Floor Statements

Madam President, let me first thank my colleague from Massachusetts for his eloquent statement on the Estrada nomination and also his other statement about the level of funding for education contained in the omnibus appropriations bill. I know how hard he has worked on that issue for many years. I commend him for the progress that has been made, and I agree with him that much more progress needs to be made.

I want to say a few words about the Estrada nomination and also talk about another aspect of the President's proposed budget to us, with which I have found serious concern.

First, on the Estrada nomination for the DC Court of Appeals, Miguel Estrada has been nominated for that position, and, frankly, the concern I bring to this issue is that many of my good friends and people whom I respect in the House of Representatives, in the Hispanic Caucus, have indicated that they oppose his nomination. When I said many, I should have said all. They had quite a discussion and quite a period of investigation of this nomination, and they concluded unanimously that the Hispanic Caucus of the House of Representatives would oppose the nomination. I have been contacted by several members of that caucus and urged to resist the nomination in the Senate. As I say, I have not taken the time to look into it in detail myself, but I have great respect for these gentlemen and women who have worked hard on this issue, and their strong opposition is of concern to me.

I am also concerned that not a single Democratic member of the Senate Judiciary Committee determined to support the nominee after hearing the nominee's answers to questions before the committee. I share my colleagues' concerns as expressed by many of those members on the Judiciary Committee that we simply do not have enough information about this nominee at this time to cast an informed vote. During his confirmation hearing, he was not willing to answer many basic questions that were propounded to him. He was evasive when asked about his judicial philosophy. He refused to provide samples of his work from the time he served in the Solicitor General's Office. There have been requests for information made that, in my view, have been reasonable.

As I understand it, the chairman and ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee and Senator Daschle are continuing to request additional information before any vote is cast on that nomination.

Some have attempted to turn this debate into a debate about the nominee's ethnicity. I don't believe that is the issue. I have supported many Hispanic candidates. In my State, I had the great honor to recommend to President Clinton, our previous President, and he in fact appointed a Hispanic nominee to our Federal court in New Mexico. But that support was based on having a full record regarding the candidate's qualifications in each case. We do not have a full record as to this nominee at this point. I hope when we attain it, then we can move forward with the vote at sometime in the future.

Mr. President, I rise today with my colleague, the distinguished senior Senator from Idaho, Senator Craig, to introduce the Rural Four-Lane Highway Safety and Development Act of 2003. We are pleased to be joined by Senators Lincoln and Cochran in sponsoring the bill.

The purpose of this bipartisan legislation is to ensure that States have the resources they need to upgrade major two-lane roads across the Nation to high-quality four-lane divided highways. The goals of this bill are to improve the safety of our most dangerous highways and to stimulate economic development in rural areas.

I think most Senators would agree that the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways is one of the transportation marvels of the 20th century. The system's 46,000 miles of divided highways interconnect virtually every major urban area in the Nation. The system represents one of the most efficient and safest highway systems in the world.

Unfortunately, when the Interstate System was planned, it left many rural communities and smaller urban areas without direct links to the high-quality transportation network that the interstate highways provide. Many of these smaller and rural communities continue to suffer economically because of the lack of high-quality four-lane highways.

To address this issue, in 1995 Congress developed the concept of a National Highway System as a way of extending the benefits of an efficient highway network to all areas of the country. Congress designated the National Highway System to help focus Federal resources on the Nation's most important roads.

Today there are about 160,000 miles on the National Highway System, including all of the interstate highways and all other routes that are important to the Nation's economy, defense, and general mobility. The NHS comprises only 4 percent of the Nation's roads, but carries more than 40 percent of all highway traffic, 75 percent of heavy truck traffic and 90 percent of tourist traffic.

The NHS reaches nearly every part of the Nation. According to the Federal Highway Administration, about 90 percent of America's population lives within 5 miles of an NHS route. All urban areas with a population of more than 50,000, and 93 percent with a population of between 5,000 and 50,000, are within 5 miles of the NHS. Counties with NHS highways have 99 percent of

all jobs, including 99 percent of all manufacturing jobs, 97 percent of mining jobs, and 93 percent of agricultural jobs.

The NHS is the critical transportation link for most of our Nation's rural areas. The Federal Highway Administration estimates that, of the 160,000 miles now on the National Highway System, fully 75 percent, or 119,000 miles, are in rural areas. Of the 1.2 trillion total vehicle miles traveled in 2000 on NHS roads, about 60 percent were in rural areas.

I hope all Senators will agree that improving highway safety should be our top priority. When it comes to highway safety, the fact is that travel on four-lane roads is safer than two-lane roads. This is especially true in rural areas. According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, in 1998 the rate of traffic fatalities on all rural roads was 2.39 per 100-million vehicle miles; however, the rate on rural interstate highways was half as high--only 1.23 per 100 million vehicle-miles.

The reason for the lower fatality rate on rural interstate highways should be obvious. When a road has only one lane in each direction, trucks and other slow-moving vehicles increase the hazard of passing. Vehicles turning on or off a two-lane road can also increase risk. A divided four-lane highway greatly reduces these perils.

Of the 119,000 miles of rural NHS roads, about 33,000 miles are interstates and another 28,000 miles have been upgraded to four or more lanes. The remaining 58,000 miles--more than half of this rural highway network--are still only two-lane roads with no central divider. These are the most dangerous roads on the National Highway System.

In my State of New Mexico, we have made some progress toward upgrading our rural two-lane highways to four lanes. In recent years, US550 from Bernalillo to Bloomfield, US285 from Interstate 40 to Carlsbad, and a key segment of US54 from El Paso to Alamogordo have been widened to four lanes. In addition, upgrading of US70 from Las Cruces to Clovis is nearly completed. But much more remains to be done.

New Mexico has 2,647 miles of rural roads in the NHS. Eight hundred and ninety-two of these NHS miles are interstates. Of the balance of New Mexico's NHS highways, 1,755 miles are in the rural parts of my State, especially Chaves, Colfax, Eddy, Lincoln, Guadalupe, Otero, Quay, San Juan, and Union Counties. And almost 70 percent--1,217 miles--of New Mexico's rural NHS highways remain only two-lane roads. These two-lane roads are major transportation routes with heavy truck and commercial traffic. In 2000, a total of 10.3 billion vehicle miles were traveled on New Mexico's NHS highways, and about one quarter, or 2.7 billion miles, were traveled on these rural NHS roads.

Unfortunately, there are only very limited funds available to upgrade the most important two-lane rural NHS roads to four-lane highways. According to a recent GAO study, over two-thirds of all Federal highway funding between 1992 and 2000 has gone either to roads in urban areas or to interstate highways. Consequently, there is a continuing shortfall in Federal highway funding needed to upgrade the most important rural two-lane roads. Our bill will help address the shortfall so that more rural segments of the NHS can be improved to four-lane divided highways.

As in many States, New Mexico's rural counties strongly believe their economic future depends on access to safe and efficient four-lane highways. Basic transportation infrastructure is one of the critical elements for companies choosing where to locate. Truck drivers and the traveling public prefer the safety and efficiency of a four-lane divided highway.

Thus one of the top priorities for rural cities and counties in my State is to complete the four-lane upgrade of such key routes as US54 from Tularosa to Nara Visa, US62/180 from Carlsbad to the Texas state line, US64/87 from Clayton to Raton, and US666 from north of Gallup to Shiprock. These two-lane rural routes in New Mexico not only bear some of the State's heaviest truck and automobile traffic, but also are some of the State's most dangerous roads. In fact, US666 is considered one of the most dangerous two-lane highways in the Nation.

New Mexico is not alone among western states in needing to upgrade two-lane roads on the National Highway System. For example, Texas has almost 3,500 miles of rural two-lane NHS roads. Montana has 2,469 miles, Kansas has 2,293, Nebraska 1,964, Wyoming 1,924, Minnesota 1,897, and Missouri 1,853 miles.

In the East, where States are smaller, many NHS routes remain only two lanes. In Vermont, 78 percent of rural NHS roads are only two lanes, in New Hampshire it's 84 percent and 99 percent in Maine.

I do believe it is time Congress took action to improve the safety of travelers on the highest priority rural two-lane roads. Last year, I secured nearly $1 million in Federal funding to begin the upgrade of US64/87 between Clayton and Raton, which is part of the Ports-to-Plains High Priority Corridor on the National Highway System.

In addition, last week Senator Roberts and I introduced S. 290, which designates U.S. Highway 54 from El Paso, Texas, through New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma to Wichita, Kansas, as the SPIRIT High Priority Corridor. Our bipartisan bill has four cosponsors. A high-priority corridor designation provides no additional Federal funding, but helps focus attention on the need to upgrade the nation's major two-lane routes.

The purpose of the bill we are introducing today, the Rural Four-Lane Highway Safety and Development Act of 2003, is to provide direct Federal funding to States to upgrade existing two-lane roads in rural areas to safe and efficient four-lane divided highways. The States would determine which two-lane roads they wanted to upgrade. To be eligible for funding, the highway must be on the National Highway System or a congressionally designated High Priority Corridor. Our bill gives funding priority to upgrading the most dangerous two-lane highways, routes most affected by increased traffic as a result of NAFTA, highways that have high levels of commercial traffic, and projects that will help stimulate regional economic growth. Total funding for six years is $1.8 billion from the highway trust fund.

My State bears a substantial burden in the maintenance and upgrading of its portion of critical national highways. New Mexico has 3.3 percent of the Nation's land area, but only 6 tenths of one percent of the population. We have 2.2 percent of all of the interstate highway miles and 1.7 percent of all other NHS miles. At the same time, as a border State, New Mexico is common route for trucks crossing the border with Mexico and heading to or coming from the east and west coasts. It is likely that the upgrading to four lanes of the most important NHS highways in New Mexico might not occur without the supplemental funding provided in my bill.

I continue to believe strongly in the important role of highway infrastructure to economic development. Even in this age of the so- called ``new'' economy and high-speed digital communications, roads continue to link our communities together and to carry the commercial goods and products our citizens need. Safe and efficient highways are especially important to citizens in the rural parts of our country.

I recognize that the funding level in this bill is inadequate to upgrade all of the remaining two-lane routes on the NHS in the next six years. Upgrading an existing two-lane road to a full four-lane divided highway can cost upward of one million dollars per mile.

Moreover, some of the existing two-lane roads probably don't have sufficient traffic to justify upgrading at this time. In addition, some two-lane NHS routes pass through scenic areas where it may not be appropriate to upgrade to four lanes. However, I do believe the funding in this bill will take us a long way toward ensuring the most critical projects are completed in the next six years.

This year Congress will take up the reauthorization of the comprehensive six-year transportation bill, TEA-21. We are introducing this bipartisan bill today to help ensure that the issue of the safety of rural two-lane NHS routes receives the attention it deserves as the debate on reauthorization begins. I look forward to working with the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, Senator Inhofe, and Senator Jeffords, the ranking member, as well as Senators Bond and

Reid of the Transportation, Infrastructure and Nuclear Safety Subcommittee, to find a way to ensure additional federal resources are in place to hasten the work of upgrading rural two-lane NHS roads to safe, efficient four-lane divided highways.

