Floor Statements

Mr. President, this morning I rise to speak about the national defense function of this budget resolution. The resolution provides $413.9 billion in discretionary spending for our national defense. This amount represents a increase of almost $20 billion, 5 percent above the 2004 level.

As chairman of the Readiness and Management Support Subcommittee of the Armed Services Committee, I am keenly aware that today we are a nation at war. Almost 200,000 U.S. military service personnel are currently deployed around the world in Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation Enduring Freedom, and other military operations in the ongoing global war on terrorism.

Our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines remain deployed in Korea, the Balkans, at sea and elsewhere, protecting American interests and deterring aggression.

There can be no disagreement on the magnificent manner which our Armed Forces have answered their nation's call. Their professionalism and performance have been brilliant, and their willingness to sacrifice for this country is inspiring.

That is why I am so troubled today by the Democrats' response to President Bush's weekly radio address last Saturday. That response was delivered by Senator John Kerry, their party's presumptive Presidential nominee.

We all know that each Senator has a right to state their opinion on defense issues. However, when a Senator, or in this case, a party's presumptive nominee, makes an argument built on a foundation of facts as distorted as Senator Kerry's was, then the argument becomes more than an honest disagreement.

He quoted the Secretary of the Army as saying that U.S. forces were ``not prepared'' for the present conflict in Iraq.

This is the exact quote:

The Secretary of the Army admitted that the United States

forces were ``not prepared'' for the present conflict.

But yesterday at the Senate Armed Services Readiness Subcommittee hearing, the Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, General Casey, testified that comment ``was taken out of context.'' He stated ``we were very well prepared, all of the services.''

General Moseley, Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force, said, ``I would have to tell you that . . . all airmen, whether they were Navy, Marine, or Air Force, were exceptionally well prepared. . . . and I would take issue with anyone that criticized our magnificent airmen.''

General Huly, Deputy Commandant of the Marine Corps, said, ``I believe we were very well prepared . . . I think that's evidenced by the fact that we exceeded our expectations, accomplished the mission in a shorter period of time, with far fewer losses than we even anticipated ourselves.

Senator Kerry has woven a picture of incompetence and malfeasance by our military leaders and our President. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is amazing the different pictures painted by those who have been there, and those who have not.

I personally visited Iraq last December. As a matter of fact, I was privileged to have been in the country the day the Third Infantry Division captured Saddam Hussein. I have to tell you what impressed me the most was watching our troops go above and beyond the call of duty; painting schools, rehabbing hospitals, and winning over the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people, even in the Tikrit region where their safety was most at risk.

Watching events in Iraq unfold underscores that America is blessed with more than her fair share of heroes. These men and women are doing what needs to be done in an extremely hostile environment. And they are depending on this Congress to pass a budget that gives them the resources to complete their mission and return home safely to their families. This budget ensures that the military has the resources it needs to remain properly prepared and adequately equipped.

In his radio address, Senator Kerry also stated that: ``I will never send our troops into harm's way without enough firepower and support.''

Strong words, but words alone offer little in this context and in the overall context of our budget discussions. It is interesting to note that while Senator Kerry claims to be a devout supporter of our troops, he was one of only 12 Senators who voted ``no'' for an Iraqi supplemental that provided that very ``firepower'' and ``support'' he now claims is so necessary.

The Iraqi supplemental was used to purchase the same body armor and ``up-armored Humvees'' Senator Kerry rails about as being insufficient. If we had allowed Senator Kerry to make the decision, our troops would indeed be ill prepared.

Votes have consequences. By voting against the Iraqi supplemental Senator Kerry voted to undermine the troops in the field and that is not only inexcusable, it is reprehensible. I hope no Senator would make such an egregious mistake with respect to the current budget resolution.

