Devil's Staircase Wilderness Act of 2011

As the senior Senator from New York relinquishes the chair to his colleague from New York, I want to thank both of them for their amazing leadership in every issue we turn to today.

Senator Schumer's work to help us bring this transportation bill to the floor is exemplary. And Senator Schumer knows, as Senator Gillibrand

knows and every one of us knows, we cannot have a strong economy if we cannot move goods, if we cannot move people, if commerce comes to a halt. So we have to pass a transportation bill to make sure our highways are adequate, our bridges are safe, our commerce can move, and our transit systems can carry people from one place to another.

I want to say to my colleague who is now sitting in the chair, Senator Gillibrand, that I listened to her remarks. I am very touched by them. She talked about women's voices, and she is dedicated to ensuring they are heard. Let me assure my friend that her voice has been heard on this and so many other important issues. And it is an effective voice. She was the one who came to me when the Republicans started to say they did not think it was necessary for women to have access to birth control with no copay through their insurance, and said: Barbara, do you understand that a full 15 percent of women are prescribed birth control pills because they want to avoid ovarian cancer, they want to make sure that a cyst on an ovary does not get out of control, they want to avoid debilitating monthly pain, and even it is used for terrible skin conditions?

So when we hear our colleagues talk about birth control as if it is some unnecessary prescription--although you never hear them say it when it comes to Viagra, I would note--let me point out it is necessary. We will be on our feet day after day, month after month, hour after hour, and minute after minute, because we are not going to let them take away medicine from women. Oh, no. They are not. They will not. And the women of this country will not have it. They are engaged in this debate. They understand it. My friend from New York has been an incredible voice.

So here we are. We are on the highway bill. You may wonder, why is it that the Senator from New York came and talked about the issue of birth control and women's health when we are on a highway bill? Well, here is the news: My Republican colleagues are so intent on taking away women's rights, rights to health care, that they insisted on having a vote to take away these rights before they would allow the highway bill to move forward. Can you imagine?

I think it appropriate that at this point I pay tribute to my colleague, Senator Olympia Snowe, who has been an amazing colleague, who has been a voice of reason, a voice of progress, over the many years she has served. I have served with her in the House and the Senate, I do not know, decades. I will miss Olympia Snowe. But let's listen to what she said. She said: This place has become so polarized, so partisan we cannot move forward.

I would submit to you that the situation we find ourselves in at this moment is exhibit A on why someone such as Olympia Snowe is saying this has been a privilege and a wonderful thing, but I think I am going to move on. Because here we have a highway bill that is completely bipartisan. And again, my colleague in the chair from New York, Senator Gillibrand, is a very important member of the Environment and Public Works Committee. We passed a bill out of our committee with a vote of 18 to 0. We had 100 percent support in a polarized time because everybody understands we have to make sure we have a No. 1 transportation system, a class A transportation system in this great country of ours, a vision that was first brought to us by Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s when he said, we have to be able to have a network of national highways.

So here is a bill that comes out of the EPW Committee 100 percent bipartisan. The section that dealt with banking comes out of the Banking Committee 100 percent bipartisan. It comes out of the Finance Committee very bipartisan, not 100 percent but very. And in Commerce it had a problem, which we have rectified, and it is now bipartisan.

So four committees have done their work on the transportation highway bill, and all of them have been bipartisan. So we come to the floor--I think this is now the third week or the second week on the bill--the second week on the bill--and we have gone nowhere, because in order for us to move forward, the Republicans are insisting on a vote to take away women's health care. So Senator Reid said to them: Fine. We will vote on it Thursday morning. But let it be known throughout this land what is going on.

Sometimes people tune in and they say: Oh, it is so complicated, I cannot follow it. It is not complicated. Here is where we are: We have a bipartisan bill, 2.8 million jobs are at stake. We have to do it. The transportation bill is going to expire, the authorization, so we will not have any program in place March 31. We have to do this work, and we cannot move forward unless we have a vote on a polarizing amendment--a polarizing amendment.

How did it come about, this polarizing amendment? It came about because we passed the health care law that made some incredible breakthroughs. Two of the biggest breakthroughs, I think, in that bill is that we for the first time said to insurance companies and employers: When you provide insurance for your people, it must include a list of essential health care benefits and preventive health care benefits.

Let me read you the list of essential health care benefits that people of America are going to have unless the Blunt amendment passes and takes this away. This is the list of essential benefits the Blunt amendment would take away: Emergency services, hospitalization, maternity and newborn care, mental health treatment, preventive and wellness services, pediatric services, prescription drugs, ambulatory patient services, rehabilitative services and devices, and laboratory services.

These are categories of services that health insurance plans must cover under health care reform. But if the Blunt amendment passes--and we know it started because of birth control, but it has reached beyond that to every single essential health benefit that any employer in this Nation, if Blunt passes, could say: I do not want to do any of these. I do not want to do some of these, because I have a moral objection.

So if you worked for an employer who believes that prayer is what we need to cure illness--and by the way, that is their right. I would fight for their right to believe that. They would be able, however, to tell you that that is your alternative, and they do not have to provide any of those essential health benefits in their insurance plan.

The other thing the Blunt amendment does is it says that no more preventive health benefits will be required. Under the law, these are the preventive health benefits that are required to be offered to you. You do not have to take them if you are an employee who has an objection to any of these things. You do not have to do it, but they have to be offered to you: Breast cancer screenings, cervical cancer screenings, hepatitis A and B vaccines, measles and mumps vaccine, colorectal cancer screening, diabetes screening, cholesterol screening, blood pressure screening, obesity screening, tobacco cessation, autism screening, hearing screening for newborns, sickle cell screening, fluoride supplements, tuberculosis testing for children, depression screening, osteoporosis screening, flu vaccines for children and the elderly, contraception.

Contraception is a preventive health benefit because we know it prevents unintended pregnancies and prevents abortion and prevents illness. Fifteen percent of people take it to prevent illness. Also, well-woman visits, HPV testing, STD screening, HIV screening, breast feeding support, domestic violence screening, and gestational diabetes screening--all of these have to be provided. But if you don't want to take contraception, you can say, no; I am not interested in that. If you don't want to have your child to have a vaccine--personally, I think that is terrible--but you don't have to. But that is what is required.

Under the Blunt amendment, let's be clear. Any employer who simply says they have a moral objection can say: Sorry, see this list. We are not going to do 6, 7, 8, 9, or 10 things here. For example, obesity screening, we believe that is your problem, and we have a moral objection to that. Colorectal cancer screening, I have an objection to that because, again, my religion says it doesn't do any good.

This is why Blunt is so dangerous. It is about denying women the absolute right to have contraception offered to them--it does that, but it does a lot

more than that. Again, we are on a highway transportation bill. It is 2.8 million jobs. It came out of four committees, and it is bipartisan. It will keep this country moving. It will keep this economy going.

Madam President, I want you to imagine one Super Bowl stadium filled with people. Think about what that looks like in your mind's eye. Every seat in that stadium is filled. Now imagine 15 of those stadiums filled. That is how many unemployed construction workers there are in this great country today.

Yes, we are making progress. Yes, President Obama took us out of the worst recession since the Great Depression that he inherited. Yes, he turned it around. But he and we say, we have to do more. We cannot just say, because we are creating jobs now, it is enough. The President knows it; we know it. We were bleeding 800,000 jobs when he took over, and now we have stemmed it and we are creating a couple hundred jobs a month--100,000, 200,000--thank goodness. We have created, in the last 6 months or so, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of jobs.

Here is the point: Why on Earth would we take a U-turn as we are on the road to economic recovery, as we are on the road to a bill that is absolutely necessary, and take up the issue of women's health? I am telling you, I believe it is radical. I believe it is taking us backward. I believe it is hurtful to women. I call on every woman, regardless of political party, to make your voice heard against the Blunt amendment. You are being attacked.

What the President did in dealing with the issue of contraception showed the wisdom of Solomon. He basically said: If you are a religious institution and you have an objection to offering contraception, you don't have to do it. So 335,000 churches are exempt. I feel sorry for the employees who may not agree with the church, but they work for the church and therefore that is the rule.

Religiously affiliated hospitals and universities raised a question-- you know, they serve a broad array of people. They hire a broad array of people, not just people of one faith but of many faiths and of many points of view. They raised the question, saying: We don't feel comfortable. The President came up with a compromise that has been embraced by Catholic Charities, Catholics United, and the Catholic Health Association. The only group that doesn't support him are the bishops.

If I could respectfully say to them, they don't deliver the health care services; Catholic Charities does, and the Catholic Health Association does. They represent thousands of providers. So they have embraced the President's compromise. But not my Republican friends. They didn't. They want to cause trouble and take away the ability for women to have access to contraception, without a copay--while they support supplying Viagra to men. It is stunning.

I think this is rippling across the land. I don't know if we have the photo--I don't think we have it on the floor--of the last panel that was held in the House, and my friend from New York talked about it. We do have it.

This is a picture. A picture is worth 1,000 words. This is a panel on women's health focused on contraception. Where are the women? Where are the women? One, two, three, four, five men; they are talking about women's health care. Not one of them ever had a baby. Not one of them ever had a monthly cramp. They are talking about women's health care like they know all about it.

The chairman, Chairman Issa, didn't see immediately that there was a problem. There was a woman sitting there, and she asked to be heard. She said, ``I have a story to tell this panel.'' Oh, no, he didn't want to hear from her. He said she wasn't qualified. Do you know what her story was? It was about how a friend of hers who was denied the contraceptive pill and instead developed a terrible tumor on her ovary. He didn't think that was worthy of discussion.

This issue is rippling through the land. It says everything to me. We women in the Senate are not going to allow this to go unnoticed. That is a symbol of what is happening to women in this country. In the very States that are passing legislation that some have dubbed ``State rape,'' because it would require a woman to be subjected to an invasive vaginal probe without her consent, now they are backing off. That was the bill that almost passed in the Virginia Legislature. Now they have said: OK, it is a sonogram. There is another way to do it. It took women crying out and saying: Wait a minute. Are you kidding? And they are backing off.

Well, they better back up overall because this is the 21st century. Women should be trusted and respected and honored and believed. When you tell a woman she needs to be lectured by some stranger on her own personal decisions, right away you are questioning her worth. So the issue goes so far beyond the ability to obtain birth control pills. The issue goes so far beyond that. It really does. You can stand up here and say it is not about women's health, it is really about religious freedom, but as Patty Murray, my colleague from Washington, has said: When they say it is not about contraception, it is about contraception.

Others have said: When they say it is not really about the money, it is really about the money. When they say it is not really about politics, it is about politics.

This is about contraception, making it difficult for women who don't have the means to have some sense of control over their reproductive lives and to be able to access a pill that could help them live a healthier life and live longer and free of pain.

So they will come and say: Oh, Senator Boxer, this isn't about contraception; it is about religious freedom. The President has taken care of the religious objection. I described how he did it, and I will say it again. He said if you are a religious institution, you don't have to provide contraception. If you are a religiously affiliated institution, there will be a way for a third party to deal with it. The Catholic health organizations support it, Catholic Charities. He has come up with a compromise. There is no reason to have this polarizing debate. Everybody should have religious freedom, including the employees, including the boss, including everybody. So no one under the President's plan is forced to do something they don't want to do. We just want to make sure when the Institute of Medicine tells us that availability to contraception saves lives and protects health, women get a chance to get it if they want. If they don't want it, they don't have to get it. Of course not.