I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, the legislation I am introducing today with Senators Thomas, Lincoln, and Johnson entitled ``The Medicare Incentive Payment Program Improvement Act of 2003'' is designed to improve the flow of needed bonus payments to physicians serving Medicare patients in Health Professions Shortage Areas, HPSA.

The Medicare Incentive Payment Program, MIPP, created by the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1987, was meant to assist physicians in defraying the higher costs and burdens of serving Medicare patients in shortage areas. Rural areas are know to suffer from physician shortages, both primary care and specialty physicians. In fact, even though 20 percent of America lives in a rural area, less than 11 percent of physicians in the U.S., practice in rural areas.

In my own State, the ongoing loss of physicians from underserved areas has affected both primary care and in particular, specialty services. In many areas, the shortage of specialists exceeds that of the primary care physicians. The New Mexico Health Policy Commission reported in its year 2000 report that 22 percent of residents in Los Alamos and Santa Fe were unable to receive needed specialist care.

While the national ratio of physicians per population is 198 doctors per 100,000 persons, New Mexico ranks 33rd in the country with only 170 physicians per 100,000 population. We are not in a position to ``grow our own doctors'' either as New Mexico ranks 37th among the 46 States with medical schools in graduating physicians per capita.

New Mexico, like many other States with large numbers health profession shortage areas, or HPSAs, must rely on its ability to recruit and retain physicians in underserved areas to meet the health care needs of its citizens. It was the original intent of the MIPP to do this, by allowing for physicians in underserved areas to receive an additional 10 percent add-on in payments for services rendered. These 10 percent ``bonuses'' are meant to be an essential component in our ongoing effort to ensure Medicare beneficiaries access to medical services, particularly in underserved areas.

Unfortunately, the Medicare Incentive Payment Program has fared poorly, with few providers choosing to receive the payments. In fact, the total annual physician payments have never exceeded $100 million, because of a series of disincentives in the legislation.

The program requires a provider to do a number of things to obtain the bonus payments. First, providers must be aware that MIPP payments are available to them. Many providers are unaware of the program's existence. Next, physicians must find out if the patient's medical care occurred in a shortage area. Following this, a unique code must be attached to the Medicare claim, which is then forwarded to the carrier. Finally, after all these steps, providers are subjected to automatic Medicare audits, just for applying for the very payments for which they are eligible.

Providers committed to serving Medicare patients in underserved areas deserve the support assured by the original legislation's intent.

The Medicare Incentive Payment Improvement Act of 2003 addresses and improves shortcomings in the original legislation by: Placing the burden for determining the bonus eligibility on the Medicare carrier. Eliminating automatic provider audits. Directing the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services to establish a Medicare Incentive Payment Program Educational Program for Providers. Establishing an ongoing analysis of the programs, ability to improve Medicare beneficiaries' access to physician services. Continue to provide the original 10 percent add-on bonus for Part B physician payments in Health Provider Shortage Areas.

Medicare carriers are the logical arbiters to determine whether physician services occurred in a shortage area. Physicians, already overworked, lack sufficient time, resources and training to research and determine whether a service was provided in a HPSA. By placing the responsibility on carriers, with their sophisticated information systems, the physician's administrative burdens will be reduced.

The automatic audits triggered by this program, which are costly, time intensive, and unwarranted, will be lifted under our legislation. By placing the responsibility on carriers to determine payment eligibility the need for provider audits is eliminated.

While the MIPP program is intended to improve beneficiaries' access to physician services, there is no measure of the program's effect on physician availability. The legislation offered today directs CMS to perform an ongoing analysis as to whether these payments actually do improve beneficiaries' access to physician services.

I believe these improvements, in addition to others listed above, will greatly improve patient's access to care.

The following organizations have expressed support for this legislation: American College of Physicians/American Society of Internal Medicine, and the National Rural Health Association.

I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I rise today with my colleague, the distinguished senior Senator from Idaho, Senator Craig, to introduce the Rural Four-Lane Highway Safety and Development Act of 2003. We are pleased to be joined by Senators Lincoln and Cochran in sponsoring the bill.

The purpose of this bipartisan legislation is to ensure that States have the resources they need to upgrade major two-lane roads across the Nation to high-quality four-lane divided highways. The goals of this bill are to improve the safety of our most dangerous highways and to stimulate economic development in rural areas.

I think most Senators would agree that the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways is one of the transportation marvels of the 20th century. The system's 46,000 miles of divided highways interconnect virtually every major urban area in the Nation. The system represents one of the most efficient and safest highway systems in the world.

Unfortunately, when the Interstate System was planned, it left many rural communities and smaller urban areas without direct links to the high-quality transportation network that the interstate highways provide. Many of these smaller and rural communities continue to suffer economically because of the lack of high-quality four-lane highways.

To address this issue, in 1995 Congress developed the concept of a National Highway System as a way of extending the benefits of an efficient highway network to all areas of the country. Congress designated the National Highway System to help focus Federal resources on the Nation's most important roads.

Today there are about 160,000 miles on the National Highway System, including all of the interstate highways and all other routes that are important to the Nation's economy, defense, and general mobility. The NHS comprises only 4 percent of the Nation's roads, but carries more than 40 percent of all highway traffic, 75 percent of heavy truck traffic and 90 percent of tourist traffic.

The NHS reaches nearly every part of the Nation. According to the Federal Highway Administration, about 90 percent of America's population lives within 5 miles of an NHS route. All urban areas with a population of more than 50,000, and 93 percent with a population of between 5,000 and 50,000, are within 5 miles of the NHS. Counties with NHS highways have 99 percent of

all jobs, including 99 percent of all manufacturing jobs, 97 percent of mining jobs, and 93 percent of agricultural jobs.

The NHS is the critical transportation link for most of our Nation's rural areas. The Federal Highway Administration estimates that, of the 160,000 miles now on the National Highway System, fully 75 percent, or 119,000 miles, are in rural areas. Of the 1.2 trillion total vehicle miles traveled in 2000 on NHS roads, about 60 percent were in rural areas.

I hope all Senators will agree that improving highway safety should be our top priority. When it comes to highway safety, the fact is that travel on four-lane roads is safer than two-lane roads. This is especially true in rural areas. According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, in 1998 the rate of traffic fatalities on all rural roads was 2.39 per 100-million vehicle miles; however, the rate on rural interstate highways was half as high--only 1.23 per 100 million vehicle-miles.

The reason for the lower fatality rate on rural interstate highways should be obvious. When a road has only one lane in each direction, trucks and other slow-moving vehicles increase the hazard of passing. Vehicles turning on or off a two-lane road can also increase risk. A divided four-lane highway greatly reduces these perils.

Of the 119,000 miles of rural NHS roads, about 33,000 miles are interstates and another 28,000 miles have been upgraded to four or more lanes. The remaining 58,000 miles--more than half of this rural highway network--are still only two-lane roads with no central divider. These are the most dangerous roads on the National Highway System.

In my State of New Mexico, we have made some progress toward upgrading our rural two-lane highways to four lanes. In recent years, US550 from Bernalillo to Bloomfield, US285 from Interstate 40 to Carlsbad, and a key segment of US54 from El Paso to Alamogordo have been widened to four lanes. In addition, upgrading of US70 from Las Cruces to Clovis is nearly completed. But much more remains to be done.

New Mexico has 2,647 miles of rural roads in the NHS. Eight hundred and ninety-two of these NHS miles are interstates. Of the balance of New Mexico's NHS highways, 1,755 miles are in the rural parts of my State, especially Chaves, Colfax, Eddy, Lincoln, Guadalupe, Otero, Quay, San Juan, and Union Counties. And almost 70 percent--1,217 miles--of New Mexico's rural NHS highways remain only two-lane roads. These two-lane roads are major transportation routes with heavy truck and commercial traffic. In 2000, a total of 10.3 billion vehicle miles were traveled on New Mexico's NHS highways, and about one quarter, or 2.7 billion miles, were traveled on these rural NHS roads.

Unfortunately, there are only very limited funds available to upgrade the most important two-lane rural NHS roads to four-lane highways. According to a recent GAO study, over two-thirds of all Federal highway funding between 1992 and 2000 has gone either to roads in urban areas or to interstate highways. Consequently, there is a continuing shortfall in Federal highway funding needed to upgrade the most important rural two-lane roads. Our bill will help address the shortfall so that more rural segments of the NHS can be improved to four-lane divided highways.

As in many States, New Mexico's rural counties strongly believe their economic future depends on access to safe and efficient four-lane highways. Basic transportation infrastructure is one of the critical elements for companies choosing where to locate. Truck drivers and the traveling public prefer the safety and efficiency of a four-lane divided highway.

Thus one of the top priorities for rural cities and counties in my State is to complete the four-lane upgrade of such key routes as US54 from Tularosa to Nara Visa, US62/180 from Carlsbad to the Texas state line, US64/87 from Clayton to Raton, and US666 from north of Gallup to Shiprock. These two-lane rural routes in New Mexico not only bear some of the State's heaviest truck and automobile traffic, but also are some of the State's most dangerous roads. In fact, US666 is considered one of the most dangerous two-lane highways in the Nation.

New Mexico is not alone among western states in needing to upgrade two-lane roads on the National Highway System. For example, Texas has almost 3,500 miles of rural two-lane NHS roads. Montana has 2,469 miles, Kansas has 2,293, Nebraska 1,964, Wyoming 1,924, Minnesota 1,897, and Missouri 1,853 miles.

In the East, where States are smaller, many NHS routes remain only two lanes. In Vermont, 78 percent of rural NHS roads are only two lanes, in New Hampshire it's 84 percent and 99 percent in Maine.

I do believe it is time Congress took action to improve the safety of travelers on the highest priority rural two-lane roads. Last year, I secured nearly $1 million in Federal funding to begin the upgrade of US64/87 between Clayton and Raton, which is part of the Ports-to-Plains High Priority Corridor on the National Highway System.

In addition, last week Senator Roberts and I introduced S. 290, which designates U.S. Highway 54 from El Paso, Texas, through New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma to Wichita, Kansas, as the SPIRIT High Priority Corridor. Our bipartisan bill has four cosponsors. A high-priority corridor designation provides no additional Federal funding, but helps focus attention on the need to upgrade the nation's major two-lane routes.

The purpose of the bill we are introducing today, the Rural Four-Lane Highway Safety and Development Act of 2003, is to provide direct Federal funding to States to upgrade existing two-lane roads in rural areas to safe and efficient four-lane divided highways. The States would determine which two-lane roads they wanted to upgrade. To be eligible for funding, the highway must be on the National Highway System or a congressionally designated High Priority Corridor. Our bill gives funding priority to upgrading the most dangerous two-lane highways, routes most affected by increased traffic as a result of NAFTA, highways that have high levels of commercial traffic, and projects that will help stimulate regional economic growth. Total funding for six years is $1.8 billion from the highway trust fund.

