have a plan that might be taxed 
under the law because it has been negotiated as part of collective 
bargaining, if you are a fast food institution that has insurance but, 
apparently, with high deductibles--those were all reasons to create a 
waiver. You would think that a faith-based belief would also be a 
reason that a waiver could have been granted.
  This amendment just assures that we can have the same kind of 
opportunity to exercise our religious beliefs going forward as every 
American has in health care, in labor, in hiring, and other areas up 
until right now.
  I would like to turn to my friend, the Senator from Texas.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I want to express my gratitude to the 
Senator from Missouri for his leadership on this issue.
  This used to be a topic that was a bipartisan issue dating back to 
the passage of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993.
  But just so people can refresh their memories, there have been a 
number of allusions made to the language of the Constitution. But let 
me just read the first amendment to the Constitution, part of our Bill 
of Rights, the fundamental law of the land that cannot be abridged or 
changed by a mere act of Congress, which is what we are concerned 
about; that the President's health care bill, the Affordable Care Act, 
so-called, purports to change the Constitution, which it cannot do. 
When there is a conflict between the Constitution and a law passed by 
Congress, that law falls as unconstitutional.
  But the first amendment to the Constitution says:

       Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of 
     religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . .

  Let me repeat that:

       Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of 
     religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . .

  That is what we are talking about is the free exercise of religion. I 
agree with Senator Risch that one of the biggest problems with this 
legislation, the President's health care bill, the so-called affordable 
care act, which we have came to learn is not so affordable, is that it 
forces each individual in this country to buy a government-approved 
product according to the dictates of Congress. That is one of the 
issues the Supreme Court will be ruling on, whether that is even within 
the scope of congressional power under the commerce clause.
  But Senator Risch makes a very good point; that is, the basic problem 
with this legislation generally is it is too big, it is too expensive, 
and it is too intrusive on the individual choices and freedoms of 
American citizens.
  As I said, it used to be that religious freedom was a bipartisan 
issue. That is why I am so concerned this has turned into a purely 
partisan issue. It is very obvious to me that some of our colleagues on 
the floor believe they can make political hay by scaring people, by 
misleading people; that this is somehow about denying women access to 
contraception when that is not the issue.
  This is about protecting our sacred constitutional freedoms. When I 
said religious freedom used to be a bipartisan issue, I was referring 
to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993. I think it is 
interesting to see who the sponsors were and people who were some of 
the principal proponents of the bill. That demonstrates it was 
bipartisan.
  The lead sponsor in the House was Senator Chuck Schumer, now a Member 
of the Senate. Cosponsors included then-Representative Maria Cantwell, 
now in the Senate; then-Representative Ben Cardin, who is presiding 
today; and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

[[Page 2441]]

  In the Senate it had 60 cosponsors. Ted Kennedy was the lead sponsor. 
We have heard Senator Brown from Massachusetts saying the position he 
is taking on this issue of religious freedom is exactly the same 
position Senator Kennedy took during his lifetime. But 60 other Members 
of the Senate cosponsored this, including Senator Boxer, Senator 
Feinstein, Senator Kerry, Senator Lautenberg, Senator Leahy, Senator 
Levin, Senator Murray, and Senator Reid, the majority leader of the 
Senate today.
  It was signed into law by then-President Clinton, demonstrating that 
religious freedom was not a partisan issue, it was a bipartisan concern 
of Congress and the reason why this bipartisan legislation passed to 
protect religious freedom.
  So similar to members of the Catholic Church who are concerned about 
being forced to provide coverage for surgical sterilization or drugs 
that induce abortions or other forms of contraception, members of the 
Muslim faith, if they are a woman, need not be concerned about 
restrictions on their ability or desire to wear a head scarf in public 
or in government buildings or dietary rules practiced by observant Jews 
or that Christians would not be somehow interfered with when it came to 
wearing religious symbols such as crosses or rosaries. This is not 
about those rules or those items of clothing or religious symbols, this 
is about religious freedom, over which Congress shall pass no law, 
under the words of our Constitution.
  I am somewhat disappointed we now find ourselves--that the lines seem 
to have been drawn so sharply in a partisan way on an issue that used 
to enjoy such broad bipartisan support. It is my hope our colleagues 
will reconsider because it is not good for the country, it is not good 
for our Constitution, it is not good for the preservation of our 
liberties, for the very fundamental law of our land, the Bill of 
Rights, to become a partisan issue.
  But if there is a fight, if there is a disagreement, I believe it is 
our responsibility to speak in defense of religious freedom and to 
remind our colleagues that Congress shall pass no law restricting 
religious freedom. That is what we are talking about.
  I thank my colleague from Missouri for being the leader on this 
important amendment. I am pleased to have had the opportunity to voice 
the reasons for my support, and I hope our colleagues who are opposed 
to the amendment or have already publicly stated their opposition will 
reconsider.
  Mr. BLUNT. I do too. I hope we find out now that while we do not have 
as much bipartisan support as we would like to have, we will have some. 
Senator Ben Nelson from Nebraska, along with Senator Ayotte from New 
Hampshire and Senator Rubio from Florida and I introduced this bill in 
August of last year. This is not just something we came up with 
recently.
  Members who were in the Senate when the health care act, the 
affordable health care act passed, said they believed if it had passed 
in a more normal way, this would have been in the final bill, that 
would have been an understanding, as it was in the Patients' Bill of 
Rights draft and legislation that was introduced in 1994 or the health 
care bill in 1999. This same language was an accepted and bipartisan 
part of who we are as a country enforcing the first amendment.
  In fact, in the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, it says: 
``Government shall not substantially burden a person's exercise of 
religion even if the burden results from a rule of general 
applicability.'' Even a rule that would generally apply, the government 
should not burden a person's exercise of religion unless it 
demonstrates a burden that it is in the furtherance of a compelling 
government interest.
  I cannot imagine--nobody has had to do this ever before. Why would 
suddenly defining insurance policies beyond the faith beliefs of 
individuals and groups that were long held, why is that a sudden 
compelling government interest or it is the least restrictive means of 
furthering that government interest? Surely not.
  Again, I am going to repeat for what may be the third or fourth time: 
We do not do anything in this amendment that would end the mandate. 
That is for another debate at another time. The government can still 
have a mandate. The government can still say: Here is what we are 
telling you a health care plan has to look like. But this allows people 
who have a faith-based first amendment right to object to that to have 
a way to do it.
  One of the original cosponsors of the bill; that is, the amendment we 
are debating today, has joined us and that is Senator Ayotte from New 
Hampshire. She is an advocate of the first amendment, as a former 
attorney general. I am glad she is here.
  Ms. AYOTTE. I thank the Senator. I appreciate the opportunity to be 
here to rise in support of the pending amendment that is based upon, as 
Senator Blunt mentioned, a piece of legislation that was introduced on 
a bipartisan basis earlier in the year called the Respect for Rights of 
Conscience Act, which I was proud to cosponsor.
  During the past few weeks, we have heard certainly impassioned 
arguments from both sides of the aisle about this issue. Certainly, it 
has been a robust and important exchange of views, which I have 
appreciated. However, I think it is regrettable that similar to so much 
else that happens around here, this issue has been used as an election-
year tactic to score political points, and in some cases there have 
been the facts of what this amendment and our bill hope to accomplish 
have been supplanted by mischaracterizations and distortions.
  That is unfortunate because what we are here to talk about is 
incredibly important. This is a fundamental matter of religious freedom 
and the proper role of our Federal Government. It is about who we are 
as Americans and renewing our commitment to the principles upon which 
this Nation was founded.
  This debate comes down to the legacy left behind by our Founding 
Fathers and over 200 years of American history. We have a choice 
between being responsible stewards of their legacy, as reflected in the 
first amendment to the Constitution, or allowing the Federal Government 
to interfere in religious life in an unprecedented way. The first 
amendment to the Constitution starts with: ``Congress shall make no law 
respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free 
exercise thereof.''
  Just last month, we saw our Supreme Court unanimously uphold, under 
the establishment and free exercise clauses of our Constitution, a 
ruling in the Hosanna-Tabor case that the Federal Government may not 
infringe on the rights of religious institutions in their hiring 
practices. To do so, they ruled on a unanimous basis, would interfere 
with the internal governance of the church.
  Protecting religious freedom and conscience rights has in the past 
been, as was mentioned here, a bipartisan issue. No less than Ted 
Kennedy himself, a liberal icon of the Senate, wrote in 2009 to the 
Pope: ``I believe in a conscience protection for Catholics in the 
health care field and will continue to advocate for it.''
  Senator Kennedy had previously pushed for the inclusion of conscience 
protections in legislation he proposed in 1997 as well as in his 
Affordable Health Care for all Americans Act proposed in 1995. These 
are the same protections our amendment seeks to restore.
  In 1994, provisions aimed at protecting conscience rights were 
included in the recommendations made by the Task Force on National 
Health Care Reform, led by then-First Lady Hillary Clinton. In 1993, 
when President Bill Clinton signed the bipartisan Religious Freedom 
Restoration Act into law, he said: ``The government should be held to a 
very high level of proof before it interferes with someone's free 
exercise of religion.''
  Protecting religious freedoms was once an issue that bound Americans 
together. It certainly is a very important issue as we take the oath of 
office here to uphold the Constitution of the United States. I believe 
this effort which is so fundamental to our national character must 
bring us together once more on a bipartisan basis.

[[Page 2442]]

  I would like to make one very important point about this amendment. 
Unfortunately, many have tried to characterize this amendment as 
denying women access to contraception. That is a red herring, and it is 
false. We are talking about government mandates that are interfering 
with conscience protections that have long been engrained in our law.
  To be clear, women had access to these services before the President 
passed the Affordable Care Act, and after this amendment would be 
passed, they would still have access to these important services. 
Contrary to what some of my friends on the other side of the aisle have 
asserted, this measure simply allows health care providers and 
companies to have the same conscience rights they had before the 
President's health care bill took effect.
  We are not breaking any new ground. In fact, we are respecting what 
is contained within our first amendment to the Constitution and what 
has long been a bipartisan effort to respect the conscience rights of 
all Americans, whatever their religious views are.
  This vote goes to the heart of who we are. If we allow the government 
to dictate the coverage and plans paid for by religious institutions, 
that is the first step down a slippery slope. When religious liberty 
has been threatened in the past, Members of both sides of the aisle of 
Congress have taken action to preserve our country's cherished 
freedoms. We must do so again now or risk compromising a foundational 
American principle.
  I hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will give this 
amendment careful consideration and appreciate that it is an amendment 
that will respect the conscience rights of all religions and will 
certainly not deny women access to services they need and deserve.
  I appreciate the Senator having me here today. I hope my colleagues 
will support this important amendment.
  Mr. BLUNT. I thank the Senator for her leadership and from the 
beginning of this discussion back in August when Senator Ayotte, 
Senator Rubio, Senator Nelson from Nebraska and I introduced this bill, 
we have been joined in this amendment by three dozen or more other 
sponsors, one of whom actually I mentioned a piece of legislation he 
was involved in the first time he was in the Senate. It protected the 
religious rights of people who were temporarily in the country, with 
exactly this same language, who might have some religious belief or 
moral conviction that meant they didn't want to get the vaccines we 
would require a visitor to have. In 1996 Senator Coats put this in a 
law that virtually every Member of the Senate serving today, in both 
parties, voted for, as they have time after time when this issue was 
brought up. This language was understood to be an important defense of 
the first amendment in a health care piece of legislation.
  I am glad Senator Coats has joined us today. Whenever I researched 
this, I saw that he had used this very language 15 years ago in a piece 
of legislation. I know the Senator is an important advocate of 
religious freedom.
  Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Missouri. I thank 
him also for his willingness to engage with this amendment, to put it 
in play here for us to debate and discuss. It is a very fundamental 
principle of our Constitution that is at stake, and it deserves debate, 
and it deserves this body putting their yea or nay on the line relative 
to how we are going to go forward. I commend him for his leadership, 
and I am pleased to join him, as well as many others, in this colloquy.
  This is an issue that is as old as this Nation. We are all blessed to 
live in this Nation and are blessed by the wisdom of our Founding 
Fathers, guaranteeing our rights. The very first right they guaranteed 
in the Constitution was the right to religious freedom. Many of the 
earliest settlers came here because of that right and their desire to 
come to a country where their religious beliefs, tenets, and principles 
would be respected and honored, where they would not be dictated to by 
a government like they lived under before they came here, but it would 
be protected and preserved as a basic fundamental right. It was a 
transformational idea at the time. Yet, now for well more than 220 
years or so, it has been maintained throughout the history of this 
country. It stands as a bulwark against government interference with 
personal beliefs and government trying to dictate how we exercise the 
religious freedoms we are all so privileged to have.
  It has been said--and I want to repeat it--that the debate today is 
not about access to contraception. This is not about whether it is 
appropriate to use contraception. It is not about a woman's right to 
contraception. As a pro-life Christian and a Protestant, I am not 
against contraception, but I also believe it is a decision individuals 
must make in accordance with their own faith and beliefs, not a 
decision to be made by the Federal Government.
  What this is about is whether Congress is going to sit by and idly 
allow this administration to trample our freedom of religion--that core 
American principle--or whether we will stand and protect what our 
Founding Fathers put their lives on the line for and what millions of 
Americans today will defend. We cannot pick and choose when to adhere 
to the Constitution and when to cast it aside in order to achieve 
political prerogatives. We must consistently stand for our timeless 
constitutional principles. The debate that is taking place is a stand 
to protect an inalienable right, the right of conscience established in 
our Nation's founding days and sustained for over 200 years.
  I regret that this issue has been reframed for political purposes 
into a woman's right to choose, to deny women the opportunity to 
exercise their right to make a choice. That is not what this is about 
at all. Yet some have said it has been so successfully reframed that, 
politically, those who defend this as a matter of religious conscience 
and freedom are on the losing side of the political argument. Well, we 
may be or we may not be. I think it is up to this body to decide that 
with a thorough debate and vote that puts our yeas and nays on the 
line.
  Nevertheless, whether it is a winner or a loser politically, it is 
irrelevant to the argument. It should be irrelevant to the debate 
because this clearly is a fundamental principle of religious freedom 
that needs to be protected regardless of the political consequences. So 
those of us standing up to debate this are setting aside any kind of 
political risks, any advice that basically says: You don't want to 
touch this because it has been reframed in a way that the American 
people don't understand it. We are here to say that we stand to protect 
the liberties that are granted to us by our Constitution and, 
regardless of political consequences, we will continue to do that.
  Mr. President, I again thank Senator Blunt and all those who are 
willing to address this issue and trust that our colleagues will see 
this as a fundamental breach of a constitutional provision provided to 
us by the people who sacrificed their lives to do so.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. BLUNT. I thank the Senator.
  Mr. President, I want to go next to my neighbor in the Congress, and 
now my neighbor in the Senate, and my neighbor in real life from 
northwest Arkansas. I am from southwest Missouri. I am glad Senator 
Boozman came down to discuss this issue.
  Mr. BOOZMAN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Missouri, and I 
appreciate his hard work and his leadership in bringing this amendment 
forward.
  President Obama's accommodation of religious liberty in his revised 
health care mandate covering contraceptives, sterilizations, and 
medicines causing abortion raises more questions than it answers. 
Perhaps the most troublesome part is that even with this revision, the 
President's mandate refuses to acknowledge that the Constitution 
guarantees conscience protections. He instead tries to run around them. 
You don't ``accommodate'' religious liberties, you respect them. That 
is why they are enshrined in the Constitution.
  Those constitutional protections should prevent the President from 
trampling the conscience rights of

[[Page 2443]]

Americans and religious institutions that hold a strong belief that 
contraceptives, sterilizations, and drugs causing abortion are wrong. 
Clearly, however, these constitutional protections are not enough. 
President Obama's ``accommodation'' shows that he considers conscience 
rights to be an inconvenience in his effort to remake America in his 
vision. That is why we need the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act. 
The Respect for Rights of Conscience Act--introduced by my colleague 
from Missouri, Senator Roy Blunt--seeks to restore conscience 
protections that existed before President Obama's health care law. 
These are the same protections--and I think this is important--that 
have existed for more than 220 years, since the first amendment was 
ratified.
  The amendment of the Senator from Missouri has been offered to the 
surface transportation act, and we expect to vote on it as early as 
tomorrow. The amendment's goal is commendable, and I look forward to 
supporting it. It is simply asking the President to respect the 
religious liberties of Americans.
  Many longstanding Federal health care conscience laws protect 
conscientious objections to certain types of medical services. The 
President could have just as easily followed that course when he issued 
a mandate requiring almost all private health insurance policies--
including those issued by religious institutions, such as hospitals, 
schools, and nonprofits--to cover sterilizations and contraceptives, 
including emergency contraceptives at no cost to policyholders, but he 
did not.
  Now Congress must step up and protect the religious liberties of all 
Americans. We can do this by passing Senator Blunt's amendment. I 
certainly encourage all of my colleagues to take a close look at this--
this is so important--and restore the conscience protections we have 
always stood for as a nation. I commend the Senator from Missouri and 
look forward to supporting his amendment.
  Mr. BLUNT. I thank the Senator.
  Mr. President, let me conclude in the next few minutes by first 
saying that a growing list of groups support this amendment: Home 
School Legal Defense Association, Family Research Council, Southern 
Baptist Convention, Americans United for Life, American Center for Law 
and Justice, Susan B. Anthony List, Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, 
U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Focus on the Family, Christian 
Medical Association, National Right to Life, National Association of 
Evangelicals, Orthodox Union of Jewish Congregations, Concerned Women 
for America, Eagle Forum, Religious Freedom Coalition, 
CatholicVote.org, American Family Association, Catholic Advocate, 
Traditional Values Coalition, Christus Medicus Foundation, Alliance 
Defense Fund, Christian Coalition, Advanced USA, American Association 
of Christian Schools, American Principles Project, Wallbuilders, Let 
Freedom Ring Liberty Consulting, Liberty Counsel Action, Free Congress 
Foundation, Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, Students 
for Life of America, Heritage Action, and there are others that are 
supporting this amendment.
  We can go back to 1965 and a Supreme Court case where the 
determination of how a conscientious objection would be defined was 
clearly established in ways that led to this religious belief and moral 
conviction becoming the standard. It is not just something we came up 
with for this amendment, it has been the standard since that 1965 case. 
It said: These are the elements you have to have. You cannot suddenly 
decide you have a religious conviction. This is a conviction that has 
to be a provable part of who you are.
  The Public Health Service Act in 1973, where Senator Church brought 
this language into the public health arena, is really the first major 
legislation after Medicare and the Medicaid discussion. There was also 
the Legal Services Corporation limitation, the foreign aid funding 
limitation, and the refusal to participate in executions or in 
prosecutions of capital crimes limitation. This language was good 
enough for those things, and almost every Member of the current Senate, 
if they were there then, voted for these, and since, including the 
action Senator Coats talked about earlier. The Medicare and Medicaid 
Counseling and Referral Act, the Federal Employees Health Benefits 
Plan, contraceptive coverage for Federal employees in 1999, the DC 
contraceptive mandate in 2000, and the United States Leadership Against 
HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Act in 2003 all included this 
language. We had to get to the affordable health care act, which passed 
the Senate, and then suddenly it wasn't possible to go through the 
final process of legislating here. There was no conference committee, 
no House bill. My belief is that almost nobody who voted for that act 
originally thought that would be the final bill.
  Frankly, I think that if we had ever had a more normal process, this 
normal element of protecting the first amendment would have been added, 
as it was every other time. This is about the first amendment. I 
understand the fundraising ability to make it about something else. I 
understand the PR ability to make it about something else. But it is 
not about anything else.
  A minute ago, we had three Protestants on the floor on the 
contraception issue who probably have no religious problem at all. 
There may be other elements I have problems with, but it doesn't matter 
if I have a problem. What matters is that I represent lots of people 
who do have a problem with it, and the Constitution is specifically 
designed to protect those strongly held religious views.
  As Senator Coats said, it was the first thing in the first amendment. 
It was exact in its duplication in 1994 in the great health care effort 
made then, whether it was the protection of religious freedom or the 
Patients' Bill of Rights or the effort First Lady Clinton worked hard 
to do. This wasn't even really a debatable item then because everybody 
understood this was a necessary part of protecting the first amendment 
to the Constitution.
  Again, I would say if these two or three things that are most 
objectionable to the Catholic community right now--and many of the 
people who are opposed to this are opposed to this because they wonder 
what they could be opposed to that the government would decide they had 
to participate in, they had to be a provider of, they had to pay the 
bill for. I would ask my colleagues to think of something in their 
religious view that they would not want to be forced by the government 
to be part of, and let's give all Americans that same capacity who have 
these strongly held religious beliefs.
  I would encourage my colleagues to support the first amendment. I am 
grateful for those groups around the country that have rallied around 
the first amendment. Freedom of religion defines who we are and has 
defined who we are since the very beginning of constitutional 
government, where the first thing added to the Constitution was the 
Bill of Rights. And the first thing in the Bill of Rights is respect 
for religion. We need to not give that away just to prove that 
everybody has to do what the government says because the government 
knows best rather than our conscience and our personal views.
  This is not about whether people provide health care or not, it is 
about whether they are required to provide elements of health care they 
believe are fundamentally wrong, and how the government can force 
people to do things they believe and have a provable religious 
conviction are fundamentally wrong.
  Mr. President, I think we have used the hour we had, but this debate 
will go on. There will be a vote tomorrow, but this debate will go on 
until this important freedom is soundly protected in health care, in 
hiring, in all of the elements that create that faith distinctive in 
our individuals and institutions that make us uniquely who we are.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Merkley). The Senator from Maryland.
  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I had the opportunity to listen to my 
colleague from Missouri as he talked about his amendment. I know he is 
very sincere in his efforts to protect the first

