Medicaid Indian Health Act of 2005

Mr. President, I expect maybe about 12 minutes. If I could get 15 I will try and yield some back.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from North Dakota. I hope both our colleagues, and Americans, will have a chance to listen carefully to his assessment of the whole budget process that we have been faced with in the Senate. It has very important implications for the American people. It will impact the financial condition of our Nation and of Americans and its relationship to the world economy. Most of all, I hope our colleagues and friends have listened to him carefully, talking about what the issue is before us in the Senate today before we vote.

As I have said previously, the budget is a question of priorities. The Republican proposal is going to give $95 billion in tax giveaways, the vast majority of which will benefit the wealthiest individuals, with just crumbs for individuals who earn below the $100,000. And who is paying for it? The neediest people in our country.

The conference report leaves the tax cuts for the rich under the Christmas tree but leaves middle-class families out in the cold. This is what we are talking about: families who make over $1 million will get $32,000 and families with incomes under $100,000 will get $29.

Now we have to ask, where will we get those resources? How are we going to come up with that money? Those who have been the most vulnerable in our society are the ones who will be penalized, particularly the elderly and needy who rely on the Medicaid Program and also the young people who rely on the student financial aid program.

The portion of the Senate bill reported by the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee passed on a very strong bipartisan basis, unanimous on the education features of it. The bill included $12 billion in new student aid and benefits, $8 billion of this was put to need-based aid, which would be available to young people, to effectively raise the Pell grant, which is so important for more than 5 million families in this country, from $4,050 to $4,500. The bill also provided some additional assistance for those who were focusing on the study of math, science, and high-need foreign languages, basically a recognition and a response to the need to keep America competitive with China and India, and globally, in terms of engineering and other math and science graduates. So we decided to provide some stimulus and additional help to encourage people to study math and science. But we did it in addition to providing an increase for all needy students.

Most of the hearings that we have had in our committee, under the chairmanship of Senator Enzi, have focused on college access and affordability--and I pay tribute to him both for his leadership in getting this proposal through the Senate, and also for battling for any help for students in the conference.

We passed, in the budget resolution last January, a very significant increase for education that would have helped all needy students. The Senate Republicans and Democrats went on record to say in our Nation's budget we want to allocate additional resources to education. We increased it by $5.4 billion, and that was struck down by the Republican leadership over in the House of Representatives and completely lost in the conference report to

that bill. So this has been a long battle to try and provide some additional help.

What has come back from the conference in this reconciliation bill is no different. It is completely unsatisfactory. The conference completely struck our $450 increase for Pell students, putting the maximum Pell grant right back down to $4,050, where it has been for four years. The conference included some increase for individuals who are going to study math and science. As I mentioned, math and science is important, but we cannot focus on it at the expense of all other students. Most thoughtful educators believe that one has to begin with math and science in the very early grades. We are going to do something about math and science, and we have a bipartisan group that want to improve math and science education, but the approach in this legislation is not the answer to the challenge faced by our Nation.

This year, over 5 million students rely on the Pell grant to afford the cost of college. In the Senate bill, we gave additional aid to every one of those students. The bill that returned from the partisan meetings with the House takes that aid away from millions of students. In order to qualify for the additional aid in this report, students have to attend full time. Over 40 percent of the students who attend public 4-year colleges in a degree-granting program attend part time, so they will see none of the assistance that is provided in this bill. Those are hard-working students who have to work 25, 30 hours a week or more, one or two jobs, in order to put themselves through school. They will see no help from this bill.

To get any of this additional assistance, the students must maintain a B average. Is this the message we want to send to the students, that their aid disappears if they slip to a B-minus? How does this help the students? To get any additional grant aid in their junior or senior year, they must major in math, science, or engineering.

I strongly support and encourage more students to study math and science but not at the expense of other students. What does this say to the young people who want to be teachers? You are out of luck. What does it say to the millions of people we need to be nurses? You are out of luck. You do not benefit one cent with this particular program.

The Senate bill took a balanced approach, and made sure that all the children who needed our help got an increase in aid. That is not what came out of conference.

I think that is sending a message to young people: Don't bother spending your time being a teacher anymore, don't try to study to become a nurse because that extra aid and assistance will not be there.

Federal need-based aid was established to help all low-income students afford the higher education of their choice. That was the need. That was the reason for it. We said as a country that we have young people of talent and ability who can gain entrance into the best schools and colleges, but they cannot quite put it all together because their families can't afford it along with rest of their basic needs. We said, OK. They are able to gain entry into the schools and colleges of their choice, and we will help them afford it. Through a combination of the grants and aid programs, work-study programs, and their summer income, they will be able to continue through their degree. Not only did these individuals gain, but the Nation gained. The whole country reaped the benefit, because we said that every student matters and every student deserves our help. That is not what this conference report says.

During this holiday season, we should be focused on the true meaning of Christmas and the special thoughts that Americans of many faiths have at this time of year for their families, their friends and neighbors, and peoples everywhere. We're reminded that each of us as an obligation to care for one another and to help those in need--to lend a hand to the least of those in our midst. As the Bible teaches us, we should ``Love thy neighbor as thyself.''

But this budget reconciliation bill does the opposite. It robs from the poor to make room for tax giveaways to the rich. Wealthy Americans, banks and drug companies are big winners under this deal. Those who need hope and help are the big losers. It's a bill Scrooge would love.

Sadly, as we complete this measure at Christmastime, it will indeed be the neediest members of our society who have to tighten their belts. Republicans have decided to leave tax giveaways for the wealthy under the Christmas tree, while leaving middle-class families out in the cold. Those with incomes over $1 million will receive an average of $32,000 in tax cuts. But those with incomes under $100,000 will receive an average of only $29. Bah humbug.

Children and families struggling to pay for health care will be among those who are hurt the most, and 46 million Americans lack health insurance, but this bill will increase costs and cut health benefits for millions of low-income families. It slashes Medicaid funding by $6.9 billion over the next five years, and $28.4 billion over 10 years.

Under this administration, the number of uninsured has already risen to historic levels. But this Republican bill will send the level even higher, by raising costs and cutting benefits for low-income families who rely on Medicaid for needed health care.

The conference report is actually Worse than the Republican House bill in many respects. It would take away the guaranteed benefits for the 25 million children who receive health care through Medicaid by creating an ambiguous new state option called ``flexible benefits.'' It hurts seniors by increasing the prescription drug co-payments beyond those in the House bill, allowing states to charge up to 20 percent of the cost of each drug, beyond the means of many low-income Medicaid families. It indexes cost-sharing to medical inflation, a much higher rate of increase than family wages. It allows states to increase cost- sharing up to four times the amount allowed under current law.

The majority of the savings from these provisions don't come from the actual co-payments and premiums paid by Medicaid enrollees. They result from families using fewer medical services, because the increased costs will put the health services they need beyond their reach.

Unlike the Senate bill, which made the majority of its cuts by reducing overpayments to drug companies and HMOs, the conference report cuts Medicaid by limiting the access of low-income families to needed health care. Instead of getting rid of the outrageous slush fund for Medicare HMOs, it cuts health care for poor children.

The Republican Congress is telling hard-working Americans everywhere that they don't care about the hardships they face. Their policies encourage failure, not hope for a better life.

This bill means that mothers trying to hold down a job and put food on their table will go without the child care assistance and child support they need and deserve.

Behind closed doors, Republicans also have added a welfare reauthorization in this bill despite their repeated efforts to block debate on the reauthorization in the Senate. Democrats supported moving forward, but Republican reluctance to spend money on our most vulnerable citizens kept the leadership from bringing the bill to the floor.

So House Republican leaders decided to avoid the standard legislative process by unfairly slipping their welfare bill into this massive budget reconciliation bill.

The bill includes new work requirements without adequate child care funding. By eliminating the current caseload reduction credit, the bill requires over half the States to increase the number of welfare recipients in federal work activities by two-thirds in 2007, unless they have a substantial drop in their welfare caseload over the next year. Despite this increase in required work, the bill fails to allow child care funds to keep pace with inflation. The bill under-funds child care by $11 billion in terms of what is needed to maintain current purchasing power and to meet the increased work requirements.

In Massachusetts alone, 13,500 children are already on waiting lists to receive these essential services. Under this bill, the situation can only get worse.

The bill will make life harder for poor children who rely on child support to survive. It greatly weakens enforcement efforts to make dead-beat dads

live up to their responsibilities and provide for their children. Under the Republican plan, nearly $2.9 billion will be lost in child support payments over the next five years and $8.4 billion in over the next ten years.

In Massachusetts, $58 million in child support payments will be lost over the next five years, and $170 million over the next ten years.

These are the Nation's poorest children. They are vulnerable and in need. But the Republican plan would abandon them. Merry Christmas.

Families having to choose between putting food on the table and keeping warm this winter are also big losers under this bill.

In Massachusetts, the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, LIHEAP, serves 134,000 needy families. These families it will receive a maximum benefit of $765 for the current heating season. This is enough for only one tank of oil. It takes at least two to four tanks to make it through the winter.

Unfortunately, under this bill, low income families struggling to make it through the winter won't see any additional funds until fiscal year 2007. The bill cruelly ignores the obvious fact that the heating crisis is here now.

They claim that they have provided for LIHEAP in other bills. But when you add up the numbers, they've only provided $2.4 billion in regular funds and $1.6 billion in emergency funds. The emergency funds are given out at the discretion of the President, so it's possible that states will see little to none of the $1.6 billion this year. Obviously, the Republican majority had no intention of fully funding LIHEAP at its authorized level of $5.1 billion.

Republicans mouth the same old rhetoric about wanting to help our neediest citizens. But when it comes to putting their money where their mouth is they fall short--very short--and it's the nation's poor who suffer.

Students struggling to get a college degree are the big losers as well. We know that education is the key to keeping America strong, secure, and competitive. Now, more than ever, we must embrace and invest in education to advance America in the years ahead.

To do so requires a commitment to educational opportunity for all-- especially for talented youth who have so much potential, but need help affording a college degree.

The cost of tuition and fees at public colleges has skyrocketed in recent years and Pell grants have fallen far behind. Under current law, this will be the fourth year in a row that the maximum Pell grant has not been increased.

For countless families, the gap is so great that college is out of reach. Over 400,000 talented, qualified students each year can't go to a 4-year college because they can't afford it, 170,000 don't attend college at all. That's unacceptable.

But in the face of this crisis, the Republican budget deal abandons the Senate provisions that increased the maximum Pell grant by $450.

It includes the biggest cuts in student loan programs ever, in order to pay for $13 billion in tax giveaways for the richest Americans.

The Senate bill included $8 billion to increase grant aid for all Pell grant recipients. In contrast, the small amount of funding for student aid included in this Conference report--$13 billion for tax cuts and only $3.75 billion for students--will only be available for a very small number of students eligible for Pell Grants.

This bill abandons the government's long-time commitment to ensuring that the neediest students get the most help. It imposes so many hurdles to new aid that it is sure to leave behind those who need our help the most to stay in school.

Under this proposal, a single mother who can attend college only part-time because she has to work 40 hours a week to put food on the table will not be eligible for a penny in new grant aid.

Under this proposal, a student who did not have the opportunity to take rigorous courses in high school because this administration underfunded the No Child Left Behind Act would not be eligible for a penny in new grant aid.

Under this proposal, a student who decides that the best road to a good job is to pursue a credential, such as a dental hygiene certificate, would not be eligible for a penny in new grant aid.

In today's global economy, we need stronger incentives for students to study math and science, and the Senate bill did that.

We also need to address the broader crisis of hundreds of thousands of qualified students who never go to college, because the costs are too high and student aid is too low. All qualified students should get the help they need to achieve the American dream.

Take the case of Carli, from Hampton, NH. She's a junior at a public college in the State, and she already has $25,000 of debt. She relies on her Pell grant, but even with that, she has to work 20 hours a week during the school year and 40 hours a week in the summer.

She writes, ``This is not a question of not working hard enough. It has been an uphill battle to put myself through school. I am happy to do it, but I just want to know that when I'm through, there is a place for me in the American Dream too.''

Becky, from Holyoke, MA is a junior in college and is already in $24,000 of debt. She's alarmed at how high her debt will be when she graduates.

She writes, ``We students are the future of the USA. By putting us at risk and in a financial crisis, Bush and his cronies are putting the future of the USA at risk.''

In addition to abandoning so many students who so desperately need our help, this bill also rejects our Senate-passed proposals to increase competition in the federal loan programs. As a result, private lenders will still have their unfair advantage over the more cost- efficient federal loan program. The end result will be increased costs to taxpayers.

The actions taken today hand the keys of the student loan program over to profit-hungry banks and lenders. Congress missed the opportunity to say students, not banks, should be given a break.

American students deserve better. America deserves better.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record this letter signed by over 146 organizations that are against the reconciliation report.

Also, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a letter from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops that finds that this is basically an immoral, unfair, and unjust budget.

I also ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a letter from a the educational groups who oppose this report.

