Federal Aviation Administration Fair Labor Management Dispute Resolution Act of 2006

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Protecting America's Competitive Edge (PACE) Act that will enable us to build on our existing strengths to help secure America's continued economic prosperity in the twenty-first century.

I want to gratefully acknowledge at the outset that I am introducing this legislation with Senator Domenici, Senator Alexander, Senator Mikulski, and others. This measure is the product of our combined best efforts from both sides of the aisle, and our sole focus has been only on what is in the best interests of the Nation as a whole.

For the last 200 years, our investments in science and technology, both public and private, have driven our economic growth and improved the quality of life in America. They have generated new knowledge and new industries, created new jobs, ensured economic and national security, reduced pollution and increased energy efficiency, provided better and safer transportation, improved medical care, and increased living standards for the American people.

America's scientists and engineers through their unmatched vitality, creativity, and curiosity have helped us not only imagine but invent the future. In large measure, their contributions have made this new century before us so full of promise--molded by science, shaped by technology, and powered by knowledge.

One of the bedrock policies of our Nation's economic security must be to sustain our investments in science and technology. Today there is no dispute that science, and the technology that flows from it, is duly recognized as the piston that drives the economic engine that enriches the quality of our lives.

Yet today our preeminence is precarious.

Numerous thoughtful leaders in government, industry, and academia who are concerned about sustaining U.S. leadership across the frontiers of scientific knowledge are expressing growing uneasiness over troubling trends regarding the Nation's future prosperity. They warn we are slipping in our world leadership role in science and engineering, and losing sight of the importance of long-term investments in creating the conditions of prosperity.

Other nations are coming up fast behind us on the scientific track and are pouring resources into their scientific and technological infrastructure. There is the distinct possibility that U.S. competitiveness in key high-tech areas will fall behind the major Pacific Rim countries of India, China, Taiwan, and South Korea.

Moreover, the focus of our fundamental R&D has shifted away from the physical sciences, mathematics, and engineering--the critical areas of R&D most closely correlated with innovation and economic growth.

Many of our foremost research programs that have been curtailed or cut back in recent years have been the cornerstone for much of our economic progress and spurred the creation of high paying jobs. Budget increases have been disproportionately concentrated primarily in two departments--Defense and Homeland Security--leaving other vital R&D agencies with very modest increases, or with an increase for some agencies offset by flat funding, or cuts in others.

In the name of national security, we have been building a swaying tower of insecurity.

We are on the brink of a new industrial and commercial world order. The reality of the twenty-first century global economy is that China, India, and other nations once considered economic backwaters have discovered how to build strong economies around very sophisticated technology.

On the Pacific Rim, China has increased spending on colleges and universities almost tenfold in the last decade, and is doubling the proportion of GDP invested in that same period on R&D to promote competitiveness and growth. India is raising its funding of science agencies by 27 percent, and Japan is increasing its investments in life science by 32 percent, while South Korea is upgrading research spending by 8.5 percent.

As our share of the world's technical graduate workforce slips, European and Asian universities are churning out ever greater numbers of workers in scientific fields. And while young Americans may shy away from technical careers because they perceive better opportunities in other high-level occupations, there are still sufficient rewards to attract ever-increasing numbers of foreign graduate students eager to pursue science and engineering degrees.

All of these signs, granted, are a cause for concern. Yet none of them, however, is a cause for panic. To state the facts frankly is not to despair about the future, nor is it to indict the past. Our task today is not to fix the blame for yesterday, but to set the proper and prudent course for tomorrow.

These revolutionary changes in the global marketplace for highly skilled technical workers are dislodging the long-standing dominance of the U.S. scientific enterprise.

That is causing our comparative advantage in high tech production to suffer and, despite the extraordinary power and resilience of our economy, signals a lengthy and difficult period of adjustment for American industry, its workforce, and ultimately our strong middle class standard of living which makes this country great.

It also flags a pivotal moment in American history--a time of national peril, as well as a time of national opportunity.