[[Page 2444]]

amendment, and if that is what this amendment was about, he would have 
my support. But let me try to go over the amendment and put in context 
how it is drafted, because this amendment goes well beyond that.
  I would agree with my colleague that the genesis of this amendment 
was because of contraceptive services and the request from religious 
institutions not to have to provide coverage for those services. The 
amendment we have before us, however, would allow an employer--any 
employer--or any insurance company to deny essential medical services 
coverage based upon a religious or moral objection. So the concern with 
this amendment is that it would allow any employer in this country to 
deny coverage of essential medical services in the plan that employer 
provides. And that could cover women's health care issues; it could 
cover contraceptive issues, mammography screenings, prenatal 
screenings, cervical cancer screenings. An employer could very well 
say, I am against the moral issue concerning providing that coverage.
  I don't believe the historical interpretations my colleague went 
through apply to those types of circumstances. This amendment would go 
well beyond one particular service and would cover any medical service. 
In fact, it says if an employer or insurance plan had any religious or 
moral objection to a service it can choose to exclude that service from 
the essential benefit package or the preventive services provisions of 
the Affordable Care Act. Yes, it would affect women's health care. 
There is no question about that. It would also affect the health care 
of men and of children.
  The Affordable Care Act guarantees that all plans offered in the 
individual small group market must cover a minimum set of essential 
health benefits, including maternity and newborn care; pediatric 
services, including oral and vision care; rehabilitative services and 
devices; and mental health and substance use disorder services, 
including behavioral health treatment.
  Under the Blunt amendment, any employer could say, look, I don't want 
to cover rehabilitative services, for whatever reason--I have a moral 
objection to it--and they could exclude that service. Preventive care 
would be at risk, prenatal care would be at risk, life-saving 
immunization could be at risk, developmental screening, mental health 
assessments, and hearing and vision tests. Any employer could make it a 
judgment not to cover any one of those services. Any insurance company 
could, based upon a ``moral objection.'' That is a very broad standard.
  That is why pediatricians and advocates for children across the 
Nation oppose it. The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American 
Congress of Obstetricians oppose it, the Association of Maternal and 
Child Health Programs, the Children's Dental Health Project, Easter 
Seals, Genetic Alliance, the March of Dimes, and the National 
Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners oppose it. These are not 
political groups, these are health care groups. They know this 
amendment could put at risk what we were attempting to achieve in the 
Affordable Care Act, and that is to make sure we have coverage for 
essential health services for all the people in this country.
  Well, what if an employer could say, I don't want to cover preventive 
services based on a moral objection? That could happen. This amendment 
would allow employers to decline to offer life-saving screenings for 
prostate cancer screenings by simply citing a moral objection, even 
though one in six men in the United States will be diagnosed with 
prostate cancer during their lifetime. Last year, 33,000 Americans died 
from prostate cancer.
  An employer who claims a moral objection to cigarette smoking could, 
under the Blunt amendment, deny employees coverage for smoking 
cessation programs or treatment for lung cancer. I have a moral 
objection to smoking; I am not going to cover in my health care plans 
treatment for lung cancer. More people die from lung cancer than any 
other type of cancer. More than 200,000 people are diagnosed with lung 
cancer each year and more than 150,000 die from it. Last year, 85,000 
were men.
  An employer who claims a moral objection to alcohol consumption 
could, under the Blunt amendment, deny coverage for substance abuse or 
rehabilitation or for medical treatment for liver disease, if it is 
found to be the result of alcohol abuse.
  Nowhere in the Affordable Care Act does it stipulate any American 
must take advantage of the expanded preventive health services. Here is 
where we have an agreement. We have an agreement that we are not trying 
to tell anyone what they have to do. I have been a defender of the 
first amendment my entire legislative career. If you have a religious 
objection to this, then don't use the services. Nowhere in the 
Affordable Care Act does it require a woman to use contraception or a 
man to have cancer screening or a child to receive well-baby visits. 
What the Affordable Care Act requires is that every American have 
access to these services so they can decide for themselves, with the 
advice of their physician, whether they are appropriate and healthy to 
utilize. If the Blunt amendment were used by employers to deny access 
to care, we are denying the people in this country the right to make 
that choice themselves.
  I agree it is not just contraceptive services, it is the choice to be 
able to have preventive services--to take care of your children, to 
have the screenings for early detection of cancer or to have treatment 
for serious diseases. All that could be put at risk. The Affordable 
Care Act views health care as a right, not a privilege, and it expands 
the freedoms available to American workers and their families rather 
than limits them.
  I understand the intentions may be very pure. And if we want to have 
a resolution saying we support the first amendment, you will have all 
of us in agreement on that. But when you say you are using that to 
remove from the Affordable Care Act the essential health coverage for 
services that I think all of us agree should be available to every 
person in this country, to make a decision whether he or she wants that 
health care, then this amendment could be used to deny them that 
ability to get that health care. Whether it is women's health care 
issues, which was the genesis of this amendment originally, in the 
debate we had a couple of weeks ago, or whether it is the care of our 
children or the care of each American, this amendment puts that at risk 
by allowing an individual employer or insurance company to make a 
decision to eliminate essential health service coverage. I don't 
believe we want to do that, and I urge my colleagues to reject the 
Blunt amendment.
  With that, Mr. 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. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cardin). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about the attack on 
women's health care that has been taking place over the last few weeks. 
There has been a heated debate in Washington about access to 
contraception for all women, regardless of her employer. There is a 
fundamental question here: Do women get control over their health care 
or do a small handful of people--the presidents of companies and the 
presidents of insurance companies--get to choose for a woman whether 
she has access to birth control?
  First, I think it is important to note that 98 percent of all women 
have relied on contraception at some point in their lives. The 
nonpartisan scientists and experts at the Institute of Medicine who 
first recommended covering contraception without a copay did so because 
there are tremendous health benefits that come from use. But now some 
in this Chamber are holding up this transportation bill, a bill that 
would create more than 1 million jobs across the country and 7,000 jobs 
in Oregon, because, apparently, it is a higher priority to take away 
women's

[[Page 2445]]

health choices, to come between a woman and her doctor.
  How is this relevant to a transportation bill? The answer: It is not. 
But regardless, we are going to vote on an amendment to this bill that 
would allow those CEOs of companies and insurance companies the right 
to refuse coverage not just of contraception but of any health care 
service they consider in violation of their personal convictions. So 
the personal convictions of one will be imposed on the dozens or 
hundreds of thousands of employees of that company. That is an 
incredible philosophy.
  I wish one of my Republican colleagues was on the floor to have a 
little conversation about it, because I would simply ask the question: 
Please explain why you think that the CEO of a company should get to 
come between a woman and her doctor and choose what health care she has 
access to.
  We talk a lot about big government. Well, this is big government. 
This is big government, giving power to an individual who runs a 
company, making choices for dozens or hundreds or thousands of their 
employees. Not only are we talking about contraception but any health 
care service.
  A company CEO could deny access to HIV or AIDS treatment, to 
mammograms, to cancer screenings, to maternity care, to blood 
transfusions. The list goes on and on.
  The Blunt amendment would allow an employer who objected to 
premarital sex to deny an unmarried pregnant woman maternity care. Is 
that right, that an employer should make that choice for all the 
employees who work for him or her? The Blunt amendment would allow an 
employer to deny children of employees access to vaccines because the 
CEO has a conviction that the vaccine poses a risk. Is that right, that 
the leader of a company should make that decision for Americans, coming 
between them and their doctors? The Blunt amendment would deny all 
health coverage if a CEO believes that physical health problems are 
simply God's will. That is the imposition of one's religion on those 
who work for you, making it their religious requirement. That is not 
the way the Constitution is designed. The Constitution is designed to 
allow us to all follow our own course, not to impose our course on 
everyone else through an employment relationship.
  The Blunt amendment would allow a CEO to say we are not going to 
cover end-of-life care because, in that conviction of that CEO--whether 
it be a man or a woman, the CEO believes that such end-of-life care is 
interfering with God's will. The Blunt amendment would allow an 
employer to deny access of folks who suffer from obesity to health 
care-related obesity programs because they believe that obesity comes 
from a moral failing.
  I think we can all understand with these examples that this is simply 
wrong--simply wrong--that a CEO should be able to take their personal 
convictions and impose them on their employees.
  This amendment is just the latest in a litany of extraordinary and 
extreme efforts by my Republican colleagues to curtail women's access 
to health care services. In the last year alone, Republicans nearly 
shut down the government over Planned Parenthood, tried to eliminate 
title X funding for low-income women's health, and tried to take away 
preventive services such as cancer screenings for women because of 
ideological objections.
  What this amendment is all about is that a few powerful CEOs dictate 
health coverage for the rest of America. If this, giving the powerful 
few the ability to dictate coverage for everyone else, isn't an 
overreach by an overly intrusive government, I don't know what is.
  Some have said that blocking women's coverage of contraception 
through their insurance doesn't affect access. They say that 
contraception doesn't cost that much; that, in the words of one 
Republican House Member, there is not one person who has not ever been 
able to afford contraception because of the price. Well, tell that to 
our young women between age 18 and age 34 who actually know what 
contraception costs. More than half of women struggle to afford it at 
some point. Tell that to a young couple struggling to figure out how 
they can afford to buy their birth control and put food on the table 
for their children. Tell that to a college student deciding whether to 
buy textbooks or fill her prescription. The truth is, contraception is 
hugely expensive without insurance. Based on information compiled by 
the Center for American Progress, the cost to an average woman using 
birth control pills continuously between age 18 and menopause would be 
more than $66,000 over the course of her lifetime if she had to pay out 
of pocket.
  I think this point bears reinforcement, because I would never have 
imagined that that is the price of birth control. I think the House 
Member I was quoting probably had no idea of what contraception costs, 
$66,000 for a woman between the age of 18 and menopause. Where I come 
from, that is a lot of money. A lot of money. That is 5.5 years of 
groceries for a family of four. That is putting two kids through the 
University of Oregon with 4-year degrees, not including the cost of 
room and board. That is a downpayment on a nice family home. In fact, 
where I come from, that is a third of the price of a nice family home. 
I think a lot of families would wish they had extra cash in their 
pockets right now. And I certainly have heard from many women in Oregon 
who are extremely concerned about the impact this amendment would have 
on their pocketbooks and on their health.
  Therese from Washington County writes to me:

       As-one of your constituents, and a practicing Catholic 
     woman on birth control, I am urging you to please back up the 
     President on this most recent decision requiring 
     contraception coverage for all of their employees . . .
       There are many, many reasons women use the pill in addition 
     to preventing pregnancy. I have issues with pre-menopause. 
     There are lots of women I know who have heavy periods, 
     horrible acne, endometriosis, debilitating cramps . . . the 
     list goes on. And to not treat these ailments because the 
     treatment also prevents pregnancy is to allow women to 
     suffer.

  Bridget from Multnomah County writes:

       This amendment does not protect religious freedom. Rather, 
     it empowers insurance companies and businesses to impose 
     their religious views on their employees and the insured. It 
     is an example of government intrusion into the personal lives 
     of millions of women who would prefer to privately make their 
     own choice about family planning, without politicians 
     interfering.
       It-is incredibly, vitally important to me that you do not 
     support this amendment. I happily attended a Catholic college 
     and cannot imagine what I would have done had I found out 
     that my health insurance did not cover birth control. . . . 
     This would be a disastrous decision.

  It is not Congress's job, it is not an employer's job, to impose our 
beliefs on others. Let's let women and families make their own health 
care decisions without the heavy hand of government intrusion being 
provided from my colleagues across the aisle. Let's not put government 
between women and their doctors or between men and their doctors or 
between families and their doctors.
  I am committed to fighting for women's health and will do whatever I 
can to defeat this amendment--this amendment, which is so wrong on 
health care and so wrong on imposing religious views of one or personal 
convictions of one on the many.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
  Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I am pleased to join Senator Merkley, 
the Presiding Officer, and the others of my colleagues who will come to 
the floor this afternoon to speak out against the Blunt amendment.
  Over the past year, we have come to the floor many times to speak out 
against the attacks on women's health. Since this Congress began, we 
have seen assaults on Planned Parenthood, on Federal funding for family 
planning and on contraception. But now we are facing the Blunt 
amendment which is even more extreme and far reaching than we have seen 
in all those other attempts to politicize women's health.
  This proposal would affect health care not just for women but for all

[[Page 2446]]

Americans. It will affect the care of our children, of our husbands, 
and our wives. In short, the Blunt amendment would let your boss make 
your health care decisions instead of you and your doctor. The 
amendment would empower corporations or any other employer to deny 
virtually any preventive or essential health service to any American 
based on any religious or moral objection. I would point out that in 
the bill, religious and moral objections are not defined. So it can be 
whatever anybody interprets it to mean.
  Under the amendment, an employer could claim a moral or religious 
basis in order to deny things such as coverage for HIV/AIDS screenings 
or counseling, prenatal care for single mothers, mammograms, 
vaccinations for children, or even screenings for diabetes if the 
employer claims a moral objection to a perceived unhealthy lifestyle.
  While this amendment could affect men, women, and children, make no 
mistake; at the most fundamental level, this debate is about a woman's 
access to contraception. Supporters of the amendment want to turn back 
the clock on women's health. They want to deny women access to 
preventive health services.
  Birth control is something most women use sometime in their lifetime, 
and it is something that the medical community believes is essential to 
the health of a woman and her family. I would point out the decision 
that the Blunt amendment claims to be addressing is one that was made 
not for political reasons but for medical reasons by the Institute of 
Medicine, and it was made because contraception is important to women's 
health. It prevents unintended pregnancies. The United States has the 
highest rate of unintended pregnancy in the developed world. 
Approximately one-half of all pregnancies here in America are 
unintended. Contraception can help women and families address this.
  Access to birth control is directly linked to declines in maternal 
and infant mortality. In fact, the National Commission to Prevent 
Infant Mortality has estimated that 10 percent of infant deaths could 
be prevented if all pregnancies were planned.
  For some 1.5 million women, birth control pills are not used for 
contraception but for medical reasons. As the Presiding Officer pointed 
out in that poignant letter from your constituents who pointed out all 
of the reasons that women could take contraceptives, it could reduce 
the risk of some cancers, and it is linked to overall good health 
outcomes.
  As Governor of New Hampshire, I was proud to sign a law back in 1999 
that requires health care plans to cover contraception. At that time, 
we heard little controversy, little uproar, virtually no concerns about 
religious exemptions to the law. The bill in New Hampshire back in 1999 
passed the Republican-led State legislature with overwhelming 
bipartisan support. In fact, in the House, almost as many Republicans 
voted for the bill as Democrats. I think that was because it was 
understood by people on both sides of the aisle of all religious faiths 
that requiring contraceptive coverage was about women's health and it 
was about basic health care coverage.
  For 12 years, that law in New Hampshire has been in place with little 
opposition because it has worked. And it is particularly unfortunate, 
as we are having this debate about women's health, thinking about what 
happened back in New Hampshire, to see this debate become so 
politicized. It is not right. It is not what is the best interest of 
women's health, and I urge my colleagues to oppose the Blunt amendment.
  The decision about a woman's health care should be between her, her 
doctor, her family, and her faith. Let's not turn back the clock on 
women's access to health care.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Merkley). The Senator from California.
  Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, do we have a specific order here for 
speaking?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democrats currently have 30 minutes of 
time.
  Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I am on the floor here today, as I was 
earlier, to talk about the dangers of this Blunt amendment.
  Senator Blunt says it has nothing to do with providing health care to 
women; it has nothing to do with that. It is just about freedom of 
religion, he says. Well, as many people say, when someone comes up to 
you and says it is not about the money, it is about the money. And when 
someone says it is not about access to women's health, it is about 
religious freedom, it is about access to women's health care. Why do I 
say that? Because that is what this debate is all about. And we see it 
all over the country with rightwing Republicans trying to take away 
women's health care. Why are they trying to do this? You would have to 
ask them. But we are here to say no.
  The thing about the Blunt amendment is, it would not only say that 
any insurer or any employer for any reason could stop women from 
getting access to contraception; it could also stop all of our families 
from getting access to essential health care services and preventive 
health care services.
  Why do I say that? Let's take a look at the Blunt amendment. Enough 
of this chatter. Let's take a look at it. Here is what it says: A 
health care plan shall not be considered to have failed to provide the 
essential health care benefits package described in our law or 
preventive health care services described in our law if they exercise 
what they call a moral objection.
  So say someone has a moral objection to someone who has smoked, and 
the person wants to give up smoking and they want to get a smoking 
cessation program as part of their insurance. If the insurer says, That 
is your fault, you are not getting it; or someone may have diabetes and 
the employer or the insurer says, You know what? That was your problem. 
You ate too much sugar as a kid. Too bad.
  That is what the Blunt amendment does and that is a fact. Here it is. 
I placed it here because this is the amendment. That is what it says.
  I wish to show a list of preventive services and essential health 
care services that the Blunt amendment threatens. Remember, the Blunt 
amendment says there is a new clause that now says any insurer or any 
employer can deny any one of these benefits: emergency services, 
hospitalization, maternity and newborn care, mental health treatment, 
pediatric services, rehabilitative services--that is just some.
  Here is the list of the preventive health care benefits that any 
insurer or any employer could deny: breast cancer screenings, cervical 
cancer, hepatitis A and B vaccines, yes--contraception, HIV screening, 
autism screening, hearing screening for newborns.
  This is the list. Why do I show this list? Particularly because I 
know the Senator served on the HELP Committee and helped put this 
together. This is the list of services that was put together by the 
expert physicians in the Institute of Medicine, this list, preventive 
health care, and this list, essential health benefits.
  I was stunned to come on the floor and hear Senator Ayotte invoke the 
name of our dear colleague and our dearly missed colleague, Ted 
Kennedy. She tried to imply that he would support the Blunt amendment.
  She is not the first Republican to do it. I am calling on my 
Republican friends to stop right now because there are several reasons 
why they are wrong to do that. First of all, Ted Kennedy, in one of his 
last acts, voted for the health care bill. He voted for the health care 
bill that came out of the HELP Committee. He helped to write the 
preventive section. He helped to write the essential health benefits 
section. He would never ever--as his son has said--support the Blunt 
amendment that would say to every employer in this country if they 
don't feel like offering any of these, they don't have to.
  He fought hard for these. He wouldn't give an exception to an 
insurance company or a nonreligious employer, never.
  How else do I know that to be the case? I ask unanimous consent to 
have

[[Page 2447]]

printed in the Record a list of bills that Senator Kennedy cosponsored.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

       S. 766, Equity in Prescription Insurance and Contraceptive 
     Coverage Act of 1997.
       S. 1200, Equity in Prescription Insurance and Contraceptive 
     Coverage Act of 1999.
       S. 104, Equity in Prescription Insurance and Contraceptive 
     Coverage Act of 2001.
       S. 1396, Equity in Prescription Insurance and Contraceptive 
     Coverage Act of 2003.
       S. 1214, Equity in Prescription Insurance and Contraceptive 
     Coverage Act of 2005.
       S. 21, Prevention First Act (110th Congress).
       S. 21, Prevention First Act (111th Congress).

  Mrs. BOXER. What are these bills? These are bills that called for 
equity for women to get contraceptive coverage. If they were given 
other coverage, they had the right to get contraceptive coverage. Ted 
Kennedy was a leader. He is a cosponsor on all these bills. Do you know 
for how many years? Thirteen years. For thirteen years, Ted Kennedy 
fought for women to get access to contraceptive coverage in their 
insurance.
  I say to my Republican friends, don't come to the floor and invoke 
the name of our dear colleague. I was so proud that the first thing I 
did when I came to the Senate, he asked me if I would help him work on 
a bill to protect people who were going to clinics, women's clinics, 
who were being harassed at the clinic door. You know what. I worked it 
for him. I helped him on the floor, and I was so proud we won that. Now 
there is a safety zone for women when they go to a clinic for their 
health care, their reproductive health care. That was Ted Kennedy.
  Yes, Ted Kennedy supported a conscience clause--we all do, and 
President Obama has taken care of that. He has stated clearly in his 
compromise that if you are a religious institution, you do not have to 
offer birth control coverage. If you are a religiously affiliated 
institution, you don't have to cover it directly but you do indirectly. 
That was a Solomon-like decision by our President. But that is not 
enough for my Republican colleagues. They have to fight about 
everything.
  I ask unanimous consent also to have printed in the Record the letter 
Patrick Kennedy wrote to Senator Brown.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:
                                                February 26, 2012.
     Hon. Scott Brown,
     Suite 100, 337 Summer Street,
     Boston, Massachusetts.
       Dear Senator Brown: In your current radio ad and in many 
     news reports, I hear you claim my father would have joined 
     you in supporting an extreme proposal now before the U.S. 
     Senate that threatens health care coverage for women and 
     everyone. Your claims are misleading and untrue.
       Providing health care to every American was the work of my 
     father's life. The Blunt Amendment you are supporting is an 
     attack on that cause.
       My-father believed that health care providers should be 
     allowed a conscience exemption from performing any service 
     that conflicted with their faith. That's what was in his 1995 
     law and what he referenced to the Pope. That is completely 
     different than the broad language of the Blunt Amendment that 
     will allow any employer, or even an insurance company, to use 
     vague moral objections as an excuse to refuse to provide 
     health care coverage. My father never would have supported 
     this extreme legislation.
       You are entitled to your own opinions, of course, but I ask 
     that, moving forward, you do not confuse my father's 
     positions with your own. I appreciate the past respect you 
     have expressed for his legacy, but misstating his positions 
     is no way to honor his life's work.
       I respectfully request that you immediately stop broadcast 
     of this radio ad and from citing my father any further.
           Sincerely,
                                               Patrick J. Kennedy.