Again, I will end where I started, talking about my colleague Olympia Snowe, who is retiring, not running again, because she said we are so polarized. This is exhibit 1. We are on a transportation bill that is bipartisan, but the other side can't let it rest, cannot move forward on it, and cannot move to make sure our businesses and our workers have a brighter future. Oh, no, they have to delay it.

By the way, it is not only with this birth control amendment and women's health amendment but with other amendments that have nothing to do with the subject. It is what makes the American people wonder what we are doing here.

I want to show some charts that deal with transportation issues right now. I will continue talking about Olympia Snowe for a minute. I went through some of the issues that I worked on with her. I want to talk about them. She and I wrote the Airline Passenger Bill of Rights Act. We were very strong because we knew our constituents were getting stuck on aircraft hour after hour, stuck on the tarmac, with no food, kids screaming, nightmare scenarios, 9, 10 hours on the runway. We thought passengers deserved a bill of rights.

We worked with outside groups, some wonderful people. Lo and behold, it passed as part of the FAA bill that finally got enacted. We didn't get 100 percent of what we wanted, but we got 90 percent. I was proud to work with her.

In 2009, following a tragic Buffalo commuter plane crash, which I know the occupant of the chair remembers, Senator Olympia Snowe wrote a bill to implement the recommendations of the National Transportation Safety Board to make sure these pilots get enough rest and that they are well-trained. We were very pleased that moved forward. We worked together--Olympia and I--on the Purple Heart for POWs to make

sure the Purple Heart included prisoners of war who died in captivity and they could get that to bless their memory.

We worked together against the global gag rule.

We worked together and wrote a letter to the President--President Obama--asking him to appoint a woman to replace Justice David Souter.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record this letter I will be quoting from.

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

The most important thing is to nominate an exceptionally

well-qualified, intelligent person to replace Justice Souter.

. . . Women make up more than half of our population, but

right now hold only one seat out of nine. . . . This is out

of balance. In order for the Court to be relevant, it needs

to be diverse and better reflect America.

Then, of course, the President nominated Sonia Sotomayor and we were very excited about that.

So it was wonderful to work with her on that, and we worked together on respecting human rights in Tibet and led 27 Senators in a letter to Chinese leader Hu Jintao asking that Tibetans be respected. Regarding women in Afghanistan, we worked together to ask Afghan leaders to revise a law that would legalize marital rape and impose other Taliban restrictions on Shiite women in Afghanistan.

This is just a partial list of issues I have worked on with Olympia Snowe, and I will do a longer tribute for the record at a later time.

But, again, as I heard this news, I was first filled with worry about her health, and I hoped she was OK. But she has clarified she absolutely is. So I wish her nothing but the best. I know she will always work on issues because she is so good at looking at a problem and solving it and not thinking first whether it is Democratic or it is Republican or where it falls on the political scales. So I have appreciated working with her on so many of these important issues that have come before us.

I think the Senate should take a minute to think about this in relation to this bill. The whole world is watching us. When I say that, I don't mean the whole world literally, but I think the country is watching us. Why do I say that? Because 1,000 groups have endorsed our moving ahead with this bill--a coalition of 1,075 organizations from all 50 States. Here is what they said about this Transportation bill:

There are few Federal efforts that rival the potential of

critical transportation infrastructure investments for

sustaining and creating jobs and economic activity.

This is what they wrote. So they know this is the way to sustain and revive economic activity. This is what is at stake: Right now, 1.8 million jobs are created because we have a transportation bill. That bill ends March 31. So 1.8 million jobs are at stake if we don't act. Because of the way we wrote our bill, we leveraged funding, and this gained great bipartisan support. We have greatly increased the TIFIA Program, which is the transportation infrastructure financing program, which leverages funds by 30 times. Because of this, we believe we will see another 1 million jobs created. So we are talking 2.8 million jobs that are at stake. Yet we have an amendment on women's health. I just keep coming back to how insane that is.

I also wish to note again the many unemployed construction workers. Remember, I said 15 stadiums could be filled with unemployed construction workers. This is the number: 1.48 million construction industry workers unemployed. The unemployment rate is 17.7 percent among construction industry workers; whereas, the national unemployment rate is 8.3 percent. We know the housing sector is still having major problems getting out of the funk it is in. It is tough. So we have to do this bill.

I have a picture, just in case your mind's eye wasn't able to conjure it up. Here is a picture of a stadium filled with about 100,000 people. So 15 of these stadiums would basically reflect all the unemployed construction workers.

Which are the groups that are supporting us and are they bipartisan? Oh, my goodness. I don't think I could share with everyone a more bipartisan list of organizations than the AAA, the American Association of State Highway and Transit Officials, the American Bus Association, the American Concrete Pavement Association, the American Council of Engineering Companies, the American Highway Users Alliance, the American Moving & Storage Association, the American Public Transportation Association, the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, the American Society of Civil Engineers--and it goes on and on--the trucking association, the Metropolitan Transportation Organizations, Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, Governors Highway Safety Association, International Union of Operating Engineers, Motor & Equipment Manufacturers Association, National Asphalt Pavement Association, National Association of Development Organizations, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association, National Construction Alliance.

Oh, it goes on. That is just a partial list of those 1,000-plus organizations.

When we started our bill the Presiding Officer will remember we made history because we had Richard Trumka, the head of the AFL CIO, sitting next to Tom Donohue, the head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Donohue and Trumka, the odd couple. They are fighting and arguing on everything. Yet they came together in front of our committee because they know we will all benefit. All of America benefits when we do a bill such as this.

I think I have shared a lot, but there is one more point. If we allow this bill to go away, and we are stuck with an extension because the transportation fund is not collecting enough gas tax revenues--and there is a good-news reason for that, which is we are getting better fuel economy and we are using public transit a lot more, so the gas tax is not coming in at the rate it normally does--we will be down 35 percent in the fund. So right away--right away--631,000 jobs are gone. But what is so great about our bill is that four committees, including the Finance Committee, filled the gap in a way that was bipartisan.

Our story is a great story to tell. If I had to tell my grandkids a story, I would say: Once upon a time in America, we didn't have a national road system. But a Republican President named Dwight Eisenhower had a vision. He was a general. He knew it was important to move things in a reliable way, and he had a vision of a national transportation system, and everybody in the country said: What a great idea. So we started to have a bill every few years to authorize a highway fund. Then somebody came up with the notion of it being funded by the users, so that the gas tax would go--part of it--to this fund and we would have enough in that fund to build our highways and our bridges, and then, later on, our transit systems. People said: We have a lot of wear and tear on the roads. What if a lot of people took public transit and got out of their cars? It would be better for the air quality. It would be better for everybody and for the state of the roads, and so they were married up, highways and transit and bridges.

Now we have to live up to that legacy and not bog this bill down with birth control amendments and women's health amendments and amendments

about Egypt or anything else. There is time for that. We don't mind those battles but not on this bill. Infrastructure is the name of the game. We all know it--Republicans and Democrats.

So I say, let's stop playing games with this bill, please. Let's dispose of this birth control amendment, this women's health amendment. It doesn't belong on here. But if that is what it takes to get us off dead center, fine, let's go. To coin Olympia Snowe's phrase, it will be polarizing. It will not be pretty, but we will dispose of that and then we will move on and dispose of this bill.

I hope we will not have to face 5, 10, 20, 30 unrelated amendments. I hope we can get it down to a small number and move on. Let's pass this bill, lift the workers and lift our businesses. Every dollar, almost-- most of the dollars--goes straight to the private sector through our States, through our local entities.

Then let's hold our head up high when we go home. So when I go to the supermarket I don't have people coming to me and saying: What is going on over there? Birth control on a highway bill. What, are you kidding? I don't want to have those conversations every time I go to the supermarket. What are these guys thinking, they say. I say: I don't know. I can't speak for them. I think it is an agenda that appeals to the far right of this Nation. It is not a mainstream way to go.

In closing now, for those who say Republicans and Democrats never work together, that is not true. Senator Inhofe and I are as far away from each other politically as two human beings can get, but we teamed up and put aside our ideologies, put aside our pet peeves, put aside things that, perhaps in our hearts, we truly wanted to do on this bill, and we met in the middle. He was over here and I was over here and we ended up right in the middle. We said: We can do this, and we proved we could do it. It was a challenge that was put to us by the leadership of both our parties and we met that test and other committees met that test.

So here we are. Are we now to say to committee chairs and ranking members, Republicans and Democrats alike, forget about it? It is not worth it. Work your heart out.

I pay tribute to my staff, my Democratic staff, and to Senator Inhofe's Republican staff. They worked night after night after night to come together on this bill. Then we were given an assignment 2 weeks ago to resolve the germane amendments and they have come together and they have resolved I don't know how many but dozens of amendments. So is the message, work your little hearts out, have your staff give up their nights with their families and come up with a bipartisan bill and all of a sudden have it subjected to some polarizing amendments that have nothing to do with the subject?

Please, let's not see this bill go down. Because if this bill goes down, let me tell you, I, for one, will go to as many cities as I can and counties in this country and tell the truth about what happened. There is no reason for us not to get this done, especially when we have the Chamber of Commerce working with the AFL CIO, we have Republican- leaning business organizations working with Democratic-leaning worker organizations all throughout this country--over 1,000 of them. I talk to them every week to say thank you to them for keeping the pressure on all of us to keep moving forward. When we have that kind of bipartisanship in our committees, when we have that type of bipartisan bill on the floor, when we have that type of bipartisan support in the country, it is time to move forward and get the job done for the American people.

I thank the Chair, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, do we have a specific order here for speaking?

Mr. President, I am on the floor here today, as I was earlier, to talk about the dangers of this Blunt amendment.

Senator Blunt says it has nothing to do with providing health care to women; it has nothing to do with that. It is just about freedom of religion, he says. Well, as many people say, when someone comes up to you and says it is not about the money, it is about the money. And when someone says it is not about access to women's health, it is about religious freedom, it is about access to women's health care. Why do I say that? Because that is what this debate is all about. And we see it all over the country with rightwing Republicans trying to take away women's health care. Why are they trying to do this? You would have to ask them. But we are here to say no.

The thing about the Blunt amendment is, it would not only say that any insurer or any employer for any reason could stop women from getting access to contraception; it could also stop all of our families from getting access to essential health care services and preventive health care services.

Why do I say that? Let's take a look at the Blunt amendment. Enough of this chatter. Let's take a look at it. Here is what it says: A health care plan shall not be considered to have failed to provide the essential health care benefits package described in our law or preventive health care services described in our law if they exercise what they call a moral objection.

So say someone has a moral objection to someone who has smoked, and the person wants to give up smoking and they want to get a smoking cessation program as part of their insurance. If the insurer says, That is your fault, you are not getting it; or someone may have diabetes and the employer or the insurer says, You know what? That was your problem. You ate too much sugar as a kid. Too bad.

That is what the Blunt amendment does and that is a fact. Here it is. I placed it here because this is the amendment. That is what it says.

I wish to show a list of preventive services and essential health care services that the Blunt amendment threatens. Remember, the Blunt amendment says there is a new clause that now says any insurer or any employer can deny any one of these benefits: emergency services, hospitalization, maternity and newborn care, mental health treatment, pediatric services, rehabilitative services--that is just some.

Here is the list of the preventive health care benefits that any insurer or any employer could deny: breast cancer screenings, cervical cancer, hepatitis A and B vaccines, yes--contraception, HIV screening, autism screening, hearing screening for newborns.

This is the list. Why do I show this list? Particularly because I know the Senator served on the HELP Committee and helped put this together. This is the list of services that was put together by the expert physicians in the Institute of Medicine, this list, preventive health care, and this list, essential health benefits.

