Floor Statements

Madam President, I think everybody recognizes that our current health care system is in very serious crisis. We have 46 million Americans who lack any health insurance. We have even more than that who are underinsured. The cost of health care is soaring. And we end up spending twice as much per person on health care as do the people of any other nation, despite having so many people uninsured and underinsured.

While a lot of the discussion regarding the health care crisis focuses on insurance coverage, there is another crisis equally severe that we do not talk enough about; that is, the crisis in access to doctors and dentists--in fact, the crisis in terms of primary health care.

The truth is that in our country today, we have some 56 million Americans, including Americans who have health insurance, who simply cannot find a doctor and, even more, cannot find a nurse. The absurdity of that is that when somebody cannot find a doctor, that person will end up going to the emergency room at great cost to our Nation or, equally likely, that person may not go to the doctor at all, gets sick, and ends up in the hospital, and we are spending tens of thousands of dollars treating that person when we could have spent far less if that man, woman, or child had access to a doctor when the illness first developed.

I am very gratified, and I thank President Obama, I thank Senator Inouye and Senator Harkin, Congressman Obey, the Democratic leadership in the House for taking this Nation a giant step forward in terms of addressing the crisis in primary health care in the stimulus package.

What happened in the stimulus package is that $2 billion was allocated for community health centers, to help those community health centers expand, to help in the growth of new community health centers. On top of that, another $300 million was appropriated for the National Health Service Corps. The National Health Service Corps is one of the important health programs we have in this country because it provides debt forgiveness and scholarships for young physicians so they can go out and serve in underserved areas.

Many medical school graduates are leaving school $100,000, $150,000 in debt, and they have no choice but to end up becoming specialists, making a whole lot of money in order to pay back those debts. What we have done in the stimulus package is almost triple the amount of money going into the National Health Service Corps, which means that we are going to be able to enable thousands of young physicians and dentists to go out and work in underserved areas, which is a huge step forward for primary health care. That was a very important part of the stimulus package.

In fact, on top of all of that, this sum of money is going to create 44,000 sustainable jobs as we create a primary health care infrastructure and as we provide health care to an additional 4 million Americans.

As significant as what we did in the stimulus package is, it is only a downpayment for what we have to do to address the crisis in terms of primary health care. Therefore, I am very proud to announce that today I introduced, along with 21 of my Senate colleagues--and they are in alphabetical order--Senators Begich, Bingaman, Boxer, Brown, Burris, Cardin, Casey, Durbin, Harkin, Inouye, Kennedy, Kerry, Johnson, Leahy, Menendez, Merkley, Mikulski, Schumer, Stabenow, Tester, and Wyden--all of those Senators join with me in new legislation which, in fact, is going to revolutionize primary health care in America.

Also today, the majority whip in the House, Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, introduced a similar bill which I believe has 78 cosponsors. That legislation is called the Access for All America Act. Its goal is to significantly expand community health centers all over this country, as well as the National Health Service Corps.

The community health center concept was developed by Senator Ted Kennedy over 40 years ago. The truth is that the concept of community health centers has been long supported in a bipartisan manner. President Bush was supportive of the concept. Senator McCain certainly mentioned it in his campaign for President, and Senator Hatch--many Republicans have supported it, as well as many people on our side of the aisle.

The reason for that bipartisan support is that everybody here understands that community health centers provide quality health care in a cost-effective manner. What community health centers do is provide comprehensive health care in terms of access to doctors and dentists. I point out that there is a major dental crisis all over this country. Community health centers by law have to provide mental health counseling. On top of that, community health centers provide the lowest cost of prescription drugs in the United States of America.

Today, there are approximately 1,100 community health centers all over America. In my State of Vermont, we have gone from 2 to 7 in the last 5 years, and they are now providing health care to over 80,000 Vermonters.

We have 1,100 in this country today. What this legislation will do is go from 1,100 community health centers to 4,800 community health centers, quadrupling the number of health centers in America. By doing that, we will provide comprehensive, high-quality primary health care in every underserved area in this country--a giant step forward in terms of making primary health care accessible to every man, woman, and child in this Nation.

In my view, we need to move toward a national health care program which guarantees health care for all people, but we can take this important step forward in terms of primary health care quite soon.

Here is one of the very wonderful aspects of what this legislation does. Right now, we spend about $2.1 billion a year for community health centers. This legislation, over a 5-year period, will take that number up to $8 billion. It will go from $2 billion to $8 billion as we quadruple the number of community health centers.

What study after study suggests is that in fact this investment will end up saving us money. This investment in primary health care will save us money because those people who get sick will now be able to go to a community health center--perhaps the most cost-effective primary health care in America--rather than walking into an emergency room, which is one of the most expensive health care providers in the country. In addition, when people have access to health care and get treatment when they need it, they are not going to get very sick and end up in a hospital, where it will cost tens of thousands of dollars to deal with their illness.

So what this legislation does is quadruple the number of community health centers, and it very substantially increases the amount of money that goes to the National Health Service Corps so we can provide debt relief and scholarships to young physicians who will then go out and serve us in underserved areas.