  Mrs. BOXER. In that letter, he said: ``You are entitled to your own 
opinions but I ask that, moving forward, you do not confuse my father's 
position with your own.''
  He said: ``I appreciate the past respect you have expressed for his 
legacy, but misstating his positions is no way to honor his life's 
work.''
  I ask my colleagues in this debate, come and state their own views, 
but don't misstate the views of a dear departed colleague who for 13 
years supported a woman's right to have access to contraception.
  I think people watching this today have to be a bit confused because 
when they look up at the screen it says we are on a transportation 
bill. Indeed we are. Indeed we have been on it for almost 3 weeks now. 
I say to my colleagues who know the importance of this bill: Please, 
let us get to it. Let us get to the heart of the matter. We have a huge 
unemployment rate among construction workers. The unemployed 
construction workers could fill 15 Super Bowl stadiums. That is how 
many are unemployed. We need to get to this bill.
  It is important to our businesses. It is important to our workers. It 
is important to our communities. It is important for our safety. It is 
important to fix the bridges and the highways. It is important to carry 
out the vision of Republican President Dwight Eisenhower, who said it 
was key that we be able to move people and goods through our great 
Nation.
  When Olympia Snowe, our very respected colleague from Maine, told us 
yesterday she would not seek reelection, she said it was because there 
is so much polarization here. I said this morning, this bill is exhibit 
1. Here we have an underlying bill that came out of four committees in 
a bipartisan way. It means we can save 1.8 million jobs, create up to 1 
million new jobs, and guess what. The first amendment is birth control, 
women's health, an attack on women's health. We have to come to the 
floor and stand on our feet and fight back.
  You know what. I am proud to do it. I am proud of the men and women 
who have stood on this floor and have come to press conferences and 
been on conference calls fighting for women's rights. But this issue 
was decided a long time ago. We know access to contraception is 
critical for people. A full 15 percent of women who use it use it to 
fight debilitating monthly pain or to make sure tumors do not grow any 
larger or for severe skin conditions, and the rest use it to plan their 
families.
  When families are planned do you know what happens? The babies are 
healthier. The families are ready. Abortions go down in number. It is a 
win-win. We all know that and I always thought we could reach across 
the aisle and work together to make sure there was family planning. But 
today just proves the opposite, our colleagues on the other side, the 
Republicans, are bound and determined to go after women's health.
  I stand opposing the Blunt amendment, thanking my colleagues for 
their eloquence, and hoping we can dispose of it, defeat it, and get 
back to our Transportation bill.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey.
  Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I rise to oppose the Blunt amendment 
which simply goes way too far. The President has struck the right 
balance in his decision to address religious institutions' concerns 
when it comes to providing women's health services, but this amendment 
gives all employers shockingly broad discretion to make moral decisions 
for their employees, fundamental decisions about some of the most 
personal issues an individual faces--the health care needs of 
themselves and their families, a woman's decision about contraception 
and family planning, decisions about whether their child gets a blood 
transfusion for deadly disease, decisions regarding the use of 
prescription drugs, decisions on who to treat and how to treat them--
based entirely on an employer's moral views, not an individual's moral 
beliefs.
  The bottom line is health services should not be provided at the 
moral discretion of an employer but on the medical determination of the 
employee and their doctor. According to the Department of Health and 
Human Services, 1.7 million New Jerseyans, almost 500,000 children, 
over 600,000 women and over 600,000 men benefit from the expanded 
preventive service coverage from their private insurers that we created 
under the law: screenings for colon cancer, mammograms for women, well 
child visits, flu shots, a host of other routine procedures. All

[[Page 2448]]

these could be taken away under this proposed amendment should their 
employer determine it is against their personal beliefs or convictions.
  Every day, millions of Americans who are worried about a health 
condition go to see their doctor. Millions of women go for necessary 
screening and access to legal medical procedures. Their doctor 
evaluates their condition and recommends a course of treatment and that 
can range from simple preventive measures, such as exercise and diet, 
to a prescription drug regimen, to major surgery. The last thing a 
woman or her doctor should have to concern themselves with is whether 
their employer will deem their medical treatment to be immoral based on 
their employer's personal beliefs, regardless of their own beliefs or 
needs. The last thing they need is to be denied coverage by an employer 
who would be allowed, under this amendment, to effectively practice a 
form of morality medicine that has nothing to do with accepted medical 
science or the affected individual's personal beliefs.
  Under the language of this amendment, that is exactly what would 
happen. It would allow employers simply to deny coverage based on a 
particular religious doctrine or moral belief, regardless of the 
science, medical evidence or the legality of the prescribed treatment. 
Put simply, we expect our health insurers, no matter where we work, no 
matter what our faith, to cover basic benefits and necessary medical 
procedures recommended by our doctor and then we as individuals should 
have the right to decide which of those benefits we use based on our 
own personal beliefs, our medical diagnosis, and our treatment options. 
Just because one person makes one decision or holds one belief doesn't 
mean someone else will do the same. That is what freedom is all about.
  The arbitrary denial of coverage based on anything other than good 
science and rational medical therapy was the driving force behind the 
need for health care reforms that ensured that if one paid their 
premiums, they would be covered, freeing families from having to choose 
between putting food on the table, paying their mortgage or using their 
savings to pay for medical treatment because an insurer, based on their 
own rules, refused to cover them.
  With this amendment, we are turning back the clock and allowing the 
arbitrary denial of coverage based on someone else's sense of morality. 
That is not what America is about. It is not what freedom of religion 
is about.
  In a system predicated on employer-based health insurance coverage, 
in which workers often forgo other benefits such as wage increases in 
exchange for coverage, it is vitally important to ensure families can 
count on their coverage to provide the treatments and benefits they 
need. We can continue doing so, as we have for many years, while 
respecting people's personal moral beliefs.
  Supporters of this amendment claim it is about protecting religious 
freedom. They are wrong. Supporters of this amendment claim that recent 
regulations guaranteeing a woman's access to preventive health care 
services is a governmental overreach. They are wrong. What supporters 
of this amendment are actually trying to accomplish has nothing to do 
with either of those issues. It has to do with trying to dismantle 
heath care reform to score cheap political points and throw America's 
mothers, daughters, and sisters under the bus in the process.
  This amendment is not about religious freedom. The President rightly 
addressed that concern with a recent compromise he announced for 
religious institutions. No, it is about allowing morality-based 
medicine to deny coverage for neonatal care for unwed women, to deny 
access to lifesaving vaccines for children, to refuse to cover 
medications for HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases or even 
deny coverage for diabetes or hypertension because of an unhealthy 
lifestyle. The scope of this amendment is unlimited.
  If it were truly about religious freedom or about contraceptives, 
then why have so many nationally respected organizations that have 
nothing to do with birth control, reproductive issues or religion, such 
as the Easter Seals, the March of Dimes, the Spina Bifida Association, 
come out in such strong opposition? The answer is simple, because the 
amendment isn't about birth control and it isn't about religious 
freedom. The amendment is about fundamentally undermining our system of 
patient protections, especially for women, and leads us backward to a 
time when insurance companies and employers could play life-or-death 
games with insurance coverage. Supporters of this amendment will stop 
at nothing to undermine the progress made thanks to health care reform, 
progress that says insurance companies can no longer deny coverage 
because of a preexisting condition, can no longer impose arbitrary caps 
on the coverage you can receive or cancel a policy because of a 
diagnosis they deem too expensive to cover. In my view, it is shameful 
that they are using women's health and access to vital preventive 
services as a scapegoat for a larger anti-health agenda. Any attempt to 
say otherwise is wrong.
  Let me close by saying to allow any employer the ability to deny any 
service for any reason is doing a disservice to the people we 
represent. We would be turning the Constitution on its head to favor a 
morality-based medical decision over good science and over the 
relationship between a patient and their doctor. This is an incredibly 
overreaching amendment with radical consequences, and I urge my 
colleagues to oppose it and preserve the progress we made on trying to 
level the playing field for workers and patients in this country.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I rise to thank the distinguished 
Senator from New Jersey for his remarks, and most particularly for the 
remarks of my friend and colleague from California. She has fought this 
fight along with the dean of our women, Senator Mikulski, year after 
year and time after time.
  Before I speak about the Blunt amendment, I wanted to express that 
the retirement or announced perspective retirement of Senator Olympia 
Snowe is, for me, a heartbreak. I have regarded her as one of the most 
impressive Senators in our body. She still has many good years ahead of 
her. I have had the pleasure of working with her on a number of bills. 
Most importantly, we did really the only fuel economy improvement that 
had been done in 20 years in the 10-over-10 bill. What is interesting 
about it is it was a bipartisan bill and it got passed thanks to 
Senator Ted Stevens who was Vice-Chairman of the Commerce Committee at 
the time and it was put in his bill. So it was really quite wonderful 
to see that happen.
  This is my 20th year here, along with my friend and colleague Senator 
Boxer, and over the last 10 years what I have seen is more and more 
attacks on women and women's health, stemming largely from the abortion 
debates, but not only that. We have fought--and Senator Mikulski has 
led the way--for equal pay, we have fought against discrimination, 
attacks on Title X Family Planning grants, attempts to defund Planned 
Parenthood, and attempts to limit access to preventive health care such 
as contraception. These attacks to limit a woman's right to make her 
own reproductive health care choices have now escalated to an 
unprecedented level. I am not going to go into the specifics of some of 
them, but trust me, I never thought I would see people in public office 
put forward some of the bills out there. I believe strongly that all 
women should have access to comprehensive reproductive care, and should 
be able to decide for themselves how to use that care regardless of 
where they work or what insurance they have.
  The other side of the aisle has tried to take away access not only to 
contraception but also primary and preventive screenings for low-income 
women that are provided by the Title X Family Planning program and by 
Planned Parenthood. Title X programs serve over 5 million Americans 
nationwide, Planned Parenthood almost 3 million. They are not minor, 
they are major,

[[Page 2449]]

and for many individuals it is their only source of care. And now here 
we are defending not just women's rights but the rights of all 
Americans to have access to essential and preventive health care 
benefits.
  I strongly oppose this latest attack in the form of the Blunt 
amendment, and I join my colleagues on the floor to speak about the 
harm that this amendment will do.
  I think it was stated by Senator Menendez that the amendment is 
vague. In its vagueness it becomes a predicate for any provider, 
employer, or insurer to decline to provide to cover a myriad of health 
care benefits simply on the basis of religious beliefs or moral 
conviction. There is no statement in the legislation as to what the 
religious belief or moral conviction has to be, when it begins, or when 
it ends. It is an excuse as to why they do not want to do something.
  What does this mean? Well, what it means in reality is 20 million 
women could be denied any preventive health care benefits, including 
contraception, mammograms, prenatal screenings, and cervical cancer 
screenings. In addition, 14 million children--and this is right--could 
be denied, under this Blunt amendment, access to recommended preventive 
services including routine immunizations, necessary preventive health 
screenings for infants, and developmental screenings.
  In my State alone an estimated 6.2 million individuals--2.3 women, 
1.6 million children, and 2 million men--could be denied access to the 
preventive health services afforded to them by the health reform law, 
which incidentally is four typewritten pages, single spaced, a list of 
preventive health services. This debate is not about religious freedom. 
It is about allowing providers and employers the right to deny access 
to care for autism screening, STD and cancer screenings, and well-baby 
exams for any reason. All they have to say is they have a moral concern 
with it, that their conscience bothers them.
  For instance, any employer could refuse to cover screening for type 2 
diabetes because of moral objections to a perceived unhealthy 
lifestyle. A health plan could refuse to cover maternity coverage for 
an interracial couple because they have a religious or moral objection 
to such a relationship. The only thing this amendment does is protect 
the right to deny. It doesn't give anything. It allows denial. It does 
nothing to protect the rights of employees to access fundamental health 
care.
  The radical wing of the Republican Party does not speak for most of 
the women in this country. About 100 organizations nationwide oppose 
this amendment, including the National Partnership for Women and 
Families, National Physicians Alliance, Human Rights Campaign, and the 
American Public Health Association.
  Earlier we heard from an intensive care nurse who had worked 37 years 
in intensive care in a Boston hospital who said people get the best 
care essentially when the politicians stay away, and I believe that. I 
have heard to date--and I am sure Senator Boxer has heard from a 
similar number--from 11,500 constituents in my State, Senator Boxer's 
State, who oppose this amendment and have grave concerns about its 
implications. I don't need to tell the women in this body that we have 
had to fight for our rights. No one has given women anything without a 
fight. We had to fight for our right to inherit property, our right to 
go to college, our right to vote, and for the last 10 years, the right 
to control our own reproductive systems. We will continue to fight the 
Blunt amendment and other attempts to roll back the clock.
  I urge my colleagues to think carefully about the long-reaching 
implications of this amendment and oppose it. Senator Boxer shared with 
me a letter, and she indicated that she had read one part of it. I wish 
to read another part of it. This is a letter from Patrick Kennedy to 
Scott Brown, and I want to read this paragraph because it involves 
someone everybody on this floor knows sat right over there at that desk 
for years and was known as the lion of the Senate. When he stood on his 
feet, everyone listened. Here is what Patrick Kennedy said:

       My-father believed that health care providers should be 
     allowed a conscience exemption from performing any service 
     that conflicted with their faith. That's what was in his 1995 
     law and what he referenced to the Pope. That is completely 
     different than the broad language of the Blunt amendment that 
     will allow any employer, or even an insurance company, to use 
     vague moral objections as an excuse to refuse to provide 
     health care coverage. My father never would have supported 
     this extreme legislation.

  It is signed Patrick Kennedy, and I believe Senator Boxer put the 
letter in the Record so anyone who wishes to see the whole letter has 
access to it. But I hope this amendment is defeated on the floor.
  I see the distinguished Senator from the neighboring State, Maryland, 
the dean of the women, is on the floor.
  I will yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Thank you very much, Mr. President.
  Mr. President, what is the parliamentary situation?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority has 1\1/2\ minutes remaining.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to extend the 
time on the Democratic side for 15 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Thank you very much. I want to thank my colleagues who 
have spoken on this amendment, particularly those who oppose the 
amendment.
  I come to the floor today with sadness in my heart. I come because 
over the weekend one of our Maryland National Guards was killed in 
Afghanistan. He was one of two men working in a building in which he 
was attacked by someone he trusted at the Interior Service, and it 
appears that he was assassinated. I talked to his widow. We are sad. We 
are sad that somebody who went to defend freedom was killed in such a 
terrible way.
  I am sad because last night I spoke to a dear friend of mine whose 
husband is very ill from the ravages of brain cancer, and we remembered 
so many good times we had together, but those good times don't seem 
possible in the future. I want so much for her to be with her husband 
and not think about the consequences of costs and so on.
  Last night we learned that our very dear friend and colleague, 
Senator Olympia Snowe, is going to retire not because she is tired but 
because she is sick and tired of the partisanship. Senator Snowe is not 
tired. She is sick and tired of the partisanship. And you know what. So 
am I.
  We have a highway bill here. We have an unemployment problem. We 
could solve America's problems and get it rolling again, and if we pass 
the highway bill--with the appropriate debate on amendments germane to 
the bill--we could do it. So I am really sad.
  I am sad that I have to come to the floor to debate an amendment that 
has no relevance to the highway bill. And I am sad because we are so 
tied up in partisan politics and scoring political points that we don't 
look at how we can get our troops out of Afghanistan. How can we make 
sure we have a budget that can fund the cure for cancer and at the same 
time make sure any family hit by that dreaded C word doesn't go 
bankrupt during care?
  I am devastated that a dear friend and extraordinary public servant 
is so fed up with how toxic we have become that she chooses not to run 
for office again. So I want to be serious, and therefore you need to 
know I am really sad about this, but I also am frustrated about this. 
So I want to talk about this Blunt amendment because we have heard 
nothing but mythology, smokescreens, and politics masquerading as 
morality all day long.
  Let me tell you what the Blunt amendment is not. It is not about 
religious organizations providing health care and the government saying 
what the benefits should be. It is not about affiliated religious 
organizations and the government saying what the service is to be. This 
amendment is about nonreligious insurance companies and nonreligious 
employers. It is about secular insurance companies and it is about 
secular employers. The Blunt amendment allows that any--any--health 
insurer or employer can deny coverage for any health service they

[[Page 2450]]

choose based on something called religious beliefs and moral 
convictions.
  Now, there is a body of knowledge that defines religious beliefs, but 
what is a moral conviction? That is not doctrine. That is a person's 
personal opinion. A moral conviction, no matter how heartfelt, no 
matter how sincere, no matter how fully based upon ethical principles, 
is still a person's personal opinion. So we are going to allow the 
personal opinions of insurance companies and the personal opinions of 
employers to determine what health care a person gets. What happened to 
doctors? What happened to the definition of essential health care? So 
this is not about religious freedom; this is not about religious 
liberty because it is not even about religious institutions. So let's 
get real clear on this Blunt amendment.
  This amendment is politics masquerading as morality. Make no mistake. 
The politics is rooted in wanting to derail and dismember the 
Affordable Care Act and our preventive health care amendment.
  So what the Blunt amendment does, as I said, is allow any insurer or 
any employer to deny coverage based on religious beliefs or moral 
convictions. Well, what that essentially means is this: Let's look at 
examples. If an employer has a conviction, a personal opinion, against 
smoking, they can refuse to cover treatment for lung cancer or 
emphysema. If an employer has a personal opinion that they call a moral 
conviction that doesn't approve of drinking alcohol, they can refuse to 
cover any program for alcohol treatment or substance abuse.
  Let's say there is an employer who doesn't believe in divorce and 
they say: I will not cover health care for anybody who is divorced 
because I have a moral conviction against that. Suppose a person says--
there are some schools of thought that say: I have a moral conviction 
that a woman can only see a woman doctor, and I will not cover anything 
where she is seen by a male physician. Where are we heading? These are 
not ridiculous examples. It puts the personal opinion of employers and 
insurers over the practice of medicine.
  This is outrageous. This is vague. It is going to end up with all 
kinds of lawsuits--let's speak about lawsuits. While some have been 
pounding their chests talking about religious freedom and the 
Constitution, what is also in the Blunt amendment is this whole idea 
that gives employers access to Federal courts if they believe they 
can't exercise the amendment. This is a new lawyers full employment 
bill.
  I am shocked because the other party is always trashing lawyers. They 
are always trashing the trial lawyers associations. Now they have 
created a whole new right--or an opportunity--for Federal court action, 
clogging the courts on this particular issue.
  This is why Americans are so fed up. They want us to focus on health 
care. They want us to focus on how to lead better lives.
  Let me talk about how we got here in the first place. Do my 
colleagues remember why we had health reform legislation? I remember 
because it still exists: 42 million Americans are uninsured; 42 million 
Americans are uninsured for health care.
  This is the fifth anniversary of a little boy in Prince George's 
County who died because he could not have access to dental care. His 
infection was so bad, so severe, and there was nobody to see him. His 
mother was too poor to be able to pay for it. That little boy, in the 
shadow of the Capitol of the United States, died.
  Now, that is why we work for the Affordable Care Act. People can call 
it ObamaCare. I don't care what people call it. I call it an 
opportunity for the American people to get what a great democratic 
society should provide.
  Then, we not only looked at what was uninsured, we also looked at the 
issues around women. Senator Stabenow held a hearing, and I held a 
hearing, and guess what we found. Women pay more for their health 
insurance than men of equal age and equal health status. Nobody said 
that is a social justice issue. Well, I have a moral conviction about 
that. I have a really deeply felt moral conviction that if you are a 
woman, you shouldn't be discriminated against by your insurance 
company.
  We also found that women were denied health care because of 
preexisting conditions. We found that in eight States, if a person was 
a victim of domestic violence, they were doubly abused--not only by 
their spouse, but they couldn't get insurance coverage because they 
said the cost of physical and mental health care would be too much. 
Well, I had a moral conviction. I had a moral conviction that if you 
are a victim of domestic violence, you shouldn't be denied health care. 
I had a real strong moral conviction about that.
  Then, during my hearing, I heard a bone-chilling story. It wasn't 
just me; it was all who attended. There was a woman who testified that 
she had a medically mandated C-section. Then she was told by her 
insurance company, in writing, that she had to get sterilized in order 
to receive health insurance. The insurance company was mandating 
sterilization for her to get coverage. I nearly went off my chair.
  At that hearing there was a representative of the insurance company. 
They had no moral reaction to that. They had no moral reaction to that. 
I had a reaction. I had a really big one. That is why we got the 
amendments we did, where you could not deny health care on the basis of 
preexisting conditions. So I have a lot of moral convictions about 
this: that in the United States of America no child should die because 
of the absence of health care; no woman should be discriminated against 
in the health care system; and, at the same time, a person needs to be 
able to have the opportunity to get the services their doctor says they 
need.
  The other thing on our agenda was to not only save lives, but to save 
money, and we knew that prevention was the way to go. I came to the 
floor and offered the preventive health amendment. It was a great day. 
Many women spoke for it. It was primarily oriented toward women, but it 
was going to cover men as well. It was going to make sure that early 
detection and early screening would save lives. We spoke about the 
necessity for mammograms. We spoke about the necessity for screening 
for diabetes and heart disease and the kinds of things that, if 
detected early, could save lives. That bipartisan amendment passed.
  Then, after it was passed, and after the bill passed, the Secretary 
of Health and Human Services said: Preventive benefits should be 
defined not by politicians and not by a bureaucrat at HHS but by the 
medical community. So she requested the Institute of Medicine to define 
the preventive health care benefit. The preventive benefits we are 
talking about that Senator Blunt says an employer doesn't have to 
provide came from the Institute of Medicine. It didn't come from the 
Congress. It didn't come from bureaucracy at HHS. It came from a 
learned, prestigious society that we turn to--the Institute of 
Medicine. This is what they said are the essential preventive services 
that would save lives as well as save money.
  So this is where this came from. Now, some are on the floor saying: 
If you have a moral conviction against what the Institute of Medicine 
says is an essential benefit, you could go ahead and do it. Again, we 
are not talking about religious institutions who are employers; we are 
not talking about religious-affiliated institutions; we are talking 
about nonreligious institutions.
  Ordinarily I would call this amendment folly, but this is a 
masquerade. I think it is just one more excuse to opt out of the 
Affordable Care Act. It is one more excuse to opt out of ObamaCare. 
They want to opt out, but I think it is a cop-out, and we have to stop 
masquerading that this is about morality or the first amendment or 
someone's religious beliefs.
  So I hope we defeat this Blunt amendment. Most of all, I wish we 
could get back to talking about the serious issues affecting the 
American people. I am going to bring those troops home. I sure want to 
find that cure for cancer and help come up with the resources so we can 
do it. I am going to be sure that no little boy ever goes through what 
Deamonte Driver and his family had to suffer.

