Medicare Prescription Drug Savings and Choice Act of 2004

Mr. President, I am privileged to represent a State that values families and the tradition of this country as much or more than any State in our Nation. We are the 14th State in the Union. We are a State that values and respects not only our families, but our duties to the rest of the country. In fact, during the current war in Iraq, Vermont has lost on a per capita basis more soldiers than any other State in the country. We are a very special State.

We also have a wonderful constitution, the shortest constitution, I believe, of any State in the Nation. We hold to it as we do the U.S. Constitution. We have provisions in our Vermont State Constitution which

make it very difficult to change, for a reason. It has guided us for well over 200 years, just as our U.S. Constitution has guided the nation as a whole.

When you change the fundamental role of the Federal Government to have it intrude into the lives of our people and into our separate religious institutions, that is wrong. Doing so preemptively, based on the false premise that the U.S. Supreme Court, the Supreme Court of Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice O'Connor, is going to reach out and require States to approve same-sex marriages, is ill founded. Doing so in order to write discrimination into the Constitution is abhorrent.

Instead of a respectful and deliberative process with respect to the U.S. Constitution, we have something else going on here, something that Senator Durbin and Senator Feingold and others spoke of yesterday. None of the various proposed constitutional amendments have gone through the traditional process to help the Senate determine whether a proposed amendment is ``necessary,'' as, of course, the Constitution requires. Changing the fundamental charter of our Nation should not be proposed in this haphazard manner.

Everybody here knows that this is a political exercise being carried out on the fly. It shows little respect for the Constitution or the priorities of the American people.

Instead of taking action against terrorism, providing access to prescription drugs at lower prices, improving the criminal justice system, engaging in oversight to get to the bottom of the Iraq prison abuse scandal, providing a real Patients' Bill of Rights against the HMOs, or just fulfilling the basic requirements of the Senate by passing a budget and determining the 12 remaining appropriations bills on which the Senate has yet to act, the Republican leadership in the Senate has frittered away another week, with only 5 weeks left in the session. We have lost another week, but they know on the vote they will not win.

The American people have felt the need to amend the Constitution only 17 times since the adoption of the Bill of Rights. You would not recognize that tradition of restraint in looking at this Congress, in which dozens of proposed amendments to the Constitution have been introduced. The Senate has voted to increase the democratic rights of our citizens on several occasions, but we have only voted once to limit the rights of the American people. That was prohibition. We know that failed, and we had to come back in an embarrassed way and vote to repeal it.

This is a motion to proceed to the third version of the Federal Marriage Amendment that has been introduced in this Congress. Senator Daschle and the Democratic leadership offered a fair up-or-down vote on this amendment, but the Republican leaders refused. Instead, they want to have a constitutional convention on the Senate floor, with multiple votes on a variety of versions of constitutional amendments.

Yesterday, the distinguished Senator from Oregon, Mr. Smith, indicated he was not insisting on a vote on his version of a constitutional amendment. I have not heard the distinguished senior Senator from Utah insist on a separate vote on an alternative version. I really do not understand why the Republican leadership wouldn't agree to an up-or-down vote at a certain time on this amendment, as Senator Daschle offered. It almost seems as if the Republican leadership can't take yes for an answer on this procedural matter.

Are we facing crises here in the United States? I suppose that we are, but they are not constitutional crises. They are real-world problems. They have more to do with international terrorism and difficult economic times for America's working families than how the people of the State of Massachusetts will determine how to work out a State constitutional amendment or other approaches to the question of marriage in their State.

No constitutional crisis exists demanding constitutional changes. Look at two of our largest States, California and New York. They have Republican Governors. Their Republican Governors are not asking us to change the Constitution. Many of the Republican Senators in this Chamber know there is not a constitutional crisis, and I commend their courage in opposing this amendment.

I compliment the Log Cabin Republicans for their forthrightness and courage. They are right that marriage is an issue for the States and for our religious institutions within their separate spheres. In fact, they are right that Vice President Cheney and I agree on this, even though the Vice President is uncharacteristically silent at this moment.

I began this debate last Friday by urging that our Constitution not be politicized. I am saddened to see the proponents of this amendment and those trying to make this an election year issue see nothing as off limits or out of bounds, not even the Constitution. They propose turning the Constitution of the United States from the fundamental charter preserving our freedoms into a kiosk for political bumper stickers. They would reduce it to a device--in their words--to ``stand up against the culture.''

The real conservatives, the conservatives of Vermont and other States--know that conserving the Constitution is among the most important responsibilities we have. Our oath as Senators--an oath I have taken five times, and I can remember each one of them as though it was yesterday--is to ``support and defend the Constitution of the United States.''

Where is the respect for our States here? The Republican-appointed judges in Massachusetts changed their rules on marriage. But Massachusetts can decide for Massachusetts. They can change their constitution. But, of course, what we do here is going to force other States to ignore their own constitution or their own laws. Whether they like it or not, we will tell them what they have to do.

I hear many say Republicans and others on the Massachusetts Supreme Court endangered marriages. If I may be personal for a moment, I have been married for 42 years, to the most wonderful person I have ever known. In my mind, she is the most wonderful wife anyone could have. I sometimes ask myself why she has put up with me for 42 years, but she has. We have three beautiful children, two wonderful daughters-in-law, a wonderful son-in-law, all of whom we love. We were blessed this past weekend with our third grandchild. How wonderful it was to hold her literally minutes after she was born.

Like the former senior Senator from my State, Senator Stafford, I could say that everything I have accomplished in my life that has been worthwhile has been with the help of my wife Marcelle. We do not find our marriage endangered.

I do find a Constitution endangered if we start using it for bumper sticker slogans. That is what we are doing, and we must stop. The Constitution is too great a part of our heritage and our freedoms and our diversity and the democracy we love to tarnish it in this fashion.

When we vote today, we will not be voting to preserve the 42-year marriage of Patrick and Marcelle Leahy. She and I will not be affected by this vote, but millions of Americans will be. Remember those gay and lesbian Americans across the Nation who are looking to the Senate today to see whether this body is going to brand them as inferiors in our society. Those who vote against cloture recognize the fullness of their worth and their citizenship. I will not vote to diminish other Americans in the Constitution. I urge all Senators to vote ``no.''

I have to wonder what Americans are thinking as they watch the Senate devote its limited time to debate the Federal marriage amendment. Do they think the Nation is in a midst of a crisis that only a constitutional amendment can resolve? Are they pleased that the Senate has turned away from legislation that could improve their daily lives to engage in this debate? I doubt it.

Let me review the current legal landscape in America. Massachusetts is the only State in the Union providing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, and its citizens are in the midst of the State constitutional process to overturn that policy. In addition, Massachusetts has limited same-sex marriage to couples who reside or intend to reside there. Meanwhile, none of the other 49 States has moved to legalize gay marriage during the many months

that have followed the Goodridge decision in Massachusetts.

I think most Americans would agree with me that the sky has not fallen during the 2 months during which same-sex couples have married in Massachusetts. They may support gay marriage, or like me, they may believe that civil unions are the appropriate way to recognize the seriousness of gay and lesbian relationships. Or they may oppose any recognition at all for same-sex couples. But at a fundamental level, they understand that States should have the authority to decide who can marry, and that the relationships being formed between consenting adults in Massachusetts have not harmed their own marriages or their own families.

The Rutland Herald, a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper in my State, wrote the following in an editorial last month:

[A] remarkable thing has happened since gay marriages began

legally in Massachusetts last month: nothing. Gay and lesbian

couples who have trooped to their town clerks or church

altars have joined in the most significant relationship of

their lives, and it has not been nothing to them. But no

cataclysmic shock to society has occurred. Marriages happen

as a matter of course, and though they are one of the most

significant events in the life of the individual, they are a

routine matter in the life of a community. Now gay marriage,

too, has become routine, at least in Massachusetts.

As The Rutland Herald suggests, most Americans have not felt any effects from developments in Massachusetts, and many are surely mystified and dismayed by the Senate's fascination with the topic.

So why are we here today? We are certainly not here to legislate. Everyone in this chamber knows the Senate will not adopt this amendment. If you listen to Senator Santorum or Senator Hatch, you know they say we are here to ``put people on record,'' apparently including the many Republicans who have expressed reservations about the FMA or oppose it outright.

Obviously, the Senate leadership has decided that forcing a vote in relation to the FMA will benefit the Republican Party politically, from the race for the White House to the Senate races that will determine which party controls the agenda for the 109th Congress.

Ever since President Bush publicly embraced amending the Constitution to ban same-sex marriage, it has been obvious that he considered the issue of gay marriage crucial to his re-election campaign. The President's plan was clear: his right-wing base may have been alienated by his calls for immigration reform or a mission to Mars, but he would win them back by aggressively promoting a marriage amendment. And since the President's opponent is a Member of this body, it was only a matter of time before this amendment reached the floor, regardless of what procedural traditions had to be sidestepped to do it.

Of course, the President has never said what words he wants to be included in the Constitution. His Department of Justice has never testified before the Judiciary Committee of the House or Senate, and has never said what words it believes would be appropriate to include in the Constitution. The President and his administration want the benefit of supporting this discriminatory amendment without getting their hands dirty by delving into the specific and ugly words. This lack of concern about the language of the amendment is of course not limited to the White House. As I stressed in my opening statement, the language of this amendment is rather beside the point for its congressional supporters, too.

The President addressed the issue of gay marriage in his State of the Union address in January. He said, ``If judges insist on forcing their arbitrary will upon the people, the only alternative left to the people would be the constitutional process.'' Yet, on February 24--barely a month after the State of the Union address--and without any additional court anywhere in the country ruling on gay marriage, the President flip-flopped and endorsed putting a ban on gay marriage in the Constitution. I can only assume that something turned up in the White House's polling to prompt such a dramatic about-face. Or perhaps Karl Rove's phone simply would not stop ringing with calls from the hard- right groups that compose the core of the President's support.