In my view, this legislation, if passed--and I think we have a good chance to pass it because there is a whole lot of bipartisan support here in the Senate for this concept, a lot of support in the House as well--will revolutionize primary health care in America. It will bring us to the day when virtually every American will have access to a doctor, a dentist, mental health counseling, and low-cost prescription drugs. It will enable us to produce the doctors, the dentists, the nurses, and the other health care providers we desperately need to get out

into rural, urban America, and underserved areas. It will be a major step forward in providing the primary health care infrastructure we need as we in fact move to a national health care program.

This is important legislation, and I thank all of the 21 Members of the Senate who have already come on as original cosponsors. We hope that many more will come on in the coming weeks and months. My hope is we can get this bill out of committee and see it passed as a stand- alone piece of legislation.

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

Madam President, I think everybody recognizes that our current health care system is in very serious crisis. We have 46 million Americans who lack any health insurance. We have even more than that who are underinsured. The cost of health care is soaring. And we end up spending twice as much per person on health care as do the people of any other nation, despite having so many people uninsured and underinsured.

While a lot of the discussion regarding the health care crisis focuses on insurance coverage, there is another crisis equally severe that we do not talk enough about; that is, the crisis in access to doctors and dentists--in fact, the crisis in terms of primary health care.

The truth is that in our country today, we have some 56 million Americans, including Americans who have health insurance, who simply cannot find a doctor and, even more, cannot find a nurse. The absurdity of that is that when somebody cannot find a doctor, that person will end up going to the emergency room at great cost to our Nation or, equally likely, that person may not go to the doctor at all, gets sick, and ends up in the hospital, and we are spending tens of thousands of dollars treating that person when we could have spent far less if that man, woman, or child had access to a doctor when the illness first developed.

I am very gratified, and I thank President Obama, I thank Senator Inouye and Senator Harkin, Congressman Obey, the Democratic leadership in the House for taking this Nation a giant step forward in terms of addressing the crisis in primary health care in the stimulus package.

What happened in the stimulus package is that $2 billion was allocated for community health centers, to help those community health centers expand, to help in the growth of new community health centers. On top of that, another $300 million was appropriated for the National Health Service Corps. The National Health Service Corps is one of the important health programs we have in this country because it provides debt forgiveness and scholarships for young physicians so they can go out and serve in underserved areas.

Many medical school graduates are leaving school $100,000, $150,000 in debt, and they have no choice but to end up becoming specialists, making a whole lot of money in order to pay back those debts. What we have done in the stimulus package is almost triple the amount of money going into the National Health Service Corps, which means that we are going to be able to enable thousands of young physicians and dentists to go out and work in underserved areas, which is a huge step forward for primary health care. That was a very important part of the stimulus package.

In fact, on top of all of that, this sum of money is going to create 44,000 sustainable jobs as we create a primary health care infrastructure and as we provide health care to an additional 4 million Americans.

As significant as what we did in the stimulus package is, it is only a downpayment for what we have to do to address the crisis in terms of primary health care. Therefore, I am very proud to announce that today I introduced, along with 21 of my Senate colleagues--and they are in alphabetical order--Senators Begich, Bingaman, Boxer, Brown, Burris, Cardin, Casey, Durbin, Harkin, Inouye, Kennedy, Kerry, Johnson, Leahy, Menendez, Merkley, Mikulski, Schumer, Stabenow, Tester, and Wyden--all of those Senators join with me in new legislation which, in fact, is going to revolutionize primary health care in America.

Also today, the majority whip in the House, Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, introduced a similar bill which I believe has 78 cosponsors. That legislation is called the Access for All America Act. Its goal is to significantly expand community health centers all over this country, as well as the National Health Service Corps.

The community health center concept was developed by Senator Ted Kennedy over 40 years ago. The truth is that the concept of community health centers has been long supported in a bipartisan manner. President Bush was supportive of the concept. Senator McCain certainly mentioned it in his campaign for President, and Senator Hatch--many Republicans have supported it, as well as many people on our side of the aisle.

The reason for that bipartisan support is that everybody here understands that community health centers provide quality health care in a cost-effective manner. What community health centers do is provide comprehensive health care in terms of access to doctors and dentists. I point out that there is a major dental crisis all over this country. Community health centers by law have to provide mental health counseling. On top of that, community health centers provide the lowest cost of prescription drugs in the United States of America.

Today, there are approximately 1,100 community health centers all over America. In my State of Vermont, we have gone from 2 to 7 in the last 5 years, and they are now providing health care to over 80,000 Vermonters.

We have 1,100 in this country today. What this legislation will do is go from 1,100 community health centers to 4,800 community health centers, quadrupling the number of health centers in America. By doing that, we will provide comprehensive, high-quality primary health care in every underserved area in this country--a giant step forward in terms of making primary health care accessible to every man, woman, and child in this Nation.

In my view, we need to move toward a national health care program which guarantees health care for all people, but we can take this important step forward in terms of primary health care quite soon.