[[Page 2451]]

  Let's defeat the Blunt amendment. Let's get back to the highway bill. 
Let's get America rolling--and how about let's start functioning as an 
institution that focuses on civility and finding the sensible center 
that America has been known for in other years when we had the ability 
to govern.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Klobuchar). The Senator from California.
  Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, before the Senator from Maryland leaves 
the floor, I think it is an opportunity to thank her so much for 
speaking the truth today on the floor of the Senate--just the facts--
and what the Blunt amendment is about and isn't about. Also, I watched 
her recite the history of trying to bring preventive care and essential 
health care benefits to our people, realizing that she was in that 
pivotal position in the HELP Committee.
  I remember her looking at me one day--because we are very close 
friends; we are not on that particular committee together--and she said 
to me: Senator Kennedy asked me--I just get the chills when I think of 
it--to take on this issue of prevention and work with Tom Harkin and 
Chris Dodd and step to the plate on these essential benefits and on 
preventive benefits. She literally raised this issue, particularly on 
the prevention side--I don't know if the Presiding Officer remembers--
in caucuses, on the floor, in the committee, at press conferences, that 
we could have a new day in health care in this country because although 
we spend more than any country in the world, we are not getting the 
same results because we haven't invested in prevention.
  As she said, it is not up to politicians to decide what prevention 
should look like; it is up to the doctors. Under the Senator's 
leadership and that of Senators Harkin and Dodd and all the wonderful 
members of the HELP Committee, as well as the Finance Committee--and, 
yes, Ted Kennedy in the background because he was quite ill, but he 
sent his messages, and his staff helped--they came up with a list of 
essential health care services that nobody could ever quarrel with. 
They also came up with a list of preventive health care services that 
were so critical to all of us, particularly to women. The great news: 
Proving to us that when we invest in prevention, we save so much down 
the line. We all know this is a fact.
  Access to contraception, by the way, was put on the list not by 
politicians but by the Institute of Medicine because it is known that 
if the individual chooses that route to plan their families, that means 
we have fewer abortions and it means we will have healthier families, 
healthier babies. And many people take the birth control pill as 
medicine to prevent debilitating monthly pain. It is prescribed for 
skin diseases. It is prescribed to make sure cysts on ovaries do not 
keep growing and growing and possibly lose an ovary.
  But what has happened--and I guess I want to ask my friend one 
question before she leaves--is that the Blunt amendment would say that 
anybody, for any reason, any day, could cancel out that whole list of 
preventive and essential health care services that she fought so hard 
for.
  So when they say this is about religious freedom, no, no, no; that 
has been taken care of by our President. In terms of any provider that 
is religious or religiously affiliated, they do not have to provide 
contraception directly. Even Catholic Charities' response was ``We are 
hopeful that this is a step in the right direction . . . '', the 
Catholic Health Association supports the compromise, and so on. So I 
want to ask my friend, is she aware that when Congressman Issa held a 
hearing on women's health care, there was not one woman on the panel, 
on that first panel? Did she see those photos of that panel that was 
called to speak on women's health?
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Oh, I sure did, and it was deja vu all over again, I 
say to my colleague from California, because it was like the Anita Hill 
hearings. The Senator remembers what happened there.
  Mrs. BOXER. Yes, I do.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. During that time, there was not one woman on the 
Judiciary Committee.
  Mrs. BOXER. Absolutely.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. This is not new. The discrimination against women has 
been around a long time. I consider discrimination against women one of 
the great social justice issues, whether you are a secular humanist or 
you have core beliefs in an organized religion.
  I found not only the picture appalling, but I want to reiterate what 
we have been saying here: There is a systematic war against women. We 
do not get equal pay for equal work. We are often devalued in the 
workplace. We worry more about parking lot slots for our cars than 
childcare slots for our children. Then, when it comes to health care, 
what was so great about the preventive amendment was, first of all, we 
talked not only about family planning, where women could have the 
children they knew they could care for, but we talked about prenatal 
care. We talked about making sure our children had the opportunity for 
viability and survivability at birth.
  So, yes, it was both a picture of us not being included, but it shows 
we need to be able to fight to be heard. The issue is, women's voices 
are not being heard, and I am saying today the voices of women are 
being heard and the voices of good men who support us. I am telling 
you--not you, Senator Boxer, but I am saying out loud--if this Blunt 
amendment passes, I believe the voices of women will be heard. They 
will be heard on the Internet. They will be heard in streets and 
communities. Most of all, they will be heard in the voting booth.
  Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, I just want to thank my colleague from 
Maryland for her eloquence and for her fighting spirit. The year I came 
here was following on the Anita Hill issue, when the world saw and this 
country saw we had no women on the Judiciary Committee. Now, our 
Presiding Officer sits on that committee. Senator Feinstein and Senator 
Moseley-Braun were the two women to serve on that committee after we 
saw there were no women, and they paved the way for my good friend to 
bring her fabulous background and expertise to the table.
  But when Congressman Issa, the chairman of the committee that had no 
women on a panel talking about women's health--imagine, no women. Do we 
have that photo, Cerin? Do we have the photo of the five men testifying 
about women's health, talking about women's access to contraception, 
talking about birth control? Not one of those men ever gave birth as 
far as I know, unless they are a medical miracle. This photo I have in 
the Chamber I think is changing this country this year because a 
picture is worth thousands of words. Look at this picture, and we see 
over on the House side on that Republican side, that is who they want 
to hear from. When a woman in the audience said to the chair of that 
committee: Can I speak? I think I have some important information, he 
said she was not qualified. So I suppose if a person wants to be 
qualified to speak about women's health, they have to be a man. Her 
story she wanted to share was of a friend who was unable to get access 
to birth control because her employer did not offer it, and she was too 
financially strapped to purchase it. As a result, a cyst on an ovary 
became so large and so complicated she lost her ovary.
  Now, I just want to say to my colleagues, we are on a highway bill. 
We have to be kidding that we have now wasted 3 weeks because we are so 
consumed with attacking women's health. Get over it. We are not going 
to go back. The women of this country will not allow it.
  Look what happened in Virginia. They had a plan. They were going to 
mandate an invasive procedure, a humiliating procedure, a medically 
unnecessary procedure to women. In Virginia the women said: What? And 
the Governor said: Whoops, I have some ambitions to do more than this. 
I better change.
  I just want to say to my colleagues: Vote this down. Table this 
amendment, this Blunt amendment. This is not going to get us anywhere. 
What does it

[[Page 2452]]

do to create one job--except new jobs for attorneys, as it sets up a 
whole no right of action. I am sure the trial lawyers are going to love 
the Republicans for this bill. It sets up a whole new right of action 
because somebody is going to say: I have a moral objection against 
giving cancer treatment to a child because I think prayer is the 
answer. Somebody will sue, and that employer will sue, and they will 
sue and they will sue and there will be money, money, money going to 
lawyers. Great. What did that do to help one child? What did that do to 
make somebody feel better? What did that do to create one job?
  I know the leaders on both sides are trying to figure out a pathway 
forward on this highway bill. I am just saying, we better have a 
pathway forward. I want to say to the Presiding Officer sitting in the 
chair, who was a proud member of the Environment and Public Works 
Committee--and I hated to lose her, but everybody wanted her on their 
committee, so I lost her--she knows how it is. She lives in a State 
where a bridge collapsed. She fought hard to get that bridge rebuilt in 
record time. She knows how important it is to protect people by making 
sure our bridges are safe, that we have safe roads to schools, that we 
have good transit alternatives, that we fix our roads and our highways.
  Madam President, 70,000 of our bridges are deficient, 50 percent of 
our roads are not up to standard, and we are voting on birth control? 
Come on. What is next? Egypt? They have a whole list of things that 
have nothing to do with the highway bill. Bring it on. Let the people 
see who is stopping progress, who is stopping this bill because at the 
end of March do you know what happens. We run out on the authorization 
of the highway bill. We run out on the authorization of the 
Transportation bill. We run out, and we will lose 630,000 jobs right 
then and there.
  Instead, we can get this bill done. It is terrifically bipartisan. It 
came out of the committee 18 to 0. It came out of other committees with 
a bipartisan vote. We can get on with it, protect 1.8 million jobs, and 
create up to another 1 million jobs. Madam President, 2.8 million jobs 
are at stake, and we are debating birth control.
  I think this is resonating in the country. All of a sudden, people 
wake up and they say: What are they doing there? What is happening 
there? When they see this, it is going to be very clear we have a bill 
that has been stuck on the floor for 3 weeks because the Republicans 
are demanding votes on matters that have nothing to do with the highway 
bill. The first one is on birth control. They are talking about 
something on Egypt. They are talking about something on--oh, this is a 
good one--repealing an environmental law that is keeping arsenic, lead, 
and mercury out of the air. They want to repeal that law. Great. That 
is great. That will really do something to make us safe.
  So I am ready for these amendments. Come on to the floor. Give us a 
time agreement. Let's get on with it. Let's then allow the germane 
amendments to be offered.
  The last comment I will close with is this because it is haunting me: 
The picture of 15 football stadiums, with every seat filled, would 
equal the number of unemployed construction workers we have out there 
today. Well over 1 million suffering because they cannot find 
construction work.
  So I can only say, it is time to get this birth control amendment 
behind us. Let's beat it. Let's beat the Blunt amendment. It is a 
disaster. It is dangerous. It is hurtful. It is irrelevant to this 
bill, and it is dangerous for the country. Stop invoking the name of a 
departed colleague. Respect his family. Respect his memory. Let's get 
this vote over with. Let's go to the business at hand and create the 
jobs the American people are crying for.
  I am very pleased to see a colleague has arrived, so I yield the 
floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin is recognized.
  Mr. KOHL. Madam President, I come here today to speak about my 
amendment No. 1591, which is a bipartisan amendment to repeal the 
freight railroad industry's undeserved exemptions to the antitrust 
laws, exemptions that result in higher prices to hundreds of businesses 
and millions of consumers every day. These outmoded exemptions do 
damage to numerous industries across our country--industries that are 
vital to our economy and to the job market.
  From power companies that rely on coal shipped by rail, to farmers 
shipping grain, to chemical companies that rely on rail to transport 
raw materials, to paper companies that ship their finished products via 
rail, the railroad's antitrust exemption leads to higher prices and 
renders rail shippers at the mercy of rail monopolies engaged in 
anticompetitive practices.
  The railroads enjoy these antitrust immunities despite the industry's 
very high levels of concentration--with four freight railroads 
controlling nearly 90 percent of the market as measured by revenue and 
dividing up the country so that they face very little, if any, rail 
competition in many areas of our country.
  This amendment is very simple. Wherever the law provides freight 
railroads with an antitrust exemption, this amendment repeals it. In 
this way, the railroads will have to abide by the same rules of free 
competition as virtually every other industry. This amendment is 
identical to the Railroad Antitrust Enforcement Act, bipartisan 
legislation that has passed the Judiciary Committee by overwhelming 
margins in this Congress as well as in the past two.
  Virtually no industry--other than baseball and insurance--enjoys the 
sweeping nature of the antitrust exemptions as does the freight 
railroad industry. Yet, paradoxically, the consolidated nature of the 
freight railroad industry makes full application of antitrust law even 
more necessary.
  Just three decades ago there were more than 40 class I freight 
railroads in the United States. But today, after massive waves of 
consolidation, nearly 90 percent of industry revenues are controlled by 
just four railroads. Many areas of the country are served by only one, 
leaving their shippers captive to rate increases and anticompetitive 
measures.
  The effects of these antitrust exemptions protecting monopoly 
behavior are easy to see. Increased concentration, combined with a lack 
of antitrust scrutiny, have had clear price effects. A September 2010 
staff report of the Senate Commerce Committee stated:

       The four Class I railroads that today dominate the U.S. 
     rail shipping market are achieving returns on revenue and 
     operating ratios that rank them among the most profitable 
     businesses in the U.S. economy.

  Since 2004, this report found ``Class I railroads have been raising 
prices by an average of 5% a year above inflation.''
  The four largest railroads nearly doubled their collective profit 
margins in the last decade to 13 percent, ranking the railroad industry 
the fifth most profitable industry as ranked by Fortune Magazine. A 
2006 GAO report furthermore found that shippers in many geographical 
areas ``may be paying excessive rates due to a lack of competition in 
these markets.'' Given the industry's concentration and pricing power, 
the case for full-fledged application of the antitrust laws is plain.
  It is more than just railroad shippers who pay the price of a 
railroad industry unchecked by antitrust oversight. These unjustified 
cost increases cause consumers to suffer higher electricity bills 
because a utility must pay for the high cost of transporting coal, 
higher prices for goods produced by manufacturers who rely on railroads 
to transport raw materials, as well as higher food prices for everyone.
  Railroad monopoly conduct ripples through the economy, causing pain 
in countless corners of commerce. The current antitrust exemptions 
protect a wide range of railroad industry conduct from antitrust 
scrutiny. Unlike virtually every other regulated industry, the Justice 
Department cannot bring suit to block anticompetitive mergers--a fact 
that has greatly aided the sharp industry consolidation I have already 
described.
  Private parties and State attorneys general cannot bring private 
antitrust lawsuits to obtain injunctive relief, leaving pernicious 
industry practices

[[Page 2453]]

such as bottlenecks and paper barriers exempt from antitrust review. 
Railroad practices subject to the jurisdiction of the Surface 
Transportation Board are effectively immunized from antitrust remedies. 
Our amendment will eliminate these exemptions once and for all. 
Railroads will be fully subject to antitrust law and will have to play 
by the same rules of free competition that all other businesses do.
  The rail industry's widespread grant of antitrust exemptions has its 
origin decades ago when the industry was subject to extensive 
regulation by the long-ago abolished Interstate Commerce Commission. 
But no good reason exists today for these exemptions to continue.
  While railroad legislation in recent decades, including, most 
notably, the Staggers Rail Act of 1980, deregulated much railroad rate-
setting from the oversight of the Surface Transportation Board, these 
obsolete antitrust exemptions remained in place, insulating a 
consolidating industry from obeying the rules of fair competition. 
There is no reason to treat railroads any differently than dozens of 
other regulated industries in our economy that are fully subject to 
antitrust.
  When this amendment was filed a couple of weeks ago, the railroad 
industry responded by claiming this amendment ``goes way beyond 
antitrust laws and looks to create new regulatory law on matters 
unrelated to antitrust, and in so doing treats [railroads] differently 
than other regulated industries.''
  These arguments are completely without merit. Nothing in this 
amendment goes ``way beyond antitrust law'' or ``looks to create new 
regulatory law.'' In fact, this amendment creates absolutely no new 
regulatory law whatsoever. It simply repeals all of the antitrust 
exemptions enjoyed by the freight railroad industry.
  This amendment would not treat railroads any differently than other 
regulated industries. The mere fact that an industry is regulated does 
not exempt it from antitrust law. Many other regulated industries, 
including the telecommunications sector regulated by the FCC and the 
aviation and trucking industries regulated by the Department of 
Transportation, are fully subject to antitrust law.
  This amendment simply seeks to end the special exemption from 
antitrust law enjoyed by freight railroads--an exemption which is both 
wholly unwarranted and raises prices to shippers and consumers every 
day.
  Dozens of organizations and trade groups representing industries 
affected by monopolistic railroad conduct have endorsed the Railroad 
Antitrust Enforcement Act, which is identical to this amendment. 
Supporters of the legislation have included 20 State attorneys general 
in 2009; the leading trade associations for the electrical, 
agricultural, chemical, and paper industries; the National Industrial 
Transportation League; and the Nation's leading consumer groups.
  In sum, by clearing out this thicket of outmoded antitrust 
exemptions, this amendment will cause railroads to be subject to the 
same laws as the rest of our economy. Government antitrust enforcers 
will finally have the tools to prevent anticompetitive transactions and 
practices by railroads. Likewise, private parties will be able to 
utilize the antitrust laws to deter anticompetitive conduct and to seek 
redress for their injuries.
  In the antitrust subcommittee, we have seen that in industry after 
industry vigorous application of our Nation's antitrust laws is the 
best way to eliminate barriers to competition, to end monopolistic 
behavior, and to keep prices low and quality of service high. The 
railroad industry is no different. All those who rely on railroads to 
ship their products, whether it is an electric utility for its coal, a 
farmer to ship grain, or a factory to acquire its raw materials or ship 
out its finished product, deserve the full application of the antitrust 
laws to end the anticompetitive abuses all too prevalent in this 
industry today.
  I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as 
in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                      Tribute to Wilbur K. Hoffman

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, my late friend, the late Alex Haley, 
the author of ``Roots,'' lived his life by these six words: Find the 
Good and Praise it.
  I am here today to praise a remarkable hero who served in one of the 
most difficult battles in our Nation's history and who today at 90 
years old lives a quiet life in Memphis with his family.
  Wilbur K. Hoffman, or ``Bill'' to his fellow Rangers, was a member of 
the Dog Company of the 2nd Ranger Battalion, which in 1944 was among 
the select few companies that stormed the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc on D-
day and turned the war around for the Allies.
  Forty years after Bill Hoffman and his fellow 2nd Battalion Rangers 
clambered up the rocky cliffs on the shoreline of France, President 
Reagan returned to the windswept spot to pay tribute. President Reagan 
called them ``the boys of Pointe du Hoc.'' The President said:

       These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the 
     champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes 
     who helped end a war.