Therefore, I am calling upon Senator Kerry to retract his comments about our military being unprepared and to apologize to the men and women of our armed forces for using their sacrifices as political fodder. It is important to remember that in a democracy there will always be honest differences of opinion over the difficult decisions about the best way to fund, train, and equip American forces who are being sent into harms' way. I appreciate the opportunity to work with Members on both sides of the aisle to resolve these differences.

On February 24, Senator Levin, ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, sent a letter to Chairman Nickles and Senator Conrad.

In his letter he stated that ``no one can predict with precision what these fiscal year 2005 costs will be'' and recommended an increase in ``budget authority for the national defense function by $30 billion in fiscal year 2005.''

I agree with my distinguished colleague from Michigan when he said that this is ``the responsible thing to do for our troops and for budget accuracy.''

This budget takes Senator Levin's suggestions to heart and includes the supplemental resources necessary to provide for the 200,000 men and women in our military who are currently serving abroad.

I look forward to working with my Senate colleagues to ensure that we adequately address the sacrifices of our men and women in uniform, by passing a budget resolution that provides the resources that will sustain and improve our military as they fight for security of this great Nation. By fully supporting this budget, we will send a clear message of support to our troops, worldwide, and an important message to the world of America's complete commitment to freedom and security.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I have just a couple thoughts to share tonight on the Senator's amendment and on Social Security in general.

The Senator from Oklahoma mentioned what the Senator's amendment would actually do: raise taxes, supposedly to put into a fund to save Social Security.

First of all, it directs the Finance Committee to raise taxes. You cannot tell the Finance Committee, in a budget resolution, what taxes to raise. It could easily raise taxes on the child tax credit. It could easily raise whatever taxes it chooses to raise. You cannot direct the Finance Committee on what taxes to raise. We all know that.

Any of the amendments that have been put forward today that say, well, just raise the tax on millionaires, you have to be on the Finance Committee to be able to direct that. That may be your desire, but that is not the way the budget resolution works. You can just direct the amount of money for the Finance Committee to raise. And I think the Senator from New Jersey is aware of that.

As far as putting it in a fund, this Senator has only been here for 3 years. I was in the House of Representatives for 4 years prior to this. The one thing I have learned around here, first of all, is that there is no Social Security trust fund; it is a bunch of IOUs. It is simply an accounting system that we have. Taxpayers, basically in the future, will pay taxes to fund this accounting gimmick that we know as a trust fund.

In most companies, the way they set up trust funds, they actually take the money and invest it. That money accumulates. There are actually real assets. There are not real assets, other than the word of the United States, in the Social Security trust fund. That is really all we have.

Let me make a few points, and then I will be happy to yield.

There is no cash. There are Treasury bills, basically financing debt that we have for the long term. And we get a very low rate of interest on those for the Social Security trust fund.

The pension systems of companies and States have real assets in them. The State of Nevada has the Public Employees Retirement System. It is a system that a lot of States have.

Most teachers, police officers, and the like are not in the Social Security system because they are in a pension system. The easiest way to explain that is, instead of the taxpayers of today paying for the retirees of today, the retirees' money that they earned while working got put in a system that earned money, so that when they retired they started getting that money back out with interest.

For retirees of today under Social Security, theirs was put in a paper account. It has earned a tiny amount of interest, but the workers of today pay in taxes for their retirement payments. That is how it works. It is a complete difference.

By the way, for the State of Nevada, since we have had our PERS system--I think for 25 or 30 years, whatever it has been--the average rate of return has been 11 percent. Social Security is about 2, 3 percent, somewhere in there--1 percent. It is a lot lower, we know, than 11 percent.

If Social Security would have been set up as a retirement system, as a pension system with real assets, what the Senator is trying to do-- put money into that system--may work. But it is not set up that way.

It is set up as a pay-as-you-go system. All this money you give to Congress today, they will spend it. I have been around here 3 years, but it is obvious: If you give more money to this Government, it is going to spend it. It

is an easy way to get reelected, just giving money to people.