Here is one of the very wonderful aspects of what this legislation does. Right now, we spend about $2.1 billion a year for community health centers. This legislation, over a 5-year period, will take that number up to $8 billion. It will go from $2 billion to $8 billion as we quadruple the number of community health centers.

What study after study suggests is that in fact this investment will end up saving us money. This investment in primary health care will save us money because those people who get sick will now be able to go to a community health center--perhaps the most cost-effective primary health care in America--rather than walking into an emergency room, which is one of the most expensive health care providers in the country. In addition, when people have access to health care and get treatment when they need it, they are not going to get very sick and end up in a hospital, where it will cost tens of thousands of dollars to deal with their illness.

So what this legislation does is quadruple the number of community health centers, and it very substantially increases the amount of money that goes to the National Health Service Corps so we can provide debt relief and scholarships to young physicians who will then go out and serve us in underserved areas.

In my view, this legislation, if passed--and I think we have a good chance to pass it because there is a whole lot of bipartisan support here in the Senate for this concept, a lot of support in the House as well--will revolutionize primary health care in America. It will bring us to the day when virtually every American will have access to a doctor, a dentist, mental health counseling, and low-cost prescription drugs. It will enable us to produce the doctors, the dentists, the nurses, and the other health care providers we desperately need to get out

into rural, urban America, and underserved areas. It will be a major step forward in providing the primary health care infrastructure we need as we in fact move to a national health care program.

This is important legislation, and I thank all of the 21 Members of the Senate who have already come on as original cosponsors. We hope that many more will come on in the coming weeks and months. My hope is we can get this bill out of committee and see it passed as a stand- alone piece of legislation.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Environment and Public Works Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. 387 and that the Senate then proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be

read a third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and any statements related to the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 9:30 a.m. tomorrow, Friday, February 27; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and the Senate proceed to a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. President, there will be no rollcall votes during Friday's session of the Senate. However, Senators should expect a busy week next week as the Senate considers the Omnibus appropriations bill.

If there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate adjourn under the previous order.

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

Mr. President, let me begin by saying that I have not supported all of President Obama's nominations, but I am on the floor today to very proudly and enthusiastically support the nomination of Hilda Solis to be our next Secretary of Labor.

As a former Member of the House, I have had the honor and privilege of working with Congresswoman Solis on a number of very important issues over the years. I consider Congresswoman Solis not only an outstanding Member of that body but also a very good friend.

In my view, there are very few Members of Congress who have spent as many years as she has in the fight to expand the middle class, in the fight to address the problems of poverty, in the fight to make sure all of our fellow Americans have health care as a right. I believe very strongly that Hilda Solis will make an excellent--excellent--Secretary of the Department of Labor.

When I left the House and moved to the Senate, I was delighted to work with Congresswoman Solis to create the Green Jobs Workforce Training Program. This important initiative will not only lead to the creation of decent-paying jobs all over this country but will also help us combat the scourge of global warming and our dependence on foreign oil and help us move aggressively away from fossil fuels.

Mr. President, as you well know, millions of Americans from California to the State of Vermont are caught up in the worst economic crisis this country has faced since the Great Depression. Our people by the millions are losing their jobs. Our people are losing their homes. They are losing their health insurance. They are losing their pensions. They are losing their ability to send their kids to college. And perhaps most significantly, they are losing their hope, their belief that the American dream is still alive, that their kids will have at least a good, if not better, standard of living than our generation has.

Millions of American workers in recent years have seen their wages go down, and they are working longer hours for lower wages. During the last 8 years, some 7 million American workers have lost their health care; millions are unable to find quality childcare despite the fact that husband and wife are both working, and they just do not know what to do with their kids; and millions of Americans are wondering right now whether the dream of a college education will, in fact, be available to their kids.

What has happened over the last 8 years is, as the middle class has shrunk, poverty has increased, while the gap between the very wealthy and everybody else has grown wider. The United States of America can do better than that. Instead of seeing the middle class shrink and poverty increase, we have to see poverty go down and the middle class expand.

The American people and the workers of this country are entitled to have a Secretary of Labor who will stand with them, who will be aggressive in fighting for the rights of workers from California to Vermont. The truth is that no Secretary of Labor, no matter how great he or she may be, is going to solve all of the important problems facing our country. But what working people have a right to know is that they will have a Secretary of Labor who, in fact, understands what labor is about and is on the side of working people; a Secretary of Labor who is committed to protecting workers throughout the country from unscrupulous employers who try to steal their pay and threaten their health and safety to pad the bottom line and enrich the CEOs on top. And God only knows we have seen a lot of that over the last 8 years. For far too long, we have had a Labor Department that was more interested in protecting the actions of bad, unscrupulous employers than protecting the needs of hard-working employees. That has to change. When President Obama nominated Hilda Solis for Secretary of Labor, I think he sent a signal all over the country that that is going to change, that the rights of workers are going to be protected.