There are even more groups than these who have joined in to oppose this bill. I have not seen groups as united as these in their opposition to the way this report fails to prioritize the needs of the American family. And they speak loudly and clearly.

If you are concerned about children, the children's groups are strongly opposed to this. If you are concerned about education, virtually the whole education community is strongly opposed to it.

If you care about those in poverty and the problems our needy families face, all those groups that combat poverty are strongly opposed to it.

I hope my colleagues will look at what is in this report, listen to the grave concerns of all of these organizations, and join me in strongly opposing this legislation. I hope my colleagues will stand up for the American family and vote against this conference report.

Mr. President, I reclaim a minute of my time.

Mr. President, if the Senator would outline the $9 billion of additional aid and assistance to students, if he would outline those figures, they are in complete conflict with the information we have about what is and what is not in this bill. I hope he's not referring to the higher loan limits that students have been given which will result in increased profits for the banks. Is he taking into account the higher origination fees that students in the Direct Loan program may have to pay under this proposal? What about the fact that only 10 percent of the total need-based population is going to benefit at all from the math and science program? If he wants to provide it sometime, or list it, we would be enormously grateful. That's not what our calculations say.

I will include it in the Record at the appropriate time. I thank the Senator for trying to make a good case of a bad record. I will include the responses to each of those areas in my remarks.

I thank the Senator.

Mr. President, I ask the leader, the ranking member, that I be recognized after that.

About 25 minutes.

Mr. President, I echo a lot of the same concerns just voiced by the Senator from Illinois. We have all been here a few years, and we see some things that are questionable. But the actions taken by the majority in this session of this Congress are beyond questionable. In many cases, I think they are outrageous, and I am very glad the Senator from Illinois brought the Senate's attention to them.

Mr. President, I am here to speak on the pending legislation, and that is the budget reconciliation bill that is before us. I oppose this budget reconciliation bill, and I do so for a couple of very basic reasons.

First of all, this bill would cause many of America's poorest citizens to go without needed medical treatment. Just think of that: some of the poorest citizens in our country to go without needed medical treatment. It would make it harder for many of America's neediest citizens to move off of welfare and on to work. It would make it harder, not easier, to get off of welfare and on to work. It would also deprive many single parents help in getting child support from their deadbeat spouses. It makes it harder to get child support from deadbeat spouses. That is what this bill does, and I will explain later why that is the case. And this bill would undercut American lumber workers in their dispute with Canadian lumber.

There is a better way. The better way is something much more similar to what the Senate passed here, although I opposed it because I thought it was so draconian, and I opposed it because I felt it would lay the seeds for just what is happening here today, and that is a conference report that is much, much worse than the Senate-passed bill.

I think the Senate should vote down this bill. We do not have to pass it this year. This is not an appropriations bill. This is not a tax bill. It does not have to be passed this year. It should be voted down so we can get to work next year and cut the budget in a more fair and more moderate way, rather than this draconian way contained in this bill.

There is a right way and a wrong way, for example, to control health care spending. We all know health care costs are high, but let's just reflect a little bit and try to figure out what is the right way to cut health care costs to address that situation and do that rather than the wrong way.

Well, I might say, we in this body included some of the right way in the Senate-passed reconciliation bill. What is that? We included provisions to put us on the road to paying for performance and quality in health care. That is the right way to control health care costs; that is, to reimburse providers--doctors and hospitals--a little bit more when they show their outcomes are a little better, they are doing a better job. That means health care costs will come down because the quality will increase and we will not be providing, in many cases, health care that is irrespective of quality. We have to start addressing quality in health care. The Senate-passed bill started to address that. The conference report hardly even touches that. I will explain that a little bit later, too.

What does this bill do? Instead, this bill merely cuts holes in the safety net. It cuts holes in the safety net. It does not shore it up and try to figure out ways to address the problems; it cuts holes and makes things worse. How? Well, it raises Medicaid copayments for those least able to pay. It raises costs for people on Medicaid. It also allows States to cut Medicaid benefits below existing minimum benefits. That is the wrong way to control health care costs. The better way is to address paid performance and quality. The wrong way is to just willy-nilly cutting expenditures for the poorest of our Americans; that is, for the Medicaid Program.

We have also seen how the wrong way works, not in theory but in practice. Increasing costs for poor people forces them not to seek health care when they need it. It has that effect. When the poor people in our country have to pay that much more for health care, what do they do? They don't get the health care. What happens? They live a little bit more with the illness they have. What is the consequence of that? They come back to the emergency room later when their condition gets worse. The system ends up spending more on health care rather than less. The burden of uncompensated care grows. You and I and all the rest of us who pay for health care end up paying still more for health care because of the increased uncompensated care because the poorer people will not be seeking the health care they need but put it off and, therefore, go to emergency rooms, and we end up paying more. That is the way the wrong way works. That is the way provided for in this bill.

Furthermore, this bill is not a moderate package. Far from it. The Senate-passed bill was more moderate. Instead, the bill before us hews largely to the House-passed bill which is not moderate. It is extreme. It is draconian. The bill before us, which hews mostly to the House side, would impose nearly $2 billion in increased cost sharing on Medicaid beneficiaries or about 80 percent of the cost-sharing increases in the House bill. What else? The bill would also allow State Medicaid Programs to offer Medicaid beneficiaries an ``actuarially equivalent'' benefit package. What does that mean? I will tell you what it means. It means reduced benefits. It is a fancy euphemism for reduced benefits for Medicaid beneficiaries. States will also be able to impose new premiums for coverage and to drop individuals from Medicaid if they can't pay.

Last week I offered a motion to instruct participants of this conference not to harm Medicaid beneficiaries by passing a budget reconciliation bill that resembles the House-passed bill. The Senate overwhelmingly supported that motion. The vote was 75 to 16. I was heartened. I felt good about that action. The Senate was speaking clearly and strongly not to let the conferees impose draconian cuts. Senators who supported that motion should stick to their guns. They should remain consistent in their support of Medicaid. They should vote against this reconciliation conference report in view of what the Congress has done juxtaposed to that 75-to-16 vote.

I am disappointed with many of the provisions included in this budget reconciliation bill. I am also disappointed with provisions that were not included in this bill. The conference report does not include meaningful pay-for-performance and quality provisions. We live in a country that spends twice as much as any other country on health care per capita. Yet our country ranks

37th in the world on quality. Think of that. We spend twice as much per capita as any other country in the world and yet we rank 37th in the world on quality. Our country leaves almost 16 percent of our population with no health care coverage at all.

We are not getting good value for our health care dollar. The value that each health care dollar buys varies widely from patient to patient. Consider recent research from Dartmouth that looked at large hospitals in California.

That research found that per-person Medicare spending on health care in the last 2 years of life ranged from $20,000 to almost $90,000. The more expensive patients were not sicker. That is the point. They did not receive higher quality care. That is also the point. But they cost the Medicare Program over four times more.

I was proud to work with the chairman of the Finance Committee, Mr. Grassley, to write legislation bringing quality improvement and accountability to Medicare. We worked hard on that. We got a bill passed out of committee. Under our Medicare Value Purchasing Act, Medicare providers would be held accountable for the care they provide. And the best providers would be rewarded accordingly.

Doesn't that make sense, that we reward quality? Shouldn't we do that in the health care system? We don't today in America. Most every other industry is rewarded for quality, but our health care service by and large is not. The Senate included our pay-for-performance legislation in the budget reconciliation bill that passed this Chamber last month. I did not support the larger bill, but I was pleased that our Medicare quality legislation was included in the package. But our quality bill has mostly been stripped in the conference report.

The conference report expands existing quality reporting requirements for hospitals. It sets up minimal reporting requirements for some home health. The report includes a study on pay for performance in hospitals and some minimal payment changes to discourage a couple of hospital- acquired infections. These provisions are only for hospitals and are mostly at the discretion of the Secretary.

Moreover, these provisions are delayed until years after the independent Medicare Payment Advisory Commission recommended that Medicare providers would be ready to be paid for quality. I am disappointed to see Congress setting the bar so low because we have so little time in which to address the increasing costs of health care and all the problems that creates. I oppose this conference report because it doesn't begin to address what could and should be done. I remain fully committed to seeing Medicare pay-for-performance become law.

I also supported a motion to instruct conferees related to TANF, the Nation's welfare program. Offered by Senator Carper, this motion instructed conferees not to reauthorize TANF through the budget reconciliation process. That was the motion offered by the Senator from Delaware. That passed by a large vote.

What happened? First, let's remember that Congress enacted the TANF Program back in 1996. It was enacted to help welfare recipients get work skills and to help low-income families become economically self- sufficient. I supported it in 1996. Many Democrats did not, but I thought it was a good way to get people off of welfare and a fair way to get people back to work. What has happened? Welfare reform has mostly succeeded. That 1996 bill was a good bill. States have adopted creative policies to support low-income families making the transition from welfare to work, and millions have moved to self-sufficiency. It is not great, but it is a lot better than what it was prior to 1996.

The TANF law expired in 2002. Senator Grassley, chairman of the committee, and I worked diligently on the TANF reauthorization bill this year. It was a compromise that enjoyed near unanimous support in the committee. We could not get that bill up in the full Senate. There were a few willful Senators who opposed it, even though it had the near unanimous support of the Finance Committee. It was a moderate reauthorization of TANF.

Let's also remember policy changes to TANF--and they are quite pervasive and significant--do not belong in the fast-track budget reconciliation process. It does not belong there. The Presiding Officer knows that, as does everybody in this body. That process was designed to reduce the deficit, not to reauthorize important safety net programs such as TANF or other major policy issues. That is particularly true given the nature of the TANF provisions in this bill. This conference report contains strict new work requirements in TANF. Not only is it a reauthorization, it has provisions that make the program not work, make it worse. It is not moderate. It makes it worse. It is in this conference report.

This report undermines the State flexibility necessary to meet the standards of their most vulnerable citizens. This conference report provides only $1 billion in childcare funds, even though we need $12.4 billion in childcare funding to keep up with inflation. How miserly is that? Only $1 billion in childcare, when we really need 12 billion. Let's compromise, maybe 6, $7 billion; that is a compromise. That is midway between what this bill provides and what inflation calls for. But no, there is only $1 billion in this bill.

The report also foists a set of unfunded mandates on States, mandates that would harm low-income families. Let's not forget these families are playing by the rules right now. They are trying to do what is right. They are trying to work their way off of welfare and trying to get into sustainable employment. But this conference report eliminates the State flexibility that has made the TANF Program a resounding success.

We should reauthorize TANF. We should improve the program to focus on reducing poverty as well as welfare caseloads. And we should ensure that more people can leave welfare for sustainable work.

This conference report does just the opposite. More families will lose assistance. And our State partners will lose the flexibility that they need to support families in their time of need.

Speaking of families, what about the child support enforcement provisions in this bill? This conference report includes a $5 billion cut in Federal funding for child support enforcement efforts. That's right, a $5 billion cut.

States use these funds to track down absent parents, to establish legally enforceable child support orders, and to collect and distribute child support owed to families. These cuts will take billions of dollars out of the pockets of mothers and children who are owed child support. This cut is simply indefensible.

This bill also fails to adequately address the health needs of Katrina victims. It has been nearly 4 months since Katrina hit, resulting in over a thousand deaths, the displacement of over a million people, and a reconstruction bill that may exceed a couple hundred billion dollars. The Katrina disaster was unprecedented. It required an unprecedented response by Congress. That's why I worked with Chairman Grassley in the days following the hurricane to write S. 1716, the Emergency Health Care Relief Act.

That bill would have provided 5 months of temporary Medicaid coverage for Katrina evacuees in poverty.

That bill would have shored up State Medicaid programs overwhelmed by Katrina evacuees. That bill would have reimbursed providers for uncompensated care provided to Katrina evacuees. And that bill would have helped States with the unprecedented burden on Gulf State welfare programs.

But the Senate did not pass that bill. The Senate could not even take it up.

We tried to take it up many times. We stood on the floor many times and asked unanimous consent to bring up the bill, but we were opposed by a band of two or three or four Senators, but we cannot understand why. I think, basically, they are doing it at the behest of the White House, the President. The President didn't want to help people down there with their health care needs, and the congressional leadership did his bidding.

I appreciate Chairman Grassley's efforts to help Katrina victims. He fought to pass S. 1716 legislation against the wishes of the White House and his congressional leadership. I want him to know that I appreciate his efforts.

When the Senate eventually passed this budget reconciliation measure, it included some Katrina relief. It was an

insufficient amount. And I could not support it. It was so paltry, it was an insult. As for this conference report before us today, it is still insufficient. Moreover, its Katrina funding comes in the form of a block grant.

So States affected by Katrina, as well as States treating Katrina evacuees, are given $2 billion for their Katrina health-care needs, whether that is a sufficient amount or not. Both the House and Senate bills had provided for 100 percent federal financing over the short term for all States with Katrina-related Medicaid costs.