My State bears a substantial burden in the maintenance and upgrading of its portion of critical national highways. New Mexico has 3.3 percent of the Nation's land area, but only 6 tenths of one percent of the population. We have 2.2 percent of all of the interstate highway miles and 1.7 percent of all other NHS miles. At the same time, as a border State, New Mexico is common route for trucks crossing the border with Mexico and heading to or coming from the east and west coasts. It is likely that the upgrading to four lanes of the most important NHS highways in New Mexico might not occur without the supplemental funding provided in my bill.

I continue to believe strongly in the important role of highway infrastructure to economic development. Even in this age of the so- called ``new'' economy and high-speed digital communications, roads continue to link our communities together and to carry the commercial goods and products our citizens need. Safe and efficient highways are especially important to citizens in the rural parts of our country.

I recognize that the funding level in this bill is inadequate to upgrade all of the remaining two-lane routes on the NHS in the next six years. Upgrading an existing two-lane road to a full four-lane divided highway can cost upward of one million dollars per mile.

Moreover, some of the existing two-lane roads probably don't have sufficient traffic to justify upgrading at this time. In addition, some two-lane NHS routes pass through scenic areas where it may not be appropriate to upgrade to four lanes. However, I do believe the funding in this bill will take us a long way toward ensuring the most critical projects are completed in the next six years.

This year Congress will take up the reauthorization of the comprehensive six-year transportation bill, TEA-21. We are introducing this bipartisan bill today to help ensure that the issue of the safety of rural two-lane NHS routes receives the attention it deserves as the debate on reauthorization begins. I look forward to working with the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, Senator Inhofe, and Senator Jeffords, the ranking member, as well as Senators Bond and

Reid of the Transportation, Infrastructure and Nuclear Safety Subcommittee, to find a way to ensure additional federal resources are in place to hasten the work of upgrading rural two-lane NHS roads to safe, efficient four-lane divided highways.

I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, the legislation I am introducing today with Senators Thomas, Lincoln, and Johnson entitled ``The Medicare Incentive Payment Program Improvement Act of 2003'' is designed to improve the flow of needed bonus payments to physicians serving Medicare patients in Health Professions Shortage Areas, HPSA.

The Medicare Incentive Payment Program, MIPP, created by the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1987, was meant to assist physicians in defraying the higher costs and burdens of serving Medicare patients in shortage areas. Rural areas are know to suffer from physician shortages, both primary care and specialty physicians. In fact, even though 20 percent of America lives in a rural area, less than 11 percent of physicians in the U.S., practice in rural areas.

In my own State, the ongoing loss of physicians from underserved areas has affected both primary care and in particular, specialty services. In many areas, the shortage of specialists exceeds that of the primary care physicians. The New Mexico Health Policy Commission reported in its year 2000 report that 22 percent of residents in Los Alamos and Santa Fe were unable to receive needed specialist care.

While the national ratio of physicians per population is 198 doctors per 100,000 persons, New Mexico ranks 33rd in the country with only 170 physicians per 100,000 population. We are not in a position to ``grow our own doctors'' either as New Mexico ranks 37th among the 46 States with medical schools in graduating physicians per capita.

New Mexico, like many other States with large numbers health profession shortage areas, or HPSAs, must rely on its ability to recruit and retain physicians in underserved areas to meet the health care needs of its citizens. It was the original intent of the MIPP to do this, by allowing for physicians in underserved areas to receive an additional 10 percent add-on in payments for services rendered. These 10 percent ``bonuses'' are meant to be an essential component in our ongoing effort to ensure Medicare beneficiaries access to medical services, particularly in underserved areas.

Unfortunately, the Medicare Incentive Payment Program has fared poorly, with few providers choosing to receive the payments. In fact, the total annual physician payments have never exceeded $100 million, because of a series of disincentives in the legislation.

The program requires a provider to do a number of things to obtain the bonus payments. First, providers must be aware that MIPP payments are available to them. Many providers are unaware of the program's existence. Next, physicians must find out if the patient's medical care occurred in a shortage area. Following this, a unique code must be attached to the Medicare claim, which is then forwarded to the carrier. Finally, after all these steps, providers are subjected to automatic Medicare audits, just for applying for the very payments for which they are eligible.

Providers committed to serving Medicare patients in underserved areas deserve the support assured by the original legislation's intent.

The Medicare Incentive Payment Improvement Act of 2003 addresses and improves shortcomings in the original legislation by: Placing the burden for determining the bonus eligibility on the Medicare carrier. Eliminating automatic provider audits. Directing the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services to establish a Medicare Incentive Payment Program Educational Program for Providers. Establishing an ongoing analysis of the programs, ability to improve Medicare beneficiaries' access to physician services. Continue to provide the original 10 percent add-on bonus for Part B physician payments in Health Provider Shortage Areas.

Medicare carriers are the logical arbiters to determine whether physician services occurred in a shortage area. Physicians, already overworked, lack sufficient time, resources and training to research and determine whether a service was provided in a HPSA. By placing the responsibility on carriers, with their sophisticated information systems, the physician's administrative burdens will be reduced.

The automatic audits triggered by this program, which are costly, time intensive, and unwarranted, will be lifted under our legislation. By placing the responsibility on carriers to determine payment eligibility the need for provider audits is eliminated.

While the MIPP program is intended to improve beneficiaries' access to physician services, there is no measure of the program's effect on physician availability. The legislation offered today directs CMS to perform an ongoing analysis as to whether these payments actually do improve beneficiaries' access to physician services.

I believe these improvements, in addition to others listed above, will greatly improve patient's access to care.

The following organizations have expressed support for this legislation: American College of Physicians/American Society of Internal Medicine, and the National Rural Health Association.

I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation that I believe will go a long way in helping to reduce congestion and improve safety and security throughout the Nation's transportation network. Today I am introducing the National Transportation Modeling and Analysis Program Establishment Act, or NATMAP for short.

The purpose of this bill is to authorize the Secretary of Transportation to complete an advanced computer model that will simulate, in a single integrated system, traffic flows over every major transportation mode, including highways, air traffic, railways, inland waterways, seaports, pipelines, and other intermodal connections. The advanced model will simulate flows of both passenger and freight traffic.

Our transportation network is a central component of our economy and fundamental to our freedom and quality of life. America's mobility is the engine of our free market system. The food we eat, the clothes we wear, the materials for our homes and offices, and the energy to heat our homes and power our businesses all come to us over the Nation's vast transportation network. Originating with a producer in one region, materials and products may travel via any number of combinations of truck, rail, airplane, and barge before reaching their final destinations.

Today, the Internet connects the world electronically. But it is our transportation network that provides the vital links for the movement of both people and goods domestically and around the world. According to the latest statistics, our transportation industry carries over 11 billion tons of freight per year worth about $7 trillion. Of the 3.7 trillion ton-miles of freight carried in 1998, 1.4 trillion went by rail, 1 trillion by truck, 673 billion by domestic water transportation, 620 billion by pipeline, and 14 billion by air carrier.

Individuals also depend on our transportation system--be it passenger rail, commercial airline, intercity bus, or the family car--for business travel or simply to enjoy a family vacation. Excluding public transit, passengers on our highways traveled a total of 4.2 trillion passenger-miles in 1998. Airlines carried another 463 billion passenger-miles. Transit companies and rail lines carried 50 billion.

We are also interconnected to the world's transportation system, and, as I am sure every Senator well knows, foreign trade is an increasingly critical component of our economy. Our Nation's seaports, international airports, and border crossing with Canada and Mexico are the gateways through which passengers and cargo flow between America and the rest of the world. The smooth flow of trade, both imports and exports, would not be possible without a robust transportation network and the direct links it provides to our international ports of entry.

It should be clear that key to our continuing economic strength is a transportation system that is safe, secure and efficient. Today, we are fortunate to have one of the best transportation networks in the world, and I believe we need to keep it that way. However, we are starting to see signs of strain from the dramatic increase in traffic. For example, according to the Department of Transportation, from 1980 to 2000, highway travel alone increased a whopping 80 percent. Between 1993 and 1997, the total tons of freight activity grew by over 14 percent and truck activity grew by 21 percent. In the future, truck travel is expected to grow by more than 3 percent per year--nearly doubling by 2020. As a result of the increased highway traffic, the operational performance, a measure of congestion, has deteriorated dramatically. For example, FHWA estimates that a typical trip that would take 20 minutes in 1987 now takes over 30 minutes--a dramatic 50 percent increase.

Meanwhile, the strong growth in foreign trade is putting increased pressure on ports, airports, and border crossings, as well as contributing to congestion throughout the transportation network. According to DoT, U.S. international trade more than doubled between 1990 and 2000, rising from $891 billion to $2.2 trillion.

Congestion and delay inevitably result when traffic rates approach the capacity of a system to handle that traffic. I do believe increased congestion in our transportation system is a growing threat to the nation's economy. Delays in any part of the vast network lead to economic costs, wasted fuel, increased pollution, and a reduced quality of life. Moreover, in the future new security measures could also increase delays and disruptions in the flow of goods through our international gateways.

To deal with the ever-increasing loading of our transportation network we will need to find ways to improve system efficiency as well as to expand some critical elements of the system. However, in planning for any improvements, we must examine the impact on the whole transportation system that would result from a change in one part of the system That's exactly the goal of the bill I am introducing today.

By simulating the Nation's entire transportation infrastructure as a single, integrated system, the National Transportation Analysis and Modeling Program will allow policy makers at the State, regional, and national levels to evaluate the implications of new transportation policies and actions. To ensure that all possible interrelated impacts are included, the model must simulate individual carriers and the transportation infrastructure used by each of the carriers in an interdependent and dynamic system. The advantage of this simulation of individual carriers and shipments is that the nation's transportation system can be examined at any level of detail--from the path of an individual truck to national multi-modal traffic flows.

Some of the transportation planning issues that could be addressed with NATMAP include: What infrastructure improvements result in the greatest

gains to overall system security and efficiency? How would the network respond to shifts in population or trade flows? How would the system respond to major disruptions caused by a natural disaster or another unthinkable terrorist attack? What effect would system delays due to increased security measures have on traffic flow and congestion?

Preliminary work on an advanced transportation model has been underway for several years at Los Alamos National Laboratory. As I'm sure most senators know, Los Alamos has a long and impressive history in computer simulations of complex systems, including the recent completion of the TRANSIMS model of transportation systems in metropolitan areas. The development of TRANSIMS for FHWA was originally authorized in section 1210 of TEA-21. NATMAP builds on the original work at LANL on the TRANSIMS model.