There is perhaps no more challenging time to be Secretary of Labor than at this very moment. The problems workers are experiencing are enormous. But, frankly, I cannot think of any person who is more up to the task at hand than Hilda Solis. Her character and

her work ethic are impeccable. Most of all, she will be a tireless advocate for working families throughout this country. For millions of American workers struggling to make ends meet, Congresswoman Solis is, indeed, a breath of fresh air.

I will be strongly supporting the Secretary of Labor nominee Hilda Solis, and I hope all of my colleagues will as well.

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

Will my colleague yield?

Sure. Does my friend recall that for many years under President Bush, the Republican leadership told us how imperative it was to repeal the estate tax, which would cost this Nation $1 trillion over a 10-year period? Mr. President, $1 trillion--and who were the beneficiaries of that tax break? The top three-tenths of 1 percent.

We are spending $800 billion, including tax breaks for the middle class, rebuilding this country. What does my friend think about $1 trillion for the top three-tenths of 1 percent as opposed to putting money into the middle-class and working families?

Mr. President, my sense of history is a little bit different than my good friend from Utah. I was under the recollection that George W.

Bush was President for the last 8 years. My recollection was that the Republicans controlled the House and the Senate for 6 of those 8 years. My recollection is that during the last 8 years, 6 million Americans slipped out of the middle class and went into poverty. My recollection is that median family income for middle-class working families declined by over $2,000. My recollection is that, yes, the wealthiest people in the country did very well under President Bush but that ordinary people struggled to keep their heads above water.

The bill we are addressing this evening is not perfect. I would have written it differently. I suspect everyone here would have written it differently. But what it does do is that in the midst of the greatest economic crisis this country has faced since the Great Depression, what we do is begin to address the unmet needs of the American people and we begin marching forward to create the millions of jobs this country desperately needs.

Most importantly, we begin the process of moving America in a very different direction so that, in fact, this country does not fall into a great depression from which it would take us years and years and tremendous human suffering to dig our way out.

What this legislation does is says that after years of neglect, let us create millions of good-paying jobs by rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure. In the State of Vermont, our bridges need work, our roads need work, our water systems need work. That is true all over this country.

Let us put people to work rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure. That is what this legislation does. For decades now, people have been saying what a terrible shame it is, how silly it is that we import every single year hundreds of billions of dollars of oil from foreign countries. How silly it is. Well, finally we are beginning to address that absurdity. We are saying now and we are investing in energy efficiency, we are investing in wind, solar, geothermal, biomass, sustainable energy.

Let's end the talk of moving us into a new energy direction. Let's invest in those areas so that America, in fact, can become energy independent. My Republican friends over the years have said what we need to do is give tax breaks to the wealthiest people in this country. In fact, right now, today, despite the fact that we have the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any country, the Republican leadership today says, let's repeal the estate tax.

Do you know that if we did as the Republicans wanted and repealed the estate tax completely, we would provide $1 trillion in tax breaks to the wealthiest three-tenths of 1 percent, millionaires and billionaires all? Not one person in the middle class would gain one nickel from that effort. It is one trillion dollars for the three-tenths of 1 percent.

Then they come to the floor of the Senate and they say, what a terrible thing, you are investing $800 billion rebuilding America, creating 3.5 million jobs, giving millions of middle-class and working- class Americans tax breaks. What a bad idea that is. You should do not that. We should not invest $800 billion rebuilding America. We should give $1 trillion to the top three-tenths of 1 percent. That is the contrast in terms of how they want to go and how many of us want to go.

What this bill does is not only begin the process of rebuilding our infrastructure, not only begin the process of moving us away from fossil fuel and foreign oil, what we also understand is that middle- class families cannot afford to send their kids to college. So we are putting a significant sum of money in and expanding the Pell grant program.

This bill understands that in these hard economic times, when millions of our fellow Americans have lost their jobs, hunger in America is a real problem. So we are putting money in for food stamps. We are putting money into energy, homeless shelters so that those among us, those least able among us, are protected.

Working-class and middle-class families cannot afford childcare. We are putting billions into helping them get the childcare they need, the Head Start they need, and creating jobs in that area as well.

This is an 800-page bill. It is not perfect. Everyone knows that. But this bill begins the process----

Of moving the country in the right direction. It should be supported.

Thank you, Mr. President.

This amendment, as modified, is being cosponsored by Senator Grassley and has been cleared by both sides. This amendment simply requires recipients of TARP funding to meet strict H-1B worker hiring standards to prevent displacement of U.S. workers.

I thank Chairman Baucus for working with me on changes to my original amendment, and I urge its adoption.

Thirty seconds.

Will the Senator from Montana answer a question? We have an amendment with Mr. Grassley that we wish to bring up. Can we get it in order as well?

If I may ask the Senator from Arizona, Senator Grassley and I will be pretty brief. I don't think we need more than 10 minutes.

We would like some definitive time.