Finally, I want to briefly mention an important trade issue. This bill repeals the Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act, also known as the Byrd amendment. This repeal could not come at a worse time for the American lumber industry. The industry has recently suffered a series of setbacks in its long-running dispute with Canada on imports of Canadian softwood lumber.

The Byrd amendment is one of the few tools the industry still has to encourage Canada to settle the lumber dispute once and for all. Repealing the Byrd amendment now pulls the rug right out from under the industry. I won't do that. And I urge my colleagues who are friends of the lumber industry to join me in supporting the industry by voting against this bill.

We don't have to pass this bill this year, Mr. President. There is no need. None. So let's not pass it and do what is right in a subsequent reconciliation bill.

Mr. President, there is a great deal to be disappointed about in this spending reconciliation legislation. It does not meet the health and welfare needs of Katrina victims. It makes health care for the poorest among us more expensive and lets well-heeled people off the hook.

It puts forth an unreasonably austere welfare program in a vehicle where it doesn't belong. It fails to advance the Medicare quality agenda that many of us have worked so hard to make reality. And it undermines the U.S. lumber industry at the worst possible moment.

In short, Mr. President, the Senate should reject this bill. The Senate can do better. I urge my colleagues to do better by the American people by voting ``no.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a lengthy list of all of the groups that oppose this bill.

This is a lengthy list. I don't have time to read them all.

The groups that start with A, such as AARP, for example, are at the head of the list. This is seven pages. Let me guess how many groups per page. It is about 30 groups per page at least, in groups of seven. So 30 times 7 is a couple hundred groups that are opposed to this bill-- for good reason. This is not something they willy-nilly just came up with; they have looked at this bill. They have concluded, as I have, that we should not pass this bill. We don't have to pass it now. We can do it next year. We should go home for Christmas.

This is some Christmas present. This bill cuts Medicaid to people, pulls the rug out from under the lumber industry, and it hurts low- income people trying to get to work and off of welfare. Some Christmas present. We should go home for Christmas and not pass this legislation and then come back next year and do the right thing.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, what is the regular order?

Mr. President, I would like to speak on the PATRIOT Act and on the National Security Agency story in the New York Times for approximately 20 minutes. Is there any limitation on my ability to do so?

Mr. President, since the New York Times revealed the existence of a classified program whereby the National Security Agency was conducting intelligence operations on al-Qaida and terrorist- related operatives here in the United States and overseas, there has been a lot of reaction to that revelation.

First of all, we know the New York Times had been sitting on that story for approximately a year, and then for some unstated reason decided to release the story the day we were supposed to vote on the reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act. As a result of a variety of circumstances, but I believe in part that story, we find ourselves in the very strange position of not having reauthorized the PATRIOT Act and having the PATRIOT Act expire--16 provisions of it at least--on December 31, 2005.

There are some who said when they heard about the National Security Agency's surveillance of foreign terrorist suspects that this was an illegal usurpation of congressional authority by the President, or otherwise improper. Others have asked questions about the propriety of the program.

Frankly, I do think there has been more heat than light generated on this subject, and what I would like to do is spend a few minutes sharing with my colleagues some of the research I have been able to do over the past few days to try to understand exactly what the President's authority is and what procedures apply to the collection of signals intelligence, telephone communications between terrorist suspects in America and abroad.

The fact is that previous Presidents have also argued that they had authority that the President of the United States claims to have under the provisions of the Constitution. In fact, in 1981, President Ronald Reagan signed Executive order 12333, which provided for warrantless searches directed against a foreign power or agent of a foreign power. That was in 1981.

So it perhaps should be no surprise the President who immediately preceded the current President, President

Bill Clinton, his administration, also argued specifically in testimony provided by Jamie Gorelick, Deputy Attorney General, on July 14, 1994, before the Intelligence Committees, that the Clinton administration believes and the case law supports that the President has inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches for foreign intelligence purposes and that the President may, as has been done, delegate this authority to the Attorney General.

So we see there is historical precedent for the argument made by President Bush, our current President, that Presidents have some authority to act even without employing the use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to protect American lives and to save us against the designs of terrorists who would kill innocent American citizens.

It also appears that the U.S. Supreme Court has spoken on a related issue that could be interpreted to confer authority on the President of the United States. My colleagues recall that in 2001, after the terrorist attacks that occurred in Washington and in New York City and which was thwarted in the fields of Pennsylvania, this body passed a use-of-force resolution authorizing approval of the President and the executive branch's use of force to combat and win the global war on terrorism.

We recall that not too long ago, when trying to determine the extent to which the President's powers extended, the United States Supreme Court decided a case called Hamdi v. Rumsfeld. This involved Yaser Hamdi, who was being held as an enemy combatant, and claimed that his detention violated 18 U.S.C. 4001. Section 4001(a) states that ``[n}o citizen shall be imprisoned or otherwise detained by the United States except pursuant to an Act of Congress.''

This is analogous to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which claims that it is the exclusive method by which foreign intelligence may be obtained by use of signals intelligence.

Justice O'Connor's plurality opinion, joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist, Justice Kennedy, and Justice Breyer, concluded that the use- of-force resolution was ``an act of Congress'' that authorized Hamdi's detention, notwithstanding the argument that it violated 18 U.S.C. 4001.

Her rationale, as I understand the opinion, was that because the detention was meant to prevent a combatant's return to the battlefield, it was a fundamental incident of waging war in permitting the use of necessary and appropriate force.

Justice O'Connor, in the plurality opinion, concluded that Congress had clearly and unmistakably authorized detention in the narrow circumstances considered here. Thus, the question seems to me to be, by analogy, whether this use-of-force resolution, which authorizes American troops and our military to search out and to detain and, if necessary, to kill terrorists before they come to our shores and kill us--the question is, is the intelligence gathered by the use of this surveillance a fundamental incident of waging the war on terror? And it strikes me that it is.

Inherent in waging war is obtaining actionable intelligence from our enemy or on our enemy. Certainly, I would believe, under the rationale in the Hamdi v. Rumsfeld case, that this would be a fundamental incident in waging the war on terror and one authorized by the use-of- force resolution in 2001.

So we see that President Clinton believed, as did President Reagan, that the President had authority, even outside of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, but another arguable basis of that authority is the resolution that Congress itself passed in 2001.

Now, there is one other authority that I think bears on this issue that is important. When the Congress created the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in 1978, it created a special court to consider ex parte--that is, ``without the benefit of the other side being there''-- applications for orders to get electronic surveillance.

Now, people have thought: Well, this must be similar to other courts. But the truth is, it is not an adversarial process because we do not let our enemies know we are going to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to get an order so we can find out what they are doing. But, nevertheless, Congress did create this, what we call a court, for the purpose of considering those applications.

But more to the point, the Congress also created an appeals court called the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review. Now, granted, most of the time the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court operates in secret and does so for the obvious reasons that these are classified operations. We cannot let our enemies know what we know, so we can discover their attempts to hurt innocent American civilians.

The Congress understands, and certainly the Intelligence Committees and all the Members of Congress understand, that most, if not all, of this has to operate in confidential or classified circumstances.

But in November of 2002, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review--this appellate court created by Congress under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act--actually issued a public opinion, which was extraordinary. It is the first time since the creation of FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, that an appeal was actually brought and that the court actually issued a written opinion.

Now, notwithstanding the fact that there is not an adversarial process--again, it is a one-sided process by the Government seeking permission from the judges to conduct this important surveillance against foreign agents and international terrorists--notwithstanding that fact, the court invited the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers to submit briefs so they might consider their decision with the additional input of these organizations that, by their nature, would argue perhaps a more limited approach to Government power.

Well, all of that I say to point out that in the absence of a controlling U.S. Supreme Court decision--and I mentioned the Hamdi case which is applicable by analogy to this situation when it comes to the authorization of the use of force--in the absence of a controlling decision on the President's inherent power to conduct these operations through a warrantless surveillance, the court created by Congress to be the authoritative decisionmaker of these matters, in 2002, said, on page 48 of this opinion:

We take for granted that the President does have that

Authority [that is, to conduct warrantless searches to obtain

foreign intelligence information] and, assuming that is so,

FISA could not encroach on the President's constitutional

power.

Now, concededly, that is what lawyers like to call ``dicta.'' It is perhaps not essential to the decision of the specific issues that came before the FISA Court of Review, but it does recognize that the case law and precedent supports the President's authority to conduct warrantless surveillance in foreign intelligence and international conspiracies against the United States because of the power conferred on him under article II of the Constitution.

So in summary, we see that not only did the Clinton administration believe the President had that authority, the Reagan administration believed the President had that constitutional authority under article II and, by analogy, that the U.S. Supreme Court has suggested that the use-of-force resolution would authorize surveillance as a fundamental incident of waging the war on terror.

So these are helpful in shedding some light on exactly what authority the President had during the course of this surveillance, which he says was essential to protecting American lives against foreign agents bent on doing Americans harm.

It seems reasonable to me that the President ought to be able to rely on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review's opinion that has stated that every court that has reviewed this or similar questions has found inherent authority to conduct this type of intelligence.

Certainly, I agree that it is appropriate for Congress and this Senate to have oversight hearings. I know Senator Specter has indicated his interest in doing so; Senator Roberts, chairman of the Intelligence Committee, likewise. But we have to understand, as I know my colleagues do, that this is a classified program. There are limits to what we can talk about in public without putting in jeopardy our methods and sources of obtaining information

against those people who are bent on our destruction and certainly the destruction of innocent American lives.

So it is appropriate to have a hearing. But it is not appropriate for anyone, including a Member of the Congress, to leak classified information about the existence of this program.

Now, some have said: Well, it is not illegal nor unconstitutional for the New York Times to write about it. And I will leave that for some court sometime, someplace. But we know for a fact it is a violation of the criminal law of the United States to leak classified information. My hope is that the Justice Department and the appropriate authorities will conduct a prompt and thorough investigation into how this information was leaked because, as a result, our enemies now know what we are doing and, to some extent, how we are doing it, in a way that undermines our ability to fight and win the global war on terror.

It strikes me, when you are trying to be analytical about this, trying to figure out why is it important that the President have this authority--that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review has assumed the President has and that President Reagan and President Clinton claimed to have--why is it important that authority exists outside of a typical law enforcement or criminal prosecution context?

Well, of course, in an intelligence-gathering mode, we may not have a target per se of that intelligence-gathering activity. There may not really be knowledge that a crime has actually yet been committed but, rather, a reasonable belief that there are individuals who are plotting, conspiring to do innocent American civilians harm. So it is impossible to do in that context what we would ordinarily do in a criminal prosecution context, which would be to have an affidavit filed by an FBI agent in support of a petition for an issuance of a warrant, which would then be filed as a public record for everybody to see.

If we have learned anything as a result of 9/11, it is that we must break out of this pre-9/11 mindset, which says that terrorism must be combated as a criminal law violation alone. It is true that terrorist activity could be a crime, but our main goal is to detect and disrupt terrorist activity before people in this country or our friends and allies across the globe are injured or killed. So the fundamental goals of our national policy have to be to disrupt the information, discover it, disrupt these cells, and protect Americans in the process.

So I wanted to come to the Chamber and say a few words about this issue because there have been some who have, in breathless tones, said that this is a great travesty, they cannot believe it has happened, and some have even gone so far as to suggest the President has acted illegally. I would say that, on balance, my conclusion is, based on historical precedent and based on the authorities that are invested with the power to render legal decisions on such matters, the President probably did act within his authority, but we should proceed to have hearings to further flesh that out so Congress can understand exactly what is going on.

Finally, I wish to say a couple of words about the Senate's failure to reauthorize the PATRIOT Act. I believe the PATRIOT Act has been one of those things that have made America safer and prevented terrorists from executing another attack on our own soil. If you look from September 11 up until this date, thank goodness, the United States of America has not suffered another attack on our own soil. We do know there have been terrorist attacks that have been disrupted but were planned in the style of 9/11 against American civilians by terrorists who care nothing about our laws or our way of life but care only for their misguided ideology and are willing to do anything, including kill innocent people, in order to accomplish their goals.

It is only reasonable to assume that the PATRIOT Act has played an important part in our safety in the United States. The reason I say that is if you look out across the world, we have seen terrorist attacks in London, Madrid, Bali, and in other places around the world. I can only conclude that the PATRIOT Act has played an important role-- perhaps not the exclusive role but an important role in combating global terrorism and making sure they are not successful in attacking or killing or injuring Americans on our own soil.

It is with that in mind that I am at a loss to explain how some of our colleagues could prevent a bipartisan majority in the Senate from voting on the reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act. The fact is that some of them have said we didn't get everything we wanted in the negotiations. Well, the news is that nobody does. But the fact is the PATRIOT Act passed 98 to 1 roughly 6 weeks after the attacks of September 11. It was a bipartisan bill, obviously, because it enjoyed overwhelming support on both sides of the aisle. There is literally nothing that has changed other than additional concessions being made to address the concerns of those who claim there are civil liberty concerns in the PATRIOT Act.