  This is Bill Hoffman, a hero who helped free a continent and end a 
war.
  Bill volunteered to join the Army in 1942. A year later he 
volunteered to join the Rangers, a select group that were charged with 
special missions. Bill says that because of all of their special 
training, they would simply ``get the mission done.''
  Bill got out of the Army in 1945, after the war, but took a look at 
the job market and said, ``I think I'll go back in.'' Bill served in 
the Army for 24 years. Bill likes to say, ``Everything that happened, I 
volunteered for.'' And if you happen to ask how he feels when he looks 
back, he will say just as plainly, ``No regrets.''
  This year the Army has awarded Bill a Purple Heart. But not for the 
first time. During World War II, the Army tried. But Bill, in an Army 
ward surrounded by soldiers who had lost arms and legs in fighting, 
believed his wounds did not measure up, and so he said, ``I don't think 
so.''
  Bill's son David, more than 60 years after his father first declined 
the Purple Heart, contacted the Army about trying again. Capturing his 
father's humility in declining the medal decades ago, David calls his 
dad ``the nicest guy you'll ever meet. Friendly and outgoing but by the 
same token, he doesn't like to talk about himself'' says the son.
  Bill is the father of seven children, and nearly all of them who 
could join the service did or married someone who did.
  Bill is not a native Tennessean. He was born in Newark, NJ. He came 
to Tennessee first as a Ranger in training. The Rangers came from all 
over the country and assembled in Camp Forrest in Tullahoma for 
training. Bill's wife came down to visit him there for a couple of days 
during training, and it must have had a real effect on her, because 
more than 30 years later, after Bill was out of the Army after 24 years 
of service, and they were living in New York State, Bill's wife said to 
him, ``I want to go to Tennessee. I like it down there.'' So they 
packed up the U-Haul and moved to Ashland City, along the Cumberland 
River.
  Today Bill is one of only three Rangers left from the original 2nd 
Battalion Dog Company. While the Ranger reunions used to occur once 
every 2 years, the guys are getting old, Bill says, and now they are 
doing them every year. ``Good bunch of guys,'' Bill calls his fellow 
heroes. ``They say Ranger friendships are forever. It's true.''
  Bill turns 91 on Friday. It is an honor for me to wish this American 
hero a happy birthday.
  Congratulations, Bill Hoffman. We're proud of you. Your Nation is 
proud of you. ``Find the good and praise it.''
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I rise today to speak in support of

[[Page 2454]]

the Transportation reauthorization bill that is currently before the 
Senate. It is called the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century 
Act, so we call it by its acronym, MAP-21. It is a critical piece of 
legislation that will put Americans back to work and lay the foundation 
for future economic growth.
  Our transportation infrastructure has long been at the heart of 
America's success, from the transcontinental railroad to the interstate 
highway. Yet, across the country, the infrastructure that helped build 
our great economy has been allowed to fall into disrepair.
  For evidence of our Nation's crumbling infrastructure, one need look 
no further than my home State of Rhode Island. Anyone who drives to 
work or school in our State sees the problems--bridges that are subject 
to weight restrictions, highways with lane closures, and roads 
everywhere marked with potholes. Only one-third of our highway miles 
are rated in fair or good condition; the majority are poor or mediocre. 
According to a recent report, one in five bridges in Rhode Island is 
structurally deficient--the fourth highest figure for any State. You 
look nationwide, and the picture does not improve.
  The American Society of Civil Engineers rates our national 
transportation systems as near failing. They give our roads and 
highways a D-minus, our bridges a C, our freight and passenger rail a 
C-minus, and our transit systems a D. This is not the kind of report 
card you want to post at home on your refrigerator, and it is not one 
our great Nation should tolerate.
  Instead of committing ourselves to solving our infrastructure 
deficit, however, we continue to fall short. The civil engineers 
estimate that we would need to dedicate $250 billion each year to bring 
our transportation systems into a state of good repair. At current 
levels, the United States spends only 2.4 percent of GDP on 
infrastructure, compared with European nations at 5 percent and China 
and India at about 9 percent.
  Let's recall why it is so important that we invest in transportation. 
Our economy relies on the ability to get goods and services to where 
they are needed. An entrepreneur cannot start a business if his 
employees cannot get to work. A manufacturer cannot stay in business if 
its products cannot reach its customers. A free market can only operate 
if supply can actually get to demand. Our roads, trains, and buses are 
what allow this to happen.
  If we don't make the necessary investment, our global competitors 
nevertheless will. MAP-21 represents a downpayment that will fund 
important highway, transit, and rail projects to repair our aging 
transportation infrastructure and help ensure that America can succeed, 
as it has since we first broke ground on the Interstate Highway System.
  As important as this bill is to our long-term prosperity and our 
global economic position, MAP-21 also provides immediate support to 
local construction projects and the quality jobs that go along with 
them.
  It is estimated that MAP-21 will protect 1.8 million existing jobs 
around the country, with the potential to create up to a million more 
new jobs. This is particularly important given the high level of 
unemployment in the construction industry. In my home State of Rhode 
Island, this bill would support an estimated 8,100 jobs. At a time when 
our State's unemployment rate hovers stubbornly around 10 percent, 
those jobs are absolutely crucial.
  Given the decrepit state of our transportation systems, it should be 
obvious that we will have to address our infrastructure needs at some 
point. We need to do this work sooner or later, and there is no better 
time to make that investment than now, with so many workers ready to 
get to work and so many projects ready to get underway. I know that in 
Rhode Island there is no shortage of workers or worthwhile 
transportation projects. In fact, Secretary of Transportation LaHood 
was in Providence today, and I invited him to tour one of the most 
significant of Rhode Island's transportation projects, and that is the 
Providence viaduct. That viaduct is an overland highway bridge that 
carries Interstate 95 for nearly a quarter mile through downtown 
Providence, our capital city. It is one of the busiest stretches of the 
entire I-95 corridor.
  The viaduct runs north and south over U.S. Route 6 and State Route 
10, the Amtrak northeast corridor, commuter, and freight rail lines, 
and over the Woonasquatucket River. It provides access to downtown 
Providence, four universities, Rhode Island Hospital, our convention 
center and arena, and the Providence Place Mall, not to mention the 
north-south traffic along the eastern seaboard that traffics through 
this area.
  What Secretary LaHood saw on his tour today is a bridge that is quite 
literally crumbling. The viaduct was built in 1964, and it is showing 
its age. Its deck is badly deteriorated, steel girders are cracked and 
don't meet minimum specifications for brittleness, and our State 
department of transportation has installed these wooden planks under 
the I-beams to keep concrete from falling through onto the cars, 
pedestrians, and even the trains that travel underneath the highway. 
You can also see here where a section of the concrete has fallen 
through the supports, exposing the steel reinforcement, which is now 
rusting out in the open.
  While the viaduct remains safe for travel today, it is a weak link in 
the critical I-95 corridor. It is a potential safety hazard for the 
160,000 vehicles that travel on it each and every day, as well as to 
the cars and trains that pass underneath. The bridge is inspected on a 
regular basis, just as a precaution. If the viaduct were to fail or 
simply require posted weight limits, it would cause substantial 
regional disruptions to traffic and commerce and trade.
  Clearly, this is a problem that needs to be addressed. The cost of 
repairing the Providence viaduct is estimated at roughly $140 million. 
This is a reasonable investment to help ensure the flow of commerce 
through the entire Northeast, but it represents a very significant 
financial burden for a small State such as Rhode Island. Fixing the 
viaduct would take out almost two-thirds of the money that Rhode Island 
would get from this bill. Rhode Island simply isn't big enough and 
doesn't have the resources to tackle this important project and still 
meet our other transportation obligations.
  I have filed an amendment to MAP-21 to fund the program for the 
Projects of National and Regional Significance Program. The Projects of 
National and Regional Significance Program is a competitive grant 
program that is designed to support critical, high-cost transportation 
projects that are difficult to complete with existing funding sources. 
This program can help us address those big infrastructure projects 
around the country--ones such as the viaduct--that are currently being 
kicked down the road because the State DOTs cannot scrape enough money 
together to get them underway.
  The Projects of National and Regional Significance Program is 
authorized in MAP-21. We got that done in the Environment and Public 
Works Committee. Now we need to get that authorized program funded. I 
am pleased to have the support of my senior Senator, Jack Reed, and 
Senator Merkley on this amendment. I look forward to working with them 
and other Senators so that we can start the important work of 
rebuilding critical infrastructure projects, such as the viaduct, that 
are so important to our economy.
  While I am thanking other Senators, let me recognize Senator Olympia 
Snowe for her work on another amendment that would grant States limited 
flexibility to use congestion mitigation and air quality funds toward 
their transit systems. This is an important issue for Rhode Island, as 
we begin to scale up our new South County commuter rail.
  I introduced a version of this amendment in committee and continue to 
believe that increased flexibility in the Congested Mitigation and Air 
Quality Program, or CMAQ, would promote State-level transit options 
that we so critically need.
  Let me thank our chairwoman, Senator Boxer, and her ranking member,

[[Page 2455]]

Senator Inhofe, for their consideration of our amendment and, more 
important, for their hard work on this bill overall. As a member of the 
Environment and Public Works Committee, I can testify that the 
leadership of Chairman Boxer and Ranking Member Inhofe, working 
together, is what has made the difference for this transportation 
reauthorization. Through their efforts, we were able to unanimously 
vote the bill out of committee, making the important statement that 
investment in our Nation's infrastructure has strong, bipartisan 
support. They have set an example that I hope ultimately will be 
followed by the handful of Senators who are obstructing progress on 
this transportation bill, and our colleagues on the other side of this 
building. The American people deserve better than efforts to gut 
transportation jobs and slash infrastructure programs, or to slow down 
progress on this bill with irrelevant amendments.
  With our economy struggling to get back on its feet, with our roads 
and bridges in desperate need of repair, now is not the time to be 
debating unpopular and misguided efforts to roll back protections for 
women's health. Now is not the time, and this is not the bill, to 
debate whether we should undermine rules that protect our environment 
or fast track a pipeline project that is clearly not ready for prime 
time. We have a bipartisan bill before us. We have a bill that will 
create jobs. We have a bill that will get our economy moving forward. 
That should be our priority. We should get to the business of 
legislating on this bill.
  This is a country that does big things. We built highways and rail 
systems connecting Americans from coast to coast. We built skyscrapers 
and airplanes and rockets to take us to the Moon and back. Big things 
are part of America's national identity. Just as important, they are a 
vital source of jobs during this trying economic time.
  Let's keep doing big things. Let's give the people in Rhode Island 
and across the country a transportation infrastructure they can be 
proud of, and let's not cut funding and retreat. We cannot afford to go 
backward. The infrastructure is what supports our economy. We need to 
refocus on the job of getting America moving ahead, and MAP-21 is a 
step forward.
  I thank the Chair and yield the floor.
  Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, I thank Senator Whitehouse of Rhode 
Island for his words. Also, he is an exceptional member of the 
Environment and Public Works committee. First and foremost, he brings 
us the point of view of his State and he fights on every issue every 
day. He brings national leadership to the floor on the issue of 
infrastructure and the need to keep up with our incredible failing 
infrastructure--the fact that we have to fix these bridges, 70,000 of 
which are insufficient, and 50 percent of the roads that are not up to 
par. In Rhode Island, we have serious problems, and the Senator has 
brought those to the floor. He is a leader on a clean and healthy 
environment, protecting the air and water for his people.
  The Senator could not be more eloquent. He is making a point that we 
could come up with very difficult amendments and slow things up and gum 
up the works, et cetera, but doesn't my friend think that with so many 
construction workers out of work--they have well over 15 percent 
unemployment in the construction industry, which is about twice the 
national rate, which is too high as it is--we have a chance to protect 
1.8 million jobs and create another million jobs, and isn't it time to 
say that birth control was an issue that was resolved decades ago and 
let's move on to the task at hand and put people back to work?
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. It doesn't make sense. I thank her for getting us to 
this point. I know how much frustration she must feel, having worked so 
hard and in such a bipartisan way to get us to this point and to now 
have a process that would get this bill moving forward and get funding 
out there, get infrastructure repaired, put men and women to work in 
good, solid, high-paying jobs, only to be all snarled up so that a 
small group of people can score points with a political issue that has 
nothing to do with transportation, infrastructure, or highways.
  If people want to have a fight about whether women should get access 
to contraceptive medicine, I suppose that is their right in the Senate. 
But the idea to stop a highway bill to forge that fight is what to me 
is irresponsible.
  Mrs. BOXER. I know my colleague worked very hard on the health care 
bill, am I right on that?
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Yes.
  Mrs. BOXER. I remember him being so proud of the prevention piece he 
brought to us. He made the case to us publicly, and privately in 
caucus, that it would save so much money for the American people. Right 
now, we know, for example--and I just read this--if you have colorectal 
screening, you are 50 percent less likely to die of colorectal cancer. 
This is a screening test.
  We certainly know about mammography and all of this. Is my colleague 
aware that what the Blunt amendment says is that any employer, 
religious or not, any insurance company, religious or not, can withhold 
any one of those preventive services from being offered to employees if 
they had some kind of vague moral objection? Is my colleague aware that 
all the work he put in on making sure that insurers cover our people 
for preventive services, such as mammography, colorectal screening, HIV 
screening, and all of these important benefits, plus a list of 
essential benefits just as important, that all of that could come to 
nothing if the Blunt amendment passed and an employer woke up and said: 
I know how to save money, I will have a moral objection and not offer 
anything? Is my friend aware of how deep this Blunt amendment reaches 
into health care reform?
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I thank my chairman, and yes, it is kind of 
astonishing, the breadth and the scope of this amendment. As if CEOs 
don't have enough power over their workforce, as if they haven't done 
enough to send jobs from American factories offshore to factories 
overseas, now they would be able to dictate what kind of health care 
their employees can receive, and not based on marketplace 
considerations, not based even on health considerations, but based on 
their own unchecked moral or religious beliefs.
  Mrs. BOXER. Exactly.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I think it is a terrible mistake to go down that 
road, but I think it is a double mistake: it is wrong to go down that 
road in the first instance, but it is also wrong while we need jobs so 
urgently, while our highways crumble and our bridges deteriorate and 
water works continue to fail and we have the ability to put people to 
work in America at good jobs. You can't offshore a job building an 
American highway; you have to do it right here in this country. These 
are important jobs and this is important work. We should be getting 
about this.
  I think it sends a terrible signal to the American people when the 
Senate, taking up this piece of legislation, has to be led off into all 
these other battles that have nothing to do with highways, that have 
nothing to do with infrastructure, that have nothing to do with jobs, 
but are simply an exercise in political gamesmanship.
  Mrs. BOXER. Right.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. It is unfortunate, when there are real stakes for 
real families on the table and real time slipping by, that we don't get 
this done. We get jacked up enough around here, but as hard as the 
chairman has worked to bring this to the floor and to be ready, here we 
are, stopped again, dealing with irrelevant issues again, and all for 
the entertainment and distraction of people. It is not about jobs, it 
is not about the economy, it is not about our infrastructure, it is not 
about laying the foundation for future prosperity, and so it is 
frustrating that we have to go through this exercise.
  Mrs. BOXER. I thank my friend. When I looked at him, I thought, He is 
one of the few people who have such a personal stake in two issues that 
have been merged together, unfortunately: the Blunt amendment, which 
would allow anyone to opt out from providing so many of the services my 
friend worked to make sure the American people have, plus 3 weeks we 
are now

[[Page 2456]]

delayed on a bill my friend helped me with so strongly and so 
powerfully. So I wanted to make sure people in his State understood 
that he has worked so hard to make sure people have access to health 
care, and the Blunt amendment would drive a big Mack truck through 
this--not to use a kind of funny analogy on the highway bill, but that 
is what it would do, in the meantime stopping us from getting on to our 
work in creating all these jobs.
  My feeling is we will defeat the Blunt amendment tomorrow. I am very 
hopeful. But with that in mind, Madam President, I ask unanimous 
consent to have printed in the Record a number of letters speaking to 
the Blunt amendment.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                                          American Cancer Society,


                                        Cancer Action Network,

                                Washington, DC, February 29, 2012.
       Dear Senator: On behalf of millions of cancer patients, 
     survivors and their families, we write to express our 
     opposition to the amendment proposed by Senator Roy Blunt to 
     the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act that 
     would permit employers to refuse employee insurance coverage 
     for any health benefit guaranteed by the Affordable Care Act 
     if the employer raises a religious or moral objection to 
     those benefits.
       Annually, seven out of ten deaths among Americans are 
     attributed to chronic diseases such as cancer, diabetes, 
     heart disease and stroke. The Affordable Care Act made 
     significant strides to stem this epidemic by ensuring 
     patients would have access to essential care that could 
     address prevention, early detection, and treatment--all 
     necessary elements to improve the health and well-being of 
     our nation.
       Unfortunately, the expansive nature of the proposed Blunt 
     amendment would directly undercut this progress. 
     Specifically, it would allow any health insurance plan or 
     employer, with a religious affiliation or not, to exclude any 
     service required by the Affordable Care Act if they object 
     based on undefined ``religious beliefs or moral 
     convictions.'' The implications of this provision could 
     result in coverage denials of lifesaving preventive services 
     such as mammograms or tobacco cessation based on employer 
     discretion. Consider the reality that under the amendment a 
     tobacco manufacturer could refuse coverage of tobacco 
     cessation benefits for its employees.
       We urge all members of the Senate to consider the undefined 
     impact this amendment could have on employee health care 
     coverage, and to please vote against it. Thank you for your 
     consideration of this request.
           Sincerely,
                                            Christopher W. Hansen,
     President.
                                  ____



                                   Trust for America's Health,

                                Washington, DC, February 14, 2012.
     Senator Barbara Boxer,
     Chairman, Committee on Environment & Public Works, Hart 
         Senate Office Building, Washington, DC.
       Dear Chairman Boxer, I am writing to express my deep 
     concern over the Blunt Amendment, which is expected to be 
     offered during the debate over S. 1813, Moving Ahead for 
     Progress in the 21st Century (MAP-21). This amendment would 
     undermine the Affordable Care Act's guarantee that all 
     insurance plans cover preventive services and would do 
     serious harm to our efforts to reduce the rate of chronic 
     disease in this country.
       One of the most important provisions in the Affordable Care 
     Act (ACA) was the requirement that preventive services be 
     covered with no cost-sharing. Chronic diseases--such as heart 
     disease, cancer, stroke, and diabetes--are responsible for 7 
     out of 10 deaths among Americans each year and account for 75 
     percent of the nation's health spending. Including preventive 
     services within essential health benefits represents a 
     critical opportunity to ensure that millions of Americans 
     have access to prevention-focused health care and community-
     based preventive services. This is essential if we are to 
     address risk factors for chronic diseases--such as tobacco 
     use, poor diet, and physical inactivity--which will allow us 
     to improve the health of Americans and reduce health costs 
     over the long term.
       The Blunt Amendment would allow any health insurance plan 
     or employer, religious or not, to exclude any preventive 
     service if they object based on undefined ``religious beliefs 
     or moral convictions.'' This is an extraordinarily broad 
     provision which could result in coverage denials for 
     virtually any preventive service. Americans should be able to 
     count on a minimum level of coverage no matter where they 
     work, and this amendment sets a dangerous precedent.
       Transportation legislation is an opportunity to expand 
     access to healthy transportation choices, such as walking and 
     cycling, which will keep our communities moving by providing 
     healthy, safe, and accessible transportation options. It 
     should not be a forum for re-opening the ACA and reversing 
     gains we have made in prevention and public health. I hope 
     the Senate will defeat the Blunt Amendment and instead focus 
     on amendments to MAP-21 that would promote good health and 
     21st century transportation policy.
           Sincerely,
                                               Jeffrey Levi, Ph.D.
     Executive Director.
                                  ____

                                                Feburary 13, 2012.
       Dear Senator, on behalf of the more than 2.1 million 
     members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), 
     I urge you to oppose an amendment offered by Senator Blunt 
     (S. Amdt. 1520) to the surface transportation, 
     reauthorization bill (S. 1813) that would allow employers to 
     deny coverage for contraception and other critical health 
     care services.
       The Affordable Care Act, in an enormous step forward for 
     working women and their families, requires all new health 
     insurance plans to cover certain preventive healthcare 
     services with no cost-sharing or co-pays, including 
     mammograms, pap smears, and well-woman yearly exams. Starting 
     this August, most health insurance plans will be required to 
     cover women's preventive services, including contraception. 
     This is a tremendous milestone for women's health and 
     equality in our country.
       Unfortunately, the Blunt Amendment is an extreme proposal 
     that turns back the clock on this important advance, allowing 
     employers to impose their beliefs on their employees and take 
     away the health care benefits their employees would otherwise 
     be entitled to receive. The Blunt Amendment allows any 
     employer to deny insurance coverage for any essential health 
     benefit or preventive service to which the employer has a 
     religious or moral objection, including contraception, as 
     well as many other health services.
       As the nation's largest union of nurses, doctors, and 
     healthcare workers, we know that women's healthcare choices 
     are too often driven by the reality that the cost for gas and 
     groceries comes first. Contraceptive use is the rule, not the 
     exception, for women who can afford it. In fact, 99 percent 
     of women overall and 98 percent of Catholic women use 
     contraception at some point in their lives. Women should have 
     the freedom to make personal, private decisions about their 
     families and their future with their doctor and their loved 
     ones. An employer has no place in that decision-making 
     process.
       We urge you to oppose the Blunt Amendment when it comes up 
     for a vote on the Senate floor. SEIU may add votes on this 
     amendment to our scorecard, located at www.seiu.org. Should 
     you have any questions or concerns, contact Steph Sterling, 
     Legislative Director, at steph.sterling
     @seiu.org or at 202-730-7232.
           Sincerely,
                                                   Mary Kay Henry,
     International President.
                                  ____

                                                February 29, 2011.
       Friends, this week the Senate may consider an amendment by 
     Senator Blunt (R-MO) that would eliminate access to essential 
     health benefits for millions of Americans. The Human Rights 
     Campaign (HRC) strongly urges your boss to vote no on the 
     Blunt Amendment. HRC will consider this a key vote.
       When Congress passed the Affordable Care Act in March of 
     2010, the intent was to ensure that all Americans had access 
     to health insurance. More specifically, it required that a 
     core set of benefits be covered, including preventive care 
     specially designed for women and children. The essential 
     health benefits package was carefully crafted to respect 
     religious interests and individual conscience. To that end 
     the ACA includes a strong exemption, allowing approximately 
     335,000 churches/houses of worship to refuse to provide birth 
     control for their employees. In response to concerns raised 
     by religiously-affiliated hospitals, universities and other 
     facilities, the President has proposed additional protections 
     that would allow those entities--which operate as businesses 
     and serve and employ the broader public--not to provide birth 
     control coverage, but still ensure that their employees have 
     access to that benefit.
       HRC respects the right of religious groups to maintain 
     their beliefs and the important role religious organizations 
     play in providing important health, education and social 
     services. The ACA and the President's proposed compromise 
     strike a respectful balance between religious interests and 
     the health needs of women. However, HRC is particularly 
     concerned by efforts to go even further and permit the 
     religious or moral beliefs of individuals or private 
     businesses to limit nondiscrimination protections and equal 
     access to services and benefits. When the balance shifts too 
     far in that direction, all too often, lesbian, gay, bisexual 
     and transgender (LGBT) individuals are negatively impacted.
       The Blunt Amendment would go far beyond the President's 
     reasonable step and dramatically expand the ACA's religious 
     exemption, permitting any employer to opt-out of providing 
     coverage for an essential health benefit or preventive 
     service by asserting it violates its ``religious beliefs or 
     moral convictions,'' regardless of whether that employer is 
     in any way a religious organization.