Mr. President, later today I will be offering an amendment with Senator Grassley, which I think is an extremely important amendment, which, in fact, deals very fundamentally with the unemployment and job crisis facing this country. There is no debate the American people are furious at what happened on Wall Street, where a small number of executives have acted in an incredibly greedy manner, with extreme recklessness, and perhaps illegal behavior, in plunging our country into a major and very deep recession.

As every American knows, we are losing huge numbers of jobs. What we are trying to do now on the floor of the Senate is do everything we can to prevent this country from falling into a deep depression. In the middle of all of this, in the middle of the greed and recklessness being shown by the major financial institutions of our country,

at a time when the taxpayers of this country are spending $700 billion on a bailout, when the Fed is lending out trillions of dollars, what we see is many of those bankers are providing huge bonuses to themselves. They are furnishing their offices in lavish ways. They are buying jet planes. They are doing all of these things which suggest to me they do not know what world they are living in; they do not know what is going on in America.

I want to point out today, with Senator Grassley, another part of this terribly destructive behavior on the part of these financial institutions. During the last 3 months of 2008, the largest banks in this country--because of the economic downturn especially on Wall Street--have announced 100,000 job cuts within the financial industry itself. So 100,000 Americans are out on the street. What has been the response of Wall Street to the loss of 100,000 of their own workers? Do you know what they have done? What these banks have announced is they are requesting 21,000 foreign workers over the next 6 years through the H-1B program to fill those jobs.

So let me repeat, Wall Street causes a crisis, causing millions of people to lose their jobs, including 100,000 in financial institutions as well, 100,000 people who on average were making quite good wages with decent-paying jobs. So what they are now trying to do is bring in foreign workers through the H-1B program, and they have requested 21,000 H-1B visas over the next 6 years. Talk about adding insult to injury.

The amendment Senator Grassley and I are offering is pretty simple. It is essentially saying there will be a suspension of the H-1B program for any institution that is receiving TARP funds for just 1 year. I would have gone further, but we are just going to make it for 1 year.

Let me finish my remarks by quoting from a recent AP article just published on Monday. This is what the AP writes:

Even as the economy collapsed last year and many financial

workers found themselves unemployed, the dozen U.S. banks now

receiving the biggest rescue packages requested visas for

tens of thousands of foreign workers to fill high-paying

jobs. . . . The major banks, which have received $150 billion

in bailout funds, requested visas for more than 21,800

foreign workers over the past six years for senior vice

presidents, corporate lawyers, junior investment analysts and

human resources specialists.

Presumably Americans are unable to do these jobs.

The article continues:

The average annual salary for those jobs was $90,721,

nearly twice the median income for all American households.

During the last three months of 2008, the largest banks that

received taxpayer loans announced more than 100,000 layoffs.

The amendment is pretty simple. I hope we will have bipartisan support.

Mr. President, I see Senator Grassley standing, and I would be happy to yield for him.

Mr. President, will the Senator yield for one moment?

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the debate has concluded on the McCain amendment I be allowed to set aside the McCain amendment so I can call up the Sanders-Grassley amendment No. 306.

Can we come up after the Ensign amendment?

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank Senator Grassley for his cosponsorship of this amendment. I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment so I may call up the Sanders-Grassley amendment No. 306 with the modification that I send to the desk.

Mr. President, I thank Chairman Baucus and his staff for working with us on what I believe are significant improvements to the original amendment Senator Grassley and I offered. This amendment has been cleared by both sides with a modification. This amendment, as modified, would simply require recipients of TARP funding to meet strict hiring standards to ensure nondisplacement of U.S. workers.

I thank Senator Grassley for working with me on this amendment. I yield to him. If not, Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Yes, that will be fine.

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

I rise in strong support of the SCHIP legislation. I find it amazing that we have spent so much time debating it. This SCHIP legislation would help more than 4 million children in this country get the health insurance they desperately need. But I should point out it leaves approximately 3 million kids still uninsured.

As you well know, the United States of America remains the only major country in the industrialized world where this debate would take place. We are spending weeks discussing an issue which every other country in the industrialized world has long resolved.

So if we pass this piece of legislation tomorrow, and I hope we will, 3 million kids still remain without health insurance. The common sense of insuring children is apparent to everybody because when kids are insured, when parents are allowed to bring their children to a doctor, when kids have access to medical care in a school, professionals can pick up the medical problems kids have so 10 years later they do not end up in a hospital with a serious illness and we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to cure a child whose problems could have been detected when they were little.

This really is a no-brainer. Clearly, what we must do as a nation is move to a national health care program guaranteeing health care to all of our people, but a step forward will be passing this SCHIP legislation.

I think the American people are more than aware that our health care system is substantially broken. They understand not only do 46 million Americans have no health insurance, they understand even more are underinsured. They understand the absurdity of tying health care to jobs because when we lose our jobs, then we lose our health care.

I hear some of my friends saying: Oh, the American people do not want government health care. Well, you know what. Read the polls.

The American people do believe the U.S. Government should take the responsibility of providing health care to every man, woman, and child, and I hope as soon as possible we, in fact, do that. But not only do we have 46 million Americans, including many children--and that issue we are trying to deal with right now--who have no health insurance, what we are also doing, because of the waste and inefficiency in our current system, is we end up spending far more per capita on health care than the people of any other country.