Rather than allow us to have that vote, unfortunately, there is a minority in the Senate that is filibustering and preventing us from having an up-or-down vote. Ultimately, in the interest of the safety of the country, I ask my colleagues to reconsider their obstruction and denial of our ability to have that vote. We know that 16 provisions are going to expire December 31 unless we do.

There are those who say that what we need is a 3-month extension. Well, that is a phony deal, Mr. President, I suggest. We have been debating this PATRIOT Act since it was originally passed in October 2001. I think everybody has a pretty good idea where they stand. I believe every issue that could be debated has been debated, and every issue that could be negotiated has been negotiated. There has been an attempt to reach out and define common ground. Indeed, I believe the conference between the House and Senate did exactly that. It would be a terrible shame under the guise of, Well, we just need 3 more months to further dilute the provisions of the PATRIOT Act that have made America safer. Unfortunately, that is what I see happening with the unwillingness of the minority Senators to have that up-or-down vote and reauthorize the PATRIOT Act.

So I implore them not to make these offers of just 3 more months because we know all they are trying to do is use that for additional leverage to water down the strong protections of the PATRIOT Act. What they ought to do is reconcile themselves to the fact that they are not going to get everything they want, just as I didn't get everything I wanted. I would like to strike all sunsets in the PATRIOT Act and make it permanent. I advocated for provisions for administrative subpoenas, and that didn't make it into the bill. There are other things I would have liked to see in the bill that are not in the bill, but in the interest of trying to find common ground and in the interest of trying to pass a bill that will keep America safe, I have been willing to make those concessions.

I ask all of our colleagues, when it comes to passing this legislation, to try to find a way to allow us to have that up- or-down vote so we can reauthorize the PATRIOT Act and the American people will know we have done everything within our power to try to keep them safe, which is, in fact, the No. 1 obligation of the Federal Government--our national security.

With that, I yield the floor.

Will the Senator yield?

I applaud the Senator from Oklahoma for not only his statement but also for his continued commitment to fiscal discipline here and in trying to identify much of the wasteful and unnecessary spending.

I wonder if the Senator from Oklahoma has had a chance to look at the Defense appropriations bill we are going to consider tomorrow and see some examples of the interesting earmarks out of a conference report. Is the Senator aware of $500,000 to teach science to grade school students in Pennsylvania or $3.85 million for the Intrepid Sea-Air- Space Foundation or $4.4 million for a Technology Center in Missouri or $1 million to a Civil War Center in Richmond, VA, or $850,000 for an education center and public park in Des Moines, Iowa, or $2 million for a public park in San Francisco or $500,000 for the Arctic Winter Games, an international athletic competition held this year in Alaska?

Museums are popular this year, including $1.5 million for an aviation museum in Seattle, $1.35 million for an aviation museum in Hawaii, $1 million for a museum in Pennsylvania, $3 million for a museum in Fort Belvoir.

There are more, I say to my friend from Oklahoma, and we are at war. I wonder how many MREs, flak vests, or bullets we could buy with all this money.

I appreciate the Senator's support for this budgetary measure, but how do we tell people we are going to cut food stamps and reduce eligibility for welfare while we are taking the money that is for defense, in the tens of millions of dollars on this Defense appropriations bill, put in a conference report that none of us ever saw or read until right now, I ask the Senator from Oklahoma.

Will the Senator yield for one more question?

Not only do we have the earmarks in outrageous and disgraceful pork-barreling on this bill--again, that none of us ever saw until my staff went through this bill--but there is also a great deal of legislation. Remember, this is the Department of Defense appropriations bill. So it is not just the money, it is also policies and major policy decisions.

There are avian flu vaccine limitation of liability provisions. I tell the Senator from Oklahoma, I do not know if that is worthwhile or not, but it has been jammed into a Department of Defense appropriations bill.

There is funding for farm conservation. There is a provision protecting jobs in--guess where--Hawaii and Alaska. And there is a provision that transfers, as a direct lump-sum payment to the University of Alaska, the unobligated and unexpended balances appropriated to the United States-Canada Railroad Commission.

Does the Senator from Oklahoma have a clue what that is all about?

Here we are again, I say to my colleague from Oklahoma, when everybody wants to get out of town examining bils that have all kinds of things in them that we never saw or heard of.

In the Statement of Managers, there is $1.6 million for the Lewis and Clark bicentennial activities. The list goes on. There is $7 million for the Alaska Land Mobile Radio.

I ask my friend from Oklahoma, don't you think the American people are fed up with this kind of stuff? And don't you think it is time a group of us, who have been meeting and talking about eliminating some of these practices, get together and make things tough on the floor of this Senate next year to reign in this out-of-control, disgraceful, obscene conduct that goes on on these appropriation bills?

If I may continue, Mr. President, America is at war. We all know that, and that is why the measure we are debating today, the conference report to H.R. 2863, the 2006 Defense appropriations bill, is so very important. This conference report provides critical financing for our fighting men and women, the brave individuals we sent to fight in our name. We must support them, and, for that reason, I will vote in favor of its passage. But I do so under protest.

The conference report appropriates nearly $408 billion, plus an additional $50 billion in emergency funding for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The non-emergency portion is approximately $4.5 billion under the administration's request, but is several billions higher than the Senate bill. As is the case with so many of the appropriations bills that come to the floor, this conference report and the joint explanatory statement contain earmarks and pork projects that were neither requested nor authorized.

War means sacrifice--any student of history knows that--and Americans have sacrificed throughout our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our soldiers and their families have sacrificed, and this year other costs have spread throughout the Nation. Whether it is the victims of Hurricane Katrina, or those that have come to their aid or simply all those Americans who are paying higher gasoline prices, we see sacrifices of many kinds. And so in these difficult times, the American people are right to expect their elected leaders to sacrifice as well.

But then we see a bill like the one on the floor today, and I am sure many Americans wonder if the spirit of sacrifice stops on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. During a war, in a measure designed to give our fighting men and women the funds they need, the Congress has given in to its worst pork-barrel instincts.

Let's take a look at some of the earmarks that are in this Defense appropriations conference report: $500,000 to teach science to grade school students in Pennsylvania; $3.85 million for the Intrepid Sea- Air-Space Foundation; $4.4 million for a technology center in Missouri; $1 million to an Civil War center in Richmond, VA; $850,000 for an education center and public park in Des Moines, IA; $2 million for a public park in San Francisco; and $500,000 for the Arctic Winter Games, an international athletic competition held this year in Alaska. And museums are popular this year. There is $1.5 million for an aviation museum in Seattle, $1.35 million for an aviation museum in Hawaii, $1 million for a museum in Pennsylvania, and $3 million for the museum at Fort Belvoir. There is also $1.5 million for restoring the battleship Texas.

We are at war. How many MREs, flak-vests, or bullets could we buy with all this money? How many dollars could we return to the taxpayers? I would note that these are just a small sampling of the many, many unrequested earmarks that fill this bill.

But perhaps we are being too hard on ourselves. After all, the conference report includes a number of provisions that will rescind unobligated balances in Federal accounts, so we are offsetting a small portion of some of these needless costs. But wait a minute. There is always a catch. While the conference report rescinds $10 million from the Natural Resources Conservation Service Operations account, it also includes language to prevent any cuts to the projects and activities identified on pages 84 to 87 of the House report that accompanies the Agriculture appropriations bill. And if you review that report, you will find 108 earmarked projects totaling more than $103 million. A few examples of the projects that the appropriators are committed to protecting from any reductions, even for the sake of fiscal responsibility, include:

$242,000 for a wildlife habitat education program in conjunction with the National Wild Turkey Federation in Illinois, which is dedicated to conserving wild turkeys and preserving our Nation's hunting heritage.

$100,000 for the Trees Forever Program in Iowa--an organization with a laudable mission statement--it claims to be an organization that not only plants and cares for trees, but also addresses the challenges facing our communities and the environment--but hardly one that should be funded in a Defense appropriations bill.

$400,000 for dairy waste remediation in Louisiana.

$600,000 for conservation related to cranberry production in Massachusetts and Wisconsin. Conservation related to cranberry production. Remarkable.

$200,000 for Weed It Now--Taconic Mountains--MA/NY/CT. Weed It Now, I am told, is an effort to remove invasive plants from the forest habitat of the Berkshire Taconic plateau. I am a strong supporter of the global war on weeds, Mr. President, but this earmark does not belong in this bill.

Clearly, such projects should not be asked to spare a dime.

Beyond the earmarks, Mr. President, it is a violation of Senate rules to legislate on an appropriation bill, unless, as is the case with several sections of the detainee provisions in title 10, they are added pursuant to a rule 16 defense of germaneness. And yet this rule is flouted far too often. This bill not only

contains numerous authorizing provisions, but it also features dozens of provisions, both authorizing and appropriating, that are wholly outside of the scope of defense policy. Some of these are included to pursue laudable policy objectives; some are not. A sampling of the non- germane provisions includes: the hurricane supplemental: $29 billion for hurricane victims; the Gulf Coast Recovery Fund; avian flu vaccine limitation of liability provisions; a provision that directs funds from the Digital Transition and Public Safety Fund that are in excess of $12 billion to be spent on, among other things, the Tucson, Arizona Border Patrol sector, $30 million, the San Diego sector fence, $20 million, and to carry out the North American Wetlands Conservation Act, $50 million; 1.5 billion for home heating energy assistance; funding for farm conservation; a provision protecting jobs in Hawaii and Alaska; a provision transferring as a direct lump sum payment to the University of Alaska the unobligated and unexpended balances appropriated to the United States-Canada Railroad Commission; and, of course, the ANWR provisions, which I will discuss in a moment.

Mr. President, some of these provisions are very important. Others clearly are not. But whether or not they are important, we should follow the standing rules of the Senate. We should debate these provisions and have the opportunity to offer amendments.

Division C of this conference report authorizes the exploration, leasing, development, production, and transportation of oil and gas in and from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, ANWR. This provision does not belong in an appropriations bill to fund our troops who are fighting the war on terror.

Drilling in ANWR is, of course, the reason we are here today. When conferees tried to add these provisions to the reconciliation measure, they could not get the votes to include it in the final agreement without putting passage of the whole package in jeopardy. So instead the conference managers have circumvented Senate rules and added this unrelated and controversial measure to the Defense conference report.

Thanks to this additional language, enactment of the Defense funding bill has been needlessly delayed and continues at this moment to be the target of a filibuster. I strongly oppose this inclusion of this language in the DOD appropriations conference report, and I am appalled by the tactics that have been used to arm-twist and pressure Senators to choose between a drilling provision that they know is wrong and providing desperately needed funding for our Nation's troops.

And the ANWR provisions didn't come free, of course. The proponents had to come up with a slew of sweeteners in an effort to win support for drilling in the Arctic. Let's look at a few of these.

Division D directs an additional $1.5 billion, designated as emergency spending, for Low-Income Home Energy Assistance. The same division establishes a Gulf Coast Recovery and Disaster Prevention and Assistance Fund, which would be funded largely through ANWR oil and gas revenues. Another set of provisions addresses the Digital Transition and Public Safety Fund, established by the budget reconciliation conference report. The CBO estimates that this ``spectrum fund'' will generate $10 billion, but the conference report we are debating today figures out how to spend revenues in excess of $10 billion. After $10 billion, the next $2 billion will be directed to the Gulf Coast Fund. Already planning how to spend money that exceeds the level the CBO projects we will have. Sound familiar, Mr. President?

So CBO says we can plan on $10 billion from the spectrum fund. If we somehow get to $12 billion in revenue, the excess goes to the Gulf Coast. So you think we would stop there. But, no, we go further, planning how to spend the next $4 billion on the chance that the spectrum fund generates still more money. The conference report directs that distributions over $12 billion be earmarked as: $900 million for conservation programs through the Department of Agriculture; $50 million to carry out the North American Wetlands Conservation Act; $50 million to protect grassland and wetland habitats; $1 billion for Interoperable Communications Equipment to assist State and local government preparation for a natural disaster or terrorist attack; $1 billion to assist State and local government preparation for a natural disaster or terrorist attack; $80 million to the Department of Homeland Security to replace and upgrade law enforcement communications; $30 million to replace Border Patrol vehicles; $490 million for Air and Marine Interdiction, Operations, Maintenance and Procurement to replace air assets, including $40 million for helicopter replacement; $372 million for Air and Marine Interdiction, Operations, Maintenance and Procurement to construct and renovate air facilities; $30 million for Tucson, AZ Border Patrol sector for tactical infrastructure; $20 million for San Diego, CA Border Patrol sector for the sector conference; $30 million for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to replace detention and removal vehicles; and $17.9 million for Federal Law Enforcement Training Center for construction of a language training facility.

While the border security projects I have just mentioned are important, will they come to fruition? Not until the spectrum revenues exceed the CBO's estimate--first by $2 billion, and then by $4 billion on top of that. So only when the fund hits $16 billion would all these funds actually be distributed. This entire scheme reminds me of the saying by Wimpy, the hamburger-obsessed character from the Popeye comic, ``I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.''