The initial work at LANL on NATMAP, funded in part by DoT, DoD, and the lab's own internal research and development program, demonstrated the technical feasibility of building a nation-wide freight transportation model that can simulate the movement of millions of trucks across the nation's highway system. During this initial development phase, the model was called the National Transportation Network and Analysis Capability, or NTNAC for short. In 2001, with funding from the Federal Highway Administration, LANL further developed the model and completed an assessment of cargo flows resulting from trade between the U.S. and Latin America.

These preliminary studies have clearly demonstrated the value to the nation of a new comprehensive modeling system. I do believe that the computer model represents a leap ahead in transportation modeling and analysis capability. Indeed, Secretary of Transportation Norm Mineta, in a letter to me dated April 9 of this year, had this to say about the early simulations: ``The DOT agrees that NTNAC shows great promise of producing a tool that would be useful for analyzing the national transportation system as a single, integrated system. We agree that NTNAC would provide DOT with important new capabilities to assess and formulate critical policy and investment options and to help address homeland security and vulnerabilities in the nation's transportation network.''

I ask unanimous consent that a copy of Secretary Mineta's letter be printed in the Record.

The bill I am introducing today establishes a six-year program in the Office of the Secretary of Transportation to complete the development of the advanced transportation simulation model. The program will also support early deployment of computer software and graphics packages to federal agencies and states for national, regional, or statewide transportation planning. The bill authorizes a total of $50 million from the Highway Trust Fund for this effort. When completed, NATMAP will provide the nation a tool to help formulate and analyze critical transportation policy and investment options, including major infrastructure requirements and vulnerabilities within that infrastructure.

Congress will soon take up the reauthorization of TEA-21, the six- year transportation bill. I am introducing this bill today so my proposal can be fully considered by the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee and by the Administration as the next authorization bill is being developed. I look forward to working with Senator Inhofe, the Chairman of the EPW Committee, and Senator Jeffords, the ranking member, as well as Senator Bond, the Chairman of the Transportation, Infrastructure, and Nuclear Safety Subcommittee and Senator Reid, the ranking member, to incorporate this bill in the reauthorization of TEA- 21.

I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation that I believe will go a long way in helping to reduce congestion and improve safety and security throughout the Nation's transportation network. Today I am introducing the National Transportation Modeling and Analysis Program Establishment Act, or NATMAP for short.

The purpose of this bill is to authorize the Secretary of Transportation to complete an advanced computer model that will simulate, in a single integrated system, traffic flows over every major transportation mode, including highways, air traffic, railways, inland waterways, seaports, pipelines, and other intermodal connections. The advanced model will simulate flows of both passenger and freight traffic.

Our transportation network is a central component of our economy and fundamental to our freedom and quality of life. America's mobility is the engine of our free market system. The food we eat, the clothes we wear, the materials for our homes and offices, and the energy to heat our homes and power our businesses all come to us over the Nation's vast transportation network. Originating with a producer in one region, materials and products may travel via any number of combinations of truck, rail, airplane, and barge before reaching their final destinations.

Today, the Internet connects the world electronically. But it is our transportation network that provides the vital links for the movement of both people and goods domestically and around the world. According to the latest statistics, our transportation industry carries over 11 billion tons of freight per year worth about $7 trillion. Of the 3.7 trillion ton-miles of freight carried in 1998, 1.4 trillion went by rail, 1 trillion by truck, 673 billion by domestic water transportation, 620 billion by pipeline, and 14 billion by air carrier.

Individuals also depend on our transportation system--be it passenger rail, commercial airline, intercity bus, or the family car--for business travel or simply to enjoy a family vacation. Excluding public transit, passengers on our highways traveled a total of 4.2 trillion passenger-miles in 1998. Airlines carried another 463 billion passenger-miles. Transit companies and rail lines carried 50 billion.

We are also interconnected to the world's transportation system, and, as I am sure every Senator well knows, foreign trade is an increasingly critical component of our economy. Our Nation's seaports, international airports, and border crossing with Canada and Mexico are the gateways through which passengers and cargo flow between America and the rest of the world. The smooth flow of trade, both imports and exports, would not be possible without a robust transportation network and the direct links it provides to our international ports of entry.

It should be clear that key to our continuing economic strength is a transportation system that is safe, secure and efficient. Today, we are fortunate to have one of the best transportation networks in the world, and I believe we need to keep it that way. However, we are starting to see signs of strain from the dramatic increase in traffic. For example, according to the Department of Transportation, from 1980 to 2000, highway travel alone increased a whopping 80 percent. Between 1993 and 1997, the total tons of freight activity grew by over 14 percent and truck activity grew by 21 percent. In the future, truck travel is expected to grow by more than 3 percent per year--nearly doubling by 2020. As a result of the increased highway traffic, the operational performance, a measure of congestion, has deteriorated dramatically. For example, FHWA estimates that a typical trip that would take 20 minutes in 1987 now takes over 30 minutes--a dramatic 50 percent increase.

Meanwhile, the strong growth in foreign trade is putting increased pressure on ports, airports, and border crossings, as well as contributing to congestion throughout the transportation network. According to DoT, U.S. international trade more than doubled between 1990 and 2000, rising from $891 billion to $2.2 trillion.

Congestion and delay inevitably result when traffic rates approach the capacity of a system to handle that traffic. I do believe increased congestion in our transportation system is a growing threat to the nation's economy. Delays in any part of the vast network lead to economic costs, wasted fuel, increased pollution, and a reduced quality of life. Moreover, in the future new security measures could also increase delays and disruptions in the flow of goods through our international gateways.

To deal with the ever-increasing loading of our transportation network we will need to find ways to improve system efficiency as well as to expand some critical elements of the system. However, in planning for any improvements, we must examine the impact on the whole transportation system that would result from a change in one part of the system That's exactly the goal of the bill I am introducing today.

By simulating the Nation's entire transportation infrastructure as a single, integrated system, the National Transportation Analysis and Modeling Program will allow policy makers at the State, regional, and national levels to evaluate the implications of new transportation policies and actions. To ensure that all possible interrelated impacts are included, the model must simulate individual carriers and the transportation infrastructure used by each of the carriers in an interdependent and dynamic system. The advantage of this simulation of individual carriers and shipments is that the nation's transportation system can be examined at any level of detail--from the path of an individual truck to national multi-modal traffic flows.

Some of the transportation planning issues that could be addressed with NATMAP include: What infrastructure improvements result in the greatest

gains to overall system security and efficiency? How would the network respond to shifts in population or trade flows? How would the system respond to major disruptions caused by a natural disaster or another unthinkable terrorist attack? What effect would system delays due to increased security measures have on traffic flow and congestion?

Preliminary work on an advanced transportation model has been underway for several years at Los Alamos National Laboratory. As I'm sure most senators know, Los Alamos has a long and impressive history in computer simulations of complex systems, including the recent completion of the TRANSIMS model of transportation systems in metropolitan areas. The development of TRANSIMS for FHWA was originally authorized in section 1210 of TEA-21. NATMAP builds on the original work at LANL on the TRANSIMS model.

The initial work at LANL on NATMAP, funded in part by DoT, DoD, and the lab's own internal research and development program, demonstrated the technical feasibility of building a nation-wide freight transportation model that can simulate the movement of millions of trucks across the nation's highway system. During this initial development phase, the model was called the National Transportation Network and Analysis Capability, or NTNAC for short. In 2001, with funding from the Federal Highway Administration, LANL further developed the model and completed an assessment of cargo flows resulting from trade between the U.S. and Latin America.

These preliminary studies have clearly demonstrated the value to the nation of a new comprehensive modeling system. I do believe that the computer model represents a leap ahead in transportation modeling and analysis capability. Indeed, Secretary of Transportation Norm Mineta, in a letter to me dated April 9 of this year, had this to say about the early simulations: ``The DOT agrees that NTNAC shows great promise of producing a tool that would be useful for analyzing the national transportation system as a single, integrated system. We agree that NTNAC would provide DOT with important new capabilities to assess and formulate critical policy and investment options and to help address homeland security and vulnerabilities in the nation's transportation network.''

I ask unanimous consent that a copy of Secretary Mineta's letter be printed in the Record.

The bill I am introducing today establishes a six-year program in the Office of the Secretary of Transportation to complete the development of the advanced transportation simulation model. The program will also support early deployment of computer software and graphics packages to federal agencies and states for national, regional, or statewide transportation planning. The bill authorizes a total of $50 million from the Highway Trust Fund for this effort. When completed, NATMAP will provide the nation a tool to help formulate and analyze critical transportation policy and investment options, including major infrastructure requirements and vulnerabilities within that infrastructure.

Congress will soon take up the reauthorization of TEA-21, the six- year transportation bill. I am introducing this bill today so my proposal can be fully considered by the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee and by the Administration as the next authorization bill is being developed. I look forward to working with Senator Inhofe, the Chairman of the EPW Committee, and Senator Jeffords, the ranking member, as well as Senator Bond, the Chairman of the Transportation, Infrastructure, and Nuclear Safety Subcommittee and Senator Reid, the ranking member, to incorporate this bill in the reauthorization of TEA- 21.

I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I rise to pay tribute to the astronauts who perished aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia last Saturday, and to their families. It was a terrible tragedy we all suffered with the death of seven astronauts this last Saturday. We have heard many moving and eloquent tributes to those brave souls since the Columbia was lost. We have learned a great deal about the strength and courage and resourcefulness and humanity of each of those astronauts--Rick Husband, William McCool, David Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Michael Anderson, Laurel Clark, and Ilan Ramon. We have heard from the people who knew them best. Clearly, I and most of us here did not know them personally.

However, I want to take just a moment more to speak about one of those astronauts in particular--Laurel Salton Clark. She spent part of her youth in Albuquerque in my home State and she maintained roots there. Her father lives with his wife in Albuquerque. And Laurel's brother, John Salton, is an engineer at Sandia National Laboratories. Laurel attended Hodgin Elementary School and Monroe Middle School, and frequently returned to Albuquerque for visits with family. She was a stellar student throughout her life. Her only B, according to her father, was one she received in high school in the typing class. She was a medical doctor. She was a flight surgeon in the Navy. And she made the astronaut corps when she was 5 months pregnant.

She stood for what is best about our country. She was brave; she was strong; she was full of life. We are all diminished by her loss. We are also, of course, all diminished by the loss of each of the other brave astronauts who perished in that terrible tragedy on Saturday.

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

Mr. President, I want to speak for just a few minutes on the Senate floor about the proposal made last Friday by the Bush administration regarding Medicaid. The proposal was a disturbing one, in my view. It was to reform the Medicaid program by shifting to a block grant to the States. That is a recycled proposal, one we have seen before. It was touted, when described last Friday, as giving the States flexibility. It would give them flexibility.

It would give them flexibility to drop benefits to low-income children, to drop benefits to pregnant women, to people with disabilities, and to the elderly. And it would give them flexibility to dramatically increase the cost sharing for those vulnerable populations. With over 41 million Americans who are currently uninsured, in my view, we should be trying to find ways to expand health coverage rather than finding new ways to reduce it.