I know the Presiding Officer is more than aware that General Motors spends more, for example, on health care than they do on steel in building automobiles. What kind of sense is that? So I hope, at a certain point--and I hope soon--we as a nation end up finally saying health care is a right of all people. The absurdity that one child in this country does not have health insurance is an international embarrassment. Let's go forward, and let's develop the most cost- effective way we can provide health care to all our people.

Now, here is the irony: that even if tomorrow we guaranteed health care to all our children, even if the next day we guaranteed health care to all our people, do you know what. That does not mean people are going to be able to find doctors or dentists. Our infrastructure, especially in primary care, is in

such a bad condition that we need to revolutionize primary health care in America.

We just had a hearing, chaired by Senator Harkin, who has been very active in the whole issue of preventative care in the HELP Committee. This is unbelievable. We had a physician who is a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, in a State where presumably they have universal health care, and she cannot find a primary health care physician. A professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School cannot find a primary health care physician. That is how absurd this situation is.

We have over 50 million Americans today who do not have regular access to a physician. We have many more who cannot find a dentist. Meanwhile, if we were not depleting the medical infrastructure of Third World countries, bringing in doctors and dentists from those countries, our entire primary health care system would be in even worse shape than it is right now.

Community Health Centers

Madam President, I do wish to say a word about legislation we will be introducing next week--I am proud to tell you we have 15 original cosponsors; I hope we will have more in the next few days--which essentially begins to address the crisis in primary health care by significantly expanding a program Senator Kennedy developed in the 1960s which has widespread support--not just from Democrats but from Republicans, not just from President Obama, who was a cosponsor of similar type legislation last year, but from Senator McCain, who talked about community health centers during his campaign; and President Bush was very supportive of the concept.

So we have widespread support, and now is the time to go forward and say we will have a federally qualified community health center in every underserved area in America. By expanding the number of FQCHCs from about 1,100 to 4,800, at the end of the day, by providing primary health care, dental care, mental health counseling, and low-cost prescription drugs, do you know what we do. We save money. We save substantial sums of money because we keep patients out of the emergency room, we keep patients out of the hospital because we are treating their illnesses at an early stage rather than allowing them to become ill and then spending huge sums of money when they end up in the hospital.

I am very proud we have Senator Kennedy as a cosponsor, and Senators Durbin, Harkin, Schumer, Kerry, Boxer, Inouye, Leahy, Mikulski, Casey, Cardin, Brown, Begich, Burris, and Wyden. I hope we will have more cosponsors.

This is legislation we can pass. This is legislation which has historically had bipartisan support because we all know primary health care--giving people access to doctors, dentists, low-cost prescription drugs--is the way to not only keep people healthy, it is the way to save billions and billions of dollars.

Let me conclude by saying I hope very much we support this SCHIP legislation. It will save us money by enabling kids to get to the doctor before their problems become much more acute. It is the right thing to do, and it is the beginning of the United States trying to join the rest of the industrialized world in saying health care must be a right of all people--all people--rather than a privilege of just the few.

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

Mr. President, soon we will be voting on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, S. 181. The House of Representatives has already passed this legislation by a vote of 247 to 171. Passing this bill today will send a clear message that our country will not tolerate unequal pay for equal work.

As astonishing as it is, in the year 2009, women earn, on average, only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men in comparable jobs. What a truly unthinkable, and frankly disgraceful, circumstance--one that we must do everything within our power to change. Today we have the opportunity to take a small but very significant step in making sure that Americans have the legal opportunity to challenge pay discrimination.

Lilly Ledbetter was a loyal employee at Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company for 19 years. At first, her salary was in line with that of her male colleagues, but over time she got smaller raises creating a significant pay gap. Ms. Ledbetter was not aware of this pay discrimination until she received an anonymous note detailing the salaries of three male coworkers. After filing a complaint with the Equal Employment and Opportunity Commission, her case went to trial and the jury awarded her $3.3 million in compensatory and punitive damages due to the extreme pay discrimination she endured.

The Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit reversed this verdict, arguing that Ms. Ledbetter filed her complaint too late. If you asked anyone on the street, they would tell you that this decision goes against the citizens of this country's sense of right and wrong. How was she to know that this discrimination was happening? Ms. Ledbetter was already facing sexual harassment at Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. and told by her boss that he didn't think a woman should be working there. To argue that Ms. Ledbetter should have asked her male counterparts what their salaries were at the moment she suspected discrimination defies common sense. This topic was off limits, as it is in most work places. It is clearly not her fault she didn't discover this inequity sooner.

In 2007, the Supreme Court upheld the Eleventh Circuit ruling in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. and, as a result, took us a step back in time. It gutted a key part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that has protected hardworking Americans from pay discrimination for 45 years by making it extraordinarily difficult for victims of pay discrimination to sue their employers.