[[Page 2457]]

     This language would undermine the entire healthcare law by 
     allowing employers to cherry-pick what is covered by their 
     health insurance. While the amendment comes in response to 
     recent debate over the coverage of birth control, it would be 
     all too easy for employers to decide to drop other benefits, 
     like HIV testing, or limit coverage for specific medical 
     conditions, based on a purported religious or moral 
     objection. If enacted, the Blunt Amendment would place the 
     moral objections of any employer over the health of millions 
     of Americans, including members of the LGBT community. For 
     these reasons, HRC strongly urges you to oppose the Blunt 
     Amendment.
       Should you have any questions at all please feel free to 
     contact me at (202) 216-1515 or [email protected] or 
     Andrea Levario at (202) 216-1520 or [email protected].
                                                  Allison Herwitt,
                                             Legislative Director.
                                 ______
                                 
       To Members of the United States Senate: The undersigned 
     organizations are opposed to the amendment introduced by 
     Senator Roy Blunt (R-MO) that would jeopardize quality health 
     insurance coverage for millions of people in this country.
       The Blunt Amendment #1520 to S. 1813, the Surface 
     Transportation bill, allows any employer or insurance 
     company, religious or not, to deny health insurance coverage 
     for any essential or preventive health care law, service that 
     they object to on the basis of religious beliefs or moral 
     convictions. That means employers and insurance companies can 
     not only deny access to birth control, they can deny access 
     to any health care service required under the new health care 
     law including maternity care for unmarried women, vaccines 
     for children, blood transfusions, HIV/AIDS treatment, or type 
     II diabetes screenings. This expansive control over 
     employees' coverage will have a harmful impact on all people, 
     and it will discriminate against those who need access to 
     essential health services the most.
       In short, the Blunt amendment would eviscerate critical 
     protections in the Affordable Care Act and completely 
     undermine a fundamental principle of the health care law--
     that everyone in this country deserves a basic standard of 
     health insurance coverage.
       We urge you to reject the Blunt amendment and oppose all 
     efforts to undermine peoples' access to health care.
           Sincerely,
         Advocates for Youth; The AIDS Institute; AIDS United; 
           America Votes; American Academy of Pediatrics; American 
           Association of University Women; American Civil 
           Liberties Union; American College of Nurse-Midwives; 
           American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists; 
           American Federation of State, County and Municipal 
           Employees; American Medical Student Association; 
           American Medical Women's Association; American Nurses 
           Association; American Public Health Association; Asian 
           Communities for Reproductive Justice; Association of 
           Reproductive Health Professionals; Black Women's Health 
           Imperative; Catholics for Choice; Center for Health and 
           Gender Equity; Center for Reproductive Rights.
         Center for Women Policy Studies; Coalition of Labor Union 
           Women; Choice USA; Concerned Clergy for Choice; Doctors 
           for America; EQUAL Health Network; Feminist Majority; 
           Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC); Hadassah, The Women's 
           Zionist Organization of America, Inc.; Health Care for 
           America Now; Healthy Teen Network; HIV Medicine 
           Association; Human Rights Campaign; International 
           Union, United Automobile, Aerospace & Agricultural 
           Implement Workers of America, UAW; International 
           Women's Health Coalition; Jewish Women International; 
           Justice and Witness Ministries of the United Church of 
           Christ; Law Students for Reproductive Justice; 
           MergerWatch; Methodist Federation for Social Action.
         MoveOn.org Political Action; NARAL Pro Choice America; 
           National Abortion Federation; National Alliance on 
           Mental Illness; National Asian Pacific American Women's 
           Forum; National Center for Transgender Equality; 
           National Coalition for LGBT Health; National Coalition 
           of STD Directors; National Council of Jewish Women; 
           National Council of Women's Organizations; National 
           Education Association; National Family Planning & 
           Reproductive Health Association; National Gay and 
           Lesbian Task Force Action Fund; National Health Law 
           Program; National Immigration Law Center; National 
           Latina Institute for Reproductive Health; National 
           Organization for Women; National Partnership for Women 
           & Families; National Physicians Alliance; National 
           Women's Law Center.
         New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good; 
           Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health; Planned 
           Parenthood Federation of America; Population 
           Connection; Progressive Majority; Raising Women's 
           Voices for the Health Care We Need; Religious Coalition 
           for Reproductive Choice; Religious Institute; 
           Reproductive Health Technologies Project; Service 
           Employees International Union; Sexuality Information 
           and Education Council of the United States; SisterSong 
           NYC; Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine; The 
           National Alliance to Advance Adolescent Health; The 
           National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned 
           Pregnancy; Trust Women/Silver Ribbon Campaign; Union 
           for Reform Judaism; Unitarian Universalist Association 
           of Congregations; United Methodist Church, General 
           Board of Church & Society; U.S. Positive Women's 
           Network and Women Organized to Respond to Life-
           threatening Diseases; Women Donors Network.
                                  ____

                                                February 27, 2012.
       Dear Senator: As organizations dedicated to the health, 
     safety, and well-being of infants, children, adolescents, and 
     young adults, we strongly urge you to oppose Sen. Blunt's 
     amendment, S. Amdt. 1520, to the Moving Ahead for Progress in 
     the 21st Century Act, S. 1813. Our organizations oppose this 
     amendment that will hinder access to necessary preventive 
     health screenings for infants, children, and their families.
       The Affordable Care Act made significant progress in 
     prioritizing preventive care, health promotion, and disease 
     prevention in our health care system. The law includes a 
     number of provisions that safeguard children's access to and 
     remove disincentives from accessing preventive health care 
     services. Specifically, the ACA establishes Sec. 2713 of the 
     Public Health Services Act, which requires that individual 
     and group health plans cover preventive health services 
     without any cost-sharing to the patient, including evidence-
     based services recommended by the United States Preventive 
     Services Task Force; immunizations recommended by the CDC's 
     Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices; and preventive 
     care and screenings supported by the Health Resources and 
     Services Administration (HRSA), which are outlined in the 
     American Academy of Pediatrics' Bright Futures handbook.
       Children's health is the foundation of health across the 
     lifespan and preventive health services are the bedrock of 
     pediatric care. All adults once were children, and their 
     health is significantly influenced by preventive care during 
     their early years. Denying childhood preventive care could 
     result in billions of dollars of extra expenditures in adult 
     health care, as we continue the unsustainable system of 
     paying for adult conditions that could have been 
     inexpensively prevented during childhood. Life-saving 
     immunizations, developmental screenings, autism screenings, 
     other behavioral and mental health assessments, hearing and 
     vision testing, body mass index (BMI) measurements, oral 
     health risk assessments, identification of special health 
     care needs, solicitation of parental and child health 
     concerns, and anticipatory guidance are all essential 
     components of a pediatric well-child visit and are all 
     required to be covered without cost-sharing under the ACA. 
     This amendment would undermine efforts to promote pediatric 
     preventive health and would jeopardize the health of infants, 
     children, adolescents and young adults by denying them access 
     to these clinically appropriate services and treatments.
       Before the law's passage, pediatricians reported that their 
     patients were often required to provide co-pays or provide 
     other cost sharing for preventive health screenings. Co-pays 
     and other cost sharing are often imposed by insurers to 
     decrease health service utilization, even though families 
     already pay a monthly premium. Our organizations have argued 
     that imposing cost sharing is completely inappropriate in the 
     context of pediatric preventive services, as cost sharing has 
     the aggregate effect of limiting clinically appropriate 
     interactions between children and their health providers. 
     Indeed, one of the main reasons that the Academy cautions 
     families to seriously consider alternatives to Consumer-
     Directed Health Plans is that these plans often do not 
     provide ``first dollar'' coverage for preventive services.
       Unfortunately, S. Amdt. 1520 would create a substantial 
     loophole in the requirements for preventive health services 
     because insurance plans would not be required to offer the 
     appropriate array of pediatric preventive services and due to 
     the cost sharing disincentive discussed above. Specifically, 
     S. Amdt. 1520 would allow any employer or insurance company 
     to deny health insurance coverage for any service that it 
     finds objectionable on the basis of personal beliefs. The 
     amendment would not only allow employers and insurance 
     companies to deny access to contraception, but would include 
     all preventive health services covered by Sec. 2713 of the 
     Public Health Service Act. For instance, if an employer 
     objects to childhood vaccines on the basis of personal 
     beliefs, he or she could purchase insurance that would not be 
     required to cover these life-saving medical interventions. 
     Our organizations are seriously concerned that if this 
     amendment passes, children will not receive the preventive 
     services

[[Page 2458]]

     they need as a result of the personal beliefs of a single 
     individual, employer, or insurance company.
       Our organizations urge Congress to oppose S. Amdt. 1520 to 
     the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act and 
     protect children's access to preventive services, including 
     vaccines, well-child check-ups, and other essential health 
     benefits that help children grow to be healthy, productive 
     adults. If you have questions or concerns, please contact 
     Kristen Mizzi with the American Academy of Pediatrics at 202/
     347-8600 or [email protected].
           Sincerely,
         Academic Pediatric Association; American Academy of 
           Pediatrics; American Pediatric Society; Association of 
           Medical School Pediatric Department Chairs; The Society 
           for Adolescent Health and Medicine; Society for 
           Pediatric Research.
                                  ____

       Dear Senator Boxer: As organizations committed to the 
     health and wellbeing of infants, children, adolescents, and 
     pregnant women, we urge you to oppose the amendment offered 
     by Senator Roy Blunt (R MO), Senate Amendment 1520, to the 
     Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (S. 1813).
       Senate Amendment 1520 threatens to undermine crucial 
     clinical and preventive health services by allowing plans, 
     employers, providers, and beneficiaries to refuse coverage 
     for any service currently required under Section 2713 of the 
     Public Health Service Act and Section 1302 of the Public 
     Health Service Act, if deemed objectionable to them on moral 
     or religious grounds. The Amendment would give expansive and 
     explicit license to any employer, health plan, provider, or 
     beneficiary to exclude any health service from insurance 
     coverage. For instance, a small employer or health plan could 
     ban maternity care for women due to religious convictions 
     regarding out-of-wedlock pregnancies. Likewise, a health plan 
     or small employer that objects to childhood immunizations, 
     newborn screening for life-threatening genetic disorders, 
     other components of well-child visits, or prenatal care would 
     be fully within the law to deny coverage for any and all of 
     these vital services.
       The Affordable Care Act has made significant gains toward 
     providing critical health services for infants, children, 
     adolescents, and women of childbearing age. Section 1302 of 
     the Affordable Care Act guarantees that all plans offered in 
     the individual and small group markets must cover a minimum 
     set of ``essential health benefits,'' including maternity and 
     newborn care, pediatric services, including oral and vision 
     care, rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices, 
     and mental health and substance use disorder services, 
     including behavioral health treatment. Section 2713 of the 
     Public Health Service Act requires that all new health plans 
     cover, without cost-sharing, certain preventive services, 
     including evidence-based services recommended by the United 
     States Preventive Services Task Force; immunizations 
     recommended by the Advisory Committee on Immunization 
     Practices; preventative care and screening services for 
     children contained in Bright Futures: Guidelines for Health 
     Supervision of Infants, Children and Adolescents; and 
     preventive health care services for women developed by the 
     Institute of Medicine and promulgated by the U.S. Health 
     Resources and Services Administration, such as prenatal care, 
     well woman visits, and breast cancer screening.
       If passed, Senate Amendment 1520 could limit access to 
     necessary health services well beyond contraceptive coverage, 
     putting infants, children, adolescents, and pregnant women in 
     danger of not receiving even the most basic health care and 
     preventive services. We urge you to oppose Senate Amendment 
     1520 to the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century 
     Act. If you have any questions, please contact Michelle 
     Sternthal at [email protected].
           Sincerely,
         American Academy of Pediatrics; American Congress of 
           Obstetricians and Gynecologists; American Federation of 
           State, County and Municipal Employees; Asian Pacific 
           Islander American Health Forum; Association of Maternal 
           & Child Health Programs.
         Association of University Centers on Disabilities; CHILD 
           Inc.; Children's Dental Health Project; Children's 
           Healthcare Is a Legal Duty; Easter Seals; Families USA; 
           Family Voices; First Focus Campaign for Children; 
           Genetic Alliance; National Association for Children's 
           Behavioral Health.
         National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners; 
           National Association of Social Workers; National 
           Alliance on Mental Illness; Planned Parenthood 
           Federation of America; Service Employees International 
           Union; Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine; 
           Spina Bifida Association; Voices for America's 
           Children.

  Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, the first letter is from the Cancer 
Action Network asking us to vote no on the Blunt amendment.

       On-behalf of millions of cancer patients, survivors and 
     their families, we write to express our opposition to the 
     amendment proposed by Senator Roy Blunt.

  They talk about the fact that it would permit employers to refuse 
employees insurance coverage for any health care benefit guaranteed by 
health reform. And they are very strong on this issue. They say:

       The implications of this provision could result in coverage 
     denials of lifesaving preventive services such as mammograms 
     or tobacco cessation based on employer discretion.

  That is a new letter, dated today.
  Then we got a letter from the Trust for America's Health. They say:

       The Blunt amendment would allow any health insurance plan 
     or employer, religious or not, to exclude any preventive ser-
     vice. . . .

  The SEIU--Service Employees International--calls the Blunt amendment 
``an extreme proposal that turns back the clock.''
  The Human Rights Campaign Letter:

     . . . The Blunt amendment would place the moral objections of 
     any employer over the health of millions of Americans. . . .

  Eighty organizations signed a letter, and, referring to the Blunt 
amendment, part of that letter says:

       That means employers and insurance companies can not only 
     deny access to birth control, they can deny access to health 
     care service. . . .

  That is signed by Advocates for Youth, America Votes, the AIDS 
Institute, American Association of University Women, American College 
of Nurses and Midwives, American Congress of Obstetricians and 
Gynecologists, American Medical Students, Black Women's Health 
Imperative, Catholics for Choice, Reproductive Rights Center, Center 
for Women Policy Studies, Coalition of Labor Union Women, Choice USA, 
Concerned Clergy for Choice, Doctors for America, EQUAL Health 
Network--I mean, this goes on and on--the National Latina Institute for 
Reproductive Health, Planned Parenthood, Population Connection, 
Progressive Majority, Society of Adolescent Health and Medicine, 
National Alliance to Advance Adolescent Health, National Campaign to 
Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, Trust Women/Silver Ribbon 
Campaign, Union for Reformed Judaism, Unitarian Universalist 
Association of Congregations. This is a long list of organizations that 
oppose the Blunt amendment.
  This letter came in from the Academic Pediatric Association and a 
number of other youth organizations. They urge us to oppose the Blunt 
amendment because it doesn't protect children's access to preventive 
services.
  This is another letter signed by many more organizations, including 
the Spina Bifida Association, Voices for America's Children, Children's 
Healthcare Is a Legal Duty, Easter Seals, Family Voices, First Focus 
Campaign for Children--it goes on and on--American Federation of State, 
County and Municipal Employees, American Association of Maternal and 
Child Health Programs, Association of University Centers on 
Disabilities, CHILD, Inc. All these organizations have come together, 
and they say:

       As-organizations committed to the health and well-being of 
     infants, children, adolescents, and pregnant women, we urge 
     you to oppose the amendment offered by Senator Roy Blunt. . . 
     .

  So all you are going to hear from the other side is misstatements 
about how the Blunt amendment is nothing more than what we have always 
done. Then why are you doing it? It is because it reaches so far.
  We all support an exemption for religious providers. We all support 
that. We do not support the ability of any insurance company, 
nonreligious, or any employer, nonreligious, to stand up and say: You 
know what, I don't believe vaccines work; therefore, I don't think they 
should be made available to my people. And when you ask why, they say: 
I have a moral conviction. I have a moral conviction that people should 
have known better before they took that first cigarette when they were 
11 or 12; therefore, I am not going to give any treatment. Too bad. 
They will just get lung cancer.
  I mean, seriously. That is what the Blunt amendment will do. It will 
allow

[[Page 2459]]

anyone--nonreligious--to say they have an objection and not offer a 
host of preventive and essential health care services, including 
contraception.
  So tomorrow is our time. We are going to defeat the Blunt amendment, 
and when we defeat the Blunt amendment, we are going to move on to the 
highway bill. Hooray. And maybe, just maybe people will listen to 
Senator Olympia Snowe, who said we should not get tied up in knots over 
these controversial things and we should do what is right for the 
American people. I certainly support that.
  There is just one more thing I want to put in the Record.
  Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the 
Record the testimony of a woman who tried very hard to be allowed to 
speak with a panel of men at a congressional hearing.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

        [From the Law Students for Reproductive Justice Chapter]