In any event, the day after the President endorsed the concept of a constitutional amendment, I wrote him and asked what specific language he wanted us to add to the Constitution. After all, we have only amended the Constitution 17 times since the Bill of Rights. If the President was calling on Congress to amend it for an 18th time, I thought the least he could do is make clear what language he seeks. I have waited in vain for a response.

I am not surprised by the President's conduct in this matter. He has proven himself willing over the last 3\1/2\ years to take whatever measures he finds politically expedient. He has also shown that he is more than willing to play political games with the Constitution, as we see with today's debate and we will see again in the upcoming debate on a constitutional amendment to ban flag desecration an issue that Vice President Cheney has been campaigning on recently. The President, the Vice President, and the rest of the administration have withheld information from Congress and the public whenever it suits them. And facts have proven to be awfully malleable things when they have stood in the way of the President's political priorities. For this administration, it is all politics all the time regardless of the truth or the consequences. Let me provide three of the many possible examples.

When the facts got in the way of the President's prewar statements about Iraq, and Joseph Wilson pointed out the flaws in the President's 2003 State of the Union address concerning Iraq's alleged efforts to obtain uranium in Niger, someone in the Administration apparently told the press that Wilson's wife was an undercover agent at the CIA. The President promised that the perpetrator would be discovered and punished. But if he has made any efforts to discover the leaker's identity, we are unaware of them. Instead, he has retained counsel and allowed the investigation to grind on, perhaps in the hope that the issue will not be resolved until after election day.

When the facts got in the way of the President's proposal to expand Medicare to provide prescription drug benefits, his Department of Health and Human Services simply withheld those facts from Congress. When Congress considered the prescription drugs bill last fall, it received an estimate from the Congressional Budget Office that the cost of implementing the new program would be about $395 billion. It has since come to light that Richard Foster, the chief Medicare actuary, completed a cost estimate for the Bush administration last fall that showed the new prescription drug benefit would cost $550 billion, drastically more than the CBO estimate. In testimony before Congress, Mr. Foster explained that he was told that if he made his cost analysis public, he would be fired. The Congressional Research Service recently reported that it believes the Bush administration violated the law by withholding Mr. Foster's report and stated that it is clear that Congress has the right to receive truthful information from Federal agencies to assist in its legislative functions. It was a breach of trust with this Congress and with the American people.

And in today's papers we learn that there are administration estimates that when the purported prescription drug benefits are supposed to finally kick in around 2006, what is likely to happen is that almost 4 million retirees will, in fact, lose prescription drug benefits. That means that the Bush administration is now withholding its own estimates that one-third of all retirees with employer- sponsored drug coverage will, in fact, suffer more rather than be helped by the bill they forced through the Congress to benefit large insurance and pharmaceutical companies at the expense of our seniors.

Finally, when we in Congress raised legitimate concerns about the administration's policies on the abuse of prisoners abroad and requested documents that would shed light on the administration's policies regarding the treatment and interrogation of detainees, the White House released a small number of self-serving documents and chose to hide the rest. Then it ``disavowed'' the Office of Legal Counsel memo that laid out a strategy for evading the limits of the Torture Convention as if that document, which is legally binding on

the Executive Branch, had been nothing more than the doodling of an overly imaginative young lawyer at the Department of Justice. The administration obviously does not want the Congress or the American people to know the facts about its actions abroad or its slippery commitment to upholding American values.

Let there be no mistake: We are here today because the President wants to distract the American people from the facts of the weakened economy and reduced standing abroad that his administration has produced. He and the Senate Republican leadership prefer a political circus and seek to whip the American people into a frenzy based on the actions of a single State.

I am not so sure their political calculations are correct. I believe the American people regardless of their position on gay marriage--will be disappointed by the majority's overreaching. They will see this debate for what it is--a show produced to benefit Republicans politically while doing nothing to enhance or protect the sanctity of marriage. Senator Chafee predicted months ago that his leadership might bring the amendment up ``just for political posturing.'' He has proved prescient.

As I said at the fourth and final hearing the Judiciary Committee held on gay marriage, this debate is not about preserving the sanctity of marriage. It is about preserving a Republican White House and Senate and about doing so by scapegoating gay and lesbian Americans. I oppose this amendment, and I again urge my colleagues to oppose it as well.

This debate perfectly illustrates the Senate's priorities. We are spending days on a Federal marriage amendment that we all know does not have the votes to pass the Senate and that the House may never even put to a vote. I have spoken before about the divisiveness of this debate and the contempt that it shows for our constitutional traditions. This debate, however, also demonstrates the Senate Republican leadership's disregard for the needs of the American people and the institutional responsibilities of this body.

The Senate has been unable to get its own house in order. It is mid- July and we have still not passed a budget. The Senate has passed only one of 13 appropriations bills, and the leadership has suggested they may not be able to find the time to pass the others as individual bills. I do not believe we have ever passed only one appropriations bill in the Senate before the August recess, but we certainly seem to be headed in that direction.

A July 7 editorial in Roll Call lamented what it called the ``Big Mess Ahead.'' We are now stuck in that big mess. Roll Call noted that ``July should be appropriations month in the Senate.'' I agree. July has traditionally been when we got our work done and made sure that funding for the various functions of the Federal Government would be appropriated by the Congress as it exercised its responsibilities and the power of the purse. Not this year.

We have not done our part to help American employers create jobs. We have not completed work on a highway bill that could create 830,000 jobs, or on the FSC-ETI bill, subjecting American businesses to retaliatory tariffs that are increasing monthly. At the same time we have dallied on measures to expand the economy, and we have refused to extend unemployment benefits, even as 2 million Americans have exhausted their unemployment insurance.

We have not addressed the health care needs of our citizens. The majority has refused to take up either a drug reimportation bill that has the support of a majority of Senators, or mental health parity legislation that has 68 sponsors. Meanwhile, the Senate has done nothing to address the fact that 43 million Americans have not had health insurance for more than a year.

We have failed those hardworking Americans who struggle every day to make ends meet on wages that barely reach the poverty line. We have not increased a minimum wage that has remained unchanged since 1996. As inflation has risen and the economy has worsened, the working poor must struggle to live on the same wage Congress passed 8 years ago. The core inflation rate rose 2 percent in the first quarter of this year alone. In addition to allowing the minimum wage to stagnate, the majority has abandoned efforts to reauthorize the welfare reform law, leaving thousands of families in desperate need of quality childcare behind.

We have also failed our veterans. This failure begins at the top. The President has consistently proposed underfunding veterans' programs. His budget request for this year failed to maintain even the current level of services. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Principi recently testified that his department asked the White House for an additional $1.2 billion, but that request was denied. Forced to choose between our veterans and the President, the majority has sided against our veterans.

During consideration of this year's budget resolution, Senator Daschle offered an amendment to fund veterans programs at the level recommended by veterans' groups in the Independent Budget. Unfortunately, only one Republican voted in favor of this amendment, and it was defeated. A second amendment, offered by Senator Bill Nelson, would have increased funding for veterans by $1.8 billion. It too was defeated. Not a single Republican supported the Nelson amendment. My friends on the other side of the aisle then offered a ``smoke and mirrors'' amendment on veterans' care. Although this amendment made it seem that the Senate was voting to provide more money for veterans, we all know that this amendment did not add one red cent. The main purpose of this amendment was to provide political cover for the November election.

While the administration is shortchanging VA funding, out-of-pocket expenses for veterans are skyrocketing. Under the Bush administration, these expenses are projected to rise by an incredible 478 percent. Certain Priority 8 veterans are blocked from VA health care altogether, while others cannot receive treatment unless they pay a ridiculously high co-payment. Instead of debating polarizing issues like the Federal marriage amendment, we should be acting to provide real resources for the men and women who served this country with honor.

Unlike in 2000, the Republican majority has not even made the pretense of addressing the priorities of our Nation's immigrants. The majority leader engaged in parliamentary tricks last week to avoid a vote on Senator Craig's immigration reform bill and has found no time for the bipartisan DREAM Act, which would help thousands of immigrant students in our Nation. The prospect of comprehensive immigration reform is even more remote.

Sadly, the list of what we are not accomplishing goes on and on. Roll Call observed in its editorial last week that ``the second session of the 108th Congress is poised to accomplish nothing.'' The way things are going, under Republican leadership this session will make the ``do nothing'' Congress against which President Harry Truman ran seem like a legislative juggernaut.

The days we spend on this amendment could be spent more productively on any of the matters I just mentioned, but instead we are debating the FMA. We have followed this course even though there are only 6 weeks remaining in the Senate's scheduled work year.

I fear that at this point in an election year, floor time is only available for matters that advance the majority's narrow political agenda. This is a sad contrast from 1996, when we passed a minimum wage increase, a welfare reform bill, and other matters in a productive summer during which we occasionally put the election aside and took care of business for the American people. I supported some of those initiatives and opposed others, but I believed they were important matters that deserved the Senate's extended attention.

This summer, the Senate seems content to act as an extension of the President's reelection campaign. Why else would we be considering an amendment prompted by gay marriages in Massachusetts, 2 weeks before Democrats convene in Boston for their national convention? In light of all the talk about potential terrorist activity at the political conventions, we should be spending time passing appropriations bills for the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security. Instead,

this Senate will grind to a halt and ignore its pressing duties to conduct a debate whose outcome we all know.

I am not naive. I know that politics has always influenced Congress. It could not be otherwise. I fear, however, that the Republican leadership has taken the politicization of the Senate to new heights. Have we ever taken up a constitutional amendment that did not have the support even of a firm majority of this body, over the objection of the minority party, without even having the Judiciary Committee consider it?