The bill before us overturns the Court's 5-4 decision and reinstates prior law. It ensures that victims of pay discrimination will not be penalized if they are unaware of wage disparities. I am happy to say that we will have the opportunity today to protect millions of hardworking Americans and reverse the unreasonable and unfair Ledbetter decision. I call on all of my Senate colleagues to vote in favor of this bill, which will send a clear signal that pay discrimination is unacceptable and will not be tolerated.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, I wish to begin by congratulating Senator Mikulski on her continued efforts in fighting for pay equality for women workers. This is a struggle that has gone on for decades. We are making some progress, but we have a long way to go and it is imperative that we pass the Ledbetter legislation.

Yesterday, as everybody in the world knows, Barack Obama was sworn in as the President of the United States. I can tell my colleagues that in my State of Vermont, and I expect all over this country and, in fact, in virtually every country in the world, there was great anticipation and great joy, not only because we have made history in our country by electing the first African American ever elected President, but also because the people of this country demand that we begin moving America in a very different direction than where we have been going for the last 8 years. Unfortunately, as President Obama assumes office, the Congress, the American people, and he are looking out at a set of the most serious problems that our country has faced since the Great Depression. Let me take a very few minutes to give a broad outline of some of those problems and some of the efforts I personally will be making in order to address these crises.

As a result of the outrageous greed and recklessness and dishonesty on the part of a few hundred or a few thousand speculators on Wall Street, our entire financial system is in danger of collapsing. That impacts not only the United States but, in fact, the financial markets all over the world. At this point, the American taxpayer--primarily the middle class--has already put into the TARP bailout some $700 billion, but in addition to that, the Fed has lent out trillions of dollars with virtually no transparency and certainly no accountability. This is a crisis we have to deal with in a number of ways. I will tell my colleagues as somebody who voted against the original bailout and who voted against the second bailout, we have to develop a mechanism that does more than pump hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out Wall Street. This is a difficult issue, it is a complicated issue, but it is an issue that we have to address.

Furthermore, in my view, we need an investigation to get at the root of the problem. I reject the idea, as some suggest, that this was a problem caused by everybody; all of us are guilty in causing this financial crisis. That is wrong. The fact is there are a relatively small number of people--by and large people who in the last 5 to 10 years have made hundreds of millions of dollars; in fact, in some cases have accrued billions of dollars of wealth for themselves, who have operated in utter recklessness and, in my suspicion, in illegal mannerisms in order to make these incredible profits and to bring our financial system to the edge of collapse. We need to know who these people are, how they did it, hold them accountable, and create legislation which makes sure that we never, ever again are placed in the position we are in today.

The truth of the matter is that while the financial crisis of the last few months has exacerbated the economic problems that we are facing as a Nation today, for many years, despite the assertions of the Bush administration, the middle class has been in a significant state of decline, poverty has been increasing, and millions of people have lost their health insurance and their

pensions. What is happening today as a result of the financial crisis and the huge increase in unemployment is a situation where when people lose their jobs, they are losing their health insurance; when they are losing their income, they are losing their ability to maintain their homes and they are losing their homes; when they are losing their income, they are unable to take care of their parents, they are unable to send their kids to college, and the dreams many people have fought for their entire working lives are now disappearing. I can tell my colleagues that in the State of Vermont we have received many e-mails and communications from elderly people, elderly workers who have told me that they have spent their whole lives working so they would have a secure retirement, and now that retirement is disappearing with the decline of the stock market. We are in the midst of a grave crisis and we are going to need some bold thinking in order to get out of it.

Not only are we seeing a huge increase in unemployment, people losing their health insurance, poverty increasing, the reality is we continue to have--and we do not talk about this enough--by far the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major Nation on Earth. During my years in the House and my time in the Senate, I have heard some of my colleagues talk about family values. Well, let me say very clearly that having the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world is not a family value, it is a national disgrace. Every psychologist in the world will tell us that when kids grow up in poverty, when kids do not have early childhood education, when kids go to poor schools, there is a direct correlation between that reality and the fact that we have more people behind bars today, more people in jail than any country in the world, including China. How does that happen, that millions of Americans end up in jail more so than in an authoritarian country such as China? If one thinks it does not have a relationship to the high rate of childhood poverty in this country and the fact that we are not investing in our kids, I think you would be wrong.

Last year, we continued the process of seeing a growing gap between the very rich and everybody else. I know this is not an issue that many people in the Congress choose to talk about, but it is an issue that must be talked about, not only from a sense of morality but from a sense of basic economic well-being. In my view, it is not acceptable that the top one-tenth of 1 percent earn more income than the bottom 50 percent. It is not acceptable that the top 1 percent own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. The whole issue of greed is something that we as a Congress and as a Nation have to be talking about. Do people need billions and billions and billions of dollars in personal wealth when we have children in this city and all over this country who are living out in the streets and who are denied basic, decent quality childcare? Is that the kind of Nation that we are about?