          Testimony From Law Student Barred From House Hearing

       Members of Congress, good morning, and thank you for 
     allowing me to testify. My name is Sandra Fluke, and I'm a 
     third year student at Georgetown Law, a Jesuit school. I'm 
     also a past president of Georgetown Law Students for 
     Reproductive Justice or LSRJ. I'd like to acknowledge my 
     fellow LSRJ members and allies and thank them for being here 
     today.
       Georgetown LSRJ is here today because we're so grateful 
     that this regulation implements the nonpartisan, medical 
     advice of the Institute of Medicine. I attend a Jesuit law 
     school that does not provide contraception coverage in 
     student health plans. Just as we students have faced 
     financial, emotional, and medical burdens as a result, 
     employees at religiously affiliated hospitals and 
     universities across the country have suffered similar 
     burdens. We are all grateful for the new regulation that will 
     meet the critical health care needs of so many women. 
     Simultaneously, the recently announced adjustment addresses 
     any potential conflict with the religious identity of 
     Catholic and Jesuit institutions.
       As I have watched national media coverage of this debate, 
     it has been heartbreaking to see women's health treated as a 
     political football. When I turn off the TV and look around my 
     campus, I instead see the faces of the women affected, and I 
     have heard more and more of their stories. You see, 
     Georgetown does not cover contraceptives in its student 
     insurance, although it does cover contraceptives for faculty 
     and staff. On a daily basis, I hear from yet another woman 
     who has suffered financial, emotional, and medical burdens 
     because of this lack of contraceptive coverage. And so, I am 
     here to share their voices and ask that you hear them.
       Without insurance coverage, contraception can cost a woman 
     over $3,000 during law school. For a lot of students who, 
     like me, are on public interest scholarships, that's 
     practically an entire summer's salary. Forty percent of 
     female students at Georgetown Law report struggling 
     financially as a result of this policy. One told us of how 
     embarrassed and powerless she felt when she was standing at 
     the pharmacy counter, learning for the first time that 
     contraception wasn't covered, and had to walk away because 
     she couldn't afford it. Students like her have no choice but 
     to go without contraception. Just on Tuesday, a married 
     female student told me she had to stop using contraception 
     because she couldn't afford it any longer.
       You might respond that contraception is accessible in lots 
     of other ways. Unfortunately, that's not true. Women's health 
     clinics provide vital medical services, but as the Guttmacher 
     Institute has documented, clinics are unable to meet the 
     crushing demand for these services. Clinics are closing and 
     women are being forced to go without. How can Congress 
     consider allowing even more employers and institutions to 
     refuse contraceptive coverage and then respond that the non-
     profit clinics should step up to take care of the resulting 
     medical crisis, particularly when so many legislators are 
     attempting to defund those very same clinics?
       These denials of contraceptive coverage impact real people. 
     In the worst cases, women who need this medication for other 
     medical reasons suffer dire consequences. A friend of mine, 
     for example, has polycystic ovarian syndrome and has to take 
     prescription birth control to stop cysts from growing on her 
     ovaries. Her prescription is technically covered by 
     Georgetown insurance because it's not intended to prevent 
     pregnancy. At many schools, it wouldn't be, and under Senator 
     Blunt's amendment, Senator Rubio's bill, or Representative 
     Fortenberry's bill, there's no requirement that an exception 
     be made for such medical needs. When they do exist, these 
     exceptions don't accomplish their well-intended goals because 
     when you let university administrators or other employers, 
     rather than women and their doctors, dictate whose medical 
     needs are good enough and whose aren't, a woman's health 
     takes a back seat to a bureaucracy focused on policing her 
     body.
       In sixty-five percent of cases, our female students were 
     interrogated by insurance representatives and university 
     medical staff about why they need these prescriptions and 
     whether they're lying about their symptoms. For my friend, 
     and 20% of women in her situation, she never got the 
     insurance company to cover her prescription, despite 
     verification of her illness from her doctor. Her claim was 
     denied repeatedly on the assumption that she really wanted 
     the birth control to prevent pregnancy. She's gay, so clearly 
     polycystic ovarian syndrome was a much more urgent concern 
     than accidental pregnancy. After months of paying over $100 
     out of pocket, she just couldn't afford her medication 
     anymore and had to stop taking it. I learned about all of 
     this when I walked out of a test and got a message from her 
     that in the middle of her final exam period she'd been in the 
     emergency room all night in excruciating pain. She wrote, 
     ``It was so painful, I woke up thinking I'd been shot.'' 
     Without her taking the birth control, a massive cyst the size 
     of a tennis ball had grown on her ovary. She had to have 
     surgery to remove her entire ovary. She's not here this 
     morning. She's in a doctor's office right now. Since last 
     year's surgery, she's been experiencing night sweats, weight 
     gain, and other symptoms of early menopause as a result of 
     the removal of her ovary. She's 32 years old. As she put it: 
     ``If my body is indeed in early menopause, no fertility 
     specialist in the world will be able to help me have my own 
     children. I will have no chance at giving my mother her 
     desperately desired grandbabies, simply because the insurance 
     policy that I paid for totally unsubsidized by my school 
     wouldn't cover my prescription for birth control when I 
     needed it.'' Now, in addition to facing the health 
     complications that come with having menopause at an early 
     age--increased risk of cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis, 
     she may never be able to be a mom.
       Perhaps you think my friend's tragic story is rare. It's 
     not. One student told us doctors believe she has 
     endometriosis, but it can't be proven without surgery, so the 
     insurance hasn't been willing to cover her medication. Last 
     week, a friend of mine told me that she also has polycystic 
     ovarian syndrome. She's struggling to pay for her medication 
     and is terrified to not have access to it. Due to the 
     barriers erected by Georgetown's policy, she hasn't been 
     reimbursed for her medication since last August. I sincerely 
     pray that we don't have to wait until she loses an ovary or 
     is diagnosed with cancer before her needs and the needs of 
     all of these women are taken seriously.
       This is the message that not requiring coverage of 
     contraception sends. A woman's reproductive healthcare isn't 
     a necessity, isn't a priority. One student told us that she 
     knew birth control wasn't covered, and she assumed that's how 
     Georgetown's insurance handled all of women's sexual 
     healthcare, so when she was raped, she didn't go to the 
     doctor even to be examined or tested for sexually transmitted 
     infections because she thought insurance wasn't going to 
     cover something like that, something that was related to a 
     woman's reproductive health. As one student put it, ``this 
     policy communicates to female students that our school 
     doesn't understand our needs.'' These are not feelings that 
     male fellow students experience. And they're not burdens that 
     male students must shoulder.
       In the media lately, conservative Catholic organizations 
     have been asking: what did we expect when we enrolled at a 
     Catholic school? We can only answer that we expected women to 
     be treated equally, to not have our school create untenable 
     burdens that impede our academic success. We expected that 
     our schools would live up to the Jesuit creed of cura 
     personalis, to care for the whole person, by meeting all of 
     our medical needs. We expected that when we told our 
     universities of the problems this policy created for 
     students, they would help us. We expected that when 94% of 
     students opposed the policy, the university would respect our 
     choices regarding insurance students pay for completely 
     unsubsidized by the university, especially when the 
     university already provides contraceptive coverage to faculty 
     and staff. We did not expect that women would be told in the 
     national media that if we wanted comprehensive insurance that 
     met our needs, not just those of men, we should have gone to 
     school elsewhere, even if that meant a less prestigious 
     university. We refuse to pick between a quality education and 
     our health, and we resent that, in the 21st century, anyone 
     thinks it's acceptable to ask us to make this choice simply 
     because we are women.
       Many of the students whose stories I've shared are Catholic 
     women, so ours is not a war against the church. It is a 
     struggle for access to the healthcare we need. The President 
     of the Association of Jesuit Colleges has shared that Jesuit 
     colleges and universities appreciate the modification to the 
     rule announced last week. Religious concerns are addressed 
     and women get the healthcare they need. That is something we 
     can all agree on. Thank you.


[[Page 2460]]

  Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, this is a panel of men who were called 
by House Republican Chairman Issa to testify about women's health--not 
one woman there, but they were the experts. They denied this woman the 
chance to speak. If she had been allowed to speak, this is what she 
wanted to say:
  She had a friend who went to the doctor, and the friend had a cyst on 
her ovary. The doctor said: You have to take birth control. That is 
going to help. Those pills are going to help reduce the size of that 
cyst.
  She couldn't afford the birth control pills and her employer wouldn't 
cover them, so she couldn't take them. She is a student. She wrote her 
friend saying that the cyst ``was so painful, I woke up thinking I'd 
been shot.''
  I will quote part of the friend's testimony relaying what her friend 
told her.

       Without taking the birth control, a massive cyst the size 
     of a tennis ball had grown on her ovary. She had to have 
     surgery to remove her entire ovary. She's not here this 
     morning. She's in a doctor's office right now. Since last 
     year's surgery, she has been experiencing night sweats, 
     weight gain, and other symptoms of early menopause as a 
     result of the removal of her ovary. She's 32 years old. As 
     she put it, ``If my body is indeed in early menopause, no 
     fertility specialist in the world will be able to help me 
     have my own children. I will have no chance of giving my 
     mother her desperately desired grandbabies, simply because 
     the insurance policy that I paid for totally unsubsidized by 
     my school wouldn't cover my prescription for birth control 
     when I needed it.''

  And so her friend says:

       Now, in addition to facing the health complications that 
     come with having menopause at an early age--increased risk of 
     cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis--she may never be able to 
     be a mom.

  So when we talk about the Blunt amendment, we are not talking about 
some obtuse issue, we are not talking about some philosophical issue. 
What we are talking about when we talk about the Blunt amendment is a 
young woman, a student at law school who couldn't afford to pay for the 
birth control pills which would have saved her fertility, which would 
have saved her horrific pain--a painful operation where she lost her 
ovary simply because she couldn't have access to her birth control 
pills.
  This is not about some argument that doesn't have real consequences 
for our people. The Presiding Officer's constituents and my 
constituents deserve to have access to preventive care. They deserve to 
have access to essential health care. The Blunt amendment will take 
that away from them. It will take that away from them. And all on a 
highway bill. All on a highway bill.
  So let's keep the Blunt amendment away from this highway bill. This 
highway bill is a product of strong bipartisanship, as the Presiding 
Officer has told the Senate. Let's keep it clean. Let's keep out these 
extraneous amendments that will roll back environmental laws that are 
cleaning up the air, that will keep the arsenic and the mercury out of 
the air and the lead out of the air. Let's not roll back these laws on 
a highway bill. Let's get the highway bill done. When we have other 
arguments about other issues, let's put those issues on a relevant 
bill.
  This is the time now for us to pull together, not pull apart. The 
Nation needs us to work together. It is an election year, and it is a 
difficult time. There is a lot of name-calling going on out there on 
the campaign trail, but we are still here, last I checked, and we are 
supposed to be doing our work for the American people. We have a chance 
to do it on this highway bill. Let's defeat the Blunt amendment in the 
morning.
  I thank my friends for coming over to the floor and speaking so 
eloquently today against this dangerous, precedent-setting Blunt 
amendment that will turn back the clock on women's health and on our 
families' health.
  I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Whitehouse). The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I rise to join my colleagues in 
opposition to the amendment offered by Senator Blunt.
  It is discouraging that when we should be having a debate on our 
Nation's infrastructure and surface transportation needs, we are 
instead talking about women's health and contraception. As the Senator 
from California noted earlier, my State is a State that understands the 
importance of upgrading our infrastructure and investing in surface 
transportation. I live just a few blocks from the bridge that collapsed 
in the middle of that river on that sunny day in Minnesota, an eight-
lane highway, in the Mississippi River. So we understand the importance 
of investment in infrastructure, and that is what we should be focusing 
on in this bill. Instead, we have taken a different turn.
  I understand there are many different perspectives and opinions when 
it comes to issues related to contraception and women's health; 
however, we shouldn't be talking about them when we are supposed to be 
talking about infrastructure, highway, roads, and bridges. People are 
free to give speeches, they are free to talk about whatever they want, 
but this amendment doesn't belong on this bill. Nevertheless, it is 
here, and I think it is very important that we address it and the 
American people understand what it would mean.
  Unfortunately, this amendment impacts more than just contraception. 
This amendment ultimately limits our ability to address our health care 
challenges through prevention and wellness. Chronic conditions such as 
diabetes, heart disease, and cancer can be avoided through prevention, 
early detection, and treatment. We all know that. That is pretty common 
knowledge in our country.
  During health care reform, we made great strides in improving the 
health and well-being of our Nation by strengthening preventive 
services. We addressed prohibitive costs by eliminating copays and cost 
sharing for essential services such as mammograms and colonoscopies. We 
addressed access issues by ensuring coverage for preventive autism or 
cholesterol screenings, to name a few. I also fought to include the 
EARLY Act, which promoted early detection for breast cancer for young 
women. These types of preventive and early detection services are vital 
to so many people in this country.
  As a cochair of the Congressional Wellness Caucus, a bipartisan 
caucus, I have also heard from numerous employers that understand a 
healthy workforce only increases productivity and output. It would be 
unfortunate if we eliminated access to prevention and wellness services 
that keep our Nation's workforce strong and productive. Because of the 
necessity of these services and the benefits they provide to men, 
women, and children, including contraception, I asked my colleagues to 
oppose the Blunt amendment.
  The Blunt amendment would allow any employer or insurance company to 
refuse to cover any of the prevention services, any essential health 
benefit or any other health service required under the health care law, 
allowing these entities to deny critical health care to the millions 
who rely on these entities for insurance. The consequences of this 
provision could mean employers and other organizations for any reason 
refusing to offer coverage of lifesaving preventive services such as 
mammograms or tobacco cessation would be based on employer discretion. 
That is why I don't think it is a surprise that organizations such as 
the American Cancer Society, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the 
American Public Health Association, and the March of Dimes oppose this 
amendment.
  I think we all know the American Cancer Society, March of Dimes, 
American Academy of Pediatrics, and these groups tend not to get 
involved in contraception issues, and that goes to show us right now 
this amendment is much broader than just talking about contraception.
  According to the American Cancer Society:


[[Page 2461]]

       Annually, seven out of ten deaths among Americans are 
     attributed to chronic diseases such as cancer, diabetes, 
     heart disease and stroke. The Affordable Care Act made 
     significant strides to stem this epidemic by ensuring 
     patients would have access to essential care that could 
     address prevention, early detection, and treatment--all 
     necessary elements to improve the health and well-being of 
     our nation. Unfortunately, the expansive nature of the 
     proposed Blunt amendment would directly undercut this 
     progress.

  I am concerned the broad-based nature of this amendment would prevent 
men, women, and children from getting the preventive services they need 
as a result of the personal beliefs of a single individual or an 
employer or an insurance company. I do not believe this is the way to 
protect Americans in need of health care services, and I urge my 
colleagues to oppose this amendment.
  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. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I come to the floor today with sadness 
and reluctance because we are actually debating an extraordinarily 
worthwhile, even historic bill that would not only improve our 
infrastructure--our roads and bridges and highways in the State of 
Connecticut and throughout the country--but also provide jobs, enable 
more economic growth, and promote the effort to put Connecticut and our 
country back to work. My reluctance is we are debating an amendment 
that distracts from that essential task, the work that the Nation 
elected us to do, to make our priority creating jobs and promoting 
economic growth.
  We are debating an amendment that seems fundamentally flawed. I am 
respectful, as is everyone in this body, of the moral convictions and 
religious beliefs that others may hold. I believe this amendment is 
unconstitutionally overbroad and vague. It is unacceptably flawed in 
the way it is written because it essentially gives every employer--
anytime, anywhere, with respect to any medical condition, any form of 
treatment--the right to deny that essential health care and those 
services based on his or her undefined religious beliefs or moral 
convictions--quoting from the language itself, ``religious beliefs'' or 
``moral convictions''--without any defining limits.
  Insurance companies can even deny a person coverage for mental health 
treatment or cancer screening or HIV and AIDS screening simply because 
that employer or insurance company may believe the causes of those 
conditions somehow violate his or her religious beliefs or moral 
convictions. This amendment would threaten access to a number of 
clinical preventive services such as diabetes screening, vaccinations 
or cancer screenings, essential preventive services that have been 
proved to reduce health care costs and save lives. Those services 
should be guaranteed to every American without cost.
  In my home State of Connecticut, one of the smallest States in the 
country, approximately 270,000 women would lose access to preventive 
care if this amendment is agreed to. Around the country some 20 million 
women would lose that kind of access to preventive care. That is a 
result that simply is unacceptable. The amendment goes too far. It 
would endanger the lives of millions of Americans, would completely 
undermine the progress--and we have made progress--in providing crucial 
health care services to millions of individuals.
  I oppose this amendment because of its practical implications, 
because of its apparent unconstitutionality, and because it flies in 
the face of sound public policy. At a time when we are considering a 
bill, the transportation measure that deservedly has broad, widespread, 
bipartisan support in this Chamber and across the country, we are again 
polarized, Republican against Democrat, regrettably divided and 
potentially gridlocked because of an amendment that has nothing to do 
with transportation or putting America back to work. That should be our 
task. It is my priority. It should be the priority of this Chamber at 
this historic moment when we are reviving a still struggling economy, 
when people are hurting, striving to find work, and when we should be 
doing everything in our power to put America and Connecticut back to 
work and enable economic growth.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii.
  Mr. AKAKA. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the quorum 
call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. AKAKA. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak before the 
Senate for 10 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. AKAKA. Mr. President, I rise to urge my colleagues to oppose the 
Blunt amendment, which could lead to devastating health outcomes for 
over 20 million women across our country. Just 2 weeks ago, I applauded 
the Obama administration's decision to require health insurance plans 
to provide coverage of FDA-approved contraception needed for women's 
health care without copays beginning this August. The final rule issued 
by the Department of Health and Human Services was a tremendous step 
toward improving the health of our Nation's women and their families--a 
step that was long overdue and one made with due respect for all 
Americans' religious freedom.
  Tomorrow, we will be voting on an amendment that would not only undo 
that progress, it would move us backward. What is especially 
frightening is that this amendment goes much further than just 
reversing the rule because it is not limited to religiously affiliated 
entities. The proposal would allow any employer or health plan issuer 
to refuse coverage of any service for any reason, not just religious 
objections. If an employee had any moral objection, it would be 
permitted to refuse coverage for critical care such as alcohol and 
other substance abuse counseling, prenatal care for single women, and 
mental health care too. The way this measure is worded, employees could 
deny screening and treatment for cervical cancer because it is related 
to HPV or refuse HIV-AIDS testing and treatment due to an objection to 
ways the viruses can be transmitted. They could even refuse to cover 
certain FDA-approved drugs and treatments because they object to the 
research that led to the drug's development.
  Major national pediatric organizations recently voiced their concern 
that if this amendment becomes law, employers who say they object to 
childhood vaccines on the basis of personal beliefs could refuse to 
cover these lifesaving and otherwise costly medical services. In short, 
this amendment allows corporations nationwide to overrule the religious 
and ethical decisions made by the people they employ and to trump the 
health care advice of their doctors.
  If this amendment passes, it will discriminate against most of those 
who need financial support, and that is not right. All Americans 
deserve access to health care. We cannot allow partisan ideology to 
hurt the health of our women and children. If we do, our sisters, 
daughters, and granddaughters will pay the price. If we defeat this 
amendment, the final rule will save most American women who use 
contraceptives hundreds of dollars each year in health care costs. 
Health experts agree that birth control helps to save lives, prevent 
unintended pregnancies, improve outcomes for children, and reduce the 
incidence of abortion.
  Another point raised by my colleagues, Senators Gillibrand and 
Boxer--and I thank them for promoting awareness on this issue--is that 
14 percent of women who use birth control pills, and that is 1.5 
million American women, use them to treat serious

[[Page 2462]]

medical conditions. Some of these conditions include endometriosis, 
ovarian cysts, debilitating monthly pain, and irregular cycles.
  Religious principles are deeply important to me as a Christian, so I 
am glad the current rule accommodates conscience objections and exempts 
religiously affiliated organizations from both offering and paying for 
birth control coverage for their employees. At the same time, the core 
principle of ensuring all women's access to fundamental preventive 
health care remains protected because the care will be offered directly 
by the insurance companies. To deny any women access to affordable 
health care--as this amendment would do--is unconscionable. It could 
have devastating effects not only on her health but her family's as 
well.
  In speaking with women's health advocates and providers in Hawaii and 
across the country, one of the most common recommendations I hear for 
improving women's health outcomes is to ensure access to effective 
contraception. Across the State of Hawaii about 150,000 women seek 
access to birth control every year, and almost half of them depend on 
financial assistance to obtain it. Right now, women in States that do 
not have plans that cover birth control face costs of around $600 per 
year. Women and families who cannot afford it can end up facing tens of 
thousands of dollars in costs arising from complications from 
unintended pregnancies and other health care problems, costs that 
taxpayers often end up supporting.
  With these facts in mind, I am not surprised that a survey has shown 
that 71 percent of American voters--including 77 percent of Catholic 
women voters--support the administration's requirement to make birth 
control available to all women. I firmly believe religious liberty is 
protected under the new rule, while access to preventive care does not 
discriminate against anyone, no matter whom they work for or what their 
occupation is.
  I urge my colleagues to join me in voting against this dangerous 
amendment, which would set back improvements in preventive services and 
women's health care in this country.
  I yield back the remainder of my time and suggest a quorum is not 
present.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, tomorrow morning, the Senate will vote on 
a measure which is controversial and has gathered a lot of attention 
across America. It is an amendment offered by the Senator from 
Missouri, Mr. Blunt, and it relates to the health services that will be 
available to people across America and it calls into question an issue 
which we have debated since the earliest colonists came to this 
country; that is, the appropriate role of religion and government in 
America. It is an issue which has been hotly debated and contested in 
the earliest days of our Nation and was finally resolved by our 
Constitution in a manner that has served us well for over two 
centuries.
  The Constitution speaks to the issue of religion in three specific 
places. It states in the first amendment that we each have the freedom 
of religion; that is, the freedom to believe or not to believe. It says 
there will be no official State religion; whereas, in England they 
chose the Church of England, but in our government there will be no 
choice of any religion.
  Finally, there is a provision which says that there shall be no 
religious test for office. These are all constitutional provisions 
which, though sparing in language, have guided us carefully through 
over 200 years of history. We see around the world where other 
countries have not been as fortunate to come together in basic 
principles that have kept a diversity of religious belief alive in the 
country. Time and again we have seen differences when it comes to 
religion lead to conflict and death. We see it today in many places 
around the world. So when our government is called on to make a 
decision relative to the role of religion in American life, we should 
take care to stick to those basic principles that have guided us for 
over two centuries.
  The issue before us today is what will be the requirements of health 
insurance that is offered by employers across America. What we have 
tried to establish are the essentials and basics of health insurance 
and health care. We are mindful of the fact that if the market were to 
dictate health insurance plans and policies, they may not be fair to 
the people of this country. I recall an instance before I came to 
Congress while working in Illinois where we learned that health 
insurance companies were offering policies which refused to cover 
newborn babies in the first 30 days of their life. Of course, that was 
done for economic reasons, because children born with a serious illness 
can be extremely expensive in that 30-day period. We changed the law in 
Illinois and said, if you want to cover a maternity, if you want to 
cover a child, it is from the moment of birth. That became the policy: 
to establish basic standards so that families buying these policies 
would have the most basic protections.
  This issue we are debating with the Blunt amendment is what will be 
required of health insurance policies across America when it comes to 
preventive care. We asked the experts: What basics in preventive care 
should be included to make certain we don't overlook something that is 
fundamental to a person's survival or life? One of the things they said 
is when it comes to preventive care, to offer to women across America 
family planning services. That, of course, is the nub of the 
controversy, the center of it.
  Some religions--the Catholic religion in particular--have strongly 
held beliefs about family planning. They have been opposed to what they 
call artificial forms of birth control from the beginning. At this 
point, the controversy came up--although those religious institutions 
that are strictly religious, such as the church rectory, the convent, 
and the like, are exempted from any requirements when it comes to 
health insurance--what of those religious-sponsored institutions such 
as universities, hospitals, and charities? What should their 
requirements be when it comes to health insurance for their employees? 
So the Obama administration said their employees should also receive 
the most essential and basic services, including preventive care for 
women, including family planning, and that is when the controversy lit 
up.
  The President came to what I thought was a reasonable compromise, and 
here is what it says: A religious-sponsored university hospital, 
charity, or the like will not be required to offer health services such 
as family planning if it violates their basic religious beliefs. Their 
health insurance policy will not be required to cover those services. 
However, if an individual employee of that religious-sponsored 
institution chooses on their own initiative to go forward to the health 
insurance company, they can receive that service without charge. So the 
women will be offered these preventive care services, which are 
essential to their health, and yet there will be no requirement of the 
sponsoring institution to include those services. It is strictly a 
matter of the employee opting for that coverage.
  Now comes the Blunt amendment. Senator Blunt of Missouri said we 
should go beyond that and allow employers and insurance companies 
across America to decide the limitations of health insurance policies 
if those limitations follow the conscience and values of the employer. 
Keep in mind, we have gone way beyond religious-sponsored institutions; 
we are talking about individual employers making that decision.
  Think of the diversity of opinion and belief across America, and 
imagine, then, what we will come up with. We have heard many things 
mentioned on the floor. My colleagues have made reference to 
individuals who may have a particular religious belief, and own a

[[Page 2463]]

business that has no connection at all to a religion otherwise, and 
decide then that under the Blunt amendment they will limit health 
insurance coverage accordingly. We can think of possibilities. Someone 
believes in conscience that a woman should never use birth control and 
says, then, that it will be prohibited from being offered by the health 
insurance policy of that employer. At the end of the day we would have 
a patchwork quilt of health insurance coverage and many people in this 
country--men and women--denied basic health coverage in their health 
insurance because the employer believes in conscience it shouldn't be 
offered. That is an impossible situation. It goes beyond the freedom of 
religion, to imposing someone's religious belief on another, in a 
situation that could endanger their lives.
  The Blunt amendment would be a step in the wrong direction for this 
country. I think what the President has seized on is a reasonable 
course of action, to allow religious-sponsored institutions to follow 
their moral dictates when it comes to the health insurance they offer, 
but to still protect the right of individuals to seek the protection 
they need. I know it is going to be a controversial vote, but it is one 
that is important, because I think it strikes the right balance. I 
think it reflects back on decisions and values we have established as a 
country and that we should work to protect, even in the midst of a 
Presidential campaign when the rhetoric involved in it is very hot and 
inflammatory.