Unfortunately, the proposal allows States to continue Medicaid as it is or to convert the program into a block grant. This was tried in 1981 and again in 1996. The administration would encourage States to take the latter option; that is, to move to receipt of a block grant by encouragement of being temporarily offered increased dollars. That would be coupled with this offer of added flexibility to be able to reduce the benefits for their Medicaid beneficiaries and increase the costs being charged to those low-income and vulnerable populations. Secretary Thompson notes the proposal would clearly save the States money. This would only happen if the States decided to do what would almost certainly occur; that is, to cut benefits and increase cost sharing.

Also, this proposal takes the Federal Government off the hook for helping States address their uninsured problems because under the proposal there would be no additional Federal money available to States if they attempted to expand coverage in the future. In order to expand coverage, the only option States would have would be to essentially rob Peter to pay Paul. In

short, they could cut benefits or increase cost sharing for certain populations if they wanted to expand coverage to any others.

The proposal is ostensibly based on the success of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, the S-CHIP Program. Secretary Thompson said in his press conference that the proposal works by ``taking the principles of S-CHIP and applying them to Medicaid.''

It is ironic that the proposal actually eliminates CHIP by wrapping it into this block grant with Medicaid and with the Disproportionate Share Hospital Program, the DSH Program. It is surprising and disappointing to me that the administration is proposing to radically transform the identity and the nature of the Children's Health Insurance Program while also praising that program. It is a program that just about everyone lauds as having been quite successful at reducing the number of uninsured children in our country.

So this new proposal by the administration has strong elements of the old bait-and-switch ploy that all of us see from time to time. It advertises that there will be more money available to States--the exact amount is $12.7 billion during the first 7 years--but then, after that first 7 years, it yanks away all that money, starting in the year 2011.

Secretary Thompson noted at the press conference that he is not planning to be around at the time the $12.7 billion in reductions occurs 8 years from now. And the plan, I would say, clearly also counts on the fact that most of our current group of Governors who would be asked to make these changes will not be around either. However, that is exactly the time, 2011, when our Nation's baby boomers hit retirement age in much larger numbers. The long-term care costs within Medicaid will increase significantly during that period. Therefore, the Federal Government, under this proposal, would be dramatically stepping away from its commitment to help States and to help with the Nation's health safety net at a time when the demand for those services will obviously be increasing.

The proposal is counting on the fact that the Governors will jump at the $12.7 billion that is being offered during these initial years and will let future Governors deal with the problem later on. It is my hope and my belief that the Nation's Governors will see this nonoffer for what it is; and that is, a very shortsighted effort to limit the Federal Government's role in Medicaid that will lead to cuts in access to care for those most in need of that care.

In fact, under the proposal, States are left with nothing less than a Hobson's choice of alternatives. Both of the choices they would have would substantially weaken health insurance for low-income Medicaid beneficiaries. Under the first option that States would have, they would be allowed to continue to operate Medicaid without any financial relief from the Federal Government to help them get through the current fiscal crisis. States would have no option but to make deep cuts in their Medicaid Program during the next few years, if they choose that option.

Under the second option, the States would get a fixed amount of Federal money for the millions of people who States have voluntarily decided to cover under Medicaid, and, as a result, Federal funding would be limited and not responsive to those items that it is now responsive to, such as economic recessions, epidemics, terrorist attacks, population growth, changes in the State's health care environment, or the growth in our Nation's elderly that we expect in the next decade. Nor would it be available to States wishing to expand coverage, as I indicated before, States wishing to reduce the uninsured rate.

Although the administration's proposal advertises improved health, just as one would expect with a bait-and-switch proposal, it fails the test when you look at the details. I ask, How does the health of Medicaid beneficiaries improve by eliminating their entitlement to coverage and by allowing States the dramatic ability to reduce benefits and increase the costs that are shifted to those vulnerable populations? I am talking here about 85-year-old widows with incomes of just $800 a month. I am talking about pregnant women with incomes of $15,000 per year, or an 8-year-old boy from a family of three with an income of $19,000 per year or less.

According to Karen Davis, Cathy Schoen, Michelle Doty, and Katie Tenney--all from the Commonwealth Fund--the two main purposes of health insurance are, first, ``assuring access to needed health care services and,'' secondly, ``preventing financial burdens from medical bills.'' When you propose, as this proposal last Friday does, to reduce benefits and increase cost sharing on low-income beneficiaries, clearly you fail in trying to accomplish either of these two main purposes.

Just over a week ago, it was discovered that the Bush administration was allowing States to limit the number of emergency room visits to Medicaid beneficiaries regardless of whether the care sought was an emergency. That proposal allowed States to establish arbitrary limits, such as three visits per year. There was a huge hue and cry and the administration reversed this policy shift, but it is back in full force under this proposal related to Medicaid, as benefits would decrease and cost sharing would dramatically increase for Medicaid beneficiaries.

This is not to state that our Governors are malevolent in their intent. Their goal is to do the best they can for their citizens. It is only to say that many States are facing unprecedented fiscal crises that force them into impossible choices, choices between health care coverage and other needed services. In fact, the States already have substantial flexibility in the Medicaid Program. About 65 percent of spending in that program is for either optional populations or for optional benefits that they have chosen to pay for.

Instead, for some Governors, it may not be the flexibility they are seeking to exploit but the proposal's other aspects that eliminate the limitations on how States spend their Medicaid dollars. On several occasions in recent years, certain States worked to ``game'' the Federal dollars through a variety of mechanisms, such as provider taxes and donations, excessive payments to certain health providers that would be returned to the State via intergovernmental transfers or other mechanisms. These mechanisms to which I am referring largely benefited the budgets of the individual States and did not benefit anyone's health.

Both the first Bush administration and the Clinton administration and the current Bush administration should be applauded for working hard to deal with those problems in the Medicaid system. However, it was revealed at the press conference that those mechanisms would once again be allowed if this newly presented proposal is adopted.

Via these mechanisms, the Medicaid Program can be rapidly turned into nothing more than a giant revenuesharing program. Again, it is hard to see how such so-called innovation would improve health coverage for low-income Americans.

Instead, there is a better approach to the problem, on which I have been working with Congressman John Dingell; we are preparing legislation to introduce in the next few weeks. Our Medicaid reform proposal will be based on the knowledge that States are facing both short-term and long-term problems with their Medicaid programs, and those problems need to be addressed. As such, our initiative would have the Federal Government step up rather than shirk its commitment to the States.

In exchange, it will ask the States not to reduce their commitment to the Nation's poorest and neediest citizens. It does several things. Let me briefly outline them.

First, it will provide States with much needed short-term and long- term fiscal relief.

Secondly, it will increase Federal responsibility for Federal initiatives and for populations that are paid for by the Medicaid Program.

Third, it will protect States against economic downturns and epidemics and health care inflation and demographic changes.

Fourth, it will provide States with expanded coverage options, with real Federal fiscal support as opposed to this block grant proposal we have seen now from the administration.

And, fifth, it will increase State flexibility in ways to improve the

health of Medicaid beneficiaries rather than options to weaken their health as under the administration's proposal.

The administration's proposal will fail in each of these regards. Let me describe them in a little more detail.

First, we will propose a package that will give States both short- and long-term fiscal relief. This is in sharp contrast to the administration's block grant proposal that would leave States with no additional Federal commitment or help during economic downturns. Block grants do not adjust to problems such as downturns and epidemics and natural disasters and demographic changes, and they do not adjust for the very substantial health care inflation that we have been experiencing.

Second, our proposal takes significant steps to properly assume Federal responsibility for Federal initiatives and for populations that are paid for under the Medicaid Program. This includes assumption of 100 percent of the cost for the premiums and cost sharing that the Medicaid Program provides for low-income Medicare beneficiaries. Medicare is a Federal responsibility, and these costs should be the Federal Government's responsibility.

The same is true for a variety of other payments within Medicaid, including payments to urban Indian health organizations, to outstationed workers, to the breast and cervical cancer program, and payments to federally qualified health centers.

Third, the administration claims its proposal gives States the ability to expand coverage to more people, including the mentally ill, chronically ill, those with HIV/AIDS, and those with substance abuse problems. The difficulty is the administration's proposal gives States the ability to do that but gives them no dollars with which to do it. States are given the ability to do this by robbing Peter to pay Paul.

In sharp contrast, our proposal will give States new options to expand coverage and benefits in Medicare and CHIP, and States choosing to do so will have the Federal Government's commitment to participate with a financial commitment for more than half of those costs, as opposed to no commitment to participate under the administration's proposal.

A fourth aspect of what we are going to propose is that we will grant States the flexibility they have been seeking to provide more efficient and improved health services for these low-income Medicaid beneficiaries. This includes allowing States to simplify eligibility, to emphasize home and community-based care rather than institutional care, and a number of other options. Our proposal specifically chooses not to take the course that the administration is pursuing in several areas.

Unlike the administration, we do not grant States additional flexibility to cut benefits and eliminate quality protections and increase cost sharing on our Nation's most vulnerable populations. We do not propose to eliminate fiscal integrity standards such as those intended to ensure that Medicaid dollars are spent on health care and not on other purposes.

And we do not, as the administration's proposal does, allow for the elimination of the CHIP program, the Children's Health Insurance Program, or the Disproportionate Share Hospital Program, the DSHP program.

Finally, unlike the administration's efforts, our plan does not lock in interstate inequities and disparities on a permanent basis. In fact, the administration's proposal, as I understand it, as it was presented Friday, is particularly devastating to a State such as New Mexico. Our State currently has the highest rate of uninsured in the Nation. It is one of the fastest growing States in the country as well. It has per capita Medicaid expenditures that are well below the national average. The administration's proposal would therefore be a lose/lose/lose proposition for our State.

First, it would prevent us from seeking additional Federal assistance for proposed expansions of coverage including the recently approved Federal waiver by the Federal Government to New Mexico that is so highly touted by the administration.

Second, the block grant often fails to take into account differences in population growth, and we have a rapidly growing population.

Finally, we would be forever locked in at an expenditure level way below the national average under this block grant proposal.

During his State of the Union address this last week, the President said, ``Medicare is the binding commitment of a caring society.'' That is a noble concept. But I would suggest that just as Medicare is the binding commitment of a caring society, Medicaid is as well. For this reason, the Federal Government should not step away from it or abandon its commitment to States or to the 43 million vulnerable citizens currently served by the Medicaid Program.

Particularly, the Federal Government should not do this at a time of growing numbers of uninsured and just before the Nation's baby boomers begin to retire in large numbers.

In the name of increasing personal responsibility of our Nation's neediest and sickest citizens, the administration is proposing that we at the Federal level shirk our responsibility. Rather than abandoning the poor at this critical time, we should be reconsidering the proposed tax breaks that we have been sent intending to help our wealthiest citizens.