In addition to everything I have described in the conference report, the statement of managers that accompanies it also includes hundreds of earmarks and questionable projects. Here are just a few examples: $1.6 million for Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Activities; $30 million for continued development of the Joint Common Missile--a program that DOD cancelled this year; $10 million to restructure the Advanced SEAL Delivery System--over half a billion dollars has been spent over the last 9 years, with no deployable vehicles yet fielded, U.S. Special Operations Command has cancelled plans for future boats; $3.2 million for Handheld High Intensity Searchlights; and $7 million for the Alaska Land Mobile Radio.

Mr. President, despite high gas prices, despite a swelling budget deficit, despite our military operations overseas, and despite our domestic emergencies, pork continues to thrive in good times and bad. The cumulative effect of these earmarks is the erosion of the integrity of the appropriations process, and by extension, our responsibility to the taxpayer. We must do better, for our soldiers and for the American people.

We have to fix this system, Mr. President. Our system is broken if we cannot pass a Defense bill in wartime without billions of dollars in pork. Our system is broken if we cannot fund our troops without tacking on legislation that opens ANWR to drilling. Our system is broken if our national security is at stake and we carry on spending for the special interests as if nothing were wrong. But there is something wrong, something very wrong. We want to have it all without making any sacrifices, so we simply borrow the money, pushing off the obligations to our children and our grandchildren. ANWR is a perfect example of that. We drill today in the false hope that doing so will solve our energy problems, but in doing so we leave future generations with a degraded environment and the same dependence on oil that we have today.

In his farewell address, President Dwight D. Eisenhower reflected on the spending he believed to be excessive. His words then are all the more powerful in today's out of control environment: ``As we peer into society's future,'' he said, ``we--you and I, and our government--must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.''

And yet, I say to my colleagues, if we cannot change, if we will not change, we risk precisely that--becoming the insolvent phantom of tomorrow. I wonder what President Eisenhower would think of this mess. But, then, perhaps

others have contemplated the same question. After all, this bill includes a $1.7 million earmark for a memorial on the National Mall that would honor none other than Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Mr. President, will the Senator from Colorado yield me 30 seconds after he is recognized?

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for the Senator from Colorado to yield me 30 seconds.

Mr. President, I have brought it up, I say to my friend from New Hampshire, because you cannot take away with one hand and give with the other. What we are doing in this very vital Defense appropriations bill, again, is larded down with unnecessary, unwanted, unessential, disgraceful spending that I find unacceptable. As the Senator from Oklahoma said, we are going to start doing something about it, and the sooner the better.

I thank my friend from Colorado.

It is my understanding I am allotted 30 minutes. I would appreciate it if the Chair will let me know when I have 10 minutes left.

Mr. President, I come to the floor first to meet those two who were just debating to wish them a Merry Christmas and a happy holiday season. This is a season, a time about giving. When you give something, most often it costs you. It is called sacrifice. It is what our Nation was built on. It is the very heritage that we have as a nation, that we sacrifice to do what is in the best long-term interests of our country.

The chairman outlined the unfunded liability that is facing this Nation between now and 2070. He gave a figure of $51 trillion. That is an underestimate of what the true unfunded liability is for our country. We just added $8.7 trillion with the Medicare Part D Program. But it is such a large number we have a hard time getting our hands on it.

One of the ways to get our hands on it is to think about what it means per individual, and $51 trillion in unfunded liabilities means every man, woman, and child in this country today is responsible for $171,000. Think about that. That is more than the net worth of the country.

Why do I raise that? Because the debate we are having about this bill and movement forward and the comments about how you judge whether somebody is compassionate is based on how you treat those less than you and those who are going to follow you. I believe everybody in the Senate would agree

that leaving $171,000 worth of obligation for every man, woman, and child in this country is inappropriate. It belies the heritage of this country.

If you think about the great generations that have come before us-- the greatest generation, the World War II generation--those who have sacrificed in this country and those who are sacrificing today in the war on terrorism, it is inconceivable to me that we will not start doing some of the small things we can do, with the bills that are going to be before us today and tomorrow, to assure a Christmas gift to every American.

Some say, How can you do that and still be compassionate? My argument is, if we don't start doing it, we are not going to be able to be compassionate at all.

I would like to put up a couple of charts.

The first is from the Government Accountability Office. It shows where we are going if we freeze discretionary spending in this country. If we absolutely freeze discretionary spending, what will happen is between now and 2040, there is no increase in any discretionary spending whatsoever. You did see how our growth and expenditures take place. You can see that the vast majority of that is Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and all other spending, of which the largest proportion in 2040 won't be on any program but will be interest on the national debt.

I am also struck by the inconsistency that I hear in this body when one group of Senators has offered over $400 billion in new spending this year--$400 billion in new spending proposals this year.

If you think about why this is important, this line is represented as a percentage of our gross domestic product. All we have to do is look at the country of Germany today to see where we are going and what is going to happen to us. They have unemployment of 13 percent. Their growth is minimal in terms of their gross domestic product. Why? Because 40 percent of their gross domestic product is taken up by the Government. This only goes to 2040.

At 2050 and 2075, we are at 40 percent of our gross domestic product. That means money that could be invested in new jobs, in capital, in future opportunities for our children, won't be there because we will be consuming.

Now let's look at if we just have the Government grow at the rate of inflation. What do we see? By 2040, we are above 40 percent.

So the questions before this body and the criticisms of the bills on the floor don't make any sense if we are going to give a Christmas gift of a future to our children. This is unsustainable. The Government Accountability Office has said we are on an unsustainable course. It is impossible.

The Senator from North Dakota earlier said he is going to bring a spending reduction bill to the floor. I embrace that. There is no question that I am known in this body to try to restrain our spending. But if we don't, we belie the very heritage this country has stood for since its inception; that is, one generation sacrificing for the next so opportunities and a bright future will be there.

How have we done that? Because we are more interested in the next election than the next generation. We are more interested in making the easy choice, the expedient choice, rather than the difficult choice.

The choice is this. The way things are set up now, there is no way we can keep our obligations to you if you are dependent on the Federal Government. What is compassionate about that? What message do we send to those who truly are dependent upon us if we will not make the hard choices to make sure anybody is in a position to help them in the future?

I will talk about some specific things.

This reconciliation bill didn't go nearly far enough in terms of reducing spending. Let me give you a couple of examples.

The Federal Financial Oversight Subcommittee which I chair had a hearing on inappropriate payments. There is an Improper Payment Act which is law that the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services has failed to enforce on Medicaid alone. But let us talk about Medicare, and then we will talk about Medicaid.

In Medicare alone, it is estimated that over 10 percent of the payments that are made by Medicare are inappropriate. Of that, 90 percent are overpayments. What do I mean, overpayments? I mean fraud, I mean abuse, I mean cheating the Federal Government. And as a physician, I am talking about some of my peers and others in the health care industry, whether they are in durable medical equipment, in the pharmaceutical industry, or others who are taking advantage of the bureaucracy of the program. But this bill saves a small amount of money over the next 5 years. The total is under 8-point-some billion dollars. Less than half of that comes from Medicare and Medicaid. Think about 90 percent of $21.7 billion. That is $19 billion a year in Medicare fraud, and $19 billion a year times 5 years comes up to $95 billion. This bill doesn't even save $40 billion over the next 5 years.

If we want to be serious about giving a Christmas gift of opportunity and future and making the sacrifices, it starts in this Chamber. That sacrifice is, there is no excuse for us not to rid Medicare of the fraud that is in it today, an estimated $19 billion a year. If, in fact, we rid Medicare of the $19 billion and we rid Medicaid, which is $18 billion worth of fraud--that is estimated because they have not followed the law and reported improper payments.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an article from New York Times that outlines some of the Medicare fraud issues in New York State.

Mr. President, it is estimated that the fraud in New York State is $14 billion a year in Medicaid alone, of which the Federal Government pays two-thirds. In 5 years, solving the Medicaid fraud in New York would pay for every savings we have claimed in this whole bill for the next 5 years.

Examples: St. Barnabas Health Care System agreed to settle $3.9 million in claims it overcharged Medicare; the Premium Health Care Group, $1.6 million for fraudulent wound-care claims; Michael Clemens, FBI special agent--$1 billion in Medicare fraud in south Florida alone.

If you add up what is going on in Medicare and Medicaid, $37.5 billion a year at a minimum is fraud and yet we are trying to save a measly two-tenths of 1 percent in terms of slowing the growth.

We haven't gone far enough. For somebody to reject this bill on the fact that we might not meet our obligations on Medicare and Medicaid-- the obligation isn't being met in terms of the oversight of these programs.

I wish to spend a few moments talking about Medicaid fraud because it is important for people to know what a poor job we are doing in terms of oversight.

Investigators estimate that as much as $18 billion worth of fraud occurs every year in New York alone on Medicaid. That is 5 percent of the total national spending on Medicaid in one State. One New York dentist, Dr. Dolly Rosen, claimed to have performed 991 procedures a day in 2003--991 procedures a day. The New York Medicaid Program consumes $44.5 billion. It is the most costly and generous in the Nation. In the article that I mentioned, James Mehmet, the retired chief investigator of Medicaid fraud in New York City, says that at least 10 percent of that was spent on fraudulent claims.

We can, if we will do the oversight, accomplish what we need to in terms of doing the hard work, and the reductions in the expenditures won't have any impact on those who are truly needy for Medicare and Medicaid. What they will have an impact on is the criminals who are defrauding the American taxpayers by billing for services they have not performed.

Other examples: Schering-Plough agreed to pay $335.5 million back to Medicaid this last year on the basis of fraud and an elevated billing process.

The other thing estimated in New York, to build the case a little further, this same James Mehmet estimates as much as 30 percent of the budget--10 percent of it is fraud; 30 percent of it is abuse. If only half of that is inappropriate payments, we are up to 25 percent or up to $12 billion a year. Again, that is in one State. If we did the oversight, changed the rules, increased the punishment, held people accountable, every bit of savings in this bill could be paid for by Medicaid fraud in New York State alone.

The question is, are we going to do what we need to do as a Senate, in the future? This bill is a first good step. It does a lot of things in terms of Medicaid, of creating a new Medicaid task force to go after fraud.

We can do much more. To do less says we do not have the Christmas spirit, the spirit of giving, the spirit of sacrifice.

I close on this one note. Most everyone listening out there has children and grandchildren. When you think about your grandchildren, what do you think? What is it you desire for them? What is it you want for them? When we hear the rhetoric--whether it is from the AARP or other groups--discounting the fact that we are going to slow down the growth in Medicare and Medicaid, and doing it not by taking away benefits for those who are truly needy but by doing the job we should be doing, when we do that, we give a gift to our children and to our grandchildren.

I want opportunity for my grandchildren. I don't want them to be given anything. I want them to be given the gift of having an opportunity to attain it. I want to create an economic environment in the future that is sustainable. We are not sustainable today. I want every grandparent out there to think, do they want something for themselves today that is going to be paid for by their grandchildren 20 years from now?

That is the real issue. That is the whole center of the entire debate in Congress today as we debate these contentious issues on how we spend or do not spend money. It is a simple question. Take now and charge it to your grandchildren. Take now and take away their opportunity for homeownership. Don't do anything now because it might not be politically popular, but undermine any future your children and grandchildren have. That is described as selfishness. That is the exact opposite of the spirit of giving.

America is better than that. America's heritage is better than that. The American people are better than that. The problem is, we do not understand what is before the Senate, the obligations and the great responsibilities before us. We were sent here to make the hard choices. If you are listening today, listen to the rumble, the rumble that is out there in the American public. They want us to do the hard work of trimming the waste, of trimming the fraud, of trimming the abuse. They want us to eliminate our political earmarks to pay for the things that are necessary for this country--not pay for the things that get us reelected. There is a rumble. The rumble is real. The American people are paying attention that we should be doing the hard and heavy lifting of making the tough choices.

This bill is a start. It should go much further. It should be $100 to $200 billion of reduced spending through fraud. If there is truly $35 billion a year in wasteful, fraudulent, improper payments for Medicare and Medicaid, that is $18 billion for Medicaid, $19 billion for Medicare. That is $37 billion a year. In 10 years we can save $370 billion. This chart I had up will show a better future for our children and our grandchildren.

I ask the Members of the Senate to make sure we pass this bill. This is a start. It does not have anything to do with the tax cut. There is not going to be any tax cut unless we get spending under control. To not want to get spending under control means Members do not want to give an opportunity for advancement in the future for our children and grandchildren.

Grandparents, this is about our grandkids. I have four grandchildren. I wish I had 20. But more than that, I wish for them the same opportunities that have been there for us, the same opportunities that the great generation fought for and gave us such wonderful blessings. The same opportunities for every veteran we have had who has fought and died and been injured and the sacrifices they have made--are they in vain if we do not have the same type of courage, the same type of commitment that those who serve our country in our armed services have?

We can do no less than to start down the hard road of making difficult choices. This is the first one. They are going to get harder as we face the economic perils in front of us and the commitments we have made that right now we cannot keep. We either change them or the American people are going to change us.