So while the Senator from New Jersey wants to put it in to save Social Security, it is not going to do that.

As a matter of fact, it will raise the baseline which will put more liability into the future.

I yield the floor.

If I may respond to the Senator from New Jersey, first of all, we have a difference of philosophy. The ranking member on the Budget Committee and I had this discussion last night. There is a difference in philosophy. This Senator believes in cutting tax rates, giving entrepreneurs more of their own money. For instance, when I was practicing as a veterinarian, I was a sole proprietor. If I wanted to expand my business, I looked at my costs, and I looked at rate of return. Part of that was taxes. Could I justify expanding my business. I looked at the cost of borrowing. I looked at the cost of taxes. I looked at all those variables. The higher you raise the cost of taxes, the less expansion of business you are going to get, the fewer jobs you are going to create.

While we have to have tax rates that allow what we believe in to be funded, there is a balance there. I believe if we raise taxes, as you are suggesting, especially as fragile as this economy and this economic recovery is, it could send us back into a double-dip recession as we have seen this economy do historically several times.

I think raising taxes would actually threaten the Social Security trust fund because, as the Senator from Oklahoma said, the only real security for the Social Security trust fund as it is set up today is a strong economy.

We have the baby boomers who are retiring, this huge demographic shift. When Social Security was first set up, there were 39 workers for every one retiree. The retirement age was 65. The average age when people died was 63. That is why a pay-as-you-go system worked for all those years. We had plenty of workers to pay for the retirees. We are down to less than four workers for every one retiree today. We are going to two to one. In future years, if we continue with the birth rates and the increase in age that people live, we will be down to one to one. A pay-as-you-go system does not work in that regard.

It is an important debate to have. I realize we are not going to solve this on the budget resolution, but the bottom line is, a strong economy is the only way in a pay-as-you-go system, a growing, strong, healthy economy is the only way for you to be able to have enough revenues coming into the Federal Government to be able to pay Social Security retirees.

If we want to change the system, and I believe in changing the system, keep it the way we have now, but for the future having similar private accounts, whether it is like we have a Nevada PERS or whatever it is, to where you have real assets that are returning a better rate of return that many other countries in the world are changing their Social Security systems into, if we have that, that is a better way for the long-term solvency for Social Security, in this Senator's opinion. But the current system would be threatened by the amendment of the Senator from New Jersey because we are in the situation of a fragile economy, and tax increases could send us into a double-dip recession.

Maybe 10 or 15 minutes.

Mr. President, I want to make a couple of comments about the budget we have before us today.

It was an interesting process, once again, in the Budget Committee last week. We had a lot of amendments that went pretty much down party lines. But one comment I will make about the Budget Committee that is maybe a little more encouraging this year is the rhetoric was not nearly as harsh. And that, in an election year, I think is something positive to take out of the whole discussion in the Budget Committee. While there were differences, I thought it was at a little higher level this year--my second year on the Budget Committee--than my first year. I thought there was a little less rancor and a little more agreeing to disagree type of attitude on the Budget Committee.

There are differences between the two sides, and sometimes even within our own parties, as we look at making policy. The ranking member on the Budget Committee has made a lot of issues about deficits. I echo that. I think it is very important we get the looming deficits in the outyears under control because they are a huge threat to the long-term health of our economy.

Having said that, there are reasons for deficits, and there are acceptable reasons for short periods of time to run deficits. The two biggest reasons would be being in a recession and having a war. Unfortunately for our country, those both hit at the same time.

We had, obviously, the recession which started at the end of the Clinton administration and continued on into the early parts of the Bush administration. Then we had September 11 and the global war on terrorism. We had the huge costs for New York City, the huge cost to our economy 9/11 has had, as well as the cost in increased spending the global war on terrorism has had. Given all of that, it is understandable why we have a $500 billion deficit.