                                 Syria

  Mr. President, I rise to speak of the atrocities that are being 
committed every day by the Syrian Government against its own citizens--
thousands who have stood bravely month after month against unspeakable 
violence simply to ask for basic political freedoms we take for granted 
in this country. And I rise to speak of the indefensible and 
inexplicable support of this brutal regime by Russia.
  It has now been almost one full year since the Syrian uprising began 
in March 2011. By some reports, over 6,000 innocent people--civilians--
have lost their lives in Syria. The exact number may never be known. 
Humanitarian groups have been prohibited from even assisting the 
wounded, and reporters prohibited from telling the story to the world. 
Syria's third largest city, Homs, has been bombarded with rockets and 
bombs by the Syrian military for over 3 weeks with scores of deaths, 
shortages of food and medical supplies.
  One report describes rockets--11 rockets--slamming into a single 
apartment building in the space of 2 minutes. As soon as the barrage 
stopped and people started to rush to get away, it started again, 
killing even more. The result: a horrific trail of death and dying in 
this building from the fifth floor on down.
  Those killed in Syria include two western journalists. Some suspect 
they might have been targeted. The murder of a well-known video 
blogger, Rami el-Sayed, supports that claim.
  In this photo, my colleagues can see the results of the Syrian 
Government's bombardment of the city of Homs. Sadly, this is likely one 
of the many burial ceremonies that the people of that city have had to 
endure recently. Just a few days ago, it was reported that the bodies 
of 64 men were uncovered in a mass grave on the outskirts of the city. 
The women and children who were with them have gone missing.
  The Independent National Commission of Inquiry on Syria, working with 
the U.N., submitted its most recent report on February 26. It said the 
Syrian Government has accelerated the killing of its own people, 
particularly in Homs, resulting in the deaths of nearly 800 civilians 
in the first 2 weeks of February alone. From the report:

       On-several occasions in January and February 2012, entire 
     families--children and adults--were brutally murdered in 
     Homs.

  It is also noted that protesters have been arrested without cause, 
tortured, and even summarily executed.
  In October, Senators Cardin, Menendez, Boxer, and I sent a letter to 
the Ambassador to the United Nations from the United States, Susan 
Rice, urging that the Syrian Government be referred to the 
International Criminal Court for possible indictment for war crimes. 
Certainly the evidence for such charges is overwhelming and continues 
to this day.
  Assad has paid lip service to reforms such as the sham constitutional 
referendum last Sunday. The document's most important changes included 
giant caveats that they would, in effect, maintain the status quo as it 
exists in Syria.
  One example is Assad's introduction of Presidential term limits to 2 
terms of 7 years each, but the clock wouldn't start until Assad's 
current term expires in 2014, giving him 14 more years in office, a 
total of 28 years. Incomprehensible.
  Secretary Clinton aptly described the referendum as a cynical ploy, 
to say the least.
  On February 17, the Senate unanimously passed a resolution that:

       Strongly condemns the government of Syria's brutal and 
     unjustifiable use of force against civilians, including 
     unarmed women and children and its violations of the 
     fundamental human rights and dignity of the people of Syria.

  Additionally, the U.N. General Assembly on February 16 passed a 
resolution by a vote of 137 to 12:

       Strongly condemning continuing widespread and systematic 
     human rights violations by the Syrian authorities.

  Last Friday, more than 60 governments and organizations gathered in 
Tunis under the auspices of the Friends of Syria rubric and they called 
for an immediate cease-fire, the provision of humanitarian aid, and a 
U.N. peacekeeping force.
  The international community has coalesced in support of the Syrian 
people. I wish to recognize once again the leadership of the Arab 
League in building this consensus against the bloodshed. Even some U.N. 
Security Council members such as India and South Africa, that early on 
had concerns about speaking out, can no longer stand by silently as the 
killing continues. In the most recent U.N. Security Council vote 
earlier this month, they chose to do the right thing and to vote in 
favor of the latest resolution backing the Arab League peace plan.
  However, as sad as it is to report, this resolution was vetoed by 
Russia and China. The exceptions to the international solidarity and 
support of the Syrian people have been Iran, China, and Russia. While 
both Iran and China's support for the Assad regime is deplorable, it is 
even worse in the case of Russia, for it is Russia that has the most 
blood of innocent Syrian women and children on its hands. Russia is not 
only protecting President Assad as he kills his own people, but it 
continues to supply him with the weapons to do it. How can any 
responsible nation take such action?
  In an interview following the Friends of Syria meeting, Secretary of 
State Clinton said:

       It's quite distressing to see two permanent members of the 
     Security Council using their veto when people are murdered: 
     Women, children, brave young men. It's just despicable. And I 
     ask, whose side are they on?

  Russia has chosen to align itself with a murderous regime, to impede 
democratic reform, and to facilitate the killing of innocent people by 
putting more and more weapons into the hands of those eager to pull the 
trigger.
  Despite 6,000 innocent civilians dying, despite the overwhelming 
international consensus that Assad has lost legitimacy to lead the 
Syrian people, Russia continues to sell arms to Syria. According to 
media reports:

       Shipping data shows at least four cargo ships since 
     December that left the Black Sea port of Oktyabrsk--used by 
     Russian arms exporters for arms shipments have headed for or 
     reached the Syrian port of Tartous. Separately was the 
     Chariot, a Russian ship which docked at the Cypriot port of 
     Limassol during stormy weather in mid-January. It promised to 
     change its destination in accordance with a European Union 
     ban on weapons to Syria but, hours after leaving Limassol, 
     reset its course for Syria.

  The Russian arming of the Syrian murderers continues.
  A Cypriot source said that ship was carrying a load of ammunition and 
a European security source said the ship was hauling ammunition and 
sniper rifles of the kind used increasingly by Syrian Government forces 
against protesters.

[[Page 2464]]

  I want to show one other photograph I have here in the Chamber. This 
photo is of one of those Russian warships--an aircraft carrier--docked 
at the Syrian port of Tartous on January 8. What we could not turn into 
a poster is the video clip showing the Russian warship captains being 
greeted like royalty by the Syrian Minister of Defense who went out to 
personally welcome their ship.
  Rebel soldiers and an official who defected from the Government of 
Syria say Moscow's small-arms trade with Damascus is booming, and that 
the government doubled its military budget in 2011 to pay for the 
brutal response to this opposition.
  That said, Russia is in a unique position. It has President Assad's 
trust and confidence--maybe more than any other country. Should Russia 
choose, it could use this power and influence to constructively broker 
a real transition and an end to this bloodshed.
  The longer President Assad holds power in Syria, the more innocent 
people will die. The window for a more peaceful transition and ending 
is closing. Now is the time for Russia to lead in the right direction--
to be a responsible global partner, and to be part of a solution in 
ending the carnage, bloodshed, and death in Syria.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Bennet). The Senator from West Virginia.


   Tribute to Southern West Virginia Community and Technical College

  Mr. MANCHIN. Mr. President, I rise today to recognize two pillars of 
West Virginia--an educational institution that is educating the people 
of our State for good-paying jobs they are going to need and a beloved 
figure who put our State at the forefront of advances in mental health.
  First, please allow me to recognize Southern West Virginia Community 
and Technical College for its distinguished ranking as the 14th best 
community college in the Nation because of all the work its staff and 
students have done together to develop the skills necessary to compete 
in the workplace.
  All of us in my great State know about Southern's dedication to 
active and collaborative learning, and we are so proud that Washington 
Monthly recognized the school's achievements in its most recent 
rankings.
  This accomplishment is not the work of any one person, but a shared 
commitment to excellence from the school's leadership, faculty, staff, 
and students. I applaud everyone who is involved at Southern for their 
focus on improving educational quality through strengthened student 
engagement and student success.
  In addition, I am so pleased that Southern is thriving under the 
steadfast leadership of President Joanne Jaeger Tomblin, who is also 
serving the public as West Virginia's First Lady. For more than 12 
years, Joanne has been the visionary and the driving force behind many 
of these accomplishments. Her unwavering enthusiasm and tireless 
dedication transcend geographical barriers to bring extraordinary 
educational opportunities to all of southern West Virginia.
  I tell young people all the time that they cannot sit on the 
sidelines and watch life happen. They have to get in the game and start 
making the calls. The same goes for those students who are returning to 
school for training or who are taking the initiative to take their 
careers to the next level.
  Southern helps all students--those who are just starting out and 
those who are in the middle of their careers--build critical skills and 
get an education to become a workforce that will meet our needs in the 
21st century and beyond. Every day, these students and their teachers 
are doing the hard work that will make our great State and country 
competitive by finding new ways to create good jobs and rebuild our 
economy.
  Again, I am so proud of this accomplishment at Southern, and it is 
just one example of what we can achieve when we all work together.


                Remembering Dr. Mildred Mitchell-Bateman

  Mr. President, I also rise today to recognize the accomplishments and 
life of a mental health pioneer and a most beautiful and true West 
Virginia hero, who we were so sad to lose last month. It is only 
fitting to honor her today on the last day of Black History Month.
  Dr. Mildred Mitchell-Bateman leaves behind a remarkable legacy. She 
transformed care for mentally ill patients by working tirelessly to 
provide hope to people who were once believed to be untreatable. Her 
work emphasized the importance of family and community--two values we 
hold so dear in West Virginia--and she put a high priority on making 
sure people received care near their homes.
  Mildred Mitchell made West Virginia her home in 1946, when she was 
hired as a staff physician at West Virginia's Lakin State Hospital, 
which at the time was a hospital for mentally ill patients who were 
African American. There she met and married her husband William L. 
Bateman, a therapist at Lakin and a native West Virginian.
  Throughout her 89 years, Mildred Mitchell-Bateman remained committed 
to serving those without a voice in our community. After leaving Lakin 
to practice medicine privately, Mildred returned to the hospital as the 
clinical director, and 3 years later was promoted to superintendent. In 
1962, Mildred was named as the director of the State's Department of 
Mental Health, becoming the first African-American woman to lead a West 
Virginia State agency.
  Mildred's vision for psychiatric care extended beyond West Virginia, 
earning her national recognition and requests for service. In 1973, she 
became the first Black woman to serve as vice president of the American 
Psychiatric Association. A short time later, she was appointed to the 
President's Commission on Mental Health, where she played an important 
role in the creation of the 1980 Mental Health Systems Act.
  Dr. Mitchell-Bateman was a doctor, a teacher, and a pioneer. Her 
accomplishments are made even more remarkable by the adversity she 
faced. Her life serves as a powerful example to us all of what one can 
accomplish with conviction, dedication, and true West Virginia grit.
  Mildred Mitchell-Bateman will forever be remembered for her many 
years of dedicated service to the Mountain State, her passion and 
dedication to the mental health community, and for touching the lives 
of so many patients. On top of that, she was also a loving mother to 
seven children, and a very proud grandmother to ten wonderful 
grandchildren.
  Gayle and I are keeping the Mitchell-Bateman families in our hearts 
and prayers. While we know that Mildred Mitchell-Bateman is gone, her 
legacy and service to the people of West Virginia will keep her alive 
in our hearts forever.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  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. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, we have had a long discussion today on 
the amendment to the surface transportation bill offered by my 
colleague and friend from Missouri, Senator Blunt. I think the 
discussion has shown pretty clearly that the amendment by the Senator 
from Missouri is both way beyond the scope of what most people 
envisioned and is extreme. It is way beyond the scope because it would 
cause the deprival of certain types of health care to perhaps millions 
of Americans in areas that go way beyond contraception.
  All an employer would have to do is say they have a moral objection 
to providing vaccinations and they would not have to provide health 
care. Maybe the employees could sue or go to court for 10 years and 
figure this out, but that is not what we want. So it would be a giant 
step backward in terms of health care.
  It is also a giant step backward in terms of depriving millions of 
American women of contraception. In a

[[Page 2465]]

sense, this is a ban on contraception, at least for the millions of 
American women whose employers would say they do not want to provide 
contraception. Some might be motivated by religious beliefs, some might 
be motivated by simply saving money, and we would never know except 
after long and costly litigation. Again, that would deprive the 
employee of contraception for a very long time.
  I think if people listened in on this debate, they would say this was 
a debate occurring not in 2012 but maybe in 1912 or even 1812 because 
issues such as a woman's right to contraception without the employer 
making a determination have long been decided by this country. We have 
seen the statistics. The overwhelming majority of Americans of every 
faith believe contraception should be available.
  So the debate has been pretty clear. I think the other side is making 
a huge mistake--certainly substantively, and in my judgment 
politically--so much so that today the leading Presidential candidate 
on the Republican side, when asked whether he supported the Blunt 
amendment said, no; he did not think Congress should be getting 
involved in contraception. Mr. Romney said we should not be doing this 
amendment, and he did not support it, unequivocally and clearly.
  A few hours later, of course, his folks walked that back, probably 
because of political pressure. He is facing Republican primaries where 
this issue is debated seriously, even if the rest of America does not 
believe that it should be debated. But what it shows is even when a 
leading candidate of the other side who is seeking votes from the hard 
right has doubts about whether this is a good idea, those doubts are 
real.
  The other side should make a retreat. Our Republican colleagues 
should not make the same mistake they made on the payroll tax deduction 
by appealing to an extreme group. They should back off this amendment. 
They should vote with us, and we should move on and debate the highway 
bill and put millions of Americans to work and update our 
infrastructure.
  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, the amendment we are considering today 
represents a direct assault on access to preventive health care 
services for millions of women in this country. The ostensible purpose 
of this proposal is to protect the rights of conscience of any employer 
or healthcare insurer, religious or secular, who may have a religious 
or moral objection to providing family planning services free of charge 
to their employees. I respect and will defend the moral values of 
employers and insurance companies. But I also respect the moral values 
of people who need medical services. So we will end up deciding whether 
or not to deny access to critical and possibly lifesaving health 
services for millions of people in this country, not whose religious or 
moral values have precedence.
  As drafted, Senator Blunt's amendment would grant employers and 
health insurance companies the power to deny access to not just 
preventive healthcare services for women, but any healthcare service, 
for anyone, regardless of its nature. This means any employer could 
choose to deny employees insurance coverage for such things as 
children's immunizations; mammograms; lifesaving cancer treatments; or 
blood transfusions simply because that employer may find these or any 
other healthcare services morally objectionable.
  For the Senate to pass such a policy would be indefensible. It would 
go far beyond nullifying the administration's rule to implement 
provisions in the Affordable Care Act requiring access to some 
preventive services at no cost. Instead, this amendment would codify 
infringement on personal healthcare decisions, would grant an employer 
the right to substitute his moral convictions for those of his 
employees, and would effectively deny access to critical healthcare 
services.
  Considering that some of my colleagues vociferously defend the idea 
of personal liberties, I am truly surprised they would support a policy 
to undermine those same liberties by handing power over an individual's 
personal healthcare decisions to that individual's employer or his 
insurance company.
  This body took a bold and historic step by enacting healthcare reform 
in 2010. We accomplished something that had eluded the country and the 
Congress for decades. The law recognizes that women have specific 
medical needs and that gaps have historically existed in preventive 
care for women. And it correctly called for specific steps to address 
that. We should not now support policies that would not only walk these 
advances back, but take giant leaps backwards in access to healthcare 
services for everyone. I urge our colleagues to vote against this 
amendment.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I am proud to join Senator Kohl and have 
long supported the No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels Act, NOPEC. 
We were able to pass this NOPEC bill as a response to the OPEC oil 
cartel by a vote of 70 to 23 a few years ago. The Senate should pass it 
again. This time, the House should also adopt this sensible application 
of our antitrust laws to those who fix prices and manipulate the oil 
market to the detriment of American consumers.
  We should be doing what we can to ensure that oil prices are not 
artificially inflated. That affects gas prices at the pump. This NOPEC 
amendment will hold accountable the collusive behavior that 
artificially reduces supply and increases the price of fuel. The rise 
and fall of oil and gas prices has a direct impact on American 
consumers and our economy. We should increase accountability and take 
away the profits of those who manipulate prices and supply to their 
benefit and unfairly prey upon consumers.
  On Monday, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported that 
prices for regular gas rose 13 cents per gallon last week to a 
nationwide average of $3.78. Gasoline pump prices are up 34 cents a 
gallon over last year. The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on 
the skyrocketing price of oil in May 2008, but these recent increases 
in price have led to renewed calls for investigation into their causes. 
We already know one significant cause: anticompetitive conduct by oil 
cartels.
  The artificial pricing scheme enforced by OPEC affects all of us. 
Fuel prices are on the rise and American consumers and businesses are 
feeling the pain at the pump. This week Vermonters are paying $ 3.79 
for a gallon of regular gasoline; last week, Vermonters were paying 
$3.70--a price jump of 9 cents in just 1 week. In 2011, the price for 
certain fuels rose by as much as one-third from 2010, according to the 
Vermont Department of Public Service. These prices affect everyone. 
These high fuel prices hit Vermonters especially hard in even the most 
mild of winters.
  In rural States such as Vermont, the cost of simply getting to work 
or to the grocery store because of high gas prices can further hurt 
already strapped household incomes. Vermont farmers shoulder the burden 
of surging fuel prices year-round, regardless of the season. Higher 
fuel prices can add thousands of dollars in yearly costs to a 100-head 
dairy operation in the Northeast.
  As we head into the summer months, when gas prices typically 
increase, soaring prices at the pump can affect the tourism industry, 
an economic driver in vacation destinations such as Vermont. As our 
summer months approach, many families in and around Vermont are going 
to find that OPEC has put an expensive crimp in their plans. Some are 
likely to stay home, others will pay more to drive or to fly so that 
they can visit their families or take their well-deserved vacations.
  American consumers should not be held as economic hostages to the 
whim of those who collude unfairly for their gain. We should not permit 
anyone to manipulate oil prices in an anticompetitive manner. The 
collusive behavior of certain oil producing nations has artificially 
and drastically reduced the supply and inflated the price of fuel. Put 
simply, the behavior of these oil cartels, which would be illegal under 
antitrust laws, harms American consumers and businesses and our 
recovering economy.

[[Page 2466]]

  Authorizing action against illegal oil price fixing and taking that 
action without delay is one thing we can do without additional 
obstruction or delay. Our amendment would allow the Justice Department 
to crack down on illegal price manipulation by oil cartels. This bill 
will allow the Federal Government to take legal action against any 
foreign state, including members of OPEC, for price fixing and 
artificially limiting the amount of available oil. While OPEC actions 
remain sheltered from antitrust enforcement, the ability of the 
governments involved to wreak havoc on the American economy remains 
unchecked.
  Our antitrust laws have been called the ``Magna Carta of free 
enterprise.'' If OPEC were simply a foreign business engaged in this 
type of behavior, it would already be subject to them. It is wrong to 
let OPEC producers off the hook just because their anticompetitive 
practices come with the seal of approval of national governments.
  In the past, our NOPEC legislation has had bipartisan support. A few 
years ago it passed overwhelmingly. By passing this legislation, we can 
say no to OPEC.
  I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Merkley.) The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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