I was stunned to come on the floor and hear Senator Ayotte invoke the name of our dear colleague and our dearly missed colleague, Ted Kennedy. She tried to imply that he would support the Blunt amendment.

She is not the first Republican to do it. I am calling on my Republican friends to stop right now because there are several reasons why they are wrong to do that. First of all, Ted Kennedy, in one of his last acts, voted for the health care bill. He voted for the health care bill that came out of the HELP Committee. He helped to write the preventive section. He helped to write the essential health benefits section. He would never ever--as his son has said--support the Blunt amendment that would say to every employer in this country if they don't feel like offering any of these, they don't have to.

He fought hard for these. He wouldn't give an exception to an insurance company or a nonreligious employer, never.

How else do I know that to be the case? I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a list of bills that Senator Kennedy cosponsored.

What are these bills? These are bills that called for equity for women to get contraceptive coverage. If they were given other coverage, they had the right to get contraceptive coverage. Ted Kennedy was a leader. He is a cosponsor on all these bills. Do you know for how many years? Thirteen years. For thirteen years, Ted Kennedy fought for women to get access to contraceptive coverage in their insurance.

I say to my Republican friends, don't come to the floor and invoke the name of our dear colleague. I was so proud that the first thing I did when I came to the Senate, he asked me if I would help him work on a bill to protect people who were going to clinics, women's clinics, who were being harassed at the clinic door. You know what. I worked it for him. I helped him on the floor, and I was so proud we won that. Now there is a safety zone for women when they go to a clinic for their health care, their reproductive health care. That was Ted Kennedy.

Yes, Ted Kennedy supported a conscience clause--we all do, and President Obama has taken care of that. He has stated clearly in his compromise that if you are a religious institution, you do not have to offer birth control coverage. If you are a religiously affiliated institution, you don't have to cover it directly but you do indirectly. That was a Solomon-like decision by our President. But that is not enough for my Republican colleagues. They have to fight about everything.

I ask unanimous consent also to have printed in the Record the letter Patrick Kennedy wrote to Senator Brown.

In that letter, he said: ``You are entitled to your own opinions but I ask that, moving forward, you do not confuse my father's position with your own.''

He said: ``I appreciate the past respect you have expressed for his legacy, but misstating his positions is no way to honor his life's work.''

I ask my colleagues in this debate, come and state their own views, but don't misstate the views of a dear departed colleague who for 13 years supported a woman's right to have access to contraception.

I think people watching this today have to be a bit confused because when they look up at the screen it says we are on a transportation bill. Indeed we are. Indeed we have been on it for almost 3 weeks now. I say to my colleagues who know the importance of this bill: Please, let us get to it. Let us get to the heart of the matter. We have a huge unemployment rate among construction workers. The unemployed construction workers could fill 15 Super Bowl stadiums. That is how many are unemployed. We need to get to this bill.

It is important to our businesses. It is important to our workers. It is important to our communities. It is important for our safety. It is important to fix the bridges and the highways. It is important to carry out the vision of Republican President Dwight Eisenhower, who said it was key that we be able to move people and goods through our great Nation.

When Olympia Snowe, our very respected colleague from Maine, told us yesterday she would not seek reelection, she said it was because there is so much polarization here. I said this morning, this bill is exhibit 1. Here we have an underlying bill that came out of four committees in a bipartisan way. It means we can save 1.8 million jobs, create up to 1 million new jobs, and guess what. The first amendment is birth control, women's health, an attack on women's health. We have to come to the floor and stand on our feet and fight back.

You know what. I am proud to do it. I am proud of the men and women who have stood on this floor and have come to press conferences and been on conference calls fighting for women's rights. But this issue was decided a long time ago. We know access to contraception is critical for people. A full 15 percent of women who use it use it to fight debilitating monthly pain or to make sure tumors do not grow any larger or for severe skin conditions, and the rest use it to plan their families.

When families are planned do you know what happens? The babies are healthier. The families are ready. Abortions go down in number. It is a win-win. We all know that and I always thought we could reach across the aisle and work together to make sure there was family planning. But today just proves the opposite, our colleagues on the other side, the Republicans, are bound and determined to go after women's health.

I stand opposing the Blunt amendment, thanking my colleagues for their eloquence, and hoping we can dispose of it, defeat it, and get back to our Transportation bill.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, before the Senator from Maryland leaves the floor, I think it is an opportunity to thank her so much for speaking the truth today on the floor of the Senate--just the facts-- and what the Blunt amendment is about and isn't about. Also, I watched her recite the history of trying to bring preventive care and essential health care benefits to our people, realizing that she was in that pivotal position in the HELP Committee.

I remember her looking at me one day--because we are very close friends; we are not on that particular committee together--and she said to me: Senator Kennedy asked me--I just get the chills when I think of it--to take on this issue of prevention and work with Tom Harkin and Chris Dodd and step to the plate on these essential benefits and on preventive benefits. She literally raised this issue, particularly on the prevention side--I don't know if the Presiding Officer remembers-- in caucuses, on the floor, in the committee, at press conferences, that we could have a new day in health care in this country because although we spend more than any country in the world, we are not getting the same results because we haven't invested in prevention.

As she said, it is not up to politicians to decide what prevention should look like; it is up to the doctors. Under the Senator's leadership and that of Senators Harkin and Dodd and all the wonderful members of the HELP Committee, as well as the Finance Committee--and, yes, Ted Kennedy in the background because he was quite ill, but he sent his messages, and his staff helped--they came up with a list of essential health care services that nobody could ever quarrel with. They also came up with a list of preventive health care services that were so critical to all of us, particularly to women. The great news: Proving to us that when we invest in prevention, we save so much down the line. We all know this is a fact.

Access to contraception, by the way, was put on the list not by politicians but by the Institute of Medicine because it is known that if the individual chooses that route to plan their families, that means we have fewer abortions and it means we will have healthier families, healthier babies. And many people take the birth control pill as medicine to prevent debilitating monthly pain. It is prescribed for skin diseases. It is prescribed to make sure cysts on ovaries do not keep growing and growing and possibly lose an ovary.

But what has happened--and I guess I want to ask my friend one question before she leaves--is that the Blunt amendment would say that anybody, for any reason, any day, could cancel out that whole list of preventive and essential health care services that she fought so hard for.

So when they say this is about religious freedom, no, no, no; that has been taken care of by our President. In terms of any provider that is religious or religiously affiliated, they do not have to provide contraception directly. Even Catholic Charities' response was ``We are hopeful that this is a step in the right direction . . . '', the Catholic Health Association supports the compromise, and so on. So I want to ask my friend, is she aware that when Congressman Issa held a hearing on women's health care, there was not one woman on the panel, on that first panel? Did she see those photos of that panel that was called to speak on women's health?

Yes, I do.

Absolutely.

Madam President, I just want to thank my colleague from Maryland for her eloquence and for her fighting spirit. The year I came here was following on the Anita Hill issue, when the world saw and this country saw we had no women on the Judiciary Committee. Now, our Presiding Officer sits on that committee. Senator Feinstein and Senator Moseley-Braun were the two women to serve on that committee after we saw there were no women, and they paved the way for my good friend to bring her fabulous background and expertise to the table.

But when Congressman Issa, the chairman of the committee that had no women on a panel talking about women's health--imagine, no women. Do we have that photo, Cerin? Do we have the photo of the five men testifying about women's health, talking about women's access to contraception, talking about birth control? Not one of those men ever gave birth as far as I know, unless they are a medical miracle. This photo I have in the Chamber I think is changing this country this year because a picture is worth thousands of words. Look at this picture, and we see over on the House side on that Republican side, that is who they want to hear from. When a woman in the audience said to the chair of that committee: Can I speak? I think I have some important information, he said she was not qualified. So I suppose if a person wants to be qualified to speak about women's health, they have to be a man. Her story she wanted to share was of a friend who was unable to get access to birth control because her employer did not offer it, and she was too financially strapped to purchase it. As a result, a cyst on an ovary became so large and so complicated she lost her ovary.

Now, I just want to say to my colleagues, we are on a highway bill. We have to be kidding that we have now wasted 3 weeks because we are so consumed with attacking women's health. Get over it. We are not going to go back. The women of this country will not allow it.

Look what happened in Virginia. They had a plan. They were going to

mandate an invasive procedure, a humiliating procedure, a medically unnecessary procedure to women. In Virginia the women said: What? And the Governor said: Whoops, I have some ambitions to do more than this. I better change.

I just want to say to my colleagues: Vote this down. Table this amendment, this Blunt amendment. This is not going to get us anywhere. What does it do to create one job--except new jobs for attorneys, as it sets up a whole no right of action. I am sure the trial lawyers are going to love the Republicans for this bill. It sets up a whole new right of action because somebody is going to say: I have a moral objection against giving cancer treatment to a child because I think prayer is the answer. Somebody will sue, and that employer will sue, and they will sue and they will sue and there will be money, money, money going to lawyers. Great. What did that do to help one child? What did that do to make somebody feel better? What did that do to create one job?

I know the leaders on both sides are trying to figure out a pathway forward on this highway bill. I am just saying, we better have a pathway forward. I want to say to the Presiding Officer sitting in the chair, who was a proud member of the Environment and Public Works Committee--and I hated to lose her, but everybody wanted her on their committee, so I lost her--she knows how it is. She lives in a State where a bridge collapsed. She fought hard to get that bridge rebuilt in record time. She knows how important it is to protect people by making sure our bridges are safe, that we have safe roads to schools, that we have good transit alternatives, that we fix our roads and our highways.

Madam President, 70,000 of our bridges are deficient, 50 percent of our roads are not up to standard, and we are voting on birth control? Come on. What is next? Egypt? They have a whole list of things that have nothing to do with the highway bill. Bring it on. Let the people see who is stopping progress, who is stopping this bill because at the end of March do you know what happens. We run out on the authorization of the highway bill. We run out on the authorization of the Transportation bill. We run out, and we will lose 630,000 jobs right then and there.

Instead, we can get this bill done. It is terrifically bipartisan. It came out of the committee 18 to 0. It came out of other committees with a bipartisan vote. We can get on with it, protect 1.8 million jobs, and create up to another 1 million jobs. Madam President, 2.8 million jobs are at stake, and we are debating birth control.

I think this is resonating in the country. All of a sudden, people wake up and they say: What are they doing there? What is happening there? When they see this, it is going to be very clear we have a bill that has been stuck on the floor for 3 weeks because the Republicans are demanding votes on matters that have nothing to do with the highway bill. The first one is on birth control. They are talking about something on Egypt. They are talking about something on--oh, this is a good one--repealing an environmental law that is keeping arsenic, lead, and mercury out of the air. They want to repeal that law. Great. That is great. That will really do something to make us safe.

So I am ready for these amendments. Come on to the floor. Give us a time agreement. Let's get on with it. Let's then allow the germane amendments to be offered.

The last comment I will close with is this because it is haunting me: The picture of 15 football stadiums, with every seat filled, would equal the number of unemployed construction workers we have out there today. Well over 1 million suffering because they cannot find construction work.

So I can only say, it is time to get this birth control amendment behind us. Let's beat it. Let's beat the Blunt amendment. It is a disaster. It is dangerous. It is hurtful. It is irrelevant to this bill, and it is dangerous for the country. Stop invoking the name of a departed colleague. Respect his family. Respect his memory. Let's get this vote over with. Let's go to the business at hand and create the jobs the American people are crying for.