Since 2000, since the year 2000, nearly 6 million Americans have slipped out of the middle class and into poverty, the median income for working age families has gone down by over $2,300, over 7 million Americans have lost their health insurance, more than 4 million decent paying manufacturing jobs have been lost, and over 4 million workers have lost their pensions. All of those figures will get worse because of the statistics we have seen in recent months because of the financial crisis. The dream of a college education is fading away for many working families in my State and all over this country as college costs go up while incomes go down. We are seeing a situation where hundreds of thousands of qualified students are unable to go to college because they simply don't have the money to do that, and many others are coming out deeply in debt and have to take jobs which they would rather not take in order to pay back their student loans. Meanwhile, in the last 8 years, despite the bailout of Wall Street, with ongoing tax breaks for the very wealthy, and with the war in Iraq, we now have a national debt of over $10.5 trillion.

Another issue this Congress has to deal with is to address the reality that the United States of America remains the only major country on Earth that does not provide health care to all of its people. Yet we end up spending substantially more per capita on health care than any other Nation. But 47 million Americans have no health insurance. Almost 20,000 Americans die every single year because they don't have access to decent primary health care--they can't find a doctor when they need it--and we pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs.

With a new President, with a new Congress, the American people are asking whether finally we will have the courage to stand up to the lobbyists who are outside of this building every single day, who are walking the corridors; can we stand up to the insurance companies, can we stand up to the drug companies so that we finally--finally--will provide quality health care, low-cost prescription drugs to every man, woman, and child as a right of citizenship? Will we have the courage to do that? I certainly hope we will.

As we speak, we are currently involved in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which have cost us not only the lives of thousands and thousands of wonderful young men and women, but they cost us over $10 billion every single month. These wars are also stretching the Army and our National Guard to the breaking point. My hope is that in the next several months we will be developing policy to bring our troops home from Iraq as soon as we possibly can. I hope very much that we will have not only a debate right here in Congress but a national conversation about how we deal with the very difficult issues of Afghanistan.

Despite the reality of global warming, our Nation still, despite decades of talk, has not yet broken our dependency on fossil fuel and foreign oil. In fact, every single year we are spending more than $500 billion bringing in oil from abroad. We have only begun--just begun--to make the advances we need to make in terms of energy efficiency and sustainable energy. As a member of both the Environmental Committee and the Energy Committee, it is my view that we have the potential to create millions of good-paying jobs as we transform our energy system away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency and sustainable energy. We can do that. We must do that.

As my colleagues well know, the major issue that this Congress is going to be dealing with in the next several weeks is an economic recovery program. I strongly support the basic outlines of that program. Obviously, there is going to be a lot of debate about the details within it and the hope that we can target that money in such a way as to create good-paying jobs as quickly as possible in the most cost-effective way imaginable. What I can tell my colleagues is that in my State--and I expect in the other 49 States in this country--our infrastructure is collapsing. We have roads in the State of Vermont which have huge problems. We have all kinds of bridges that are in need of repair in our small towns. We have water systems that are simply inadequate. We have wastewater plants that need to be rebuilt. All of these are very expensive propositions. So in the stimulus package, my hope is that we are going to put substantial sums of money into rebuilding our roads, our bridges, our water systems. I hope we begin to make the investment we need in public transportation--certainly rural public transportation in the State of Vermont--as one of many needs. If you are a worker in one part of the State and you want to go 50 miles to your job, in almost every case there is no public transportation to get you there. If you are a senior citizen and wish to go to the hospital or the grocery store, it is very hard to get there if you do not have a car. I suspect that is true all over rural America. In addition, our rail system is far behind, where Europe, Japan, and even China are now advancing forward. So I hope for and will support a major increase in funding to create a substantial number of new jobs as we rebuild our infrastructure.

In addition--I know President Obama has been very strong on this issue, and I agree with him--we need to invest heavily in energy efficiency. I can tell you that in the State of Vermont and, again, all over this country but especially in cold-weather States, you have older homes where energy is just going through the roof--literally going

through the roof and the windows--because of poor insulation. We can create jobs making our homes, our offices, our schools more energy efficient.

We need to be extremely aggressive, as I mentioned a moment ago, in terms of public transportation.

Also, right now we are on the cusp of major breakthroughs in such renewable technologies as wind, solar, geothermal, and biomass. I suspect that in 20 years, people will see a very different energy system than we have right now. It will be a cleaner system. It will be a system not emitting greenhouse gases.

There is a lot of work that stands in front of us. There was an election in November where the people said: We want change. That is what that election was all about. Unless we are bold, unless we are prepared to take on the big money interests that have dominated legislation for the last many years, there will be a great deal of disappointment all over this country.

Now is the time. There is a lot of enthusiasm in the work President Obama has been doing since he has been elected. There is an enormous amount of hope and confidence in the air that we can move America in a new direction. I hope that with new national leadership, with strong grassroots participation, with a Congress prepared to stand up and take on the powerful special interests that have dominated us for so many years, we can fulfill the faith the American people have expressed in us in recent years and that, in fact, we can move America in a very different direction and become the country all of us know we can become.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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