We should reject this amendment and move on to the matters that make a difference in the daily lives of our constituents.

Mr. President, those who are following the business of the Senate understand that just a few moments ago, we had a vote on the floor of the Senate on the proposed constitutional amendment dealing with same-sex marriage. The final vote, I think, was indicative of the feeling of this body. There were 48 who supported going forward with the debate on this amendment and 50 Senators who opposed it. Of course, 48 Senators does not meet the threshold requirement for approving a constitutional amendment, which is 67 Senators. So that gap of 19 Senators suggests this Senate does not believe it is appropriate for us to move forward on that type of constitutional amendment.

Many of the colleagues on both sides of the aisle spoke to this issue over the last several days and expressed their heartfelt feelings of the underlying issue of same-sex marriage and about the question of whether we should amend the Constitution. The vote today is, I think, a good indication that this is an issue whose time has not come. There is no issue in controversy which requires us to amend the Constitution of the United States of America.

One might ask, if this issue fell so far short, 19 votes short, of what it needed, why did we consider it? For obvious reasons. This debate was not about changing the Constitution. This debate was about changing the subject in the Presidential campaign.

It is understood that if you ask most American families what is important to them the politicians are worried about, they will talk about the obvious things: My job, the fact that my paycheck does not cover the necessities of my family, the cost of health insurance, the availability of quality health care, whether my retirement savings are going to be protected; I am concerned as well about the situation in Iraq; I would like to know when we will stop losing our soldiers, and what do we have ahead of us in terms of Iraq and the $1.5 billion which American

taxpayers spend each week in Iraq, how long will that go on? What could we do with $1.5 billion every week in the United States of America for our schools, for providing health care for our children, immunizations.

These are the obvious questions with which most families identify. But if the Presidential election campaign is waged on those issues, the White House and the Republican Party believe they are at a disadvantage because many people, in fact, an amazingly large percentage of Americans, say when asked, they feel our country is going in the wrong direction in terms of its economics to help working families, in terms of creating jobs, keeping good-paying jobs in America, dealing with the fact we still continue to be dependent on the Middle East and Saudi Arabia for our oil which draws us into a terrible situation of dependency, a terrible situation which taxes our resources.

That is what most Americans will identify as the major issues, and those are not issues on which this administration wants to campaign. So they attempted today to change the subject. They wanted to change the subject by changing the Constitution to deal with same-sex marriages, an issue which has not reached a level where it should even be addressed by our Constitution.

I will not go over that whole debate again, but the vote tells the story. The Republican Party in the majority in the Senate was unable to get a majority of votes to support the President's constitutional amendment. The rollcall tells the story. But there are other issues which, frankly, we should now move to, issues about which families across America do care.

I know as I travel around my State of Illinois and talk with families, businesses, labor union leaders, time and again the issue on their minds is the cost of health care in America.

I met 2 days ago in Chicago with a good friend of mine who heads up one of the major labor unions. It is a labor union which represents people who work at grocery stores, United Food and Commercial Workers. I talked with him about his problems.

He said: Senator, virtually every strike we have, virtually every contract negotiation is over the cost of health insurance. We get our workers 50 cents more an hour, and they don't see a penny of it. It all goes into health insurance, and there is less coverage this year than last year. They are upset with their labor leaders and upset with their employers.

Then you talk with businesspeople, businesses small and large, and I hear the same story, businesses which say: We are mom and pop, and we can no longer afford health insurance for the people who work for us; it is just too expensive.

There is another element in this whole equation which we cannot overlook, and that is the cost of prescription drugs. The cost of prescription drugs is not only driving the cost of health insurance to record levels, but it is also pushing a lot of people of limited family means into terrible choices: whether they can afford to buy the prescription drugs that will keep them healthy and, if they do, whether they will have to sacrifice the necessities of life. That is a real issue. That is an issue this campaign ought to be about. Would it not be refreshing if the debate of the week was not over same-sex marriage and its impact on families but the cost of health care and the cost of prescription drugs and their impact on families? I think that is what the voters are waiting for.

If they have any frustration with those of us in public office, it is the fact we talk past them, over them, and around them and never direct to the issues about which they care.

Today I am joining Senator Levin of Michigan and Senator Dayton of Minnesota in introducing S. 2652.

We are going to work to put this bill on the Senate calendar under rule XIV so that Senator Frist can call it up for debate. In other words, what I am trying to do is to accelerate consideration of this bill to blow past all the political issues and the political rhetoric to get into this legislation. The Democratic leader in the other body is working to discharge a companion bill so they can consider it in an expedited manner.

This bill is called the Medicare Prescription Drug Savings Act. We need to expedite this bill. We need to put it on the calendar. We need to stop wasting time on issues going nowhere because seniors and low- income individuals are facing escalating prescription drug prices that are really hurting them personally and diminishing their Medicare drug benefits. Instead of considering bills that do not have the votes to pass, like the one we just finished, we should consider something that is an urgent priority for Americans. Whether one lives in a blue State, a red State, or a purple State, whether one is in a battleground State or it is a State that is decided, they are going to find seniors concerned about the cost of prescription drugs. This is an issue that is bipartisan. It is an issue that affects virtually every family. Over the past 5 years, prescription drug prices have risen between 14 and 19 percent every single year, 5 times the rate of inflation.

One particularly egregious example of drug price inflation in the United States is Novir, an essential ingredient in the HIV cocktail to deal with the HIV/AIDS crisis. The price of an average dose of Novir went up 400 percent this year from $1,600 a year to more than $7,800. That is more than 10 times the cost of the same drug in Canada or in Europe. Americans are paying 10 times the cost of Novir for HIV patients in the United States as the price that is being paid in Canada and Europe.

Last month, the AARP released a study examining prescription drug prices for the 12-month period ending in March 2004. The study revealed that the prices charged by pharmaceutical companies to wholesalers for the top brand-name drugs used by seniors increased at a rate of 7.2 percent. That is faster than the 2 previous years, which is troubling given that inflation actually fell during that same period of time.

Drug discount cards have been suggested as the answer for this problem, but they are not. A fact sheet sent out by the Department of Health and Human Services to 40 million Medicare beneficiaries said that a discount card with Medicare's seal of approval can help save 10 to 25 percent on prescription drugs.

Now, this is the administration plan, a discount card under Medicare for prescription drugs that could save 10 to 25 percent. Well, after the same Department published the drug card prices in May, the Chicago Tribune newspaper looked at what these cards would mean in a suburb of Chicago, the city of Evanston. The Tribune compared the prices at pharmacies in Evanston with what seniors will save with drug discount cards. Take a look at it.

In some cases, the people in Evanston, IL, will actually save less without the card. The drug Lipitor, with the discount card, is $67.07. The lowest retail price, $68.99. Savings, $1.92, or 3-percent savings. Celebrex, 2 percent. Norvasc, in fact, costs more under the discounted card. So this so-called discount card seems to be of little value with drugs that are very popular and well used and prescribed to, such as Lipitor, Celebrex, and Norvasc.

The lack of significant savings from the discount cards that are being touted by the administration is not unique to Illinois or the city of Evanston. Since President Bush announced the idea of a drug discount card in July of 2001, top selling prescription drugs have experienced double-digit increases, eroding any savings that might come from the card.

Remember when the Bush administration said their discount cards would save seniors 10 to 25 percent? Well, price increases are eroding savings. Take a look at what happened to these drugs: Celebrex for arthritis pain went up 23 percent; Coumadin, a blood thinner, 22 percent; Lipitor, 19 percent; Zoloft, 19 percent; Zyprexa, 16 percent; Prevacid, 15 percent; and Zocor, 15 percent.

The prescription drug discount card is not even really keeping up with the inflation built into prescription drug prices.

Some of my colleagues may say it is not important that the drug card is not producing much savings because the real benefit will start in January of 2006. Unfortunately, rising drug prices will erode that benefit, too.

I will tell my colleagues about one of my constituents. Alois Kessler of Skokie, IL, has $3,200 in drug costs, and his income, which is fixed, is $28,500. Assuming prescription drug prices continue to rise as we have seen them rise

and Mr. Kessler stays with the same medication he is currently taking, his drug costs will be approximately $4,800 by 2006, the first year of the new Part D benefit. His income will rise about 3 percent a year. So he will have drug prices at $4,800 and an income of $31,000 a year.

The new program reduces his cost by $1,080 in the first year, so he will still have to pay out-of-pocket $2,120. By 2015, assuming he is still taking the same medication, his drug costs will reach $17,000, and his income will only have risen to around $40,400. One just cannot keep up with an inflation protection in their Medicare or retirement income against drug price increases of this kind.

What can we do about it? What we can do about it is something this bill proposes, and it is something very basic. There is a lot of talk in Congress today about bringing drugs in from Canada and other places. I am open to that conversation, anything to provide relief to seniors and people on limited incomes trying to buy lifesaving drugs.

Look to the north. Canada selling American drugs made in America, inspected in America, approved in America, with research in America, for sale in Canada turn out to be a fraction of the cost of what they are in the United States. With just 2 percent of the worldwide pharmaceutical market, Canada cannot supply the United States no matter how many busloads of seniors we send there.

The United States has 53 percent of the worldwide prescription drug market. Half of it is made up of Medicare beneficiaries. Think about this for a moment. If Medicare, the program that covers seniors, were to sit down with major pharmaceutical companies and bargain for the prices of the drugs, think about their bargaining power. They have the ability to bring prices down for Americans for drugs sold in America rather than reimported in the United States.

The prescription drug benefit bill we passed expressly prohibits Medicare from negotiating for lower prices. That is something the pharmaceutical companies wanted, and they won. They won it at the expense of American consumers.