I am very pleased to see a colleague has arrived, so I yield the floor.

Madam President, I thank Senator Whitehouse of Rhode Island for his words. Also, he is an exceptional member of the Environment and Public Works committee. First and foremost, he brings us the point of view of his State and he fights on every issue every day. He brings national leadership to the floor on the issue of infrastructure and the need to keep up with our incredible failing infrastructure--the fact that we have to fix these bridges, 70,000 of which are insufficient, and 50 percent of the roads that are not up to par. In Rhode Island, we have serious problems, and the Senator has brought those to the floor. He is a leader on a clean and healthy environment, protecting the air and water for his people.

The Senator could not be more eloquent. He is making a point that we could come up with very difficult amendments and slow things up and gum up the works, et cetera, but doesn't my friend think that with so many construction workers out of work--they have well over 15 percent unemployment in the construction industry, which is about twice the national rate, which is too high as it is--we have a chance to protect 1.8 million jobs and create another million jobs, and isn't it time to say that birth control was an issue that was resolved decades ago and let's move on to the task at hand and put people back to work?

I know my colleague worked very hard on the health care bill, am I right on that?

I remember him being so proud of the prevention piece he brought to us. He made the case to us publicly, and privately in caucus, that it would save so much money for the American people. Right now, we know, for example--and I just read this--if you have colorectal screening, you are 50 percent less likely to die of colorectal cancer. This is a screening test.

We certainly know about mammography and all of this. Is my colleague aware that what the Blunt amendment says is that any employer, religious or not, any insurance company, religious or not, can withhold any one of those preventive services from being offered to employees if they had some kind of vague moral objection? Is my colleague aware that all the work he put in on making sure that insurers cover our people for preventive services, such as mammography, colorectal screening, HIV screening, and all of these important benefits, plus a list of essential benefits just as important, that all of that could come to nothing if the Blunt amendment passed and an employer woke up and said: I know how to save money, I will have a moral objection and not offer anything? Is my friend aware of how deep this Blunt amendment reaches into health care reform?

Exactly.

Right.

I thank my friend. When I looked at him, I thought, He is one of the few people who have such a personal stake in two issues that have been merged together, unfortunately: the Blunt amendment, which would allow anyone to opt out from providing so many of the services my friend worked to make sure the American people have, plus 3 weeks we are now delayed on a bill my friend helped me with so strongly and so powerfully. So I wanted to make sure people in his State understood that he has worked so hard to make sure people have access to health care, and the Blunt amendment would drive a big Mack truck through this--not to use a kind of funny analogy on the highway bill, but that is what it would do, in the meantime stopping us from getting on to our work in creating all these jobs.

My feeling is we will defeat the Blunt amendment tomorrow. I am very hopeful. But with that in mind, Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a number of letters speaking to the Blunt amendment.

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

On behalf of millions of cancer patients, survivors and

their families, we write to express our opposition to the

amendment proposed by Senator Roy Blunt.

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

The implications of this provision could result in coverage

denials of lifesaving preventive services such as mammograms

or tobacco cessation based on employer discretion.

That is a new letter, dated today.

Then we got a letter from the Trust for America's Health. They say:

The Blunt amendment would allow any health insurance plan

or employer, religious or not, to exclude any preventive ser-

vice. . . .

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

The Human Rights Campaign Letter:

. . . The Blunt amendment would place the moral objections of

any employer over the health of millions of Americans. . . .

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

That means employers and insurance companies can not only

deny access to birth control, they can deny access to health

care service. . . .

That is signed by Advocates for Youth, America Votes, the AIDS Institute, American Association of University Women, American College of Nurses and Midwives, American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, American Medical Students, Black Women's Health Imperative, Catholics for Choice, Reproductive Rights Center, Center for Women Policy Studies, Coalition of Labor Union Women, Choice USA, Concerned Clergy for Choice, Doctors for America, EQUAL Health Network--I mean, this goes on and on--the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, Planned Parenthood, Population Connection, Progressive Majority, Society of Adolescent Health and Medicine, National Alliance to Advance Adolescent Health, National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, Trust Women/Silver Ribbon Campaign, Union for Reformed Judaism, Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations. This is a long list of organizations that oppose the Blunt amendment.

This letter came in from the Academic Pediatric Association and a number of other youth organizations. They urge us to oppose the Blunt amendment because it doesn't protect children's access to preventive services.

This is another letter signed by many more organizations, including the Spina Bifida Association, Voices for America's Children, Children's Healthcare Is a Legal Duty, Easter Seals, Family Voices, First Focus Campaign for Children--it goes on and on--American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, American Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs, Association of University Centers on Disabilities, CHILD, Inc. All these organizations have come together, and they say:

As organizations committed to the health and well-being of

infants, children, adolescents, and pregnant women, we urge

you to oppose the amendment offered by Senator Roy Blunt. . .

.

So all you are going to hear from the other side is misstatements about how the Blunt amendment is nothing more than what we have always done. Then why are you doing it? It is because it reaches so far.

We all support an exemption for religious providers. We all support that. We do not support the ability of any insurance company, nonreligious, or any employer, nonreligious, to stand up and say: You know what, I don't believe vaccines work; therefore, I don't think they should be made available to my people. And when you ask why, they say: I have a moral conviction. I have a moral conviction that people should have known better before they took that first cigarette when they were 11 or 12; therefore, I am not going to give any treatment. Too bad. They will just get lung cancer.

I mean, seriously. That is what the Blunt amendment will do. It will allow anyone--nonreligious--to say they have an objection and not offer a host of preventive and essential health care services, including contraception.

So tomorrow is our time. We are going to defeat the Blunt amendment, and when we defeat the Blunt amendment, we are going to move on to the highway bill. Hooray. And maybe, just maybe people will listen to Senator Olympia Snowe, who said we should not get tied up in knots over these controversial things and we should do what is right for the American people. I certainly support that.

There is just one more thing I want to put in the Record.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the testimony of a woman who tried very hard to be allowed to speak with a panel of men at a congressional hearing.

Madam President, this is a panel of men who were called by House Republican Chairman Issa to testify about women's health--not one woman there, but they were the experts. They denied this woman the chance to speak. If she had been allowed to speak, this is what she wanted to say:

She had a friend who went to the doctor, and the friend had a cyst on her ovary. The doctor said: You have to take birth control. That is going to help. Those pills are going to help reduce the size of that cyst.

She couldn't afford the birth control pills and her employer wouldn't cover them, so she couldn't take them. She is a student. She wrote her friend saying that the cyst ``was so painful, I woke up thinking I'd been shot.''

I will quote part of the friend's testimony relaying what her friend told her.

Without taking the birth control, a massive cyst the size

of a tennis ball had grown on her ovary. She had to have

surgery to remove her entire ovary. She's not here this

morning. She's in a doctor's office right now. Since last

year's surgery, she has been experiencing night sweats,

weight gain, and other symptoms of early menopause as a

result of the removal of her ovary. She's 32 years old. As

she put it, ``If my body is indeed in early menopause, no

fertility specialist in the world will be able to help me

have my own children. I will have no chance of giving my

mother her desperately desired grandbabies, simply because

the insurance policy that I paid for totally unsubsidized by

my school wouldn't cover my prescription for birth control

when I needed it.''

And so her friend says:

Now, in addition to facing the health complications that

come with having menopause at an early age--increased risk of

cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis--she may never be able to

be a mom.

So when we talk about the Blunt amendment, we are not talking about some obtuse issue, we are not talking about some philosophical issue. What we are talking about when we talk about the Blunt amendment is a young woman, a student at law school who couldn't afford to pay for the birth control pills which would have saved her fertility, which would have saved her horrific pain--a painful operation where she lost her ovary simply because she couldn't have access to her birth control pills.

This is not about some argument that doesn't have real consequences for our people. The Presiding Officer's constituents and my constituents deserve

to have access to preventive care. They deserve to have access to essential health care. The Blunt amendment will take that away from them. It will take that away from them. And all on a highway bill. All on a highway bill.

So let's keep the Blunt amendment away from this highway bill. This highway bill is a product of strong bipartisanship, as the Presiding Officer has told the Senate. Let's keep it clean. Let's keep out these extraneous amendments that will roll back environmental laws that are cleaning up the air, that will keep the arsenic and the mercury out of the air and the lead out of the air. Let's not roll back these laws on a highway bill. Let's get the highway bill done. When we have other arguments about other issues, let's put those issues on a relevant bill.

This is the time now for us to pull together, not pull apart. The Nation needs us to work together. It is an election year, and it is a difficult time. There is a lot of name-calling going on out there on the campaign trail, but we are still here, last I checked, and we are supposed to be doing our work for the American people. We have a chance to do it on this highway bill. Let's defeat the Blunt amendment in the morning.

I thank my friends for coming over to the floor and speaking so eloquently today against this dangerous, precedent-setting Blunt amendment that will turn back the clock on women's health and on our families' health.

I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, my colleague, the Senator from Illinois, and I live in a part of the country where these terrible weather events--tornadoes and other things--are not unusual for us. But as Senator Durbin has pointed out, we did have them last night in a number of places in southern Missouri, including Branson, the tourism strip, at one theater and one tourism location after another, as well as in Branson, Lebanon, Dallas County, and other places in southern Missouri. We had way too much experience with this last year.

As my friend has pointed out, the Federal Emergency Management people are quickly there. We had a year of experience with this, particularly after the Joplin tornado. They were terrific. We want to remember too the first responders are always our neighbors, and neighbors are coming forward to help families whose houses were lost and possessions were scattered, and even in this particular case where there are occasions where people are injured and lives have been lost as well.

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

Amendment No. 1520

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to engage in a colloquy with my Republican colleagues for 60 minutes.

Mr. President, I wish to talk about an amendment that has had lots of attention. It is an amendment that I offered on the floor a couple of weeks ago. We weren't able--the leader didn't want to get to it at the time, but the majority leader brought it up for me yesterday, and I am glad he did. I am glad we are able to talk about it.

This is an amendment that would allow religious belief or moral conviction to be an important factor in whether people comply with new health care mandates. We have long had this exemption for hiring mandates. In fact, when I served in the House of Representatives, I had been the president of a Southern Baptist university and I understood the importance of these institutions, I thought, in maintaining their faith distinctions as part of why they provide education and health care and daycare and other things. So I have long been an advocate of the principle that the Supreme Court upheld a few weeks ago 9 to 0 that there is a difference in these faith-based institutions. Now that we have health care mandates being complied with by these institutions, all this amendment does is extend the same privilege to them and others who have a religious belief or a moral conviction so that they would be able to defend their moral conviction.

We don't do anything about the mandate itself. It is important to understand that the administration--this one or any other--if the Affordable Health Care Act is still in force, can issue all the mandates that the act would allow. In fact, if a person doesn't comply with those mandates, they would have the penalties that the act would allow. But the difference is if the government wouldn't recognize a person's religious belief or moral conviction, as I think they would likely do. For example, the archdiocese in Washington, DC, is saying this is something we have long held as a tenet of our faith that we don't believe should happen, we shouldn't be a part of, and we don't want it to be a part of the insurance policies of our schools, our hospitals. My guess is if we pass this amendment, without any question, the Justice Department would say, Well, you are certainly going to be able to defend that because that has been your belief for centuries, the belief of your faith.

This amendment doesn't mention any procedure of any kind. In fact, this morning we had a reporter call the office who said we can't find the word ``contraception'' in this amendment anywhere. How is this a vote on contraception? Of course we were able to say, as we have said for 4 days, the word ``contraception'' is not in there because this is not about a specific procedure, it is about a faith principle that the first amendment guarantees.