Where I would disagree with my colleague, though, is what are we going to do with it now. How are we going to go into the future to get our hands around this deficit, to bring it down to an acceptable level? I think an acceptable level is to do what we were doing; and that is, to start paying down some of the long-term debt. With the baby boomers out there, we have to have a growing economy. We have to get some of this debt under control so we will be able to afford some of the things people want to be able to afford, as far as our Government spending is concerned.

But we have to look at how do we go forward. What are our priorities? That is what the budget we have before us attempts to set. We have more money for education. We have more money for veterans benefits. We have more money for the defense of our country. We wish we did not have to be spending all this extra money on the defense of our country, but that is the primary role for the Federal Government, according to the Constitution, to defend the United States of America. This budget reflects that primary role of the Federal Government.

Having said that, I want to look at how we have gotten to the present deficit so we can have a document that takes us forward.

This pie chart we have shows the various reasons why we have the deficit we have today. About 40 percent of it, shown on the yellow portion of the chart, the largest chunk, is because of the poor economy. Some of that can be blamed on September 11. Some of it is because of a downturn in the business cycle, and we are coming out of it. But the fact is, that is a big part of the reason we are in this deficit.

Almost 40 percent--37 percent--comes in the red area on this graph, and that is because of new spending. That is everything from the war, education programs, veterans benefits, environmental programs, roads, everything you can think of. That is new spending. That is almost 37 percent.

The tax cuts have reduced revenues--out of a total of 100 percent of the reason for the deficit, it accounts for about 23 percent of the deficit.

You can also make the argument, though, that the economy would be worse without the tax cuts. Therefore, the yellow-shaded portion, which is the 40 percent, would be even higher without the tax cuts. Because what the tax cuts did--and Alan Greenspan has testified to this--is they stimulated the economy so fewer people were on the unemployment rolls and more were working. That is the reason we have a lower unemployment rate today. That includes self-employed people. That is a big part of what people are doing. They are starting their own businesses.

One of the big things we heard from a lot of States is their State budgets

are in trouble. We saw a dramatic decline in the value of the stock market. The NASDAQ, toward the end of the Clinton administration, was tanking. Then we had September 11. All of that, with the bad economy, kind of combined and we saw huge losses in the stock market.

Since the tax cuts we passed last year, we have had an increase between the New York Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ of $4.5 trillion in value. We would see an increase in tax revenues at this point except there are so many people who had losses from before when the stock market tanked that we do not have a huge amount of increased revenues. But the fact is, as the stock market continues to go up, we are now poised to start reaping the benefits in new revenues to the Federal Government from the stock markets and capital gains taxes.

By the way, in the State of California, one of their biggest budget problems was the lack of capital gains taxes. The more the stock market goes up and the value of property goes up and the value of a lot of things goes up, the more State budgets are going to be helped, especially States that rely on revenue sources such as that, such as the State of California does.

I wish we could get more of a handle on Federal spending. I believe it is out of control.

I want to run through a few charts to show that when we were in surpluses, people got a pretty strong appetite. The ranking member on the Budget Committee talked about how we all have big appetites around here for spending. It is an easy way to get reelected, to keep giving that money out. It is hard for people to say no. When we were in those surpluses, the appetite increased. Federal spending went up fairly dramatically. You can argue for every one of these programs, it was justifiable. But we have to realize we got to this point.

A couple of examples. These are simple examples. The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. You can see in the last several years how it had gone up. Then it went down for a few years. Now it has gone back up.

For the Centers for Disease Control, there have been dramatic increases in the last several years. The increases started in about 2000, and went forward pretty rapidly.

The child nutrition programs, you can see, continued, but with a fairly good uptick in the last few years.

The child care funding in around 2000 had a huge jump compared to what it was during the 1990s. It was fine when the economy was producing a lot of tax revenues.

This is the National Institutes of Health. Their spending, as you can see, has had a very rapid rise.

There are a lot of great programs, but the fact is, we have built a lot of spending into our budget now.