Today, the Veterans' Administration and the Department of Defense negotiate for VA drug prices and cut down the cost of drugs by almost 50 percent. Take a look at some of these popular drugs and the difference between what is paid in the drugstores of America and what the Federal Government pays for the same drug: Xalatan eyedrops, $41 under the negotiated price of the VA, and $101 is what is paid in the drugstore; Celebrex, the drug we talked about earlier for arthritis, $108 on the Federal Supply Schedule and $173 at the drugstore; Lipitor for cholesterol, $215 in the Federal system, $446 over the counter; Plavix, $257 negotiated, and over-the-counter, $593.

Once you put the bargaining power of the Federal Government behind price negotiations, the prices come down. People can afford the drugs. Families can afford them. The cost of health insurance comes down, but the profits for the drug companies come down, too. That is why this Congress, under the thrall of that special interest group, has refused to give Medicare the power to negotiate.

I will give one specific example we have lived through on Capitol Hill. Many people rail about what happened with the anthrax scare a few years ago. There was a suggestion that the drug Cipro would be used as an antidote to any ill-effects caused by anthrax. We found out Cipro was an expensive drug, and Secretary Tommy Thompson said he would negotiate with the Bayer Company, the company that makes Cipro, to lower prices.

Look what happened when Secretary Thompson tried to do that. He said:

Everyone said I wouldn't be able to reduce the price of

Cipro. I am a tough negotiator.

What was the market price when he went into it? It was $4.67 per pill for Cipro. When it was all said and done, we were paying 75 cents. When someone sits down with the drug companies and says, You are overcharging us, we won't pay it, look what happens. Yet when the seniors of America look for the same kind of hard-nosed negotiating to bring down costs for them, this Congress says no; we don't want to give Medicare the ability to negotiate to do the same thing Secretary Thompson achieved when it came to these Cipro tablets. Through negotiation, Secretary Thompson brought down the price of Cipro by 490 percent. Good news for the people who needed Cipro; bad news for the people who need Medicare. But we can't even ask him to stand up for senior citizens in America. Out of the question. Drug companies don't want to lose their profitability.

Incidentally, they are very profitable. Let me show you some charts. This indicates the profitability of Fortune 500 drug companies versus the profits for all Fortune 500 companies in the year 2002. Look at what drug companies on the red bars have done on profitability: 17 percent as opposed to 3.1 percent; in this chart, 27.6 percent to 10.2 percent. They are making money hand over fist. They are charging seniors and families across America record high prices for drugs. They are increasing the cost of those drugs every single year and passing them along directly, raising health insurance costs, making it more difficult for seniors to keep up with the drugs they need to stay healthy.

I think the bill I have introduced with Senators Levin and Dayton answers the need. I believe the bill which we will attempt to put on the Senate calendar today, so we can vote it before we leave for anybody's convention, is going to go a long way toward helping America's seniors. The Medicare Prescription Drug Savings Act instructs the Secretary of Health and Human Services to offer a nationwide Medicare-delivered prescription drug benefit in addition to the PDP and PPO plans available in the 10 regions. We keep in place what is in the Medicare bill passed last year, we just add a new player. The new player is Medicare providing prescription drugs with negotiated prices. We set a uniform national premium of $35 for the first year for this prescription drug benefit, and we negotiate group purchasing agreements on behalf of beneficiaries who choose to receive their drugs through the Medicare-administered benefit. It is voluntary. Those who choose to receive their drugs will have negotiated lower prices. Those who enroll can stay enrolled as long as they want.

Not only will this bill provide seniors with lower cost drugs, it will give them a choice to enroll in a Medicare-delivered plan, cutting down on the confusion the privately delivered system has already created. Critics and the pharmaceutical industry would say my bill is about price controls and big government. How do you explain the Veterans' Administration? Aren't we saying for our veterans we want to bring down the cost of pharmaceutical drugs? Have you spoken to a veteran lately who has gone to the VA hospital to sign up for the monthly drug benefit because it is so attractive for him and his family? That tells me government can play an important role and have a voice in buying in bulk and bringing down costs.

Who supports this bill we are trying to bring to the calendar? The Alliance for Retired Americans, AFL-CIO, American Nurses Association, Campaign for America's Future, USAction, Consumers Union, the Service Employees International Union, AFSCME, the American Federation of Teachers, Families USA, the Center for Medicare Advocacy, and the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.

If you don't think this is a timely issue, pick up this morning's New York Times and take a look at the front-page story. The bill we passed, signed by President Bush, has America running in the wrong direction. Front-page headline:

Drug Law [signed by President Bush] Is Seen Leading To Cuts

in Retiree Plans.

Let me read one or two paragraphs:

New government estimates suggest that employers will reduce

or eliminate prescription drug benefits for 3.8 million

retirees when Medicare offers its coverage in 2006.

That is the plan we referred to earlier passed by Congress.

That represents one-third of all retirees with employer-

sponsored drug coverage, according to documents from the

Department of Health and Human Services.

No aspect of the new law causes more concern among retirees

than the possibility they might lose benefits they already

have.

That is what the administration offers us: discount cards which don't offer a real discount, the loss of prescription drug coverage already available for 3.8 million retirees, and, finally, a plan that is offered to seniors

that is almost impossible to describe and follow because it is so complicated in its minutiae and detail, and it does not include a provision that allows Medicare to bargain for the best prices, the same bargaining power which we use over and over again to help veterans and many other Americans.

Before the end of the day, we are going to ask that this bill be brought to the calendar. I don't know what else we will consider today, but if my colleagues in the Senate will go home and ask a random sample of anybody on the street corner, or in the shopping center, about the cost of prescription drugs and what it means, they will understand that whatever the next item of business might be in the Senate, it cannot really match in importance what this issue means to families across the United States of America.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, those who are following the business of the Senate understand that just a few moments ago, we had a vote on the floor of the Senate on the proposed constitutional amendment dealing with same-sex marriage. The final vote, I think, was indicative of the feeling of this body. There were 48 who supported going forward with the debate on this amendment and 50 Senators who opposed it. Of course, 48 Senators does not meet the threshold requirement for approving a constitutional amendment, which is 67 Senators. So that gap of 19 Senators suggests this Senate does not believe it is appropriate for us to move forward on that type of constitutional amendment.

Many of the colleagues on both sides of the aisle spoke to this issue over the last several days and expressed their heartfelt feelings of the underlying issue of same-sex marriage and about the question of whether we should amend the Constitution. The vote today is, I think, a good indication that this is an issue whose time has not come. There is no issue in controversy which requires us to amend the Constitution of the United States of America.

One might ask, if this issue fell so far short, 19 votes short, of what it needed, why did we consider it? For obvious reasons. This debate was not about changing the Constitution. This debate was about changing the subject in the Presidential campaign.

It is understood that if you ask most American families what is important to them the politicians are worried about, they will talk about the obvious things: My job, the fact that my paycheck does not cover the necessities of my family, the cost of health insurance, the availability of quality health care, whether my retirement savings are going to be protected; I am concerned as well about the situation in Iraq; I would like to know when we will stop losing our soldiers, and what do we have ahead of us in terms of Iraq and the $1.5 billion which American

taxpayers spend each week in Iraq, how long will that go on? What could we do with $1.5 billion every week in the United States of America for our schools, for providing health care for our children, immunizations.

These are the obvious questions with which most families identify. But if the Presidential election campaign is waged on those issues, the White House and the Republican Party believe they are at a disadvantage because many people, in fact, an amazingly large percentage of Americans, say when asked, they feel our country is going in the wrong direction in terms of its economics to help working families, in terms of creating jobs, keeping good-paying jobs in America, dealing with the fact we still continue to be dependent on the Middle East and Saudi Arabia for our oil which draws us into a terrible situation of dependency, a terrible situation which taxes our resources.

That is what most Americans will identify as the major issues, and those are not issues on which this administration wants to campaign. So they attempted today to change the subject. They wanted to change the subject by changing the Constitution to deal with same-sex marriages, an issue which has not reached a level where it should even be addressed by our Constitution.

I will not go over that whole debate again, but the vote tells the story. The Republican Party in the majority in the Senate was unable to get a majority of votes to support the President's constitutional amendment. The rollcall tells the story. But there are other issues which, frankly, we should now move to, issues about which families across America do care.

I know as I travel around my State of Illinois and talk with families, businesses, labor union leaders, time and again the issue on their minds is the cost of health care in America.

I met 2 days ago in Chicago with a good friend of mine who heads up one of the major labor unions. It is a labor union which represents people who work at grocery stores, United Food and Commercial Workers. I talked with him about his problems.

He said: Senator, virtually every strike we have, virtually every contract negotiation is over the cost of health insurance. We get our workers 50 cents more an hour, and they don't see a penny of it. It all goes into health insurance, and there is less coverage this year than last year. They are upset with their labor leaders and upset with their employers.

Then you talk with businesspeople, businesses small and large, and I hear the same story, businesses which say: We are mom and pop, and we can no longer afford health insurance for the people who work for us; it is just too expensive.

There is another element in this whole equation which we cannot overlook, and that is the cost of prescription drugs. The cost of prescription drugs is not only driving the cost of health insurance to record levels, but it is also pushing a lot of people of limited family means into terrible choices: whether they can afford to buy the prescription drugs that will keep them healthy and, if they do, whether they will have to sacrifice the necessities of life. That is a real issue. That is an issue this campaign ought to be about. Would it not be refreshing if the debate of the week was not over same-sex marriage and its impact on families but the cost of health care and the cost of prescription drugs and their impact on families? I think that is what the voters are waiting for.

If they have any frustration with those of us in public office, it is the fact we talk past them, over them, and around them and never direct to the issues about which they care.

Today I am joining Senator Levin of Michigan and Senator Dayton of Minnesota in introducing S. 2652.