What should we do about these international challenges? We have absolutely no choice but to emphasize what we do best in this coming rivalry. Our most important strengths have always been education and innovation. Our can-do spirit of commercializing technological innovation has always been America's core competence. We do it far better than anyone else--we have done it before, and we can continue to excel at it.

Last May, Senator Lamar Alexander and I asked the National Academy of Sciences to conduct a study to identify ``specific steps our government should take to ensure the preeminence of America's scientific and technological enterprise to enable us to successfully compete, prosper, and be secure in the global community of the 21st century.''

The Academy assembled an extraordinarily distinguished panel of America's best scientific minds, including three Nobel Prize winners, business executives, and university leaders and reported their findings back to us in October in a sobering report entitled, Rising Above the Gathering Storm.

The National Academy's report proposes four broad recommendations: 1. Increase America's talent pool by vastly improving K-12 science and mathematics education; 2. sustain and strengthen the Nation's traditional commitment to long-term basic research; 3. make the United States the most attractive setting in which to study and perform research; and 4. ensure that the United States is the premier place in the world to innovate.

First and foremost, we need to fix our math and science education system from kindergarten through high school. We should establish a merit-based, 4 year undergraduate scholarship program to annually recruit 10,000 students per year to careers teaching math and science who then commit to working for at least 4 years in K-12 public schools.

Using incentives and scholarships, our aim should be to quadruple the number of America students enrolled in advanced math and science courses to four and a half million by 2010.

A U.S. high school student has about a 70 percent chance of being taught English by a teacher with an English degree, but only a 40 percent chance of being taught chemistry by a teacher with a degree in chemistry. And the situation is worse for middle school students: 70 percent of them are taught math by a teacher lacking a certificate or major in math.

It takes many years to educate a citizen. There are no short term solutions

to this problem, and workforce issues rarely respond to quick fixes and often span generations.

That is why there is such a sense of urgency to recruit thousands of new math and science teachers in the years ahead through the award of competitive scholarships. Additionally, we must strengthen 250,000 current teachers' math and science teaching skills with enhanced training and education by leveraging the expertise of the world's best physicists, mathematicians, and engineers to help provide that training.

This legislation will also provide greater opportunities for students to take advanced math and science classes by increasing the number of students who enroll in Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate science and math courses.

Second, we must steadily increase our investment by 10 percent each year for the next 7 years in long-term basic research, with special attention devoted to the physical sciences, engineering, mathematics, and information sciences.

The Federal Government supports a majority of the Nation's basic research and nearly 60 percent of the R&D is performed in U.S. universities. At the same time, this investment at universities and colleges plays a key role in educating the next generation of scientists and engineers and a technically skilled workforce. We ought to provide 200 new research grants annually--worth $500,000 each payable over 5 years--to the Nation's most outstanding early-career researchers.

Additionally, we should consider creating a revolutionary agency in the Energy Department modeled on the highly successful Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to sponsor research to meet the Nation's long- term energy challenges that industry by itself cannot or will not support.

Just as Olympic-caliber athletes need the finest equipment and training protocols to triumph in their events, so do scientists, engineers and their students need the most modern research instruments and facilities with the best capabilities, the farthest reach, and the finest accuracy and resolution. To enable us to push beyond the frontiers of our current knowledge, we should create a centralized research infrastructure fund of $500 million annually over the next 5 years to ensure we have the equipment necessary for breakthrough scientific discoveries.

Third, we must increase the number of U.S. citizens earning science, engineering, and math degrees. We must redouble our efforts to encourage gifted young American men and women to pursue these high tech disciplines which require so much from them and which have so much to offer all of our people. We can do so by providing annually 25,000 competitive undergraduate scholarships in physical sciences, engineering, and mathematics, and fund 5,000 new portable graduate fellowships in those fields.

Equally important, we need a global recruitment strategy to attract the best and brightest to learn and live in America as part of our high tech workforce. Our visa, immigration and export control policies desperately need reform. Delays and difficulties in obtaining visas to the U.S. are contributing to a declining in-flow of scientific talent.