We need to be sure our priorities are in line with the priorities of the American people. The proposal we have received from the administration to block grant Medicaid clearly does not reflect the priorities the American people have.

Mr. President, I am pleased to submit a resolution today with Senators Bond, Lugar, DeWine, Feinstein, and Kennedy, designating March 31, 2003 as ``National Civilian Conservation Corps Day''. This day will mark the 70th anniversary of the signing of the Act that created the Civilian Conservation Corps, or CCC.

In 1933, with our country in the grip of the Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the CCC to provide work and training for the many young men who so needed it, and to achieve the goal of protecting our Nation's precious natural resources. The program continued until 1942, when resources were shifted to support efforts in World War II and an estimated 75 percent of ex-CCCers joined the military.

The accomplishments of the CCC between 1933 and 1942 are amazing by any standard. The program put over 3 million young men to work on natural resources conservation and public lands infrastructure improvements in camps in every State and the then-territories of Alaska and Hawaii, planting more than 3 billion trees, and developing more than 800 State parks.

As importantly, the lives of these young men were often dramatically changed for the better by their enrollment. Many traveled for the first time, learned new trades, and developed self-confidence and discipline, while sending much-needed money home. Thousands of alumni remain active in 167 local chapters of the National Association of Civilian Conservation Corps Alumni Association, including the Roadrunner Chapter in my home State. They still meet and share the bonds of friendship and hard work they forged during their time in the CCC.

This resolution would pay tribute to the lasting contribution of the CCC to natural resources conservation and infrastructure improvements, and to its outstanding success in providing employment and training to millions of Americans. I was pleased that the Senate commemorated the 69th anniversary of the creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps last year, and I hope the Senate will again honor the CCC on its 70th anniversary.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation that will enhance the future economic vitality of communities in Otero, Lincoln, Torrance, Guadalupe, and Quay Counties. The purpose of this legislation is to focus attention on the need to upgrade U.S. Highway 54 to four lanes. I believe improving the transportation infrastructure will help attract good jobs to South, Central, and Eastern New Mexico.

I am honored to have my good friend and colleague, Senator Roberts, as the lead cosponsor of the bill. I am also pleased to have Senators Inhofe, Hutchison, Domenici and Brownback as original cosponsors.

In addition, Representatives Udall, NM, Moran, Lucas, Thornberry, Pearce, and Reyes are introducing this bill today on the House side.

Our bill designates U.S. Highway 54 from the border with Mexico at El Paso, TX, through New Mexico, and Oklahoma to Wichita, KS, as the Southwest Passage Initiative for Regional and Interstate Transportation, or SPIRIT, corridor. Congress has already included Highway 54 as part of the National Highway System. This bill adds the SPIRIT Corridor in Congress's list of High Priority Corridors on the National Highway System.

About half of the 700-mile-long SPIRIT corridor is in New Mexico and another 200 miles of it are in Kansas. Our goal with this designation is to promote the development of this route into a full four-lane divided highway. When completed, the route will link rural areas in the four States to major market centers.

I continue to believe strongly in the importance of highway infrastructure for economic development in my State. Even in this age of the new economy and high-speed digital communications, roads continue to link our communities together and to carry the commercial goods and products our citizens need. Safe and efficient highways are especially important to citizens in the rural parts of New Mexico.

It is well known that regions with four-lane highways more readily attract out-of-State visitors and new jobs. Truck drivers and the traveling public prefer the safety of a four-lane divided highway.

In New Mexico, US 54 is a fairly level route, bypassing New Mexico's major mountain ranges. The route also traverses some of New Mexico's most dramatic scenery, including two of the State's popular Scenic Byways. One is the Mesalands Scenic Byway in Guadalupe, San Miguel and Quay Counties, incorporating the beautiful tablelands known as El Llano Estacado. The other is the state's newest byway, La Frontera de Llano, which follows highway 39 from Logan to Abbott in Harding County, including the spectacular Canadian River Canyon and the Kiowa National Grasslands.

The SPIRIT corridor passes through Alamogordo, home of the New Mexico Museum of Space History and gateway to the stunning White Sands National Monument.

Highway 54 is also important to our nation from the perspective of national security. The route directly serves Fort Bliss, the White Sands Missile Range, and Holloman Air Force Base. It also passes through the Nation's breadbasket as well as some of the Nation's most important oil and gas fields.

The route of the SPIRIT corridor starts at Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico, home of one the largest concentrations of manufacturing in the border region. As a result of increased trade under NAFTA, commercial border traffic is now much higher at the border crossings in El Paso, Texas, and Santa Teresa, New Mexico. In New Mexico, truck traffic from the border has risen to over 1000 per day and is expected to triple in the next twenty years.

The SPIRIT corridor is perfectly situated to serve international trade and promote economic development along its entire route. The route provides direct connections to four major Interstate Highways: I- 10, I-35, I-40, and I-70. SPIRIT is also the shortest route between Chicago and El Paso, shaving 137 miles off the major alternative.

Though much of US 54 is currently only two lanes, traffic has been rising dramatically along the entire route since NAFTA was implemented. In New Mexico, total daily traffic levels are nearing 10,000 and are projected to rise to 30,000, with trucks making up 35 percent of the total. In Oklahoma, traffic levels are up to 6,500 per day--40 percent of which are commercial trucks. These traffic statistics clearly reflect the SPIRIT corridor's attraction to commercial and passenger drivers.

New Mexicans recognize the importance of efficient roads to economic development and safety. I have long supported my state's efforts to complete the four-lane upgrade of US 54. The State Highway and Transportation Department now rates the project a high priority for New Mexico. The four-lane upgrade of the first 56-mile segment from the Texas border to Alamogordo was completed last year. Two more sections in New Mexico remain to be upgraded: 163 miles from Tularosa, north through Carrizozo, Corona, and

Vaughn, to Santa Rosa and 50 miles from Tucumcari to the Texas border near Nara Visa in Quay County. The cost to four-lane these two segments is estimated at $420 million. I am committed to working to help secure the funding required to complete New Mexico's four-lane upgrade as soon as possible. I am pleased the other States are also moving quickly to four-lane their portion of the route. I hope designating SPIRIT as a High Priority Corridor on the National Highway System will help spur the completion of this project.

Once the SPIRIT corridor is designated, New Mexico will have four high-priority corridors on the National Highway System. The other three are the Ports-to-Plains corridor, the Camino Real Corridor, and the East West Transamerica Corridor. These four trade corridors, as well as our close proximity to the border, strongly underscore the vital role New Mexico plays in our nation's interstate and international transportation network.

The SPIRIT project has broad grassroots support. Most of the cities, counties, and chambers of commerce all the way from Wichita to El Paso have passed resolutions of support for the four-lane upgrade of US 54 along the entire corridor.

I do believe the four-lane upgrade of Highway 54 is vital to the continued economic development for all of the communities along the SPIRIT corridor in New Mexico.

I again thank Senators Roberts, Inhofe, Hutchison, Domenici and Brownback for cosponsoring the bill, and I hope all Senators will join us in support of this important legislation. It is my hope that our bill can pass quickly this year or be included when the Senate considers the reauthorization of the six-year transportation bill.

I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record. I ask unanimous consent that letters and resolutions of support from Otero County, Lincoln County, and Alamogordo in New Mexico, and from the Director of the Oklahoma Department of Transportation and the Secretary of Transportation of Kansas be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation that will enhance the future economic vitality of communities in Otero, Lincoln, Torrance, Guadalupe, and Quay Counties. The purpose of this legislation is to focus attention on the need to upgrade U.S. Highway 54 to four lanes. I believe improving the transportation infrastructure will help attract good jobs to South, Central, and Eastern New Mexico.

I am honored to have my good friend and colleague, Senator Roberts, as the lead cosponsor of the bill. I am also pleased to have Senators Inhofe, Hutchison, Domenici and Brownback as original cosponsors.

In addition, Representatives Udall, NM, Moran, Lucas, Thornberry, Pearce, and Reyes are introducing this bill today on the House side.

Our bill designates U.S. Highway 54 from the border with Mexico at El Paso, TX, through New Mexico, and Oklahoma to Wichita, KS, as the Southwest Passage Initiative for Regional and Interstate Transportation, or SPIRIT, corridor. Congress has already included Highway 54 as part of the National Highway System. This bill adds the SPIRIT Corridor in Congress's list of High Priority Corridors on the National Highway System.

About half of the 700-mile-long SPIRIT corridor is in New Mexico and another 200 miles of it are in Kansas. Our goal with this designation is to promote the development of this route into a full four-lane divided highway. When completed, the route will link rural areas in the four States to major market centers.

I continue to believe strongly in the importance of highway infrastructure for economic development in my State. Even in this age of the new economy and high-speed digital communications, roads continue to link our communities together and to carry the commercial goods and products our citizens need. Safe and efficient highways are especially important to citizens in the rural parts of New Mexico.

It is well known that regions with four-lane highways more readily attract out-of-State visitors and new jobs. Truck drivers and the traveling public prefer the safety of a four-lane divided highway.

In New Mexico, US 54 is a fairly level route, bypassing New Mexico's major mountain ranges. The route also traverses some of New Mexico's most dramatic scenery, including two of the State's popular Scenic Byways. One is the Mesalands Scenic Byway in Guadalupe, San Miguel and Quay Counties, incorporating the beautiful tablelands known as El Llano Estacado. The other is the state's newest byway, La Frontera de Llano, which follows highway 39 from Logan to Abbott in Harding County, including the spectacular Canadian River Canyon and the Kiowa National Grasslands.

The SPIRIT corridor passes through Alamogordo, home of the New Mexico Museum of Space History and gateway to the stunning White Sands National Monument.

Highway 54 is also important to our nation from the perspective of national security. The route directly serves Fort Bliss, the White Sands Missile Range, and Holloman Air Force Base. It also passes through the Nation's breadbasket as well as some of the Nation's most important oil and gas fields.

The route of the SPIRIT corridor starts at Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico, home of one the largest concentrations of manufacturing in the border region. As a result of increased trade under NAFTA, commercial border traffic is now much higher at the border crossings in El Paso, Texas, and Santa Teresa, New Mexico. In New Mexico, truck traffic from the border has risen to over 1000 per day and is expected to triple in the next twenty years.

The SPIRIT corridor is perfectly situated to serve international trade and promote economic development along its entire route. The route provides direct connections to four major Interstate Highways: I- 10, I-35, I-40, and I-70. SPIRIT is also the shortest route between Chicago and El Paso, shaving 137 miles off the major alternative.

Though much of US 54 is currently only two lanes, traffic has been rising dramatically along the entire route since NAFTA was implemented. In New Mexico, total daily traffic levels are nearing 10,000 and are projected to rise to 30,000, with trucks making up 35 percent of the total. In Oklahoma, traffic levels are up to 6,500 per day--40 percent of which are commercial trucks. These traffic statistics clearly reflect the SPIRIT corridor's attraction to commercial and passenger drivers.