We are going to work to put this bill on the Senate calendar under rule XIV so that Senator Frist can call it up for debate. In other words, what I am trying to do is to accelerate consideration of this bill to blow past all the political issues and the political rhetoric to get into this legislation. The Democratic leader in the other body is working to discharge a companion bill so they can consider it in an expedited manner.

This bill is called the Medicare Prescription Drug Savings Act. We need to expedite this bill. We need to put it on the calendar. We need to stop wasting time on issues going nowhere because seniors and low- income individuals are facing escalating prescription drug prices that are really hurting them personally and diminishing their Medicare drug benefits. Instead of considering bills that do not have the votes to pass, like the one we just finished, we should consider something that is an urgent priority for Americans. Whether one lives in a blue State, a red State, or a purple State, whether one is in a battleground State or it is a State that is decided, they are going to find seniors concerned about the cost of prescription drugs. This is an issue that is bipartisan. It is an issue that affects virtually every family. Over the past 5 years, prescription drug prices have risen between 14 and 19 percent every single year, 5 times the rate of inflation.

One particularly egregious example of drug price inflation in the United States is Novir, an essential ingredient in the HIV cocktail to deal with the HIV/AIDS crisis. The price of an average dose of Novir went up 400 percent this year from $1,600 a year to more than $7,800. That is more than 10 times the cost of the same drug in Canada or in Europe. Americans are paying 10 times the cost of Novir for HIV patients in the United States as the price that is being paid in Canada and Europe.

Last month, the AARP released a study examining prescription drug prices for the 12-month period ending in March 2004. The study revealed that the prices charged by pharmaceutical companies to wholesalers for the top brand-name drugs used by seniors increased at a rate of 7.2 percent. That is faster than the 2 previous years, which is troubling given that inflation actually fell during that same period of time.

Drug discount cards have been suggested as the answer for this problem, but they are not. A fact sheet sent out by the Department of Health and Human Services to 40 million Medicare beneficiaries said that a discount card with Medicare's seal of approval can help save 10 to 25 percent on prescription drugs.

Now, this is the administration plan, a discount card under Medicare for prescription drugs that could save 10 to 25 percent. Well, after the same Department published the drug card prices in May, the Chicago Tribune newspaper looked at what these cards would mean in a suburb of Chicago, the city of Evanston. The Tribune compared the prices at pharmacies in Evanston with what seniors will save with drug discount cards. Take a look at it.

In some cases, the people in Evanston, IL, will actually save less without the card. The drug Lipitor, with the discount card, is $67.07. The lowest retail price, $68.99. Savings, $1.92, or 3-percent savings. Celebrex, 2 percent. Norvasc, in fact, costs more under the discounted card. So this so-called discount card seems to be of little value with drugs that are very popular and well used and prescribed to, such as Lipitor, Celebrex, and Norvasc.

The lack of significant savings from the discount cards that are being touted by the administration is not unique to Illinois or the city of Evanston. Since President Bush announced the idea of a drug discount card in July of 2001, top selling prescription drugs have experienced double-digit increases, eroding any savings that might come from the card.

Remember when the Bush administration said their discount cards would save seniors 10 to 25 percent? Well, price increases are eroding savings. Take a look at what happened to these drugs: Celebrex for arthritis pain went up 23 percent; Coumadin, a blood thinner, 22 percent; Lipitor, 19 percent; Zoloft, 19 percent; Zyprexa, 16 percent; Prevacid, 15 percent; and Zocor, 15 percent.

The prescription drug discount card is not even really keeping up with the inflation built into prescription drug prices.

Some of my colleagues may say it is not important that the drug card is not producing much savings because the real benefit will start in January of 2006. Unfortunately, rising drug prices will erode that benefit, too.

I will tell my colleagues about one of my constituents. Alois Kessler of Skokie, IL, has $3,200 in drug costs, and his income, which is fixed, is $28,500. Assuming prescription drug prices continue to rise as we have seen them rise

and Mr. Kessler stays with the same medication he is currently taking, his drug costs will be approximately $4,800 by 2006, the first year of the new Part D benefit. His income will rise about 3 percent a year. So he will have drug prices at $4,800 and an income of $31,000 a year.

The new program reduces his cost by $1,080 in the first year, so he will still have to pay out-of-pocket $2,120. By 2015, assuming he is still taking the same medication, his drug costs will reach $17,000, and his income will only have risen to around $40,400. One just cannot keep up with an inflation protection in their Medicare or retirement income against drug price increases of this kind.

What can we do about it? What we can do about it is something this bill proposes, and it is something very basic. There is a lot of talk in Congress today about bringing drugs in from Canada and other places. I am open to that conversation, anything to provide relief to seniors and people on limited incomes trying to buy lifesaving drugs.

Look to the north. Canada selling American drugs made in America, inspected in America, approved in America, with research in America, for sale in Canada turn out to be a fraction of the cost of what they are in the United States. With just 2 percent of the worldwide pharmaceutical market, Canada cannot supply the United States no matter how many busloads of seniors we send there.

The United States has 53 percent of the worldwide prescription drug market. Half of it is made up of Medicare beneficiaries. Think about this for a moment. If Medicare, the program that covers seniors, were to sit down with major pharmaceutical companies and bargain for the prices of the drugs, think about their bargaining power. They have the ability to bring prices down for Americans for drugs sold in America rather than reimported in the United States.

The prescription drug benefit bill we passed expressly prohibits Medicare from negotiating for lower prices. That is something the pharmaceutical companies wanted, and they won. They won it at the expense of American consumers.

Today, the Veterans' Administration and the Department of Defense negotiate for VA drug prices and cut down the cost of drugs by almost 50 percent. Take a look at some of these popular drugs and the difference between what is paid in the drugstores of America and what the Federal Government pays for the same drug: Xalatan eyedrops, $41 under the negotiated price of the VA, and $101 is what is paid in the drugstore; Celebrex, the drug we talked about earlier for arthritis, $108 on the Federal Supply Schedule and $173 at the drugstore; Lipitor for cholesterol, $215 in the Federal system, $446 over the counter; Plavix, $257 negotiated, and over-the-counter, $593.

Once you put the bargaining power of the Federal Government behind price negotiations, the prices come down. People can afford the drugs. Families can afford them. The cost of health insurance comes down, but the profits for the drug companies come down, too. That is why this Congress, under the thrall of that special interest group, has refused to give Medicare the power to negotiate.

I will give one specific example we have lived through on Capitol Hill. Many people rail about what happened with the anthrax scare a few years ago. There was a suggestion that the drug Cipro would be used as an antidote to any ill-effects caused by anthrax. We found out Cipro was an expensive drug, and Secretary Tommy Thompson said he would negotiate with the Bayer Company, the company that makes Cipro, to lower prices.

Look what happened when Secretary Thompson tried to do that. He said:

Everyone said I wouldn't be able to reduce the price of

Cipro. I am a tough negotiator.

What was the market price when he went into it? It was $4.67 per pill for Cipro. When it was all said and done, we were paying 75 cents. When someone sits down with the drug companies and says, You are overcharging us, we won't pay it, look what happens. Yet when the seniors of America look for the same kind of hard-nosed negotiating to bring down costs for them, this Congress says no; we don't want to give Medicare the ability to negotiate to do the same thing Secretary Thompson achieved when it came to these Cipro tablets. Through negotiation, Secretary Thompson brought down the price of Cipro by 490 percent. Good news for the people who needed Cipro; bad news for the people who need Medicare. But we can't even ask him to stand up for senior citizens in America. Out of the question. Drug companies don't want to lose their profitability.

Incidentally, they are very profitable. Let me show you some charts. This indicates the profitability of Fortune 500 drug companies versus the profits for all Fortune 500 companies in the year 2002. Look at what drug companies on the red bars have done on profitability: 17 percent as opposed to 3.1 percent; in this chart, 27.6 percent to 10.2 percent. They are making money hand over fist. They are charging seniors and families across America record high prices for drugs. They are increasing the cost of those drugs every single year and passing them along directly, raising health insurance costs, making it more difficult for seniors to keep up with the drugs they need to stay healthy.

I think the bill I have introduced with Senators Levin and Dayton answers the need. I believe the bill which we will attempt to put on the Senate calendar today, so we can vote it before we leave for anybody's convention, is going to go a long way toward helping America's seniors. The Medicare Prescription Drug Savings Act instructs the Secretary of Health and Human Services to offer a nationwide Medicare-delivered prescription drug benefit in addition to the PDP and PPO plans available in the 10 regions. We keep in place what is in the Medicare bill passed last year, we just add a new player. The new player is Medicare providing prescription drugs with negotiated prices. We set a uniform national premium of $35 for the first year for this prescription drug benefit, and we negotiate group purchasing agreements on behalf of beneficiaries who choose to receive their drugs through the Medicare-administered benefit. It is voluntary. Those who choose to receive their drugs will have negotiated lower prices. Those who enroll can stay enrolled as long as they want.

Not only will this bill provide seniors with lower cost drugs, it will give them a choice to enroll in a Medicare-delivered plan, cutting down on the confusion the privately delivered system has already created. Critics and the pharmaceutical industry would say my bill is about price controls and big government. How do you explain the Veterans' Administration? Aren't we saying for our veterans we want to bring down the cost of pharmaceutical drugs? Have you spoken to a veteran lately who has gone to the VA hospital to sign up for the monthly drug benefit because it is so attractive for him and his family? That tells me government can play an important role and have a voice in buying in bulk and bringing down costs.

Who supports this bill we are trying to bring to the calendar? The Alliance for Retired Americans, AFL-CIO, American Nurses Association, Campaign for America's Future, USAction, Consumers Union, the Service Employees International Union, AFSCME, the American Federation of Teachers, Families USA, the Center for Medicare Advocacy, and the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.