We need to ensure the best and brightest come here, stay here, and obtain legal residency after college to contribute to our national economy instead of being forced back to their home countries to compete against us.

Finally, we need to be able to assure investors that the U.S. is the preferred site for investments in new or expanded businesses that create the best jobs and provide the best services.

To spur U.S.-based research and experimentation to meet global competition, we need to modernize the patent system, realign our tax policies to encourage long-term investments in innovation, and ensure the Nation meets the goal of affordable broadband Internet access by 2007.

Our patent laws must also be reformed by moving to a first-to-file instead of a first-to-invent, thus bringing us into line with the rest of the world while reducing expensive litigation. Infrastructure planning grants and loan guarantees could also ensure that U.S. science parks are competitive with those throughout Asia.

Additionally, we should eliminate uncertainty by doubling the R&D tax credit and making it permanent. Studies document that this tax credit encourages as much R&D spending as it costs in foregone revenue--and perhaps even twice that amount over the long haul.

We face a competitive challenge of historic proportions today due to several new factors: The growing number of countries with advanced skills, multinational corporations placing their R&D centers, fueled by high education and low labor costs, wherever the profits are the greatest, and virtually every service being electronically communicable.

It will be difficult to ever match our populous economic competitors in the quantity of their scientists and engineers. Ours is an even tougher task: to stay far ahead in the quality of our research and to keep pioneering scientific fields so cutting edge that others, for the most part, cannot duplicate them.

We can readily meet this challenge and enjoy a prosperous future, even though these investments in education and research require incurring costs now for benefits later.

The PACE Act will sustain our vibrant science and technology sector and with it our well-being, health, environment, and security.

It will encourage education at home and attract talented scientists and engineers from abroad, as well as nurture a business environment that transforms new knowledge into new opportunities for creating high quality jobs and reaching shared goals.

The passage of this farsighted public investment program will ensure that the United States is stronger, smarter, and leads the world in scientific and technological innovation in the twenty-first century.

Mr. President, today I join with Senators Domenici, Bingaman, Mikulski, and more than 25 other senators, in introducing the Protecting America's Competitive Edge (PACE) Act--a package of three bills to enhance American brainpower.

America is now playing in a tougher league. China and India are competing for our jobs. The best way to keep those jobs in America is to maintain our brainpower edge in science and technology.

The story of this bill really began last May, when Senator Jeff Bingaman and I, with the encouragement of Senate Energy Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, asked the National Academies this question: ``What are the ten top actions, in priority order, that Federal policy makers could take over the next decade to help the United States keep our advantage in science and technology?''

To answer the question, the Academies assembled a distinguished panel of business, government, and university leaders headed by Norm Augustine, former CEO of Lockheed Martin, that included three Nobel Prize winners. They took our question seriously. We asked them for 10 recommendations; they gave us 20 when they released their report in October.

In October, the Energy Committee held a hearing to learn more about those recommendations from Mr. Augustine and the Academies. It was the first opportunity Congress had to hear the Academies' answer to our question.

Following those hearings, Chairman Domenici, Senator Bingaman, and I convened a series of ``homework sessions'' with members of the Academies, outside experts, and some officials in the Administration. These off-the-record sessions allowed Senators and Administration officials to grapple with the Academies' recommendations and consider how best to implement them.

Last November, Norm Augustine led a dinner discussion hosted by Senator Frist with about 30 Senators on the report's recommendations right here in the Capitol. And then, in December, Senators Domenici, Bingaman, and I met with President Bush where he graciously listened to our ideas. The President was very engaged and knew these issues well.

Now, as the Senate begins its session for the year, we are introducing this legislation to implement the recommendations of the Augustine Report. Next week, when the President addresses the nation in his State of the Union address, it is my hope that he will make this a focus of the address and his remaining three years in office.

This bill is all about brainpower and the relationship of brainpower to good American jobs.