As Ronald Reagan said--and I am paraphrasing him--he discovered, when trying to eliminate Federal programs or Federal spending: The closest thing to eternal life in Washington, DC, is a Federal program.

That was a true statement back then and remains so today.

Both sides of the aisle are going to have to come together and address the problem of Federal spending. The ranking member of the Budget Committee has argued that we need to start looking on the revenue side.

I have a philosophical difference of opinion because I believe increasing tax rates takes away the incentive for businesses to invest. I remember when I was in business as a small businessperson, and I maybe wanted to do an expansion on my animal hospital. As a practicing veterinarian, if the Government was taking more money, I would have less money to be able to make that decision. Maybe I couldn't add that extra employee or I couldn't do the expansion to add on to my building. The more money I had in my pocket because the Government was taking less, the more money I could pump back into the economy by doing an expansion of the building or by hiring another employee. Even if I didn't hire an internal employee, doing an expansion obviously puts other people to work.

That is why there is a philosophical difference between the two sides of the aisle on taxes and tax cuts. I want to put it in the hands of investors and entrepreneurs to stimulate the economy. It can be that low-income tax cuts, child tax credits, things such as that, help the economy because then those folks go out and spend money.

The bottom line is, we have to have a strong economy and have tax revenues going up. We are not going to cut spending around here--we all know that--but at least slow the rate of growth down to the point where the tax revenues start outpacing what we are doing spending-wise so that we can start taking care of these deficits and eliminate them within a few short years.

I am not a person who thinks that 7, 10, 12 years out is acceptable to have deficits where they take a dip down and then they start going back up. I believe we have to take it down as we did in the 1990s, take it all the way down to where we start actually paying off some of the long-term debt so that we leave our children and grandchildren with a smaller Federal debt than we currently have. If we don't, with the retirement of the baby boomers, our children and grandchildren will have to pay higher taxes.

It is important we join together across party lines and work out the differences we can, understanding there are philosophical differences. The one place we both agree is that we need to hold the line on spending. We will have different priorities of where that spending is, but we need to hold the line on Federal spending, especially over the next couple of years until the economy starts becoming robust.

I yield the floor.

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

I ask unanimous consent the time until 3:30 be equally divided in the usual form and that if the Bingaman amendment has not been previously disposed of, the Senate would then vote in relation to the Bingaman second-degree, to be followed immediately by a vote in relation to the Hatch first-degree, as amended if amended, provided further no additional second degrees be in order prior to the vote.

Mr. President, I understand the Senator from Tennessee is going to seek recognition. I ask unanimous consent that following the Senator from Tennessee, I be recognized to speak on the R&D amendment.

For myself, I would only need 5 minutes.

Senator Alexander?

I ask to be recognized after Senator Alexander.

I yield to Senator Alexander.

Mr. President, I want to speak on the R&D tax credit that is in this bill--the proposal to extend that tax credit which is scheduled to expire. I want to talk about some of the benefits.

This is a tax credit that has been supported by both sides of the aisle and by both bodies. There are many benefits to keeping this R&D tax credit as part of our Tax Code; first of all, the industries that benefit from this tax credit. I am the chairman of the Republican High- Tech Task Force in the Senate, and I hear about this issue all the time from very important parts of our economy and how important it is to the creation of jobs.

The industries that benefit from this include--it is not limited to the aerospace industry--the agriculture industry, biotechnology, chemical industry, electronic, energy, information technology, manufacturing, medical technology, pharmaceuticals, software and telecommunications, as well as others.

It is not just big business that benefits from this R&D tax credit; it is also many small businesses. The companies that perform significant amounts of R&D perform that research and development in the United States. They pay very good wages to the people who do the research and development.

This tax credit should be made permanent in the long run. That is my goal--to someday make this tax credit permanent. We keep extending it. I think it has been extended 10 different times over the years. It was allowed to actually lapse once, but it has never been made permanent. I believe it should be made permanent. Unfortunately, we can't do that in the context of what we are doing today. But we should at least make sure that R&D tax credit is extended for the 18 months the bill calls for.