This exact language of religious belief or moral conviction was first used in 1973 in the Public Health Services Act. It was brought to the Senate floor by Senator Church from Idaho, who I

believe was considered one of the liberals of the Senate at the time, protecting health care providers from having to be involved in procedures they didn't agree with. It is part of the Legal Services Corporation limitation in 1974, the foreign aid funding limitation in 1986, the refusal to participate in executions or prosecutions of capital crimes in 1994, the vaccination bill wherein a person comes to this country as a nonresident and they don't want to have vaccinations that are otherwise required, they don't have to have them if they have a religious belief or moral conviction against them.

The list goes on and on: The Medicare and Medicaid Counseling Act, the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan of 1998, the contraception coverage for federal employees in 1999, the DC contraception mandate in 2000, the United States Leadership Against AIDS Act in 2003.

Then this exact same language even more specifically has been in bills that weren't passed. In 1994, Senator Moynihan from New York brought a bill to the floor that Mrs. Clinton--later Senator Clinton, now Secretary Clinton--was very involved in, this 1994 health discussion. That bill said: Nothing in this title shall be construed to prevent any employer from contributing to the purchase of a standard benefits package which excludes coverage for abortion or other services if the employer objects to such services on the basis of religious belief or moral conviction.

This is Senator Moynihan less than 20 years ago in what was considered a liberal piece of legislation, putting what the country had thought since the beginning of government-paid health care was a natural part of every health care bill. In fact, the bill we are talking about that this amendment would impact is the first time the Federal Government has passed a health care bill that didn't include this language--the first time it didn't include this language. If one is not offended by the current mandate that some religions are, I think it is important to think of what one would be offended by. What in one's faith would be an offensive thing to be told one had to be a part of, and then imagine the government saying, no, a person has to be a part of that? Even if a person doesn't do it themselves, they have to pay for it, or they have to be sure that a person's employees, their associates, are a part of this thing that is offensive to that person because of religious belief or moral conviction.

Before I yield to my good friend Senator Johanns, who understands this issue so well, let me also say that, as I said, we didn't eliminate a mandate, so we can still have a mandate. The Federal Government can still come in and say: You are not offering these services so you have to pay a penalty, and then you have to go to court and prove that you have a long-held belief that this is wrong. The Court, in 1965, when this particular phrase became the boilerplate language for the law, said, You can't become a conscientious objector the day you get your draft notice, in essence; you have to have these two principles. You have to have a religious belief, a strong moral conviction, and you have to be able to go to court and prove that.

All of the fiction writers out there, in fundraising letters and otherwise, saying things such as women who have contraceptive services today wouldn't have them, of course that is not true. Of course that is not true. The women who have those services today either have them because they have found a way to pay for them themselves or they have an employer who is providing that as part of health care. That employer is not going to be able to turn around and say, I am not for that anymore because I object for some religious reason that I didn't have all the time I was providing it.

This is an important issue. It is a first amendment issue. It is an issue that group after group after group thinks violates the Religious Freedom Act--RFRA. There are six lawsuits already. I suspect they have a good chance of prevailing because it does exactly what the religious freedom law says you can't do and it needlessly forces people to participate in activities that are against their moral principles, their religious principles.

The circumstance in the country is we have 220 years of history on this. We have almost 50 years of history of government-paid health care for one group or another that always included an exemption such as this exemption. To not do this assumes that the government can make people do things that Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and others specifically said were among the rights we should defend the most vigorously; that we should hold the most dear; that we should not let a government interfere in these basic rights of conscience, a phrase of Thomas Jefferson when he wrote the New London Methodist in 1809. These rights of conscience are an area that we should not let the government get between the American people and their religious beliefs. Our laws since then, whether it is for hiring or in the case of any health care discussion, have always anticipated the protection of this first amendment right--not a specific thing but, again, if you are not offended by the things that some people are concerned about today, it is important to think about what you would be offended by, what your religious belief leads you to believe would be wrong and how you would feel if the government says now you have to be a part of that activity.

I wish to turn to my good friend from Nebraska who has been a real advocate in understanding the importance of the first amendment and the role it plays in our society.

Mr. President, I thank my friend for those good additions to what we are talking about.

I might say, also, even if there is some accounting issue that makes this appear that maybe someone you are hiring is paying for it instead of you, if this is something you are opposed to for religious grounds, it is not about the cost; it is about the fact that this is something you do not believe you should be part of.

In my particular faith, the contraception part of this is not troublesome for me. But it does not mean I should be less troubled that it bothers others or that I should care less about their religious freedom than I do mine or that I should not care about the government using the heavy hand of these fines to force people to do something.

The other point I would like to make, before I go to my friend from Idaho, is, if the government chooses to fine people, people actually have to go to court and prove they have a deep religious belief. I do not think that would be very hard for Creighton University. The entire history of the university is founded on the principles of faith that would say: This is something we do not want to be part of. If that is the case, maybe that Justice Department would not take them to court or would not make them go to court rather than pay the fine. But they could. We are not saying that anybody can do anything they want to do. We are just creating a way that we can assert your first amendment rights if we choose to do that.

As the Governor of Idaho, Senator Risch was responsible for lots of people who worked for the State of Idaho. He knows about this both from a faith perspective and an employer's perspective, and I am glad he came down to the floor.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator.

There are a number of waivers on this. The administration has given over 1,700 waivers to 4 million people. If you have a plan that is better than the government plan, if you have a plan that might be taxed under the law because it has been negotiated as part of collective bargaining, if you are a fast food institution that has insurance but, apparently, with high deductibles--those were all reasons to create a waiver. You would think that a faith-based belief would also be a reason that a waiver could have been granted.

This amendment just assures that we can have the same kind of opportunity to exercise our religious beliefs going forward as every American has in health care, in labor, in hiring, and other areas up until right now.

I would like to turn to my friend, the Senator from Texas.

I do too. I hope we find out now that while we do not have as much bipartisan support as we would like to have, we will have some. Senator Ben Nelson from Nebraska, along with Senator Ayotte from New Hampshire and Senator Rubio from Florida and I introduced this bill in August of last year. This is not just something we came up with recently.

Members who were in the Senate when the health care act, the affordable health care act passed, said they believed if it had passed in a more normal way, this would have been in the final bill, that would have been an understanding, as it was in the Patients' Bill of Rights draft and legislation that was introduced in 1994 or the health care bill in 1999. This same language was an accepted and bipartisan part of who we are as a country enforcing the first amendment.

In fact, in the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, it says: ``Government shall not substantially burden a person's exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability.'' Even a rule that would generally apply, the government should not burden a person's exercise of religion unless it demonstrates a burden that it is in the furtherance of a compelling government interest.

I cannot imagine--nobody has had to do this ever before. Why would suddenly defining insurance policies beyond the faith beliefs of individuals and groups that were long held, why is that a sudden compelling government interest or it is the least restrictive means of furthering that government interest? Surely not.

Again, I am going to repeat for what may be the third or fourth time: We do not do anything in this amendment that would end the mandate. That is for another debate at another time. The government can still have a mandate. The government can still say: Here is what we are telling you a

health care plan has to look like. But this allows people who have a faith-based first amendment right to object to that to have a way to do it.

One of the original cosponsors of the bill; that is, the amendment we are debating today, has joined us and that is Senator Ayotte from New Hampshire. She is an advocate of the first amendment, as a former attorney general. I am glad she is here.

I thank the Senator for her leadership and from the beginning of this discussion back in August when Senator Ayotte, Senator Rubio, Senator Nelson from Nebraska and I introduced this bill, we have been joined in this amendment by three dozen or more other sponsors, one of whom actually I mentioned a piece of legislation he was involved in the first time he was in the Senate. It protected the religious rights of people who were temporarily in the country, with exactly this same language, who might have some religious belief or moral conviction that meant they didn't want to get the vaccines we would require a visitor to have. In 1996 Senator Coats put this in a law that virtually every Member of the Senate serving today, in both parties, voted for, as they have time after time when this issue was brought up. This language was understood to be an important defense of the first amendment in a health care piece of legislation.

I am glad Senator Coats has joined us today. Whenever I researched this, I saw that he had used this very language 15 years ago in a piece of legislation. I know the Senator is an important advocate of religious freedom.

I thank the Senator.

Mr. President, I want to go next to my neighbor in the Congress, and now my neighbor in the Senate, and my neighbor in real life from northwest Arkansas. I am from southwest Missouri. I am glad Senator Boozman came down to discuss this issue.

I thank the Senator.

Mr. President, let me conclude in the next few minutes by first saying that a growing list of groups support this amendment: Home School Legal Defense Association, Family Research Council, Southern Baptist Convention, Americans United for Life, American Center for Law and Justice, Susan B. Anthony List, Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Focus on the Family, Christian Medical Association, National Right to Life, National Association of Evangelicals, Orthodox Union of Jewish Congregations, Concerned Women for America, Eagle Forum, Religious Freedom Coalition, CatholicVote.org, American Family Association, Catholic Advocate, Traditional Values Coalition, Christus Medicus Foundation, Alliance Defense Fund, Christian Coalition, Advanced USA, American Association of Christian Schools, American Principles Project, Wallbuilders, Let Freedom Ring Liberty Consulting, Liberty Counsel Action, Free Congress Foundation, Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, Students for Life of America, Heritage Action, and there are others that are supporting this amendment.

We can go back to 1965 and a Supreme Court case where the determination of how a conscientious objection would be defined was clearly established in ways that led to this religious belief and moral conviction becoming the standard. It is not just something we came up with for this amendment, it has been the standard since that 1965 case. It said: These are the elements you have to have. You cannot suddenly decide you have a religious conviction. This is a conviction that has to be a provable part of who you are.

The Public Health Service Act in 1973, where Senator Church brought this language into the public health arena, is really the first major legislation after Medicare and the Medicaid discussion. There was also the Legal Services Corporation limitation, the foreign aid funding limitation, and the refusal to participate in executions or in prosecutions of capital crimes limitation. This language was good enough for those things, and almost every Member of the current Senate, if they were there then, voted for these, and since, including the action Senator Coats talked about earlier. The Medicare and Medicaid Counseling and Referral Act, the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan, contraceptive coverage for Federal employees in 1999, the DC contraceptive mandate in 2000, and the United States Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Act in 2003 all included this language. We had to get to the affordable health care act, which passed the Senate, and then suddenly it wasn't possible to go through the final process of legislating here. There was no conference committee, no House bill. My belief is that almost nobody who voted for that act originally thought that would be the final bill.

Frankly, I think that if we had ever had a more normal process, this normal element of protecting the first amendment would have been added, as it was every other time. This is about the first amendment. I understand the

fundraising ability to make it about something else. I understand the PR ability to make it about something else. But it is not about anything else.

A minute ago, we had three Protestants on the floor on the contraception issue who probably have no religious problem at all. There may be other elements I have problems with, but it doesn't matter if I have a problem. What matters is that I represent lots of people who do have a problem with it, and the Constitution is specifically designed to protect those strongly held religious views.

As Senator Coats said, it was the first thing in the first amendment. It was exact in its duplication in 1994 in the great health care effort made then, whether it was the protection of religious freedom or the Patients' Bill of Rights or the effort First Lady Clinton worked hard to do. This wasn't even really a debatable item then because everybody understood this was a necessary part of protecting the first amendment to the Constitution.