The United States produces more than 25 percent of all the wealth in the world (in terms of GDP)--but has only 5 percent of the world's population. We are a fortunate country indeed. The Academies explain this phenomenon in this way: ``. . . as much as 85 percent of measured growth in U.S. income per capita is due to technological change.''

This technological change is the result, in the report's words, of an outpouring ``of well trained people and the steady stream of scientific and technological innovations they produce.''

Most of this good fortune comes from the American advantage in brainpower: an educated workforce, and our technological innovation. The United States has the finest system of colleges and universities on earth, attracting more than 500,000 of the brightest foreign students. No country has national research laboratories to match ours. Americans have won the most Nobel prizes in science and registered the most patents. We have invented electricity, the computer chip, and the internet.

As one scientist noted, we don't have science and technology because we're rich. We're rich because we have science and technology.

Yet we worry that America may be losing its brainpower advantage. American experts who travel to China, India, Finland, Singapore, Ireland, and elsewhere come home saying, ``Watch out.''

The Augustine Report found that we are right to be worried: Only 6 percent of American college-age students earn degrees in the natural sciences or engineering, trailing students in China and India and a dozen other countries, many of which have doubled or tripled their degree output over the last decade. For the cost of one chemist or engineer in the United States, a company can hire five chemists in China or 11 engineers in India. China is spending billions to recruit the best Chinese scientists from American universities to return home to build up Chinese universities.

The report also found signs that we are not keeping up: U.S. 12th graders performed below the average of 21 countries on tests of general knowledge in math. In 2003 only three American companies ranked among the top 10 recipients of new U.S. patents. Of 120 new chemical plants being built around the world with price tags of $1 billion or more, one is in the United States and 50 are in China.

To maintain America's global leadership in research and development, the Augustine Report made twenty wide-ranging and urgent recommendations for U.S. schools, universities, research, and economic policy that include: Recruit 10,000 new science and math teachers with 4-year scholarships and train 250,000 current teachers in summer institutes. Create a new coordinating office to manage a centralized research infrastructure fund of at least $500 million per year. Provide 30,000 scholarships and graduate fellowships for scientists. Increase federal funding for basic research in the physical sciences by 10 percent a year for 7 years. Give American companies a bigger research and development tax credit so they will keep their good jobs here instead of move them offshore. Create a new agency in the Department of Energy modeled on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to conduct breakthrough R&D, that will lessen our dependence on foreign sources of energy.

Some may wince at the price tag--$9 billion in the first year, and then it edges upward over the full seven year period. I believe the cost is low, relative to the benefits. Maintaining America's brainpower advantage will not come on the cheap.

This year, one third of State and local budgets go to fund education. More than 50 percent of American students have a Federal grant or loan to help pay for college. The Federal Government spends nearly $30 billion per year on research at universities and another $34 billion to fund 36 national research laboratories.

Just last year, Congress spent $85 billion to fight the war in Iraq, $71 billion for hurricane recovery, and $352 billion to finance the national debt. If we fail to invest the funds necessary to keep our brainpower advantage, we'll not have an economy capable of producing enough money to pay the bills for war, social security, hurricanes, Medicaid, and debt.

The legislation we are introducing today has strong bipartisan support. It is our hope President Bush will make it a focus of his State of the Union Address and of his remaining 3 years in office--and that future candidates for president will make it the center of their campaigns. Aside from our national security, there is no greater challenge than maintaining our brainpower advantage so we can keep our good paying jobs and strengthen our economy. That is the surest way to keep America on top.

I hope my colleagues will join us in this critical effort to protect America's competitive edge.

Mr. President, in the hours after the terrorist attacks on 9/11, America's air traffic controllers rose to meet the tremendous challenges of that day.

After halting all takeoffs, controllers began clearing the skies over America. Under unprecedented conditions, controllers guided 4,500 planes carrying 350,000 passengers to safe landings. They also rerouted more than 1,100 of the 4,500 flights within the first 15 minutes of the landing order--about one every second--and cleared the skies over America within 2\1/2\ hours.