New Mexicans recognize the importance of efficient roads to economic development and safety. I have long supported my state's efforts to complete the four-lane upgrade of US 54. The State Highway and Transportation Department now rates the project a high priority for New Mexico. The four-lane upgrade of the first 56-mile segment from the Texas border to Alamogordo was completed last year. Two more sections in New Mexico remain to be upgraded: 163 miles from Tularosa, north through Carrizozo, Corona, and

Vaughn, to Santa Rosa and 50 miles from Tucumcari to the Texas border near Nara Visa in Quay County. The cost to four-lane these two segments is estimated at $420 million. I am committed to working to help secure the funding required to complete New Mexico's four-lane upgrade as soon as possible. I am pleased the other States are also moving quickly to four-lane their portion of the route. I hope designating SPIRIT as a High Priority Corridor on the National Highway System will help spur the completion of this project.

Once the SPIRIT corridor is designated, New Mexico will have four high-priority corridors on the National Highway System. The other three are the Ports-to-Plains corridor, the Camino Real Corridor, and the East West Transamerica Corridor. These four trade corridors, as well as our close proximity to the border, strongly underscore the vital role New Mexico plays in our nation's interstate and international transportation network.

The SPIRIT project has broad grassroots support. Most of the cities, counties, and chambers of commerce all the way from Wichita to El Paso have passed resolutions of support for the four-lane upgrade of US 54 along the entire corridor.

I do believe the four-lane upgrade of Highway 54 is vital to the continued economic development for all of the communities along the SPIRIT corridor in New Mexico.

I again thank Senators Roberts, Inhofe, Hutchison, Domenici and Brownback for cosponsoring the bill, and I hope all Senators will join us in support of this important legislation. It is my hope that our bill can pass quickly this year or be included when the Senate considers the reauthorization of the six-year transportation bill.

I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record. I ask unanimous consent that letters and resolutions of support from Otero County, Lincoln County, and Alamogordo in New Mexico, and from the Director of the Oklahoma Department of Transportation and the Secretary of Transportation of Kansas be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to speak for up to 15 minutes.

Mr. President, as I understood the President in his State of the Union speech earlier this week, it is his intention to begin military action against Iraq sometime in the near future. That stated intention of the President causes me some grave concern, and I wanted to come to the Senate floor today and express that concern.

Let me begin by stating the propositions with which we all agree. First, I think we all agree Saddam Hussein is a brutal despot who has terrorized his own people and has threatened his neighboring States for many years. Second, whether or not Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction in a readily usable form at this time, we must assume that given the opportunity he will obtain those weapons. Third, it is very much in our interest as a Nation, and in the interest of our allies, that Saddam Hussein be prevented from acquiring or maintaining those weapons.

But the question before the country today is narrower than these propositions. The question before the country is whether we should cut short the inspection process that is currently underway. The U.N. inspection process is a process that we rightly insisted upon in our earlier deliberations with the Security Council. So the question is whether we should cut short that inspection process and begin a military action to remove Saddam Hussein and his regime from power.

The President has moved aggressively to prepare this Nation for war. The total number of personnel who have been either ordered to deploy, or who have been put on alert to do so, is roughly 148,000. There are roughly 23,000 marines en route to the Persian Gulf aboard three major task forces. There are roughly 25,000 sailors and aviators attached to the various carrier battle groups and amphibious task forces that are either en route to the region, on standby, or are on surge status. These forces include some 175 aircraft of all types and over 1,000 VLS launch tubes carrying nearly 500 cruise missiles.

So steps have been taken to prepare us militarily for war. Today, we are, simply put, on the brink of war. But while these military preparations have occurred, there has also been a parallel effort going on through the U.N. to ascertain what weapons of mass destruction Saddam Hussein holds, where those weapons are located, and what threat those weapons pose to his neighbors and to other free nations.

We have come to a difficult decision point. The Pentagon is advising the President that military preparations are nearly complete. The President must decide whether this country should proceed militarily in the next few weeks or whether we should continue to support the efforts of U.N. inspectors to carry out the instructions that were given them by the U.N. Security Council, on which we sit.

In my view, the President should allow the U.N. inspectors to continue their work. If they are denied access to sites they wish to inspect, then the use of military force will be justified. If they find substantial evidence of a weapons program that threatens Iraq's neighbors, then we should join with those neighbors in eliminating that threat. But up until this date, up until today, neither of these circumstances prevails. The inspectors themselves have so stated, and they have asked for additional time to complete their work.

The decision the President makes on going to war with Iraq will be the first test of the new National Security Strategy that was issued by the White House in September of last year. In that document, the President acknowledges that the legitimacy of preemptive military action depends ``on the existence of an imminent threat.''

Right after that statement appears in this document, however, the document speaks of ``adapting the concept of imminent threat.'' How much adaptation of that concept is wise? How much adaptation of that concept makes sense for ourselves and our allies as a precedent for the future?

This National Security Strategy document that the administration issued in September of last year goes on to talk about our willingness as a nation to take military action to preempt emerging threats. Here the President is contemplating, in the circumstance before us today, military action not to meet a specific identified military threat but to depose a hostile government, even though no imminent military threat has been identified.

In his State of the Union Address, the President framed the issue as being whether ``war is forced upon us.'' He stated that, ``If war is forced upon us, we will fight with the full force and might of the U.S. military--and we will prevail.'' I, and I am sure most Americans, agree with that statement. But in my view, as of this date, war has not been forced upon us. It is not credible for us to assert as a nation that war has been forced upon us.

The U.N. inspection process proceeds. If there is evidence of an imminent threat that requires us to take preemptive military action, I have not seen

that evidence. Many Americans and many of our allies also have been unpersuaded by the evidence they have seen.

The more willing we are to assert the right to start a war to change the government of a sovereign state, the more we risk encouraging preemptive action by other nations against governments they wish to depose. And the less we need to identify an imminent threat before beginning a war, the more we undermine efforts to avoid unprovoked conflict in the future.

The President was right to go to the United Nations and to insist that U.N. inspectors return to Iraq. His latest decision to send Secretary Powell to the Security Council to present evidence of the threat posed by Iraq is also proper, and I look forward to hearing what that evidence is. But unless that evidence demonstrates a threat that requires military action now, the wise course is for us to hold off on that military action and allow the U.N. inspectors to do their work.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce three welfare bills. Although these bills do not represent a comprehensive welfare reform proposal, they do address what I see as some of the most critical and pressing issues we must deal with as we move toward improving the TANF program.

Let me begin by introducing the Children First Act on behalf of myself, Mr. Kerry, Mr. Daschle, Mr. Kennedy, Ms. Landrieu, Mr. Sarbanes, Mrs. Lincoln, Mrs. Murray, Mr. Levin, Mr. Corzine, Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Johnson, Mr. Akaka, Mr. Leahy, Mr. Dodd, Mr. Lautenberg and Mr. Reed).

Since 1996, federal funding for child care assistance under the Child Care and Development Block Grant, CCDBG, has significantly increased, making it possible for states to provide more low-income families with child care assistance and to expand initiatives to improve the quality of child care. This has been an extremely important endeavor. Access to high quality childcare is crucial in helping families to work and children to succeed.

Most people agree that the recent employment gains among welfare recipients can only be sustained if families have access to dependable child care. Studies show that when childcare is available and when families get help in paying for care, they are more likely to work. In fact, when I talk to people in my home State of New Mexico about welfare reform, they identify access to childcare as the most important work support we can provide.

Despite the past increases in the CCDBG, we must do more. Overall, only one out of seven children eligible for assistance through the CCDBG program receives a subsidy, leaving approximately 12.9 million eligible children without assistance. Less than 25 percent of New Mexican children under the age of six who are eligible for childcare assistance are currently receiving it. Unfortunately, the need for childcare assistance is only likely to increase in the near future. Many states are currently threatened with serious budget shortfalls that threaten the availability of funds for numerous important endeavors, including childcare assistance. In addition, the administration's recently proposed TANF plan includes provisions for increased work requirements for recipients. If passed, this would create an increased need for welfare support services, especially childcare. Without subsidized care, many of our Nation's poor families simply cannot afford to work.

We must not only seek to increase access to childcare overall, but also to ensure the improved quality of such care. Currently, many families receiving assistance cannot provide their children with a high quality childcare setting. In part, this is because the childcare reimbursement rates are so low that many of the higher quality providers do not accept state-subsidized children into their programs. Low salaries and the lack of health care and other benefits also make it difficult to attract and retain highly qualified childcare workers. These are major issues given that quality childcare provides low-income children with the early learning experiences they need to do well in school and in life. We know that children in high quality early care are more likely to experience academic success, for example, higher test scores and an increased likelihood of graduating from high school, and less likely to experience social problems such as being charged in juvenile court or being aggressive toward others.

The Children First Act will address these important issues by increasing funds for the CCDBG by $11.2 billion over 5 years. With these funds, States will be able to serve approximately 1 million more children nationally. The bill also contains an increase in the quality set-aside in CCDBG, which will provide States with funds that can be used to train care providers and create and enforce standards of care.

I urge my colleagues to support this important piece of legislation. It will help low-income families work and help prepare our children to succeed.

Next, I would like to introduce the Education Works Act on behalf of myself and Mrs. Murray, Mr. Dodd, Mr. Reed, Mr. Corzine, and Mr. Wyden.

Since the 1996 changes in our welfare laws, the number of individuals on welfare has dramatically decreased in most States. However, although many have successfully left welfare for work over the past several years, too many have been left behind because they don't have a high school degree, have little or no work history, or are lacking the skills that are important for success in the job market. In addition, many of those who have secured work are working for low wages, receive few or no benefits, and have limited opportunity for upward financial mobility. As we move toward reauthorization, we must do more to support State efforts to insure that all individuals leaving welfare have the capacity to obtain employment that will provide long-term financial independence. The Education Works Act will do just that.

We know that the welfare programs that have been most successful in helping parents work and earn more over the long run are those that have focused on employment but also make substantial use of education and training, together with job search and other employment services. Yes, less than 1 percent of Federal TANF funds were spent on education and training in 2000, largely because current law limits the extent to which education activities count toward Federal work participation requirements, effectively restricting how long individuals can participate in training and also capping how many people can receive these services.

The Education Works Act would change this by: clarifying that states have the flexibility to allow participation in postsecondary, vocational English as a Second Language, and basic adult education programs by

TANF recipients as part of TANF work requirements; giving States the flexibility to determine how long each recipient may participate in education and training activities while receiving benefits; giving states the flexibility to provide non-cash assistance in the form of childcare and transportation supports to individuals who are participating in a full-time education program, without counting these services against the 5-year time limit on TANF benefits; eliminating the 30 percent cap on the number of TANF recipients that can participate in education and training programs in fulfillment of their work requirements.