Again, I would say if these two or three things that are most objectionable to the Catholic community right now--and many of the people who are opposed to this are opposed to this because they wonder what they could be opposed to that the government would decide they had to participate in, they had to be a provider of, they had to pay the bill for. I would ask my colleagues to think of something in their religious view that they would not want to be forced by the government to be part of, and let's give all Americans that same capacity who have these strongly held religious beliefs.

I would encourage my colleagues to support the first amendment. I am grateful for those groups around the country that have rallied around the first amendment. Freedom of religion defines who we are and has defined who we are since the very beginning of constitutional government, where the first thing added to the Constitution was the Bill of Rights. And the first thing in the Bill of Rights is respect for religion. We need to not give that away just to prove that everybody has to do what the government says because the government knows best rather than our conscience and our personal views.

This is not about whether people provide health care or not, it is about whether they are required to provide elements of health care they believe are fundamentally wrong, and how the government can force people to do things they believe and have a provable religious conviction are fundamentally wrong.

Mr. President, I think we have used the hour we had, but this debate will go on. There will be a vote tomorrow, but this debate will go on until this important freedom is soundly protected in health care, in hiring, in all of the elements that create that faith distinctive in our individuals and institutions that make us uniquely who we are.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. President, overnight and early this morning parts of my home State of Illinois and our adjoining State of Missouri were pummeled by severe storms and tornadoes. While the total extent of the damage is not yet known, it is clear that southeastern Illinois was hit hard by at least one tornado and heavy storms. The

towns of Harrisburg in Saline County and Ridgway in Gallatin County have suffered terrible damage. Several people in Harrisburg have died as a result of these tornadoes. The earliest reports suggest 10 deaths. The exact number will not be known for some time. More than 100 other people in this area are reported to have suffered serious injury.

This is an indication of some of the damage and devastation in Harrisburg. Between 250 and 300 homes in nearby Gallatin County have also been damaged. An estimated 25 Harrisburg-area businesses are damaged or destroyed, including a Walmart and a strip mall that were hit by the tornado.

This next photograph is an indication of some of the terrible devastation that took place. Three bodies have been recovered from the field behind the Walmart, and survivors are still being pulled from the wreckage of the building. Most roads in Harrisburg have been closed. People are going door to door to check. The reports are positive in terms of the accountability.

The Harrisburg Hospital has received damage itself. Yet the personnel have done a heroic job in setting up triage stations throughout the hospital after this devastation. Hospital officials are asking that all nonemergency cases that are unrelated to the severe weather go to other hospitals. The hospitals are only taking in those who are injured and asking family members to wait outside because of the limited facilities available. Patients in the hospital's B wing, which suffered heavy damage, are being evacuated to Evansville, Indiana's Deaconess Hospital, which has called in all available staff.

The First Baptist Church in Harrisburg is being used as a shelter, and I am sure everyone in that community--a wonderful community in southern Illinois--is pitching in to give a helping hand. Harrisburg schools, obviously, are canceled for the week. Ridgway is nearby, and no one is being allowed to visit the town at this point. Between 50 and 60 homes in Gallatin County have been destroyed.

I have an early photograph of some of the scenes there that show the damage to this historic church. Historic St. Joseph Church, and at least one business, the Gallatin County Tin Shoppe, have been leveled by this tornado.

This last photograph is of the same church before the storm, which is an indication of what happened. This is an historic church which many of us are well aware of. It has served the Catholics in this community for many years.

Between 9,000 and 13,000 people are without electricity because of the storm damage. The Illinois Emergency Management Agency is hard at work clearing debris and roads. Governor Pat Quinn has activated a state emergency operations center to help with the damage, and he and Jonathan Monken of the Illinois Emergency Management Agency are on their way to the scene this afternoon.

My heart goes out to all of the people in Harrisburg who have lost loved ones. We are keeping in close contact with the people on the ground, working together with my colleague Senator Mark Kirk's office here in Washington. They share our concern for the devastation, damage, suffering, and death associated with this, and both Senator Kirk and I have extended to the State of Illinois our willingness to help in any way possible.

My thoughts are with the residents of these hard-hit towns, with the first responders, and the Red Cross volunteers who are always on the scene and who are working to assess the damage and help those who have been injured. Jonathan Monken had a conference call with many members of the Illinois congressional delegation a short time ago. He assures us that all requests for State and FEMA assistance are being met at this moment. We will continue to make the promise that that will be true in the future as well.

My staff and I are in contact with local officials, including Harrisburg Mayor Eric Gregg; the mayor of Ridgway, Becky Mitchell; State Senator Gary Forby; and State Representative Brandon Phelps. I, along with Senator Mark Kirk, am committed to help do everything possible to help communities respond to and help with this disaster.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, tomorrow morning, the Senate will vote on a measure which is controversial and has gathered a lot of attention across America. It is an amendment offered by the Senator from Missouri, Mr. Blunt, and it relates to the health services that will be available to people across America and it calls into question an issue which we have debated

since the earliest colonists came to this country; that is, the appropriate role of religion and government in America. It is an issue which has been hotly debated and contested in the earliest days of our Nation and was finally resolved by our Constitution in a manner that has served us well for over two centuries.

The Constitution speaks to the issue of religion in three specific places. It states in the first amendment that we each have the freedom of religion; that is, the freedom to believe or not to believe. It says there will be no official State religion; whereas, in England they chose the Church of England, but in our government there will be no choice of any religion.

Finally, there is a provision which says that there shall be no religious test for office. These are all constitutional provisions which, though sparing in language, have guided us carefully through over 200 years of history. We see around the world where other countries have not been as fortunate to come together in basic principles that have kept a diversity of religious belief alive in the country. Time and again we have seen differences when it comes to religion lead to conflict and death. We see it today in many places around the world. So when our government is called on to make a decision relative to the role of religion in American life, we should take care to stick to those basic principles that have guided us for over two centuries.

The issue before us today is what will be the requirements of health insurance that is offered by employers across America. What we have tried to establish are the essentials and basics of health insurance and health care. We are mindful of the fact that if the market were to dictate health insurance plans and policies, they may not be fair to the people of this country. I recall an instance before I came to Congress while working in Illinois where we learned that health insurance companies were offering policies which refused to cover newborn babies in the first 30 days of their life. Of course, that was done for economic reasons, because children born with a serious illness can be extremely expensive in that 30-day period. We changed the law in Illinois and said, if you want to cover a maternity, if you want to cover a child, it is from the moment of birth. That became the policy: to establish basic standards so that families buying these policies would have the most basic protections.

This issue we are debating with the Blunt amendment is what will be required of health insurance policies across America when it comes to preventive care. We asked the experts: What basics in preventive care should be included to make certain we don't overlook something that is fundamental to a person's survival or life? One of the things they said is when it comes to preventive care, to offer to women across America family planning services. That, of course, is the nub of the controversy, the center of it.

Some religions--the Catholic religion in particular--have strongly held beliefs about family planning. They have been opposed to what they call artificial forms of birth control from the beginning. At this point, the controversy came up--although those religious institutions that are strictly religious, such as the church rectory, the convent, and the like, are exempted from any requirements when it comes to health insurance--what of those religious-sponsored institutions such as universities, hospitals, and charities? What should their requirements be when it comes to health insurance for their employees? So the Obama administration said their employees should also receive the most essential and basic services, including preventive care for women, including family planning, and that is when the controversy lit up.

The President came to what I thought was a reasonable compromise, and here is what it says: A religious-sponsored university hospital, charity, or the like will not be required to offer health services such as family planning if it violates their basic religious beliefs. Their health insurance policy will not be required to cover those services. However, if an individual employee of that religious-sponsored institution chooses on their own initiative to go forward to the health insurance company, they can receive that service without charge. So the women will be offered these preventive care services, which are essential to their health, and yet there will be no requirement of the sponsoring institution to include those services. It is strictly a matter of the employee opting for that coverage.

Now comes the Blunt amendment. Senator Blunt of Missouri said we should go beyond that and allow employers and insurance companies across America to decide the limitations of health insurance policies if those limitations follow the conscience and values of the employer. Keep in mind, we have gone way beyond religious-sponsored institutions; we are talking about individual employers making that decision.

Think of the diversity of opinion and belief across America, and imagine, then, what we will come up with. We have heard many things mentioned on the floor. My colleagues have made reference to individuals who may have a particular religious belief, and own a business that has no connection at all to a religion otherwise, and decide then that under the Blunt amendment they will limit health insurance coverage accordingly. We can think of possibilities. Someone believes in conscience that a woman should never use birth control and says, then, that it will be prohibited from being offered by the health insurance policy of that employer. At the end of the day we would have a patchwork quilt of health insurance coverage and many people in this country--men and women--denied basic health coverage in their health insurance because the employer believes in conscience it shouldn't be offered. That is an impossible situation. It goes beyond the freedom of religion, to imposing someone's religious belief on another, in a situation that could endanger their lives.

The Blunt amendment would be a step in the wrong direction for this country. I think what the President has seized on is a reasonable course of action, to allow religious-sponsored institutions to follow their moral dictates when it comes to the health insurance they offer, but to still protect the right of individuals to seek the protection they need. I know it is going to be a controversial vote, but it is one that is important, because I think it strikes the right balance. I think it reflects back on decisions and values we have established as a country and that we should work to protect, even in the midst of a Presidential campaign when the rhetoric involved in it is very hot and inflammatory.

Syria

Mr. President, I rise to speak of the atrocities that are being committed every day by the Syrian Government against its own citizens-- thousands who have stood bravely month after month against unspeakable violence simply to ask for basic political freedoms we take for granted in this country. And I rise to speak of the indefensible and inexplicable support of this brutal regime by Russia.

It has now been almost one full year since the Syrian uprising began in March 2011. By some reports, over 6,000 innocent people--civilians-- have lost their lives in Syria. The exact number may never be known. Humanitarian groups have been prohibited from even assisting the wounded, and reporters prohibited from telling the story to the world. Syria's third largest city, Homs, has been bombarded with rockets and bombs by the Syrian military for over 3 weeks with scores of deaths, shortages of food and medical supplies.

One report describes rockets--11 rockets--slamming into a single apartment building in the space of 2 minutes. As soon as the barrage stopped and people started to rush to get away, it started again, killing even more. The result: a horrific trail of death and dying in this building from the fifth floor on down.

Those killed in Syria include two western journalists. Some suspect they might have been targeted. The murder of a well-known video blogger, Rami el-Sayed, supports that claim.

In this photo, my colleagues can see the results of the Syrian Government's bombardment of the city of Homs. Sadly, this is likely one of the many burial ceremonies that the people of that city have had to endure recently. Just a few days ago, it was reported that the bodies of 64 men were covered in a mass grave on the outskirts of the city. The women and children who were with them have gone missing.

The Independent National Commission of Inquiry on Syria, working with the U.N., submitted its most recent report on February 26. It said the Syrian Government has accelerated the killing of its own people, particularly in Homs, resulting in the deaths of nearly 800 civilians in the first 2 weeks of February alone. From the report:

On several occasions in January and February 2012, entire

families--children and adults--were brutally murdered in

Homs.

It is also noted that protesters have been arrested without cause, tortured, and even summarily executed.

In October, Senators Cardin, Menendez, Boxer, and I sent a letter to the Ambassador to the United Nations from the United States, Susan Rice, urging that the Syrian Government be referred to the International Criminal Court for possible indictment for war crimes. Certainly the evidence for such charges is overwhelming and continues to this day.

Assad has paid lip service to reforms such as the sham constitutional referendum last Sunday. The document's most important changes included giant caveats that they would, in effect, maintain the status quo as it exists in Syria.