If you don't think this is a timely issue, pick up this morning's New York Times and take a look at the front-page story. The bill we passed, signed by President Bush, has America running in the wrong direction. Front-page headline:

Drug Law [signed by President Bush] Is Seen Leading To Cuts

in Retiree Plans.

Let me read one or two paragraphs:

New government estimates suggest that employers will reduce

or eliminate prescription drug benefits for 3.8 million

retirees when Medicare offers its coverage in 2006.

That is the plan we referred to earlier passed by Congress.

That represents one-third of all retirees with employer-

sponsored drug coverage, according to documents from the

Department of Health and Human Services.

No aspect of the new law causes more concern among retirees

than the possibility they might lose benefits they already

have.

That is what the administration offers us: discount cards which don't offer a real discount, the loss of prescription drug coverage already available for 3.8 million retirees, and, finally, a plan that is offered to seniors

that is almost impossible to describe and follow because it is so complicated in its minutiae and detail, and it does not include a provision that allows Medicare to bargain for the best prices, the same bargaining power which we use over and over again to help veterans and many other Americans.

Before the end of the day, we are going to ask that this bill be brought to the calendar. I don't know what else we will consider today, but if my colleagues in the Senate will go home and ask a random sample of anybody on the street corner, or in the shopping center, about the cost of prescription drugs and what it means, they will understand that whatever the next item of business might be in the Senate, it cannot really match in importance what this issue means to families across the United States of America.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise in support of the United States- Australia Free Trade Agreement. I support the agreement because 8,000 Minnesotan manufacturers, which employ some 350,000 families in my State, list the United States-Australia Free Trade Agreement as a top priority in maintaining good-paying Minnesota jobs, and that is important.

Like the JOBS bill, the highway bill, the Energy bill, as well as class action, medical malpractice, and asbestos reform litigation, the Australia Free Trade Agreement is about jobs. I was always fond of saying, when I was a mayor--and I am fond of repeating as a Senator--it is about jobs. The best welfare program is a job. The best housing program is a job. Access to health care comes with a job. Jobs are important.

While we have seen the hopes of our Nation's manufacturers dashed time and again on these other top priorities--we are still waiting for the JOBS bill to get done; we are still waiting for asbestos reform legislation to get through; we are still waiting for class action reform legislation to get through a filibuster--the reality is, we still have an opportunity to salvage the hopes of millions of working men and women in this country, men and women who could not care less about who gets the credit for keeping the economic recovery going, just as long as it keeps going.

We have grown over 1.5 million jobs in the past 10 months and in part because of the policies of this administration: the tax cuts that put money in the pockets of moms and dads, the tax cuts that allowed businesses to invest and to reinvest, the increasing expensing operations, the bonus depreciation, those things that lowered capital gains, those things that allowed businesses to say: We are going to invest, we are going to put it back in the business.

In the end, when business grows, when moms and dads have more money in their pockets, they spend that money on a good or a service, and the person who produces that good or service has a job. And that is a good thing.

So we have seen more than 1.5 million jobs in the past 10 months, but we cannot afford to rest on our laurels or wait out the results of a Presidential election. The time to act on the jobs agenda, as laid out by President Bush, is now. It is now.

The Australia Free Trade Agreement is just one component of the President's jobs agenda. This agreement builds on the $12 billion in manufactured U.S. exports to Australia and the 160,000 American jobs owing to our trade with that very important friend and ally in the global war on terror.

According to the National Association of Manufacturers, by tearing down Australian tariffs imposed against 99 percent of U.S. manufactured exports--which accounts for 93 percent of everything we sell to that country--our Nation's manufacturers stand to gain $2 billion a year in increased exports to Australia, giving us a leg up on Europe, Japan, and China.

This is not pie-in-the-sky stuff. This is very real to Minnesotans. I have 6,700 exporting companies in my State. In fact, 1 out of every 5 manufacturing jobs in Minnesota is owed to exports, and Australia is our 10th largest export market.

Let me give you some real-life examples because I think the problem most often with trade is that we vividly see jobs lost or businesses shut down, sometimes due to trade, and we need to understand that, we need to see that, we need to know the impact, and then we need to do those things to lessen that impact. But rarely do we see or hear about the jobs created or the businesses born as a direct result of our trade policy.

It is kind of like talking about tax cuts. We talk about them in abstract. We sound like accountants. We talk about trade and sound like economists. But the reality is, there is a mom or a dad who has a job opportunity because of the trade opportunities we create.

Polaris is a good example. It is a Minnesota company of which I am extremely proud. It is located way up in the northwest part of the State, about 10 minutes from Canada in a town called Roseau. Roseau has about 2,756 people at last count, the most famous being the former Secretary of Agriculture under President Carter, Bob Berglund, who is a very good friend of mine. They also grow a lot of hockey players, really talented hockey players in Roseau, MN.

Talking about former Secretary of Agriculture Berglund, lots of folks, when they get through being a Congressman or a Senator or a Secretary of this department or that department, retire to some beach in Florida, but not Bob Berglund. He went home to give back to the people of Roseau all the support he had received through his years of distinguished service.

Roseau suffered from some terrible floods not too long ago, and there was former Secretary of Agriculture Bob Berglund leading a group of folks in the town, figuring out how to deal with the flooding issue on a long-term basis. So we were not literally sticking our fingers in the dike, but we were looking beyond that. That is Bob Berglund.

In any case, Roseau would not be the town it is if it were not for guys like Bob Berglund, an indomitable spirit that pervades that place and everyone I have ever met there, and a company called Polaris.

I will go back to the flooding. When the flooding happened, the folks from Polaris did not abandon them. They were there working in the community, seeking to make a difference. They have had serious flooding over the years, and we have had to work to rebuild that town. We are still at it, and so is Secretary Berglund and so is Polaris, which is celebrating, just this year, 50 years of business. Here is what the president of Polaris, Tom Tiller, had to say about the Australia Free Trade Agreement:

In 2004, Polaris will do over $10 million in sales to

Australia. While the majority of those sales will be

conducted by Polaris Sales Australia, all of the machinery

sold in that distribution network is manufactured in

Minnesota . . . so increased sales in Australia means more

jobs in Minnesota.

Polaris is especially excited about the opportunity to sell all- terrain vehicles to the Australians under the new access granted under this agreement.

I cannot mention Polaris without mentioning another very important manufacturer in the State of which I am so proud, Arctic Cat. Arctic Cat is also located in northwest Minnesota, maybe about an hour away from Canada, in a town called Thief River Falls. Chris Twomey, with Arctic Cat, points out that:

Due to high tariffs, Arctic Cat sells less than $5 million

in products to Australia. The Australia Free Trade Agreement

makes it a lot easier for us to increase our sales there and

increase our production here at home.

This is another top-of-the-line all-terrain vehicle coming from another top-of-the-line all-Minnesota company. I am proud of those companies. I am proud of the people they employ. And I am proud of the expanded opportunity they will have to sell, to grow jobs, to make profit, to strengthen the lives of their employees and the lives of their communities--all of which are enhanced by the Australia Free Trade Agreement.

My paper and wood products industry is also very important to my State, starting a little west of where Polaris and Arctic Cat call home and extending all the way over to northeastern Minnesota. But for this industry and all the jobs it has provided over the years, northern Minnesota--which has seen some tough times--would have been in dire straits. Minnesota's International Paper and Blandin United Paper Mill are strong supporters of the Australia Free Trade Agreement because it will open the doors of Australia and the Pacific Rim to our paper and wood products industries. Again, those industries are part of the economic lifeblood of those communities. I want them to prosper. I want them to grow. I want them to have expanded opportunity. And they will get that from this agreement.

But it is not just northern Minnesota with a stake in the passage of this agreement. Eagan, MN, a growing suburb just south of St. Paul, also has a stake, as do communities all over my State. The Lockheed Martin manufacturing facility in Eagan had $40 million in international sales last year alone, with a part of that figure owing to the construction and sale of the P-3 Maritime Patroller to Australia. Currently, Eagan is in the running for another contract with Australia worth over $30 million to that community, and, according to Lockheed Martin, passage of the Australia Free Trade Agreement puts us one step closer to securing that contract.

And 3M, which not everyone knows stands for Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing, a great St. Paul company--in the neighborhoods of St. Paul they call it ``the mining,'' but it is Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing--notes that Minnesota companies alone will save some $5 million in Australian tariffs when they come down under this agreement.

This is not an abstract topic for Minnesota. It is very real. The Australian Free Trade Agreement has the potential to sustain and grow real, good-paying Minnesota jobs. For me, that is decisive because jobs are what it is all about. I don't want to oversell this agreement because that has been done too often with respect to trade agreements. That is important to repeat. Far too often on both sides we look at a trade agreement and we oversell it. And then if we don't reach those high expectations, people say: Well, it didn't work; it is no good.

We are talking about moving the ball forward. We are talking about moving the economy. We are talking about more progress, more economic growth, and more opportunity. We are talking about more jobs. I am not going to sell. A lot is promised under these agreements and, frankly, they usually fall somewhat short of the mark.

Let me say what I have heard from my manufacturers, what I have heard from Polaris, Arctic Cat, International Paper, and Lockheed. They have said the Australian agreement means opportunity, give us that opportunity. So today in the United States we have a chance to do just that. We ought to and, fortunately, I expect that we will. We will give them the opportunity when we consider the Australia Free Trade Agreement and get it passed.

Having said that, I would be remiss if I did not take this opportunity to underscore a very important point that I hope is not missed by my colleagues, particularly by those who are in charge of negotiating this agreement or any other trade agreement; that is, the importance of U.S. agriculture to trade. Their success is mutually and inextricably linked. I do not believe U.S. agriculture can succeed without moving forward on trade, nor do I believe that trade can move forward without U.S. agriculture.