Via TANF waivers, many States have already been operating programs that do many of the things we're talking about here. In other cases, however, state efforts to provide education and training to welfare recipients have been hampered by an inability to use TANF funds to support these efforts. For example, in my home State, we already have an ``Education Works'' program but only 400 participants are enrolled statewide, due to funding limitations.

States should be held accountable for decreasing welfare caseloads but also for insuring that those entering the workforce have the skills they need to become and remain economically self-sufficient. We need to give all states the flexibility to implement the types of programs that they believe will best achieve these goals. The Education Works Act is an important step in this direction and I urge my colleagues to support it.

Finally, I would like to introduce the Self-Sufficiency and Accountability Act. This Act has several broad goals: to increase state reporting and accountability for welfare dollars that are received, to encourage states to develop concrete strategies to help families move from welfare to self-sufficiency, and to allow states not currently receiving TANF waivers to do so.

First, State plan requirements under current welfare law are simply not comprehensive enough. Under current law, States can submit plans that contain little information about the services that will be provided, long-range or strategic planning, goals or benchmarks, or how they will insure equitable treatment of all welfare clients. In addition, there are currently few provisions for informing the public about the details contained in state plans. Thus, States have little or no accountability to legislators or to the public for the billions of welfare dollars they receive each year.

The Self-Sufficiency and Accountability Act seeks to remedy these deficits. Some of the key provisions include the following: comprehensive state plans would be required to describe the programs and services that will be offered, eligibility requirements, the purposes and goals for all programs and how these goals will be assessed; the new State plans would increase compliance with nondiscrimination, employment, and civil rights laws by requiring among other things, better training of caseworkers, better communication with welfare clients about their rights and obligations, an appeals process, reporting requirements for complaints, and penalties for states that fail to comply with these requirements; the Act would improve public awareness of and access to State plans in their entirety and provides opportunity for public comment when a state plan is pending or being amended.

As I mentioned earlier, large numbers of individuals have moved from the welfare rolls to work since 1996. During the current welfare reauthorization, we must look beyond simply putting people to work and focus on strategies that will help these individuals achieve lasting economic self-sufficiency. Unfortunately, the current content and structure of state plans are wholly inadequate to address these crucial self-sufficiency concerns. The self-Sufficiency and Accountability Act will address these shortcomings by encouraging States to develop concrete strategies designed to move families toward self-sufficiency. The bill requires States to identify and address individual and environmental barriers to self-sufficiency, describe program strategies implemented to promote self-sufficiency, and to assess the progress of former welfare families in this regard.

The final purpose of this bill is to address the issue of increased State flexibility to implement programs that have been proven effective. After the last reauthorization, many states obtained and some continue to use TANF waivers to develop innovative welfare programs that are suited to the specific needs of their TANF caseloads and labor market conditions in their states. This Act would allow states that currently have waivers to continue to operate under those waivers. In addition, the Act stipulates that any state may submit a waiver application on terms similar or identical to states that are successfully implementing innovative programs. In this way, all States would be provided with the flexibility to employ proven strategies in an effort to address the unique needs of their welfare clients.

Taken together, the three bills I have introduced today would go a long way toward helping people transition from welfare and providing these individuals with the skills and supports they need to achieve a lifetime of productive and financially sustaining work.

I urge my colleagues to support these three bills and I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bills be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce three welfare bills. Although these bills do not represent a comprehensive welfare reform proposal, they do address what I see as some of the most critical and pressing issues we must deal with as we move toward improving the TANF program.

Let me begin by introducing the Children First Act on behalf of myself, Mr. Kerry, Mr. Daschle, Mr. Kennedy, Ms. Landrieu, Mr. Sarbanes, Mrs. Lincoln, Mrs. Murray, Mr. Levin, Mr. Corzine, Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Johnson, Mr. Akaka, Mr. Leahy, Mr. Dodd, Mr. Lautenberg and Mr. Reed).

Since 1996, federal funding for child care assistance under the Child Care and Development Block Grant, CCDBG, has significantly increased, making it possible for states to provide more low-income families with child care assistance and to expand initiatives to improve the quality of child care. This has been an extremely important endeavor. Access to high quality childcare is crucial in helping families to work and children to succeed.

Most people agree that the recent employment gains among welfare recipients can only be sustained if families have access to dependable child care. Studies show that when childcare is available and when families get help in paying for care, they are more likely to work. In fact, when I talk to people in my home State of New Mexico about welfare reform, they identify access to childcare as the most important work support we can provide.

Despite the past increases in the CCDBG, we must do more. Overall, only one out of seven children eligible for assistance through the CCDBG program receives a subsidy, leaving approximately 12.9 million eligible children without assistance. Less than 25 percent of New Mexican children under the age of six who are eligible for childcare assistance are currently receiving it. Unfortunately, the need for childcare assistance is only likely to increase in the near future. Many states are currently threatened with serious budget shortfalls that threaten the availability of funds for numerous important endeavors, including childcare assistance. In addition, the administration's recently proposed TANF plan includes provisions for increased work requirements for recipients. If passed, this would create an increased need for welfare support services, especially childcare. Without subsidized care, many of our Nation's poor families simply cannot afford to work.

We must not only seek to increase access to childcare overall, but also to ensure the improved quality of such care. Currently, many families receiving assistance cannot provide their children with a high quality childcare setting. In part, this is because the childcare reimbursement rates are so low that many of the higher quality providers do not accept state-subsidized children into their programs. Low salaries and the lack of health care and other benefits also make it difficult to attract and retain highly qualified childcare workers. These are major issues given that quality childcare provides low-income children with the early learning experiences they need to do well in school and in life. We know that children in high quality early care are more likely to experience academic success, for example, higher test scores and an increased likelihood of graduating from high school, and less likely to experience social problems such as being charged in juvenile court or being aggressive toward others.

The Children First Act will address these important issues by increasing funds for the CCDBG by $11.2 billion over 5 years. With these funds, States will be able to serve approximately 1 million more children nationally. The bill also contains an increase in the quality set-aside in CCDBG, which will provide States with funds that can be used to train care providers and create and enforce standards of care.

I urge my colleagues to support this important piece of legislation. It will help low-income families work and help prepare our children to succeed.

Next, I would like to introduce the Education Works Act on behalf of myself and Mrs. Murray, Mr. Dodd, Mr. Reed, Mr. Corzine, and Mr. Wyden.

Since the 1996 changes in our welfare laws, the number of individuals on welfare has dramatically decreased in most States. However, although many have successfully left welfare for work over the past several years, too many have been left behind because they don't have a high school degree, have little or no work history, or are lacking the skills that are important for success in the job market. In addition, many of those who have secured work are working for low wages, receive few or no benefits, and have limited opportunity for upward financial mobility. As we move toward reauthorization, we must do more to support State efforts to insure that all individuals leaving welfare have the capacity to obtain employment that will provide long-term financial independence. The Education Works Act will do just that.

We know that the welfare programs that have been most successful in helping parents work and earn more over the long run are those that have focused on employment but also make substantial use of education and training, together with job search and other employment services. Yes, less than 1 percent of Federal TANF funds were spent on education and training in 2000, largely because current law limits the extent to which education activities count toward Federal work participation requirements, effectively restricting how long individuals can participate in training and also capping how many people can receive these services.

The Education Works Act would change this by: clarifying that states have the flexibility to allow participation in postsecondary, vocational English as a Second Language, and basic adult education programs by

TANF recipients as part of TANF work requirements; giving States the flexibility to determine how long each recipient may participate in education and training activities while receiving benefits; giving states the flexibility to provide non-cash assistance in the form of childcare and transportation supports to individuals who are participating in a full-time education program, without counting these services against the 5-year time limit on TANF benefits; eliminating the 30 percent cap on the number of TANF recipients that can participate in education and training programs in fulfillment of their work requirements.

Via TANF waivers, many States have already been operating programs that do many of the things we're talking about here. In other cases, however, state efforts to provide education and training to welfare recipients have been hampered by an inability to use TANF funds to support these efforts. For example, in my home State, we already have an ``Education Works'' program but only 400 participants are enrolled statewide, due to funding limitations.

States should be held accountable for decreasing welfare caseloads but also for insuring that those entering the workforce have the skills they need to become and remain economically self-sufficient. We need to give all states the flexibility to implement the types of programs that they believe will best achieve these goals. The Education Works Act is an important step in this direction and I urge my colleagues to support it.

Finally, I would like to introduce the Self-Sufficiency and Accountability Act. This Act has several broad goals: to increase state reporting and accountability for welfare dollars that are received, to encourage states to develop concrete strategies to help families move from welfare to self-sufficiency, and to allow states not currently receiving TANF waivers to do so.

First, State plan requirements under current welfare law are simply not comprehensive enough. Under current law, States can submit plans that contain little information about the services that will be provided, long-range or strategic planning, goals or benchmarks, or how they will insure equitable treatment of all welfare clients. In addition, there are currently few provisions for informing the public about the details contained in state plans. Thus, States have little or no accountability to legislators or to the public for the billions of welfare dollars they receive each year.

The Self-Sufficiency and Accountability Act seeks to remedy these deficits. Some of the key provisions include the following: comprehensive state plans would be required to describe the programs and services that will be offered, eligibility requirements, the purposes and goals for all programs and how these goals will be assessed; the new State plans would increase compliance with nondiscrimination, employment, and civil rights laws by requiring among other things, better training of caseworkers, better communication with welfare clients about their rights and obligations, an appeals process, reporting requirements for complaints, and penalties for states that fail to comply with these requirements; the Act would improve public awareness of and access to State plans in their entirety and provides opportunity for public comment when a state plan is pending or being amended.

As I mentioned earlier, large numbers of individuals have moved from the welfare rolls to work since 1996. During the current welfare reauthorization, we must look beyond simply putting people to work and focus on strategies that will help these individuals achieve lasting economic self-sufficiency. Unfortunately, the current content and structure of state plans are wholly inadequate to address these crucial self-sufficiency concerns. The self-Sufficiency and Accountability Act will address these shortcomings by encouraging States to develop concrete strategies designed to move families toward self-sufficiency. The bill requires States to identify and address individual and environmental barriers to self-sufficiency, describe program strategies implemented to promote self-sufficiency, and to assess the progress of former welfare families in this regard.

The final purpose of this bill is to address the issue of increased State flexibility to implement programs that have been proven effective. After the last reauthorization, many states obtained and some continue to use TANF waivers to develop innovative welfare programs that are suited to the specific needs of their TANF caseloads and labor market conditions in their states. This Act would allow states that currently have waivers to continue to operate under those waivers. In addition, the Act stipulates that any state may submit a waiver application on terms similar or identical to states that are successfully implementing innovative programs. In this way, all States would be provided with the flexibility to employ proven strategies in an effort to address the unique needs of their welfare clients.

Taken together, the three bills I have introduced today would go a long way toward helping people transition from welfare and providing these individuals with the skills and supports they need to achieve a lifetime of productive and financially sustaining work.

I urge my colleagues to support these three bills and I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bills be printed in the Record.