I am happy to yield.

I am happy to respond. As the Senator knows, on the conference report I am unable to offer amendments to eliminate those things. As the Senator well knows, also, I have started down a track where I am going to confront earmarks in the Senate or we are going to change that.

With that, I offered on almost every appropriations bill what was called a sunshine amendment. That will be offered again in the House next year, and when we come to conferences, the ability to put in extraneous earmarks has got to be limited.

I would, however, answer the Senator. Having had an oversight hearing on food stamps, we spend $1.6 billion in giving food stamps to people who do not qualify, who have more than the capability to take care of themselves. That is at a rate of 6.9 percent of every person who comes to attest for food stamps.

So I believe the same thing can be said for the Food Stamp Program that we can say about Medicare and Medicaid, that we need to run a bill. We need to have better oversight. We need to check it so the fraud and abuse is out of it.

As the Senator knows, I do not like earmarks because I believe they compromise the operation of good government. I think they buy votes when votes would not be there. I think the Government has grown because of the force of earmarks.

So I am not aware of those specific things. I have not looked at it, to answer the Senator's question. But I am not happy they are there.

I will.

No, I do not.

As the Senator knows, I believe we do a disservice to our country in the way we manipulate appropriations. I have been very vocal on that. But I also know it requires courage to stand up. And the American people are expecting that. They are going to see that this next year on the floor of the Senate. They are going to see a process by which every earmark is challenged in the bills that come before us and in the bills that come out of conference.

What I do know--and I will finish my statement with this--is every economist and every elected official in this country, in this body, knows we are on an unsustainable course. Everybody knows that. Everybody is aware of that. Slowing the rate of growth of programs is compassionate. It is not lacking in compassion. If you do not slow the rate of growth, the very people you want to help will not be helped in the future. It is compassionate to keep your obligations. The way to keep your obligations is to change the programs so we pay for them out of the waste, fraud, and abuse that is involved.

Most people who oppose this bill do not have a good alternative. They do not have a good alternative. The plan of never-ending expansion, unsustainable commitments, is the surest way to deny benefits and coverage to the very people we want to help in the long run. It is the only way we are going to be able to do it. We cannot continue to avoid the tough choices, and we cannot continue to avoid prioritizing and to grow government as we like. We cannot do what we have done in the past. The economic conditions will not allow it. The American people are not going to allow it.

It is time, and it starts January first--it starts here with this bill, but it starts in the next session of Congress. It is going to be different. It is going to be difficult. But we are going to make the tough choices.

With that, I yield my time.

Mr. President, just approximately 15 minutes.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. President, I wish to acknowledge the comments of my colleague and my friend, the senior Senator from Alaska, giving us some of the historical perspective about some of the process we have seen in the Senate.

As we take up the issue of the Defense appropriations bill and as it contains within it the issue of energy exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, it is fair to say there has been a hue and cry of ``This can't be done. We can't have this included in it,'' and almost a sense of outrage that such a controversial issue would be inserted in a bill that truly our troops, our national security depends on.

We know this is not a new issue in the Senate. This is not a new issue in the Congress. The Alaska delegation has been fighting this issue for just about three decades now. Senator Stevens has indicated that for 25 years he

has been working on this issue. My father, who held this office before me, spent the 22 years of his career working to advance ANWR; trying to get our colleagues here in the Senate to understand the issue and to move it through the process, to convince the Congress of the merits of opening the Coastal Plain to environmentally sensitive energy development. We have debated this issue so many times on this floor, I have some of my colleagues saying: Can't we just pass ANWR so we don't have to keep hearing this debate year after year after year? And we have been successful, twice here on the Senate side and numerous times on the House side, where the measure has moved through. We were successful in moving the ANWR provision through the Congress, both Houses, in 1995, only to have President Clinton veto it, and we were successful just several months ago in passing the ANWR measure through on the reconciliation bill. So this is not new debate. This should not come as a surprise that this is a priority, not just for the Alaska Senators, but a priority for the Congress, a priority for this country.

Senator Stevens spoke to the issue of national security and how ANWR can assist us in that.

When we talk about the ``whys,'' why we should open ANWR to limited exploration and development, what we are talking about with ANWR is not an insignificant quantity of oil. It is not the ``drop in the bucket'' that some people suggest. It is not the ``mere months of supply'' that some people suggest. At predicted prices, at what we are seeing today, we recognize that the expectation out of ANWR is between about 6 billion barrels of oil and 14.65 billion barrels of oil. So the mean figure that we use, a conservative figure, is about 10 billion barrels of oil for this country. This is by far the largest known source of domestic onshore oil in this country today. The estimates lead us to make the statement that we believe that the ANWR field, or oil find, could rival that of Prudhoe Bay, which has been supplying this country with about 20 percent of our domestic needs for about the past 25 years.

Now, when we recognize what high oil prices are doing to this country in terms of the health of our economy, in terms of our ability to travel. Face it, the energy costs this country are facing are a burden on hard-working Americans. And what is the expectation? Do we expect the price of oil is going to be dropping? Right now, we are looking at future prices in the area of $60-a-barrel oil. The Energy Information Administration, EIA, 2006 forecast has predicted the price of oil is going to remain between $50 and $55 a barrel for the next couple decades. We have to recognize that everything we can do to bring down that cost of oil through increased production domestically is going to help us.

We have always talked about the jobs, the jobs aspect that ANWR will help bring about. It will bring about hundreds of thousands of jobs, not just in my State of Alaska, but all around the country.

And as we talk about these issues we must remember the deficit we face as a nation and the balance of payments deficit that we face. This especially is where ANWR development can make a dramatic improvement in reducing our balance of payments deficit. If we are at peak production with ANWR, anticipating 1 million barrels a day, this will reduce our country's balance of payment deficit by just about $20 billion annually. This is significant, folks. This oil is coming from the United States. This is domestic production.

Now, the big debate today, of course, is the fact that this provision, the ANWR provision, has been included in the Defense appropriations bill. Is this the perfect place for this? Well, when we started several months back, at the beginning of the year, it was not in this bill. It was in the reconciliation bill. We took criticism, great criticism, at the time for inserting it in that legislation as well. But let's talk about why it makes sense, why it is not illogical to place the ANWR provision in the Department of Defense appropriations bill.

My colleague from Alaska made mention that there is a great tie-in between ANWR and our national security and meeting the needs of our military.

We have direct benefit through increased domestic oil production because we help our military to strengthen our national security by becoming less reliant on foreign sources. Sufficient reliable energy supplies are vital to our military. That is absolutely the bottom line. Consider that it takes eight times more oil today to meet the needs of the average soldier than it did decades ago during World War II. Our military today consumes on average about 4 percent of the oil we as a nation consume daily about 800,000 barrels per day. This is a reality. This is what we are dealing with.

Right now, the military accounts for about 80 percent of all the oil that our Government consumes daily. So when we look at what we can anticipate from ANWR--about a million barrels a day at peak production--that development will help us to fully meet our military's total fuel needs. This fact alone makes ANWR a worthy candidate for inclusion in the Defense appropriations bill.

Really what we need to be focused on is what ANWR does for us, how it helps facilitate our energy security and, in turn, our national security. Opening ANWR offers America the best chance for finding a secure supply of oil that helps to reduce our dependence on OPEC, on other nations; and it does this for decades.

You all heard that we are 58 percent dependent today as a nation on foreign sources of oil. We are expected to pass the two-thirds mark within about 20 years. When you put that into perspective and you recognize that such a quantity of our energy--more than half of our energy comes from elsewhere--particularly from OPEC or unstable Mideast regimes, that we have a vulnerability. Think back to some of the statements made earlier this year coming out of Venezuela, one of our leading sources of imported oil. Again, this should remind us that we need to do all that we can responsibly do to increase our domestic energy production. Look at the world picture--what is happening with China and India and a host of developing nations and their need for supplies of oil. That makes it all the more important to make sure we are doing what we can at home.

So we need to increase our energy independence, but we also need to do it in balance with our environment and diversifying energy supplies. I wish to talk about the environmental perspective for a minute because this is important. We just cannot develop for development's sake without a corresponding obligation to balance our environmental needs and requirements. But this bill containing the ANWR provision actually lets us address the environmental issues that have been raised about ANWR for years.

When the reconciliation bill was going through, because of procedural issues--notably the Byrd rule--we were not able to include, for instance, all the environmental safeguards in that that we might have liked. It could plain and simply only open ANWR. But contained within this Defense appropriations bill are the environmental safeguards, the provisions that we have been discussing for decades. It also has provisions that will require the best technology. We are talking about directional drilling to limit the surface disruption. It requires industry to maintain winter exploration drilling schedules, a technique of using ice roads so the wildlife isn't disturbed. The tundra remains protected. It includes the provision that we voted on not too terribly long ago that would limit ANWR oil from export, from going outside this country. There is an export ban that would be in place contained within this legislation.

For Alaska Natives, it finally allows them to develop their lands as long as the total disruption doesn't exceed 2,000 acres of the surface of the coastal plain. That is another point that needs to be made. We are not talking about disturbing the surface of the entire 1.5 million acres of Coastal Plain; we are asking for permission to explore and drill in the entire plain, but not to impact more than 2,000 acres in the process. For some in rural areas, that is the size of a small farm. For some in urban centers, this is size of your airports. That is what we are talking about. This bill allows us to place this language in it.

There was mention in the Washington Post this morning that somehow or other the language contained in the bill allows for an even greater area

to be opened for oil exploration and development. That is not the case. The case is that the 2,000-acre limitation covers both federal and Native and state lands. What it does allow for is for Alaskan Natives who live up there to have the ability to gain their final land selections, but any development from those lands are subject to the 2,000-acre limitation. It is a 2,000-acre limitation in total.

We also require the Department of the Interior to consult with the Natives so that their local knowledge is considered to reduce the impact on the environment and their subsistence lifestyles. We have the support of those Natives who live there, work there, and send their children to school there, who want to see good infrastructure in terms of health facilities and schools. They support opening ANWR, but they want to do it in a responsible manner and in consultation, so that they know their voices are heard. We have put language in this bill that speaks directly to those wishes.

We have also included a provision that provides for local impact aid for any of the communities that may be subject to oil development impacts. These include the Inupiat of the North Slope, the Gwich'in south of the Brooks Range, and the municipalities and Native Corporation lands that border the Trans-Alaska Pipeline corridor.

And we included language that encourages project labor agreement talks and local hire provisions.

So we have been able in this legislation to take the concerns of some of our friends and colleagues who have been working with us--our friends from Hawaii wanted to make sure we had Native consultation provisions included. We have been able to add that in this Defense appropriations bill along with the environmental provisions that have been discussed for decades, ensuring that when we move forward with opening ANWR to responsible oil exploration and development, we have all of these provisions in place. This is key to us in the Senate, and it is certainly key to the Alaskans whom I represent, and most certainly to those who live and work on the Coastal Plain.

Now, I have to comment very quickly about a remark that was made yesterday by my colleague from Washington. In her argument against opening ANWR, she talked about ``toxic'' spills on the North Slope, and essentially argued that Alaskans are not being responsible somehow with our oil development. That does require a response.

Opponents have claimed there have been a high number of spills. But they fail to mention that the companies who operate on Alaska's North Slope have to report spills of most any substance that is more than a gallon in size, whether it is pure water, salt water, oil, or chemicals; whatever it is, it has to be reported if it is over a gallon in size.

According to the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, there has been an average of 263 spills on the North Slope yearly, seven times less than in the rest of the state yearly. The average oil spill, however, was just 89 gallons--that is about 2 barrels of oil-- and 94 percent of that was totally cleaned up. Most spills are of water used in making ice roads.

According to the National Academy of Sciences's 2003 study, if you look at all the spills from 1977 through 1999, 84 percent of all those spills were less than 2 barrels in size. Only 454 barrels of oil per year have been released into the environment, compared to the 378,000 barrels of oil that enter North American waters yearly as a result of urban runoff, the drips we see at filling stations and other spills. That may be less oil than enters the Alaska environment naturally because of the oil seeps that come up from under the ground on the North Slope.

I wanted to take a second to correct the record on other point.

Senator Stevens spoke in his comments previously about how including ANWR in the Defense appropriations bill not only helps Alaskans in getting the pipeline from a status of half full, or less than half full, to full; but it is also important to point out how adding ANWR to the Defense bill is going to help Americans overall.

I have mentioned national security. I have mentioned the jobs. I have mentioned the economic security and the reduction in the overall trade deficit.

What we will also be able to do as a result of the ANWR proceeds and the revenues that will come forth is to aid Americans who have been impacted by the disaster on the Gulf Coast. The bill also allocates 5 percent of the revenues to go to fund increases in money for the program that will also help Americans with their energy costs. This is the LIHEAP program, the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program. We know here it is getting cold, and it is going to be a colder winter as we move into January and February. Americans are looking at their home heating bills. They are looking at their utility bills, and they are seeing increases of 30 to 40 percent. We are going to see natural gas increases in our utility bills in excess of that.