With Minnesota in the top 10 among States for the production of nearly every commodity that can be produced in our climate, the success of my farm families is extremely important to mainstream Minnesota. It is important to me.

Let me begin with sugar. Few folks realize Minnesota is the No. 1 sugar-producing and processing State in the country. Folks sometimes think about Florida, Louisiana, and other places, but it is sugar beets which makes the same kind of sugar you buy in your local store. And more sugar is produced from sugar beets than from cane sugar. Minnesota farm families own both the production and processing sides of our

State's sugar beet industry, an industry that is directly or indirectly responsible for $2 billion in economic activity and about 30,000 jobs. The exclusion of sugar from the Australian agreement has been much maligned by folks inside and outside the Chamber, but not by this Senator. Let me tell you why.

The fact is, the reason we are able to stand here now on the cusp of passing the Australia Free Trade Agreement is in part or in whole owing to how this administration wisely handled sugar. Today, the Australia Free Trade Agreement is on the move. The sad reality is that CAFTA is up on the blocks. CAFTA is another great opportunity. We need to work to strengthen our trade opportunities with our friends in Central America. We have seen the flourishing of democracy there. Our Central American friends and allies deserve the benefit of expanded trade opportunity. CAFTA is up on the blocks. We have to figure a way to move it forward and to deal with the sugar problem in CAFTA.

When I say ``deal with,'' this is not about parochialism or protectionism. It is about common sense and equity. Common sense says if you have a world problem, as the distortion in the sugar market most certainly is, you handle the problem in a global context. In other words, the right place to deal with sugar is in the World Trade Organization, not in these bilateral and regional agreements. Equity requires that when our trade team rightly decided that discussions concerning the farm bill's safety net for other commodities, such as corn and soybeans, should be reserved for the WTO and excluded from bilateral or regional agreements, the same should hold true for sugar: Common sense and equity.

In regard to the farm bill, I would point out that this legislation is to our farm families in rural America what the JOBS bill we just overwhelmingly passed is to our Nation's manufacturers. To anyone who has gone to see the new World War II Memorial, you will notice all the wreaths that represent the two pillars of industry and agriculture. Those responsible for both are critical to this country. We must not unilaterally disarm against either in global competition, which today is not always free and not always fair.

As for my State's sugar farmers, they are among the most competitive in the world. In fact, America's sugar farmers are among the top one- third in the world in overall efficiency, as measured by the cost of production. But what they face is a dump market where the average world cost of production per pound is 16 cents while the average selling price per pound is only 6 cents. As the saying goes, something is rotten in Denmark. I don't want to blame the Danes on that, just an expression.

Meanwhile, the U.S. sugar policy has been good to taxpayers and consumers alike. The U.S. sugar policy costs taxpayers nothing and, in fact, the two times in recent history where the U.S. had no sugar policy, consumer prices received the brunt of it when prices spiked to record highs. So my deepest thanks and appreciation go out to the Bush administration and its trade team for doing what is right by America's sugar farmers, right by Minnesota, and right by this Senator. You have a good model now on sugar, one that moves the trade agenda forward. We ought to stick with it.

Dairy is another important industry in Minnesota--we are fifth in the Nation--and here again our trade team deserves thanks for working with me and other interested Senators, as well as our Nation's dairy farm families, in arriving at a more workable although not perfect solution. Maintaining the second tier tariff for Minnesota dairy farmers is an absolutely essential part of this agreement. I am pleased that we have worked with our trade team on this issue. I don't want to get into discussions of the complexity of dairy policy on the floor of this body, but this issue of a second-tier tariff was important to my dairy farmers and dairy farmers throughout America. We managed to make sure that we maintained that second-tier tariff. That was a good thing.

Under the agreement, in-quota dairy imports are estimated to equal only 0.17 percent of the annual value of U.S. dairy production, and only about 2 percent of the current value of imports. Finally, assurances by our trade team that imports will not affect the operation of the milk price support program are extremely important to me and to America's dairy farmers.

Today I have 6,000 hard-working dairy farm families who milk about half a million cows every morning and night, who can breathe a little easier, thanks to the efforts of our trade team. I stress, less than 10 years ago we had about 14,000 Minnesota families. So we have lost over half the dairy farmers in our State. I presume that pattern has been shown in other parts of the country. But those 6,000 hard-working dairy farm families can sleep a little easier tonight thanks to the efforts of our trade team.

Again, it is not a slam dunk. This agreement is not perfect, but it is more workable to my dairy farmers and cooperatives at home because second-tier tariffs were maintained and in-quota imports are expected to be low.

My cattlemen are about where my dairymen are. They are relieved, but I would say our trade team had to overcome a very difficult issue. On the whole, they worked very hard to address the concerns of Minnesota's cattlemen. They phase down U.S. tariffs over an 18-year period and phase up the amount of in-quota access, all the while providing safeguards to protect against import surges that would disrupt U.S. markets. And at the end of the 18-year period, another safeguard is put in place to protect against import surges that would otherwise depress U.S. beef prices.

As a Senator representing nearly 16,000 cattlemen and a State that ranks sixth in beef production, my support for this agreement is couched in part on my reliance that these safeguards for U.S. beef will, in fact, be allowed to work as intended and that any waiver would be undertaken only in the rarest of circumstances, circumstances that I, frankly, can't conceive of now as I speak.

Steve Brake, a good friend of mine, is president of the cattlemen. Whenever I get to cattle country, I touch base with him to where things are. He understands. It is extremely important to him and his fellow cattlemen that we strictly enforce these safeguards. I know I will hear from Steve if we don't. If I hear about it from Steve, our trade team is going to hear about it, too. The safeguards are in place. I have great respect for what has been done, and I think our cattlemen can sleep easier tonight.

I am pleased that the sanitary and phytosanitary issues that stood in the way of our pork producers' access to the Australian market have been favorably resolved, leading to the endorsement of the agreement by more than 6,000 Minnesota pork producers. I will repeat that. These issues have been resolved and have led to the endorsement of the agreement by my more than 6,000 Minnesota pork producers.

I also appreciate the work of our trade team in pressing the issue of the Australian Wheat Board, a monopolistic state trading enterprise whose time has passed. While I am disappointed we were unable to do away with the board under this agreement, I am pleased the Australians have agreed to discuss this issue in the Doha Round of the WTO.

Overall, I believe this administration had a tough job to do and it did it reasonably well--job well done--something evidenced by the likely passage of this agreement. The Australia Free Trade Agreement is a good precursor to the WTO discussions that will take place in Geneva yet this month because it underscores a point: You don't have to give away the farm to negotiate a good agreement, and you may not pass one if you do.

So the Australia Free Trade Agreement that President Bush has sent to Congress is about sustaining and growing American jobs. It is about bolstering support in the economic opportunity of our rural families, our rural communities, and the incredible work they do to produce the safest, most affordable food supply in the world.

So to the President and our trade team, I say: Job well done. To our Members and colleagues in this body, I say: Let us move forward and pass the Australia Free Trade Agreement.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, when I came to the Senate I learned a new aphorism, referring to the debates and sometimes repetitive arguments you tend to hear by Members of Congress. Someone told me: ``Well, everything has been said; it is just not that everyone has had an opportunity to say it yet.''

Sometimes I wonder if that reflects the fact when we are debating important issues like this, people aren't listening or maybe they made up their minds and they are not open to the facts or persuasion or perhaps some preconceived notion they have about the motivation for legislation is flat wrong, but they have already locked in, they have already gone public, they have taken a position and then it becomes two contending adversaries across some demilitarized zone and we try to fight it out the best we can and then count the votes.

But I think two things are most important about this debate. Despite some of the repetition of erroneous arguments, we have had an important debate. I think two things will come out of this that have been very positive, regardless of what happens in the vote today.

First, we have had a debate on the importance of traditional marriage, the importance of the American family and steps we should be taking in order to preserve the traditional marriage and American family and to work in the best interests of children. That is a debate that has been long overdue. I am told it has been perhaps at least 8 years, since the passage of the Defense of Marriage Act, since this body has even talked about the most basic building block in our society. I think that has been very positive.

I also think it has been positive that we have been able to direct the American people's attention to the erosion of our most fundamental institutions by judges who seek to enforce their personal political agendas under the guise of interpreting the Constitution.

Now I come to the Senate and hear some of my colleagues, including the Senator from Massachusetts, say this is all part of a right-wing conspiracy, or words to that effect. Surely, when the Defense of Marriage Act passed in 1996 by a vote of 85 Senators, an overwhelming bipartisan consensus which defined marriage as a union of a man and a woman, that was not the product of a vast right-wing conspiracy. Indeed, that was the Senate and Congress functioning at its best, coming together to protect the fundamental institution, one we have fought hard and should continue to fight hard to preserve and protect against all challenges.

We have heard and I have read in the press that this side of the aisle has been castigated for not accepting the Democratic leader's offer to go to an up-or-down vote on this amendment. The problem is, of course, that they only tell half of the offer. The other part of the offer was banning consideration of any further amendments that might be offered in the Senate--in other words, constraining the debate, stifling the debate, and limiting the right of any Senator on any piece of legislation, whether it is a constitutional amendment or an ordinary bill, to offer alternatives for the body to consider as a means of advancing the debate.

My understanding is the majority leader countered by saying, okay, we will go to an up-or-down vote, but we are not going to limit our right to offer amendments. The amendment most talked about is the so-called Smith amendment, which is, lo and behold, the first sentence of the amendment offered by Senator Allard hardly a surprise to anybody--which merely defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman. Our colleagues on the other side of the aisle were apparently afraid to allow the Senate to consider alternatives as a way of advancing the debate because they were afraid an alternative, perhaps along the lines of Senator Smith's amendment, the one-sentence amendment, would garner more votes. I am advised it would garner perhaps as many as ten new votes.