That kind of performance was wholly dependent on the caliber and training of the world's finest air traffic controllers. And as I come to the floor of the Senate today, there are hundreds of pilots flying commercial airplanes under an air traffic controller's guidance. Each and every day, the lives of thousands of people are in the hands of each and every air traffic controller.

Because what they do is vital to our safety, I became very concerned by a letter I received from Illinois air traffic controller Michael Hannigan last December. He wrote that ``the air traffic controllers, who work aircraft everyday, often six days a week, are not being allowed to negotiate in good faith with the Federal Aviation Administration.'' And he asked for me to help ``the hard working Federal employees that want the protections as a labor union that they should have a right to bargain for.''

What was clear in Michael's plea was the sense that he and his colleagues felt that they were being treated unfairly. I looked into it and came to the conclusion that if we did not restore a fair negotiation procedure, it would threaten agency morale and effectiveness.

The problem is this: lower courts have determined that the FAA Administrator currently has the extraordinary authority to impose wages and working conditions on her workers without arbitration. In order to do that, she merely has to declare an impasse in negotiations and if Congress does not set everything else aside and stop her from imposing her terms and conditions within 60 days, the Administrator can go ahead and act unilaterally. That authority denies air traffic controllers and all other FAA employees the opportunity to engage in and conclude negotiations in good faith.

To diffuse the management-labor tension at the agency and bring the FAA together, I am introducing ``The FAA Fair Labor Management Dispute Resolution Act of 2006''. I am also proud to say that Senator Inouye, the co-chair of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committees; Senator Murray, the ranking member on the Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee; and Senator Lautenberg, a member on the Commerce Committee Subcommittee on Transportation, are joining me in this effort.

The FAA Fair Labor Management Dispute Resolution Act replaces the FAA Administrator's arbitrary authority with neutral binding arbitration in the case of an impasse in labor-management negotiations. In arbitration, both labor and management would have to make concessions, and both would be able to accept the outcome as fair.

We need this legislation now because the FAA Administrator is engaged in contract negotiations with the agency's two largest groups of workers--the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) and Professional Airways Systems Specialists (PASS). In both cases, negotiations have been contentious. And the FAA's workers fear that the Administrator is not intent on reaching fair, voluntary agreements given her previous negotiations. Indeed, the Administrator has already used her authority to impose wages and working conditions without arbitration or agreement on NATCA's 11 non-air traffic controller bargaining units, and she stands at impasse with four of PASS's five bargaining units.

The Administrator has made three arguments in defense of her actions: 1. the FAA needs the authority ``to operate more like a business''; 2. air traffic controller pay is ``inappropriate given the financial circumstances of the airline industry the system serves''; and 3. changing the law to send an impasse to binding arbitration would essentially ``change the rules of the game during halftime.''

But the agency's employees point out that the agency is not a business driven to cut costs in pursuit of profit, it is a public agency with no margin for error. They also argue that the nation's air safety should not depend on how well or poorly the airlines are doing financially. And, if the rules are unfair, the employees argue they should be changed before negotiations conclude.

Regardless of the merits of each side's positions, if the Administrator is able to impose her chosen conditions on air traffic controllers, it will have two negative effects on the agency: 1. it will lead to an erosion of talent at the agency with vital, retirement- eligible air traffic controllers interpreting such agency action as an invitation to

retire; and 2. it will make recruiting needed replacement employees that much more difficult.

I recognize that negotiations between the Administrator and the air traffic controllers are difficult. However, it is in the best interest of the agency and public safety to have management and labor cooperate in contract negotiations and if that is impossible, then no one side should be able to impose its views on the other. Only neutral arbitration can produce a fair outcome that the entire organization can accept.

More than 2,900 air traffic controllers will be eligible to retire this year, and 7,100 controllers could leave the agency within the next nine years. Meeting this management challenge will require cooperation between labor and management. Moreover, rising tension between the FAA Administrator and FAA employees threatens this vital agency's effectiveness at every level and, as a result, threatens the safety of passengers.