This is a huge consideration for us as we try to balance our budgets within our own homes. So the ability to share with those who have been impacted by Katrina, helping to provide financing, if you will, for Gulf Coast rebuilding is a key of this bill. Under the Gulf Coast Recovery and Disaster Prevention and Assistance Fund about 25 percent of the total ANWR revenues will go into the fund--80 percent of the bonus and 20 percent of the longer-term royalties from ANWR production will go to the Gulf Coast States to help them recover from the effects of Katrina, Rita, and Wilma.

Also, we are talking about the reduction of the Nation's budget deficit over the life of the field--tens of billions of dollars to reduce the budget deficit will come from the proceeds from ANWR.

What is coming from ANWR is not something that only benefits Alaskans, and there have been those who have suggested that. It is not something that benefits only oil companies, and there are some who have mentioned that. The proceeds from ANWR and what we will be able to do in terms of providing for jobs, for energy security, national security, funding programs such as LIHEAP, funding to the States of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Texas, and Florida in the restoration fund, are significant; it is important, and it is appropriate that all are included in the legislation before us.

I, too, join my colleague, my senior Senator from Alaska, in asking our colleagues to end this debate once and for all, after the 25, 30 years we have been debating, arguing, and talking, and allow America to finally use its own resources to help our economy and protect our security.

Mr. President, I have several letters and resolutions I would like printed in the Record. These are a letter from the mayor and city council of the city of Kaktovik, addressed to Members of Congress; a board resolution from the Alaska Federation of Natives in support of opening ANWR; letters of support from unions; from the Chamber of Commerce; from Americans for Tax Reform; from the American Gas Association, as well as the Alliance for Energy and Economic Growth. I ask unanimous consent they be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Chafee.) Who yields time?

The Senator from Iowa.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent under our allocation of time to speak until 2:15.

I ask unanimous consent that under our allocation of time I be allowed to speak until 2:15 p.m.

Mr. President, there is a lot happening in the final days of this Congress. One might ask, What on Earth are we doing here days before Christmas? We are doing the work that should have been done in March, April, May, June, July, and August, work that wasn't done then for a number of reasons. But now we come to a number of important issues and this is reconciliation, budget cuts, and we have a tax cut bill ricocheting around. We have the PATRIOT Act that my colleague just described. We have the Defense appropriations bill. That has now

been burdened with an amendment that calls for drilling in ANWR.

It is an interesting time, but one that is frustrating for some of us in the Senate. I will give you a description of that frustration.

On Sunday, we met at 12 o'clock--this past Sunday--on a conference, a very large conference dealing with the Defense appropriations bill. I was a conferee. We started at 12, and I left at 5 or 5:30 in the afternoon. We finished the work on that conference report. I opposed a number of things that happened on Sunday. The Defense appropriations bill was before us. They added drilling for oil in Alaska, the ANWR provision, having nothing to do with the bill. They added it because they thought they had the votes to add it.

Well, we finished the conference, and I left here at 5:30 on Sunday, and I discovered they added another provision. There wasn't a conference still going on at that point. A bunch of folks got in a room and decided what they were going to stick in the conference report.

I told my colleagues I grew up in a small town of about 350 people. When I was a kid, I used to go and watch the blacksmith. We had a blacksmith in my hometown. It was kind of fun to go and watch the blacksmith work. He would take a piece of metal, put it in a tong, stick it in heat, in hot coals until it turned white hot, and then he would put it on an anvil, take a big old hammer and beat it. That is how he shaped metal. Heat it and beat it with an old hammer. I watched that guy with dirty clothes, sweating all day long. He would heat that metal and beat that metal. Some people think apparently that is the way the Senate should work--heat it and beat it. Get hold of a big old hammer and pound ANWR through here. It doesn't matter the rules don't permit it; pound it through here. In fact, change the rules if they get in your way. It doesn't matter. Don't like the rules? Change them.

I am usually an optimist. They say a pessimist is someone who smells flowers and looks around for a casket and a body, and an optimist is someone who sees a manure pile and looks for a pony. I am an optimist, usually, looking for good things in what we are doing and where we are heading. But this notion that we live in a special place on this Earth and somehow we don't have to care about nurturing it to make sure it remains special, that it will all work out is a notion devoid of leadership.

The fact is, we are off track in this country. We are No. 1 in exports in waste paper. Did my colleagues know that? The largest volume of export in America is waste paper to China. Unbelievable. Yes, we are No. 1 in exporting waste paper.

And, oh, by the way, in the last 4 years, we also sent about 3 to 4 million jobs to Asia, mostly to China. We have the largest trade deficit in the history of humankind. This past year on the budget deficit, we will borrow $550-plus billion, nearly $570 billion. So we have a budget deficit that is way out of control, a trade deficit that is way off the charts, and we are shipping jobs overseas. Our No. 1 export now is waste paper, and you think things are going great. Suck it up, they say, it is a great place, things are going fine.

I don't think things are going fine. The question is where is the leadership here? David McCullough wrote a book about Adams. It is a wonderful book. He is a great historian. He wrote this book about Adams. I have told this story before. In this book, he described John Adams as representing this country's interests in Europe. Adams would write back to his wife Abigail as they were trying to put this new country together, and he would say: Where will the leadership emerge to help frame and start this new country of ours? Then he would say: There is really only us. There is me and there is Thomas Jefferson and there is George Washington and there is Ben Franklin and there is Madison and there is Mason. There is only us.

Now, of course, we know in the rearview mirror of history that the ``only us'' is some of the greatest human talent ever assembled, and they built a very extraordinary place, a very special country, with a Constitution that says ``We the People.'' The first 3 words, we the people.

But the current leadership in the White House and Congress says we don't have to worry too much about deficits. We are going to cut some spending but, oh, by the way, even though we are up to our neck in deficits, we want to cut taxes, and, oh, by the way, we still want to cut taxes mostly for upper income people. The second part of this reconciliation document is still in the House of Representatives, the tax side. It is very important to say that capital gains and dividends, normally called unearned income, capital and dividends--be given preferential tax rates. That is the most important thing. Warren Buffett, the world's second richest man, said when all this is phased in, he will pay a lower tax rate than his receptionist in his office. Tax work, they say, tax work but exempt investment. That is the mantra around here.

What is the most important thing? Drive down the taxes on dividends and capital gains; drive them down. It doesn't matter, we don't need the revenue. Deficits don't matter, Vice President Cheney said. Deficits don't matter.

They now come to the floor of the Senate with a proposal that says, by the way, let's cut some spending. Guess whose spending is going to get cut. Is it a surprise that the most vulnerable among us get cut? Is it a surprise the proposal is to decide there should not be enough money in Medicaid, that which delivers health care to America's poor, to provide the kind of funding that is necessary in Medicaid?

It is said by some, and I believe it, that budgets are moral documents as well. Someone once asked the question: If you were required to write an obituary for someone you had never met and the only information you had was that person's check register, what would it tell you about the obituary you would write?

What if all you knew about this country was its Federal budget and that is all the information you had as a moral document, but what was important? What mattered to this country? What did this country believe represented the most important areas of investment, expenditure to build on the successes of this country? Would it be, for example, that you decided tax cuts for wealthy Americans are the most important?

Let me show you a picture. I showed it yesterday, but I think it is important. This is a picture of a five-story building on Church Street in the Cayman Islands. Some people would just as soon you didn't this picture. But On Church Street in the Cayman Islands, there is a five- story building called the Ugland House. Do you know what is inside this building? This building is the official address for 12,748 corporations. Impossible, you say? No, it is not impossible. It is not impossible. We are running an economy now and, by the way, with the advice and consent of those in the Congress and in the Senate who voted for it--we are running one that says to businesses: Go ahead, get rid of your American jobs, move them to China, ship the products back to this country to sell them, and run your business through a mailbox in the Grand Cayman Islands so you don't have to pay taxes. That is what this building is about. And, oh, by the way, many of the companies that have this building as their address in the Cayman Islands to avoid paying U.S. taxes got a gift from this Congress--not with my vote--that is the equivalent of a $60 billion tax break--a $60 billion tax break.

In the past year and a half, a bill was passed called the JOBS Act to create new jobs. Of course, it didn't. It cost jobs. It gave a very fat tax break to the largest corporations in our country that do business here and overseas. It said, if you repatriate your income from overseas, because some day you are going to and when you do, you have to pay the 35-percent corporate rate, if you do it now, we will give you a special deal that we won't give to any other Americans: You pay a 5.25-percent tax rate. There is not one American living in Ohio, North Dakota, Oklahoma, or any other State represented in this Chamber who is told in law that they get to pay an income tax of 5.25 percent.

This Congress told the largest companies in this country, we will give you a 5.25-percent tax rate. That was a priority. My colleague who sat in this desk behind me, Senator Fritz Hollings, offered the amendment to strip it. I voted for it. I spoke for it. But, no, we could not strip that out because too

many Members of this Congress believed it was important, a priority, to provide a big fat $60 billion tax break to the largest corporations in this country, with a 5.25-percent tax rate.

Compare that to the proposition we are offered today by people who come to the floor breathlessly saying we have to cut spending to reduce the deficit. Did they care about reducing the deficit when they gift- wrapped a $60 billion tax cut package for the biggest companies by giving them a 5.25-percent tax rate? No. It did not matter. It did not matter then. They just promised that it would create new jobs.

Interestingly enough, the very companies repatriating income to take advantage of this bargain basement tax rate are cutting jobs. This is not just me saying it. This is from the Wall Street Journal and other newspapers that describe exactly what is happening.

So today we have the breathless chant about let us cut funds for the Child Support Enforcement Program, which, it is estimated by the Congressional Budget Office, will result in $2.9 billion in child support going uncollected. Let us cut funding $12.7 billion for the student loan programs. Let us cut funding from family farmers--by the way, many of whom faced some disaster this year; the worst drought since 1895 in Illinois, Missouri, Iowa. One million acres could not be planted in North Dakota.

Those farmers are not going to get disaster help, but the leadership had no reservations about allowing a situation where 12,748 corporations establish their address in one five-story building in the Cayman Islands, for the purpose of not paying taxes in this country. It is all perfectly legal because this Congress believes it ought to continue to happen.

We have had vote after vote on my amendment to try to shut this down. Cannot do it. So in terms of priorities I think it is important to ask the question, on whose behalf are we legislating? I happen to believe we ought to cut the deficit. In fact, in January and February I am going to be offering a very specific set of plans on how you cut spending in a real way. We have very large agencies in our Government, and unlike businesses that have overhead expenditures and then direct expenditures there is no distinction between our overhead expenditures. In fact, they cannot even separate out overhead expenditures.

The first thing one should cut back on is overhead and travel and those kinds of things, but it cannot even be separated out in these agencies. We ought to take a whack at that. I am going to propose that.

I support some of these issues, but let me mention a number of issues that are attendant to this as well. There is a provision buried in this huge reconciliation bill, as is always the case in these things that come to our desk--my colleagues can see the size of this legislation. There is a provision repealing something called the Byrd law that I want to talk about just for a moment.

When American enterprises, American companies, are the victims of unfair trade--and there is a lot of it--our government sometimes imposes antidumping and countervailing duties. The Byrd amendment, which I supported, says that U.S. producers who have been injured by unfair trade should receive those duty revenues.

But the WTO stepped in and said: Well, it is not right that you would recompense your victims of trade who have been injured by unfair trade. So the WTO ruled against us, and we have our colleagues in the Senate and in the House who have been very anxious to overturn the Byrd rule. Sure enough, they do it in this bill.

They cannot run to the bank fast enough, in my judgment. Those who want to do this sort of damage to us cannot run to the bank fast enough to deal with all of these issues. We have the biggest trade deficit in history. We have jobs flowing out of this country. We have a country that does not have the spine, the backbone, the will to stand up for our producers on unfair trade. Those who have been victimized, those who have been hurt by unfair trade, ought to receive the benefits of the tariffs. Now the majority says that is not true; we are going to take it away.

I do not understand that. I do not have the foggiest idea where the Senate's priorities are.

We are right at the end of the session, a couple of days left, and the Defense appropriations bill was not passed this year. Now it is about to be passed, except they load on one of the most controversial issues called drilling for oil in ANWR. Under any other circumstance, one would be laughed out of the Chamber for that. Yet we have people come here--I heard a colleague of mine yesterday say: Well, let us all be bipartisan.

I am all for being bipartisan. Let us also be fair and let us legislate the right way. Let us not stick these unrelated issues on this legislation and then say: By the way, it does violate the rules, but we will change the rules and we will change it only for this purpose and change it right back, and never mind.

Do they think that we cannot see, hear, or think? Is that what this arrogance is born of? I do not understand it. We are close enough to the end of this session, and this country is in deep enough trouble with trade and budget deficits and a range of other issues that we ought to find a way to work together.