I will gladly yield after I complete my remarks.

It is a bogus offer. It is a bogus argument that somehow by refusing their attempt to stifle the debate and stifle the amendment process that this has somehow become nothing but bare partisan politics.

There are those who would raise their voices, those who would call Members names, Members who believe it is important to defend the traditional institution of marriage, in hopes we would lose the courage of our convictions. In hopes that we would simply be silent while we see the ongoing march of litigation as part of a national strategy to undermine the traditional institution of marriage that we know is the most important stabilizing influence in our society and one that functions in the best interests of our children. But we are not going to lose the courage of our convictions. We are not doing to sit on the sidelines. We are not going to be quiet. We are not going to give up. In fact, regardless of how this vote turns out at noon today, I know of no important piece of legislation considered by Congress that has been successful the first time it has been introduced into the Senate.

What I have learned is probably the most important characteristic of a Member of the Senate is someone who is willing to persevere over weeks and months and even years until ultimately they are able to see the fruit of their labor and the legislation they have sponsored be accepted by the Senate. It is part of a building process, it is part of an awareness process that is very important.

Part of the awareness process is also to knock down some of the unfounded statements that are made during the course of the debate. It was, I believe, the Senator from Massachusetts who said that no court has called the Defense of Marriage Act into question. Perhaps he was not able to listen yesterday when I read a paragraph out of the Massachusetts Supreme Court decision in Goodridge, relying on the case of Lawrence v. Texas, that plainly calls the constitutionality of the Federal Defense of Marriage Act into question. As a matter of fact, you cannot really believe, as the court did, that the marriage laws of Massachusetts were unconstitutional and believe that the Defense of Marriage Act is constitutional as well.

To be fair, the unconstitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act is an argument the Senator from Massachusetts made back in 1996 when he voted against the Defense of Marriage Act, as did the other Senator from Massachusetts, Senator Kerry, who voted against the Defense of Marriage Act then and who stated that if passed, it would be unconstitutional. This has been a consistent theme, although they have some of their facts wrong. I hope that helps clarify.

The question before the Senate today is simple: Do you believe traditional marriage is important enough that it deserves full legal protection? As I said, an overwhelming bipartisan consensus in 1996 voted that it did by passing that statute. President Clinton said as much by signing that legislation into law in 1996.

This debate is important. It is long overdue because we have, in essence, a stealth operation going on today. It is an effort where a handful of courts around the country, as well as those who have engaged in a nationwide litigation strategy, are basically operating off the radar screen of most Americans. The only time the American people know very much about it is when a blockbuster decision is handed down, such as the Massachusetts Supreme Court in May of this year, or when they happen to see local officials engaged in civil disobedience, for example, in San Francisco, issuing same-sex marriage licenses and same- sex marriages in that location.

This is not, despite the wishes of some of the people who are opposed to this amendment, something that can be solved at the State level. I believe in the principle of federalism. I believe people at the local level, closest to the problem, are best prepared and are in the best position to try to address that problem. But we have seen how, with one State recognizing same-sex marriage, people have moved now, we know, to 46 different States and how there are lawsuits pending in at least 10 of those States--and no one knows how many there will be in the future--seeking to compel those States, in violation of their current State law, to recognize those same-sex marriages.

Some people have said, don't worry. The Senator from New York, Senator Clinton said, don't worry, we do not have to amend right now, we can wait until after the Federal Defense of Marriage Act is held unconstitutional. In fact, she said no one had challenged it, and I have attempted to clarify that by my earlier statements.

In the interest of completeness, let me ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the cover sheet from a lengthy petition in both cases, one filed in the Western District of Washington, in re Lee Kandu and Ann C. Kandu, and another complaint, Sullivan v. Bush, filed in Federal court, the Southern District of Florida, Miami Division, seeking to hold the Federal Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional as a matter of Federal law.

Some have said there are more important issues to debate. Certainly, the Senate has debated and I hope and trust we have passed legislation that has done a lot of good on behalf of the people who sent us here. If we haven't, we have not been doing our job. I believe we have a record we can be proud of when it comes to defending America and the war on terrorism, when it comes to rejuvenating our economy to see it come roaring back the way it has, indeed, providing a prescription drug benefit to senior citizens.

We have done a lot of which we can be very proud. And for someone to stand up and say that preservation of traditional marriage is not important enough for us to talk about, to me, is breathtaking in its audacity and its sense of obliviousness to what the concerns are of moms and dads and families all across this country.

We know for years, for a variety of reasons, the American family has been increasingly marginalized. We know we have a crisis in this country of too many children being born outside of wedlock, too many marriages ending in divorce, and too many children being raised in less than optimal circumstances, putting them at risk for a whole host of social ills for which ultimately the American taxpayer has to pick up the tab. And I have not even mentioned the human tragedy involved, as some child fails to live up to their God-given potential.

I do not believe that we can remain neutral or to remain merely spectators in this further marginalization of the American family. We cannot allow for a process that puts more and more children at risk through a radical social experiment. And if we want to look for the only evidence that we know is available, we can look to Scandinavia, where less people get married, more children are born out of wedlock, and more children become, thereby, the responsibility of the State.

It is not good for them, it is not good for us, and we should not, without letting the American people have a voice in the process, merely sit back while judges radically redefine our most basic societal institution.

Now, let me click through a number of other arguments that have been made.

I know Senator Durbin has said we should not talk about constitutional amendments during an election year. My question to him is: Isn't Congress still in session? Aren't the American taxpayers still paying us to do our job? As a matter of fact, six times Congress has successfully proposed amendments in an election year.

Some have claimed that the text that is before us--Senator Allard's amendment--prevents States from enacting civil unions if they should wish to do so through their elected representatives. Yet the Democrats' own legal expert, Professor Cass Sunstein, answered this very question: Of course not. This amendment does not prevent the States from enacting civil unions should they decide to do so.

Some have even gone so far as to claim that the Allard text would regulate private corporations, churches, and other private organizations. As the Presiding Officer well knows, and as virtually everybody in this body should know, the Constitution regulates State actors, not private actors. These arguments do not hold water. But they do not have to work for our opponents on this issue to say them because that is not the point. The point is, if you cannot convince them, confuse them. Their aim is to distract the American people away from the real question, which is, as I said at the outset: Do you believe that traditional marriage is important enough that it deserves full protection under law?

I would ask the opponents of this amendment, if you believe in traditional marriage--as some of you but certainly not all of you have said you do--but you do not support this amendment, what is your plan? What do you think the American people should do when courts run red lights and act in excess of their authority by legislating from the bench, redefining our most basic institutions? What are you going to do to stand up on behalf of the American family to prevent the increasing marginalization of the American family?

But I am confused by the arguments that are made by some on the other side of this issue. When some of their very own leaders say the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional--such as Senator Kennedy, Senator Kerry--when your very own leaders say, as the senior Senator from Massachusetts did yesterday, that traditional marriage is a ``stain on our laws''--repeating the language of the Massachusetts Supreme Court in saying that traditional marriage is a ``stain that must be eradicated'' because it, in essence, represented discrimination--what do the opponents of this amendment think we should do? Do you want the courts to strike down traditional marriage? What you are saying is that you do not want the American people to know about it, much less have a voice in correcting this radical social experiment.

Of course, everyone has a right to file lawsuits. But the American people have rights, too, rights preserved by Article V of the U.S. Constitution, which provides a process of amendment, particularly when courts engage in a radical redefinition of our most basic institution under the guise of interpreting the Constitution. Indeed, the only way the American people have of responding is through a constitutional amendment. So we have no choice but to offer this amendment by way of response.

I think no one should be fooled into thinking that on this side of the aisle we are afraid of a full and fair debate and a vote on the various proposals that may come to the floor. But, indeed, under the offer made by the Democratic leader last Friday, it would have cut off any amendments, would have stifled a full debate, which I think has been on the whole very positive.

I appreciate my colleague for letting me finish my prepared remarks. I do not know if he still has a question, but I would be glad to respond if he does.

Mr. President, I would be glad to respond to my colleague's question, but I first ask unanimous consent that the time engaged in question and answer be charged to the other side, in fairness.

I thank the Senator.

I would be glad to respond to that because I think that is an important issue. No one has suggested we should not make this discussion about preserving traditional marriage. I would say there was no attempt to try to limit any debate, any amendments that might be offered--for example, the single-sentence amendment, which is the first sentence of Senator Allard's amendment--to amendments that are germane to the preservation of traditional marriage.

So I must say that while I respect my colleague--and he knows that, and, as he said, there are many things we agree on--I simply disagree that our refusal to take the offer that would allow no amendments, whether or not they are germane to the issue of traditional marriage, in no way opens this matter up to non-germane or extraneous amendments.

I would be pleased--at least speaking personally; of course, any Senator could lodge an objection to the unanimous consent request--for us to stay on the subject because I think this has been a very helpful debate.

I would also ask unanimous consent that a letter to Ms. Margaret A. Gallagher dated July 11, 2004, and a letter from the Liberty Counsel dated July 10, 2004, be printed into the Record.

At this point, I yield the floor.

Could I ask for a brief unanimous consent request?

I believe we have been going back and forth to each side. I certainly want to accommodate the Senator so everyone will be able to be heard, but we also have some folks on our side.

I ask unanimous consent that Senator Allard be recognized for 5 minutes out of the 25 minutes remaining on our side until the chairman comes to the floor and the leadership time is reserved under a previous consent, and then Senator Santorum be recognized as our next Republican speaker for 10 minutes on our side, and then finally the last 5 minutes of that 25-minute segment, that Senator Sessions be recognized.

Mr. President, we have additional speakers on our side who are ready, but the practice has been to go back and forth, so we would be glad to allow time for our Democratic colleagues.