Again, the legislation we are introducing today would encourage both sides in all FAA labor-management negotiations to reach a voluntary agreement and in the case of impasse, it would allow the FAA to move forward after binding arbitration, bring its workers together, and focus on other challenges because no one side will have had arbitrary authority.

The FAA's employees are dedicated, hard working public servants responsible for helping ensure the safety of the flying public. It is stressful, important work. We must value that work and treat them fairly.

Mr. President, in the hours after the terrorist attacks on 9/11, America's air traffic controllers rose to meet the tremendous challenges of that day.

After halting all takeoffs, controllers began clearing the skies over America. Under unprecedented conditions, controllers guided 4,500 planes carrying 350,000 passengers to safe landings. They also rerouted more than 1,100 of the 4,500 flights within the first 15 minutes of the landing order--about one every second--and cleared the skies over America within 2\1/2\ hours.

That kind of performance was wholly dependent on the caliber and training of the world's finest air traffic controllers. And as I come to the floor of the Senate today, there are hundreds of pilots flying commercial airplanes under an air traffic controller's guidance. Each and every day, the lives of thousands of people are in the hands of each and every air traffic controller.

Because what they do is vital to our safety, I became very concerned by a letter I received from Illinois air traffic controller Michael Hannigan last December. He wrote that ``the air traffic controllers, who work aircraft everyday, often six days a week, are not being allowed to negotiate in good faith with the Federal Aviation Administration.'' And he asked for me to help ``the hard working Federal employees that want the protections as a labor union that they should have a right to bargain for.''

What was clear in Michael's plea was the sense that he and his colleagues felt that they were being treated unfairly. I looked into it and came to the conclusion that if we did not restore a fair negotiation procedure, it would threaten agency morale and effectiveness.

The problem is this: lower courts have determined that the FAA Administrator currently has the extraordinary authority to impose wages and working conditions on her workers without arbitration. In order to do that, she merely has to declare an impasse in negotiations and if Congress does not set everything else aside and stop her from imposing her terms and conditions within 60 days, the Administrator can go ahead and act unilaterally. That authority denies air traffic controllers and all other FAA employees the opportunity to engage in and conclude negotiations in good faith.

To diffuse the management-labor tension at the agency and bring the FAA together, I am introducing ``The FAA Fair Labor Management Dispute Resolution Act of 2006''. I am also proud to say that Senator Inouye, the co-chair of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committees; Senator Murray, the ranking member on the Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee; and Senator Lautenberg, a member on the Commerce Committee Subcommittee on Transportation, are joining me in this effort.

The FAA Fair Labor Management Dispute Resolution Act replaces the FAA Administrator's arbitrary authority with neutral binding arbitration in the case of an impasse in labor-management negotiations. In arbitration, both labor and management would have to make concessions, and both would be able to accept the outcome as fair.

We need this legislation now because the FAA Administrator is engaged in contract negotiations with the agency's two largest groups of workers--the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) and Professional Airways Systems Specialists (PASS). In both cases, negotiations have been contentious. And the FAA's workers fear that the Administrator is not intent on reaching fair, voluntary agreements given her previous negotiations. Indeed, the Administrator has already used her authority to impose wages and working conditions without arbitration or agreement on NATCA's 11 non-air traffic controller bargaining units, and she stands at impasse with four of PASS's five bargaining units.

The Administrator has made three arguments in defense of her actions: 1. the FAA needs the authority ``to operate more like a business''; 2. air traffic controller pay is ``inappropriate given the financial circumstances of the airline industry the system serves''; and 3. changing the law to send an impasse to binding arbitration would essentially ``change the rules of the game during halftime.''

But the agency's employees point out that the agency is not a business driven to cut costs in pursuit of profit, it is a public agency with no margin for error. They also argue that the nation's air safety should not depend on how well or poorly the airlines are doing financially. And, if the rules are unfair, the employees argue they should be changed before negotiations conclude.