This is not about bending steel. This is about compromise, working together to do the right thing for this country. There is no Republican or Democrat way to go off track on trade or on the budget. It just hurts our country. Together, we ought to be able to do better for America.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask the Senator from Oklahoma if he would mind if I take a minute and half off our side to respond, at which point the Senator from Oklahoma will be recognized.

Mr. President, let me say my colleague from New Hampshire, while interesting and articulate, stops a couple of pages short of good research. First, my colleague talks at length about the WTO. I am not sure which direction we would be required to bow to the WTO. Is it the east or the west? The WTO, of course, does not run or manage American public policy and trade.

But I do want to say this with respect to the Byrd law. My colleague said ``just a few companies'' benefit from it. The fact is, well over 700 companies benefit from it. So, when one talks about misrepresentation, I will ascribe that, I guess, to a mistake.

No, I only have a minute and a half. Several hundred companies have benefited, not just a few.

If one wants to run America's trade policy exclusively through the sieve of the World Trade Organization, I will say get a big armchair, sit back, have a good time, and say: Whatever you want, WTO.

That is not my belief. My belief is we ought to invest in this country's strength. When American companies are victimized by unfair trade, we ought to in my judgment have the good sense, as we have in this legislation we call the Byrd law, to use the tariff to recompense them.

It is not a treaty.

Mr. President, I yield myself such time as I may consume but not more than 30 minutes.

Mr. President, before I comment on the Senate Committee on Finance portion of the Deficit Reduction Act, I will go over some ground that has been covered by other Members on our side of the aisle through this chart or similar charts, to point out how three entitlement programs--Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid--as a percentage of the gross domestic product are going to continue to grow and grow and grow until reaching a point where it squeezes out almost everything else in the Federal budget.

This is already legislated. The red on the chart, if we do nothing, is where we end up.

This bill is doing something about that problem. But we ought to be doing a lot more.

I start out by saying what we are doing in this entire deficit reduction package is reducing expenditures of the Federal Government over the next 5 years. Five years is the length of the budget reconciliation changes that we are making. During that 5-year period of time, the Federal Government will spend about $12.5 trillion. We are cutting out of that $12.5 trillion, a 5-year figure, about $10 billion as shown in the red part of the chart.

The reason I try to put that in perspective, one-quarter of 1 percent is at $40 billion, compared to the $12.5 trillion. That is a spit in the ocean compared to what the problem is.

I point out two things. We will hear from Members of this Senate, mostly from the other side of the aisle, that it is catastrophic we are making changes to one-quarter of 1 percent in all the money the Federal Government is going to spend over the next 5 years. It is catastrophic. The world is coming to an end, we will hear.

Then, from the other point of view, considering what these problems are that we know we face today--and no Republican or Democrat disagrees with that--for what we are doing we ought to be somewhat ashamed we cannot do more than one-quarter of 1 percent of all the money the Federal Government is going to spend in the next 5 years.

For the average American who votes and thinks that Washington, DC, is on some other land from the standpoint of what we do in the Congress, they would say to both sides of the argument that the world is coming to an end, that we are going to eliminate or reduce one-quarter of 1 percent or to those that are bragging--I will be in that category of bragging--about doing something about one-quarter of 1 percent, they are going to say, you guys have to be crazy if you cannot find in all the money that the Federal Government spends, some way of saving more than one-quarter of 1 percent of the $12.5 trillion that will be spent over the next 5 years. They would probably say you ought to go out and find some other work where you can accomplish something.

Those are the extreme points of view. That is what I think the public is probably going to say to us at our town meetings when we go back home if we are going to brag about this, or maybe to the people that are going to complain about it, asking if we are really doing much. It is similar to all the labor that an elephant will go through to give birth and then give birth to a mouse. That is what we have here, a mouse compared to the elephant of a problem.

I take an opportunity to explain what is in the Senate Committee on Finance portion of this bill. Senator Gregg needs to be complimented for getting us where we are today on this conference agreement. What I described, one-quarter of 1 percent of all money over the next 5 years, $12.5 trillion worth, this is the first time we have gone through this process in almost 10 years.

So we do not do this every year. And the public watching would say: Why don't you do it every year? I wish I had a responsible answer for that. But I think we ought to recognize Senator Gregg's involvement and the involvement of all the chairmen of the committees in putting together, over several months, this budget reconciliation package for spending to achieve this goal, and achieving this goal regardless of how small it might be.

It is important for the reason I have given you, that by all accounts, the growth in entitlement spending has monumental implications for our Nation's economic and financial strength.

The chart I just spoke about shows the Congressional Budget Office's projections for mandatory spending, including Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. According to this chart, by 2050 mandatory spending will approach 30 percent of the Nation's gross domestic product. That is 30 percent by 2050. This would push Federal spending well above the levels that it has been throughout much of the post- World War II period, as evidenced by that straight line that goes across that chart.

This might be, hopefully, a worst case scenario, but it is a plausible scenario. The agreement that we are going to be voting on, called the budget reconciliation package, begins to get at this situation--the red on this chart--by achieving nearly $40 billion in savings over the next 5 years. That includes $6.4 billion in net Medicare savings and $4.7 billion in net Medicaid savings.

I actually hesitate to mention those amounts because for many of our constituents it is hard to get past the numbers. To them, any reduction--any reduction--even if it is only one-fourth of 1 percent, is a bad reduction. But the policy--and we ought to be making decisions in this body based upon sound

policy--the policy behind these reductions is sound, just as the policy behind the numerous spending provisions in this entire package is sound.

Throughout this process I have sought to reduce wasteful spending, eliminate loopholes, and pay providers more accurately. I have sought to advance policies that will ensure the availability of important health care and social services, to update these programs to reflect our Nation's changing needs, and also to promote the delivery of high- quality health care services.

The agreement makes some important improvements in the Medicare Program, not the least of which is addressing a scheduled reduction in payments to physicians, which could have led to access problems for beneficiaries. The agreement builds on progress made 3 years ago that linked increases in Medicare payments to hospitals to the reporting of quality data.

I actually would have preferred to do more in the area of pay for performance, and I will continue to push further for changes because we just cannot sit back on this issue, as the private sector is moving much faster than Government, particularly the major corporations of America, in making sure they do their health care business with people in the health care profession and institutions in the health care profession that are going to deliver quality care. We have to be more concerned about this than we have in the past in the Federal Government.

Medicare is the single largest payer of health care in the Nation. Taxpayers and beneficiaries deserve to get the highest value for every Medicare dollar spent. Unfortunately, there is no question that today we are not getting the most value for the taxpayer dollar.

The bill also takes steps to ensure access to quality care in rural communities. It does this by reinstating special payment programs, such as a 5-percent add-on for rural home health providers, the Medicare dependent hospital program, and the hold-harmless payments for small rural hospitals.

The conference agreement also includes coverage of valuable preventive benefits not covered by Medicare. These preventive benefits are important to prevent illnesses and to keep beneficiaries healthy.

This bill also saves beneficiaries and Medicare money by changing the payment structure for durable medical equipment.

Now Medicare will only pay for DME services that are needed; that is, after we get this passed.

I would like to look at Medicaid changes.

In our efforts to reform the Medicaid Program, we take some very important steps, many of them recommended by a bipartisan group of our Nation's Governors. Eventually, all 50 Governors made suggestions to us in a unanimous agreement.

Let's just look at long-term care. In the very near future, a lot of older people are going to need long-term care. Right now, Medicaid is a primary payer for long-term care services. The Deficit Reduction Act expands the Long-Term Care Partnership Program and will promote awareness about long-term care insurance.

We combine that with a policy to tighten restrictions on seniors' ability to transfer or hide assets with the intention of qualifying for Medicaid. These policies protect the integrity of Medicaid and create an incentive for seniors to explore new long-term care options.

The agreement will ensure accurate payments to pharmacies for the cost of drugs, and it has little effect on the market.

We give States the ability to offer Medicaid beneficiaries coverage more consistent with coverage typically offered by employers, while at the same time guaranteeing that children do not lose any benefits currently provided under Medicaid.

We include protections for preventive services and treatment for children. This bill continues to require States which cover early, periodic, screening, diagnosis, and treatment services to continue to do that. The language of the bill is very clear.

Mr. President, on that very point, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a statement by Dr. McClellan, Administrator of CMS, supporting our interpretation of the provisions.

We also include policies that give States the option of asking for a limited set of Medicaid beneficiaries to share in the cost of their care.

The cost-sharing policy excludes anyone under the Federal poverty level, mandatory children, adoption or foster care children, preventative care and immunizations for all children, pregnancy-related services, hospice residents, and women who qualify for Medicaid under the breast and cervical cancer eligibility group.

It is a reasonable, responsible policy that I encourage my colleagues to support. These are all modifications of what the House of Representatives did in their provisions in this area.

These are important, measured first steps that our Governors, in this communication to the Congress to which I previously referred, have asked for, on a bipartisan basis, to reform the Medicaid Program.

Now, the Medicaid Program is a Federal-State program. It is a big cost to the Governors. If we have Governors, 50 of them, of both political parties, coming to us and saying: We can tell you how to spend your taxpayers' dollars more wisely, and we will save some money at the State level, and we will be able to serve more people--they came to us and said that to us. And this document responds to that.

I don't know how 100 Senators can put their judgment--just in case they disagree with what we are trying to do. I suppose if they agree, this doesn't apply to them. I don't know how those Senators who disagree with what we are doing on a Federal-State program can put their judgment above that of 50 Governors who are almost equally divided between Republicans and Democrats.

This bill also dramatically increases funding to protect Medicaid from fraud and abuse. It does so by creating a Medicaid integrity program that mirrors a similar program already in place in the sister program of Medicare.

The agreement incorporates the Family Opportunity Act. This is a major improvement in Medicaid. This is a program that Senator Kennedy and I have been working on for 7 years. These provisions will help families meet the needs of their children with disabilities. Right now, these parents,

if they have a child with disabilities, face difficult decisions. I can document this among my own constituents in Iowa, that time and time again, many parents of disabled children tell me of their struggles getting health care for their children with costly special needs.

Many parents have been effectively forced to quit their jobs, to take low-paying jobs so this child with costly medical care can qualify for Medicaid. Why? Because the services their child needs are not available with private health insurance. So they need the assistance of Medicaid.

This policy we presently have in place and in the Family Opportunity Act turns by 180 degrees; it is totally backward.

This agreement allows States to give these parents in this situation the option to buy into Medicaid while continuing to work and probably in most cases continuing to pay taxes. These are folks who want to work and can work, and we should not have a disincentive to productive employment in America just because some family has a child with special very expensive health needs.

Moving on, the agreement also fills shortfalls in funding of their State children's health insurance programs that States would have experienced just next year.

We also include $2 billion to assist Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi, as well as other States to meet health care needs of people whose lives were devastated by Katrina. It extends TANF Programs with a few minor improvements. It closes several loopholes in TANF and in child support, while providing funding for childcare, child welfare, and allowing more child support to go directly to families.

For nearly 4 years, I have tried to reauthorize TANF in the regular order. Without any help from Democrats, I reported a bill out of the last Congress on a partisan basis. That year, Senator Frist devoted a week for the consideration of welfare. The first floor amendment offered on behalf of Senator Snowe would have increased childcare spending by $6 billion--I voted for it--bringing the total childcare money to $7 billion. That passed with 78 votes. Unfortunately, even with that victory which they won, Democrats blocked it.

I kept trying, and this year I worked out a bipartisan bill with Senator Baucus that the committee reported out on a voice vote. But again, efforts to reauthorize welfare in regular order have stalled. If we don't pass the Deficit Reduction Act, we will have to extend TANF for a 12th time. That is an unconscionable way to legislate. States cannot continue operating their welfare programs unsure of what the next reauthorization will bring.

Advocates complain that the $1 billion is not enough childcare money. But I say to them, where were you over the past year when there was $6 billion on the table and I was committed to bringing that $6 billion out of conference or we would not have had a conference report on TANF?

There has never been enough childcare money to satisfy those on the far left--$5.5 billion wasn't enough; $7 billion wasn't enough. I don't even know if $20 billion would have been enough. The fact remains that there hasn't been an increase in childcare for 4 years, and if we persist in passing extension after extension, there won't be any new childcare money at all.

As I said in the beginning, it is difficult for many folks to get beyond the numbers. But as I laid out here, this agreement includes many provisions to provide services that better meet people's needs, and it does so by getting rid of waste and abuse in the programs.

These are dollars that right now we are simply throwing away. They get taxpayers and beneficiaries nothing. Without some changes, these important programs of Medicare, Medicaid, and TANF will be driven into the ground. That some folks don't support these changes--well, to me, I believe they cannot see the forest for the trees.

The agreement before us includes sound policies. It achieves savings by reducing wasteful spending, closing loopholes, and taking steps to pay providers more accurately. It improves oversight of Medicaid to crack down on fraud and wasteful spending. It establishes policies to help families and beneficiaries and to ensure long-term viability of these programs. I urge my colleagues to support it.

I yield the floor and reserve the remainder of the time for Senator Gregg.