One example is Assad's introduction of Presidential term limits to 2 terms of 7 years each, but the clock wouldn't start until Assad's current term expires in 2014, giving him 14 more years in office, a total of 28 years. Incomprehensible.

Secretary Clinton aptly described the referendum as a cynical ploy, to say the least.

On February 17, the Senate unanimously passed a resolution that:

Strongly condemns the government of Syria's brutal and

unjustifiable use of force against civilians, including

unarmed women and children and its violations of the

fundamental human rights and dignity of the people of Syria.

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

Strongly condemning continuing widespread and systematic

human rights violations by the Syrian authorities.

Last Friday, more than 60 governments and organizations gathered in Tunis under the auspices of the Friends of Syria rubric and they called for an immediate cease-fire, the provision of humanitarian aid, and a U.N. peacekeeping force.

The international community has coalesced in support of the Syrian people. I wish to recognize once again the leadership of the Arab League in building this consensus against the bloodshed. Even some U.N. Security Council members such as India and South Africa, that early on had concerns about speaking out, can no longer stand by silently as the killing continues. In the most recent U.N. Security Council vote earlier this month, they chose to do the right thing and to vote in favor of the latest resolution backing the Arab League peace plan.

However, as sad as it is to report, this resolution was vetoed by Russia and China. The exceptions to the international solidarity and support of the Syrian people have been Iran, China, and Russia. While both Iran and China's support for the Assad regime is deplorable, it is even worse in the case of Russia, for it is Russia that has the most blood of innocent Syrian women and children on its hands. Russia is not only protecting President Assad as he kills his own people, but it continues to supply him with the weapons to do it. How can any responsible nation take such action?

In an interview following the Friends of Syria meeting, Secretary of State Clinton said:

It's quite distressing to see two permanent members of the

Security Council using their veto when people are murdered:

Women, children, brave young men. It's just despicable. And I

ask, whose side are they on?

Russia has chosen to align itself with a murderous regime, to impede democratic reform, and to facilitate the killing of innocent people by putting more and more weapons into the hands of those eager to pull the trigger.

Despite 6,000 innocent civilians dying, despite the overwhelming international consensus that Assad has lost legitimacy to lead the Syrian people, Russia continues to sell arms to Syria. According to media reports:

Shipping data shows at least four cargo ships since

December that left the Black Sea port of Oktyabrsk--used by

Russian arms exporters for arms shipments have headed for or

reached the Syrian port of Tartous. Separately was the

Chariot, a Russian ship which docked at the Cypriot port

of Limassol during stormy weather in mid-January. It

promised to change its destination in accordance with a

European Union ban on weapons to Syria but, hours after

leaving Limassol, reset its course for Syria.

The Russian arming of the Syrian murderers continues.

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

I want to show one other photograph I have here in the Chamber. This photo is of one of those Russian warships--an aircraft carrier--docked at the Syrian port of Tartous on January 8. What we could not turn into a poster is the video clip showing the Russian warship captains being greeted like royalty by the Syrian Minister of Defense who went out to personally welcome their ship.

Rebel soldiers and an official who defected from the Government of Syria say Moscow's small-arms trade with Damascus is booming, and that the government doubled its military budget in 2011 to pay for the brutal response to this opposition.

That said, Russia is in a unique position. It has President Assad's trust and confidence--maybe more than any other country. Should Russia choose, it could use this power and influence to constructively broker a real transition and an end to this bloodshed.

The longer President Assad holds power in Syria, the more innocent people will die. The window for a more peaceful transition and ending is closing. Now is the time for Russia to lead in the right direction-- to be a responsible global partner, and to be part of a solution in ending the carnage, bloodshed, and death in Syria.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Thank you very much, Mr. President.

Mr. President, what is the parliamentary situation?

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to extend the time on the Democratic side for 15 minutes.

Thank you very much. I want to thank my colleagues who have spoken on this amendment, particularly those who oppose the amendment.

I come to the floor today with sadness in my heart. I come because over the weekend one of our Maryland National Guards was killed in Afghanistan. He was one of two men working in a building in which he was attacked by someone he trusted at the Interior Service, and it appears that he was assassinated. I talked to his widow. We are sad. We are sad that somebody who went to defend freedom was killed in such a terrible way.

I am sad because last night I spoke to a dear friend of mine whose husband is very ill from the ravages of brain cancer, and we remembered so many good times we had together, but those good times don't seem possible in the future. I want so much for her to be with her husband and not think about the consequences of costs and so on.

Last night we learned that our very dear friend and colleague, Senator Olympia Snowe, is going to retire not because she is tired but because she is sick and tired of the partisanship. Senator Snowe is not tired. She is sick and tired of the partisanship. And you know what. So am I.

We have a highway bill here. We have an unemployment problem. We could solve America's problems and get it rolling again, and if we pass the highway bill--with the appropriate debate on amendments germane to the bill--we could do it. So I am really sad.

I am sad that I have to come to the floor to debate an amendment that has no relevance to the highway bill. And I am sad because we are so tied up in partisan politics and scoring political points that we don't look at how we can get our troops out of Afghanistan. How can we make sure we have a budget that can fund the cure for cancer and at the same time make sure any

family hit by that dreaded C word doesn't go bankrupt during care?

I am devastated that a dear friend and extraordinary public servant is so fed up with how toxic we have become that she chooses not to run for office again. So I want to be serious, and therefore you need to know I am really sad about this, but I also am frustrated about this. So I want to talk about this Blunt amendment because we have heard nothing but mythology, smokescreens, and politics masquerading as morality all day long.

Let me tell you what the Blunt amendment is not. It is not about religious organizations providing health care and the government saying what the benefits should be. It is not about affiliated religious organizations and the government saying what the service is to be. This amendment is about nonreligious insurance companies and nonreligious employers. It is about secular insurance companies and it is about secular employers. The Blunt amendment allows that any--any--health insurer or employer can deny coverage for any health service they choose based on something called religious beliefs and moral convictions.

Now, there is a body of knowledge that defines religious beliefs, but what is a moral conviction? That is not doctrine. That is a person's personal opinion. A moral conviction, no matter how heartfelt, no matter how sincere, no matter how fully based upon ethical principles, is still a person's personal opinion. So we are going to allow the personal opinions of insurance companies and the personal opinions of employers to determine what health care a person gets. What happened to doctors? What happened to the definition of essential health care? So this is not about religious freedom; this is not about religious liberty because it is not even about religious institutions. So let's get real clear on this Blunt amendment.

This amendment is politics masquerading as morality. Make no mistake. The politics is rooted in wanting to derail and dismember the Affordable Care Act and our preventive health care amendment.

So what the Blunt amendment does, as I said, is allow any insurer or any employer to deny coverage based on religious beliefs or moral convictions. Well, what that essentially means is this: Let's look at examples. If an employer has a conviction, a personal opinion, against smoking, they can refuse to cover treatment for lung cancer or emphysema. If an employer has a personal opinion that they call a moral conviction that doesn't approve of drinking alcohol, they can refuse to cover any program for alcohol treatment or substance abuse.

Let's say there is an employer who doesn't believe in divorce and they say: I will not cover health care for anybody who is divorced because I have a moral conviction against that. Suppose a person says-- there are some schools of thought that say: I have a moral conviction that a woman can only see a woman doctor, and I will not cover anything where she is seen by a male physician. Where are we heading? These are not ridiculous examples. It puts the personal opinion of employers and insurers over the practice of medicine.

This is outrageous. This is vague. It is going to end up with all kinds of lawsuits--let's speak about lawsuits. While some have been pounding their chests talking about religious freedom and the Constitution, what is also in the Blunt amendment is this whole idea that gives employers access to Federal courts if they believe they can't exercise the amendment. This is a new lawyers full employment bill.

I am shocked because the other party is always trashing lawyers. They are always trashing the trial lawyers associations. Now they have created a whole new right--or an opportunity--for Federal court action, clogging the courts on this particular issue.

This is why Americans are so fed up. They want us to focus on health care. They want us to focus on how to lead better lives.

Let me talk about how we got here in the first place. Do my colleagues remember why we had health reform legislation? I remember because it still exists: 42 million Americans are uninsured; 42 million Americans are uninsured for health care.

This is the fifth anniversary of a little boy in Prince George's County who died because he could not have access to dental care. His infection was so bad, so severe, and there was nobody to see him. His mother was too poor to be able to pay for it. That little boy, in the shadow of the Capitol of the United States, died.

Now, that is why we work for the Affordable Care Act. People can call it ObamaCare. I don't care what people call it. I call it an opportunity for the American people to get what a great democratic society should provide.

Then, we not only looked at what was uninsured, we also looked at the issues around women. Senator Stabenow held a hearing, and I held a hearing, and guess what we found. Women pay more for their health insurance than men of equal age and equal health status. Nobody said that is a social justice issue. Well, I have a moral conviction about that. I have a really deeply felt moral conviction that if you are a woman, you shouldn't be discriminated against by your insurance company.

We also found that women were denied health care because of preexisting conditions. We found that in eight States, if a person was a victim of domestic violence, they were doubly abused--not only by their spouse, but they couldn't get insurance coverage because they said the cost of physical and mental health care would be too much. Well, I had a moral conviction. I had a moral conviction that if you are a victim of domestic violence, you shouldn't be denied health care. I had a real strong moral conviction about that.

Then, during my hearing, I heard a bone-chilling story. It wasn't just me; it was all who attended. There was a woman who testified that she had a medically mandated C-section. Then she was told by her insurance company, in writing, that she had to get sterilized in order to receive health insurance. The insurance company was mandating sterilization for her to get coverage. I nearly went off my chair.

At that hearing there was a representative of the insurance company. They had no moral reaction to that. They had no moral reaction to that. I had a reaction. I had a really big one. That is why we got the amendments we did, where you could not deny health care on the basis of preexisting conditions. So I have a lot of moral convictions about this: that in the United States of America no child should die because of the absence of health care; no woman should be discriminated against in the health care system; and, at the same time, a person needs to be able to have the opportunity to get the services their doctor says they need.

The other thing on our agenda was to not only save lives, but to save money, and we knew that prevention was the way to go. I came to the floor and offered the preventive health amendment. It was a great day. Many women spoke for it. It was primarily oriented toward women, but it was going to cover men as well. It was going to make sure that early detection and early screening would save lives. We spoke about the necessity for mammograms. We spoke about the necessity for screening for diabetes and heart disease and the kinds of things that, if detected early, could save lives. That bipartisan amendment passed.

Then, after it was passed, and after the bill passed, the Secretary of Health and Human Services said: Preventive benefits should be defined not by politicians and not by a bureaucrat at HHS but by the medical community. So she requested the Institute of Medicine to define the preventive health care benefit. The preventive benefits we are talking about that Senator Blunt says an employer doesn't have to provide came from the Institute of Medicine. It didn't come from the Congress. It didn't come from bureaucracy at HHS. It came from a learned, prestigious society that we turn to--the Institute of Medicine. This is what they said are the essential preventive services that would save lives as well as save money.

So this is where this came from. Now, some are on the floor saying: If you have a moral conviction against what the Institute of Medicine says is an essential benefit, you could go ahead and do it. Again, we are not talking about religious institutions who are employers; we are not talking about religious-affiliated institutions; we are talking about nonreligious institutions.

Ordinarily I would call this amendment folly, but this is a masquerade. I think it is just one more excuse to opt out of the Affordable Care Act. It is one more excuse to opt out of ObamaCare. They want to opt out, but I think it is a cop-out, and we have to stop masquerading that this is about morality or the first amendment or someone's religious beliefs.