Regardless of the merits of each side's positions, if the Administrator is able to impose her chosen conditions on air traffic controllers, it will have two negative effects on the agency: 1. it will lead to an erosion of talent at the agency with vital, retirement- eligible air traffic controllers interpreting such agency action as an invitation to

retire; and 2. it will make recruiting needed replacement employees that much more difficult.

I recognize that negotiations between the Administrator and the air traffic controllers are difficult. However, it is in the best interest of the agency and public safety to have management and labor cooperate in contract negotiations and if that is impossible, then no one side should be able to impose its views on the other. Only neutral arbitration can produce a fair outcome that the entire organization can accept.

More than 2,900 air traffic controllers will be eligible to retire this year, and 7,100 controllers could leave the agency within the next nine years. Meeting this management challenge will require cooperation between labor and management. Moreover, rising tension between the FAA Administrator and FAA employees threatens this vital agency's effectiveness at every level and, as a result, threatens the safety of passengers.

Again, the legislation we are introducing today would encourage both sides in all FAA labor-management negotiations to reach a voluntary agreement and in the case of impasse, it would allow the FAA to move forward after binding arbitration, bring its workers together, and focus on other challenges because no one side will have had arbitrary authority.

The FAA's employees are dedicated, hard working public servants responsible for helping ensure the safety of the flying public. It is stressful, important work. We must value that work and treat them fairly.

Mr. President, today I rise to introduce legislation to address yet another serious flaw in the Medicare prescription drug benefit that has come to light.

On January 1, the new Medicare prescription drug benefit went into effect. Overnight, millions of seniors and disabled Americans found themselves thrown into a confusing and complex transition.

Some of our poorest and most vulnerable beneficiaries, those in assisted living facilities, have found themselves suddenly forced to produce copayments to get the medications they need.

These are beneficiaries with serious mental illnesses who have been stabilized on medications, and people with developmental and physical disabilities who have little or no incomes and no way to afford the medicines that they depend on.

The bill I am introducing will fix this problem by waiving copayments for this group of vulnerable beneficiaries and reimbursing them for any copayments they have already been forced to shoulder.

This is just one of so many problems we have seen plaguing this program. The first 26 days of this program have been a disaster for far too many seniors and disabled across New York and across the country.

We have heard reports from our poorest seniors, who were being charged hundreds of dollars for drugs. We have heard reports of disabled individuals asked to provide doctor's notes certifying a need for their medications and of beneficiaries leaving pharmacies without the drugs they depend on to keep them healthy.

As a result of problems with computer systems, phone lines, and the inability of Medicare and private plans to provide correct information to those on the front lines of care, millions of people around the country have faced problems receiving this new benefit.

I am working on all fronts to help Medicare beneficiaries weather this transition. Before this program went into effect, it was clear that those dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid, our poorest and most vulnerable seniors and disabled, would have a particular challenge navigating this transition. I was very concerned that many these Medicare recipients would walk up to their pharmacy counters on January 1 and be unable to get their prescriptions filled.

In anticipation of these problems, I introduced legislation in December to keep these Medicare recipients from falling through the cracks by stepping up outreach and education to pharmacists and providing reimbursement to pharmacists who are charged a transaction fee to access beneficiary information through Medicare. I also cosponsored legislation to give Medicare beneficiaries more time to enroll in the new program.

And I issued a resource guide, now available in both English and Spanish, to help New Yorkers navigate this new program. To date more than 75,000 copies of the guide have been distributed.

Since the new program went into effect, I have repeatedly urged the Bush administration to address the problems plaguing this program. And last week, I introduced comprehensive legislation along with several of my Senate colleagues, that includes my bill to help pharmacists help their customers, and makes the other fixes I have been calling for: provisions to improve outreach and education, fix problems with drug plans transition programs, protect the benefits of seniors who also have coverage from a retiree drug plan, and make sure that States and low income beneficiaries are reimbursed for excessive costs they have been forced to shoulder by the inept implementation of the new benefit.

We owe it to our seniors and disabled Americans to get this right. And I will keep fighting to ensure that we do.