So I hope we defeat this Blunt amendment. Most of all, I wish we could get back to talking about the serious issues affecting the American people. I am going to bring those troops home. I sure want to find that cure for cancer and help come up with the resources so we can do it. I am going to be sure that no little boy ever goes through what Deamonte Driver and his family had to suffer.

Let's defeat the Blunt amendment. Let's get back to the highway bill. Let's get America rolling--and how about let's start functioning as an institution that focuses on civility and finding the sensible center that America has been known for in other years when we had the ability to govern.

I yield the floor.

Oh, I sure did, and it was deja vu all over again, I say to my colleague from California, because it was like the Anita Hill hearings. The Senator remembers what happened there.

During that time, there was not one woman on the Judiciary Committee.

This is not new. The discrimination against women has been around a long time. I consider discrimination against women one of the great social justice issues, whether you are a secular humanist or you have core beliefs in an organized religion.

I found not only the picture appalling, but I want to reiterate what we have been saying here: There is a systematic war against women. We do not get equal pay for equal work. We are often devalued in the workplace. We worry more about parking lot slots for our cars than childcare slots for our children. Then, when it comes to health care, what was so great about the preventive amendment was, first of all, we talked not only about family planning, where women could have the children they knew they could care for, but we talked about prenatal care. We talked about making sure our children had the opportunity for viability and survivability at birth.

So, yes, it was both a picture of us not being included, but it shows we need to be able to fight to be heard. The issue is, women's voices are not being heard, and I am saying today the voices of women are being heard and the voices of good men who support us. I am telling you--not you, Senator Boxer, but I am saying out loud--if this Blunt amendment passes, I believe the voices of women will be heard. They will be heard on the Internet. They will be heard in streets and communities. Most of all, they will be heard in the voting booth.

Madam President, I rise today to speak in support of the Transportation reauthorization bill that is currently before the Senate. It is called the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act, so we call it by its acronym, MAP 21. It is a

critical piece of legislation that will put Americans back to work and lay the foundation for future economic growth.

Our transportation infrastructure has long been at the heart of America's success, from the transcontinental railroad to the interstate highway. Yet, across the country, the infrastructure that helped build our great economy has been allowed to fall into disrepair.

For evidence of our Nation's crumbling infrastructure, one need look no further than my home State of Rhode Island. Anyone who drives to work or school in our State sees the problems--bridges that are subject to weight restrictions, highways with lane closures, and roads everywhere marked with potholes. Only one-third of our highway miles are rated in fair or good condition; the majority are poor or mediocre. According to a recent report, one in five bridges in Rhode Island is structurally deficient--the fourth highest figure for any State. You look nationwide, and the picture does not improve.

The American Society of Civil Engineers rates our national transportation systems as near failing. They give our roads and highways a D-minus, our bridges a C, our freight and passenger rail a C-minus, and our transit systems a D. This is not the kind of report card you want to post at home on your refrigerator, and it is not one our great Nation should tolerate.

Instead of committing ourselves to solving our infrastructure deficit, however, we continue to fall short. The civil engineers estimate that we would need to dedicate $250 billion each year to bring our transportation systems into a state of good repair. At current levels, the United States spends only 2.4 percent of GDP on infrastructure, compared with European nations at 5 percent and China and India at about 9 percent.

Let's recall why it is so important that we invest in transportation. Our economy relies on the ability to get goods and services to where they are needed. An entrepreneur cannot start a business if his employees cannot get to work. A manufacturer cannot stay in business if its products cannot reach its customers. A free market can only operate if supply can actually get to demand. Our roads, trains, and buses are what allow this to happen.

If we don't make the necessary investment, our global competitors nevertheless will. MAP 21 represents a downpayment that will fund important highway, transit, and rail projects to repair our aging transportation infrastructure and help ensure that America can succeed, as it has since we first broke ground on the Interstate Highway System.

As important as this bill is to our long-term prosperity and our global economic position, MAP 21 also provides immediate support to local construction projects and the quality jobs that go along with them.

It is estimated that MAP 21 will protect 1.8 million existing jobs around the country, with the potential to create up to a million more new jobs. This is particularly important given the high level of unemployment in the construction industry. In my home State of Rhode Island, this bill would support an estimated 8,100 jobs. At a time when our State's unemployment rate hovers stubbornly around 10 percent, those jobs are absolutely crucial.

Given the decrepit state of our transportation systems, it should be obvious that we will have to address our infrastructure needs at some point. We need to do this work sooner or later, and there is no better time to make that investment than now, with so many workers ready to get to work and so many projects ready to get underway. I know that in Rhode Island there is no shortage of workers or worthwhile transportation projects. In fact, Secretary of Transportation LaHood was in Providence today, and I invited him to tour one of the most significant of Rhode Island's transportation projects, and that is the Providence viaduct. That viaduct is an overland highway bridge that carries Interstate 95 for nearly a quarter mile through downtown Providence, our capital city. It is one of the busiest stretches of the entire I 95 corridor.

The viaduct runs north and south over U.S. Route 6 and State Route 10, the Amtrak northeast corridor, commuter, and freight rail lines, and over the Woonasquatucket River. It provides access to downtown Providence, four universities, Rhode Island Hospital, our convention center and arena, and the Providence Place Mall, not to mention the north-south traffic along the eastern seaboard that traffics through this area.

What Secretary LaHood saw on his tour today is a bridge that is quite literally crumbling. The viaduct was built in 1964, and it is showing its age. Its deck is badly deteriorated, steel girders are cracked and don't meet minimum specifications for brittleness, and our State department of transportation has installed these wooden planks under the I-beams to keep concrete from falling through onto the cars, pedestrians, and even the trains that travel underneath the highway. You can also see here where a section of the concrete has fallen through the supports, exposing the steel reinforcement, which is now rusting out in the open.

While the viaduct remains safe for travel today, it is a weak link in the critical I 95 corridor. It is a potential safety hazard for the 160,000 vehicles that travel on it each and every day, as well as to the cars and trains that pass underneath. The bridge is inspected on a regular basis, just as a precaution. If the viaduct were to fail or simply require posted weight limits, it would cause substantial regional disruptions to traffic and commerce and trade.

Clearly, this is a problem that needs to be addressed. The cost of repairing the Providence viaduct is estimated at roughly $140 million. This is a reasonable investment to help ensure the flow of commerce through the entire Northeast, but it represents a very significant financial burden for a small State such as Rhode Island. Fixing the viaduct would take out almost two-thirds of the money that Rhode Island would get from this bill. Rhode Island simply isn't big enough and doesn't have the resources to tackle this important project and still meet our other transportation obligations.

I have filed an amendment to MAP 21 to fund the program for the Projects of National and Regional Significance Program. The Projects of National and Regional Significance Program is a competitive grant program that is designed to support critical, high-cost transportation projects that are difficult to complete with existing funding sources. This program can help us address those big infrastructure projects around the country--ones such as the viaduct--that are currently being kicked down the road because the State DOTs cannot scrape enough money together to get them underway.

The Projects of National and Regional Significance Program is authorized in MAP 21. We got that done in the Environment and Public Works Committee. Now we need to get that authorized program funded. I am pleased to have the support of my senior Senator, Jack Reed, and Senator Merkley on this amendment. I look forward to working with them and other Senators so that we can start the important work of rebuilding critical infrastructure projects, such as the viaduct, that are so important to our economy.

While I am thanking other Senators, let me recognize Senator Olympia Snowe for her work on another amendment that would grant States limited flexibility to use congestion mitigation and air quality funds toward their transit systems. This is an important issue for Rhode Island, as we begin to scale up our new South County commuter rail.

I introduced a version of this amendment in committee and continue to believe that increased flexibility in the Congested Mitigation and Air Quality Program, or CMAQ, would promote State-level transit options that we so critically need.

Let me thank our chairwoman, Senator Boxer, and her ranking member, Senator Inhofe, for their consideration of our amendment and, more important, for their hard work on this bill overall. As a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, I can testify that the leadership of Chairman Boxer and Ranking Member Inhofe, working together, is what has made the difference for this transportation reauthorization. Through their efforts, we were able to unanimously vote the bill out of committee, making the important statement that investment in our Nation's infrastructure

has strong, bipartisan support. They have set an example that I hope ultimately will be followed by the handful of Senators who are obstructing progress on this transportation bill, and our colleagues on the other side of this building. The American people deserve better than efforts to gut transportation jobs and slash infrastructure programs, or to slow down progress on this bill with irrelevant amendments.

With our economy struggling to get back on its feet, with our roads and bridges in desperate need of repair, now is not the time to be debating unpopular and misguided efforts to roll back protections for women's health. Now is not the time, and this is not the bill, to debate whether we should undermine rules that protect our environment or fast track a pipeline project that is clearly not ready for prime time. We have a bipartisan bill before us. We have a bill that will create jobs. We have a bill that will get our economy moving forward. That should be our priority. We should get to the business of legislating on this bill.

This is a country that does big things. We built highways and rail systems connecting Americans from coast to coast. We built skyscrapers and airplanes and rockets to take us to the Moon and back. Big things are part of America's national identity. Just as important, they are a vital source of jobs during this trying economic time.

Let's keep doing big things. Let's give the people in Rhode Island and across the country a transportation infrastructure they can be proud of, and let's not cut funding and retreat. We cannot afford to go backward. The infrastructure is what supports our economy. We need to refocus on the job of getting America moving ahead, and MAP 21 is a step forward.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

It doesn't make sense. I thank her for getting us to this point. I know how much frustration she must feel, having worked so hard and in such a bipartisan way to get us to this point and to now have a process that would get this bill moving forward and get funding out there, get infrastructure repaired, put men and women to work in good, solid, high-paying jobs, only to be all snarled up so that a small group of people can score points with a political issue that has nothing to do with transportation, infrastructure, or highways.

If people want to have a fight about whether women should get access to contraceptive medicine, I suppose that is their right in the Senate. But the idea to stop a highway bill to forge that fight is what to me is irresponsible.

Yes.

I thank my chairman, and yes, it is kind of astonishing, the breadth and the scope of this amendment. As if CEOs don't have enough power over their workforce, as if they haven't done enough to send jobs from American factories offshore to factories overseas, now they would be able to dictate what kind of health care their employees can receive, and not based on marketplace considerations, not based even on health considerations, but based on their own unchecked moral or religious beliefs.

I think it is a terrible mistake to go down that road, but I think it is a double mistake: it is wrong to go down that road in the first instance, but it is also wrong while we need jobs so urgently, while our highways crumble and our bridges deteriorate and water works continue to fail and we have the ability to put people to work in America at good jobs. You can't offshore a job building an American highway; you have to do it right here in this country. These are important jobs and this is important work. We should be getting about this.

I think it sends a terrible signal to the American people when the Senate, taking up this piece of legislation, has to be led off into all these other battles that have nothing to do with highways, that have nothing to do with infrastructure, that have nothing to do with jobs, but are simply an exercise in political gamesmanship.

It is unfortunate, when there are real stakes for real families on the table and real time slipping by, that we don't get this done. We get jacked up enough around here, but as hard as the chairman has worked to bring this to the floor and to be ready, here we are, stopped again, dealing with irrelevant issues again, and all for the entertainment and distraction of people. It is not about jobs, it is not about the economy, it is not about our infrastructure, it is not about laying the foundation for future prosperity, and so it is frustrating that we have to go through this exercise.