Why is it important? New vaccines, faster Internet, and other communications capabilities, safer transportation, enhanced energy- efficient appliances, higher quality entertainment, better homes, improved national security. The list of societal benefits as a result of R&D is endless.

R&D is the lifeblood of the U.S. economy. We really should encourage not only adoption of the extension but also eventually making permanent this tax credit.

The revenue analysis, according to the economic benefit of the R&D tax credit prepared by Coopers & Lybrand in 1998 says:

In the long run, $1.75 of additional tax revenue would be

generated for each dollar the Federal Government spends on

the credit, creating a win-win situation for both the

taxpayers and the government.

I will conclude with this: We should do the right thing for the economy and allow companies some level of predictability. We keep telling them we are going to extend it, we are going to extend it. But, frankly, it is hard when research and development is usually planned long term. It is hard to do that when we keep coming up to the deadline and then finally extending the tax credit.

I encourage us to do what we are doing today--extending it for 18 months but also be looking for ways to make this R&D tax credit permanent.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the Cantwell amendment, and want to put this in a little perspective. We have an unemployment benefit insurance program and then we have the temporary extension of the benefit program which we have been doing for some time now. In fact, I think the temporary extension has been done two different times.

I also want to clear up some of the confusion because there is a payroll survey which measures the amount of jobs created, and there is a household survey. We know what statistics can do depending in whose hands they are, but let us at least know what the facts are.

Payroll survey measures--if someone goes to work for somebody, they get a job and go on their payroll, that is the payroll survey. So if a person is employed by somebody, it is counted in the payroll survey.

When I was practicing as a veterinarian, I opened my own practice. I was self-employed. That does not go on the payroll survey, but it does go on the household survey. Right now, on eBay--we have all heard of eBay--there is a fairly solid estimate that there are now over 200,000 people with full-time businesses operating on eBay. These are full-time jobs and the individuals are doing very well operating on eBay. They are buying and selling things on eBay.

However, those 200,000 jobs are not counted in the payroll survey. That is the survey the Democrats are commonly referring to all the time when they are saying there are job losses.

To show the difference between the payroll survey and the household survey with statistics, in January the payroll survey said we had created about 100,000 jobs. The household survey showed the creation of almost half a million jobs. Now if one believes the other side, they are saying to somebody who is self-employed that they do not have a job. Well, I am sorry, but when I was a self-employed veterinarian working 100 hours a week, I thought that was work. I thought that was a job. Listening to the other side, they are saying it is not a job.

Having said that, let's look at unemployment rates, which is a measure of the payroll survey. When the Democrats were in charge of the House, the Senate, and the White House, all three bodies, they had the ability to extend this program on their own because they had the votes to do that. Let's look at the historical unemployment rates versus today's unemployment rates to see whether they extended the program; in other words, to see when they had the ability to act whether they matched it against what they are saying today.

In the early 1990s when the Democrats were in control of the Senate, the House, and the White House, the unemployment rate at the start of the program was 7.0 percent. When we started the program this time, the unemployment rate was at 5.7 percent. At the peak of the program in the 90s, the highest unemployment rate under the Democrats went up to 7.8 percent. The peak unemployment rate this time went to 6.3 percent.

When the Democrats voted to end the program, to terminate the extension of unemployment benefits, the unemployment rate was at 6.4 percent.

What is that unemployment rate today? It is at 5.6 percent, almost a full percentage point less than when the Democrats controlled the Senate, the House, and the White House, and they voted to terminate the program. Why did they vote to terminate it? Because

the extension of unemployment benefits is put in during times of high unemployment rates.

Well, they are saying times have changed. Statistics back then do not compare with statistics now. I do not know why, but that is what they are saying.

Let's point out what this Senate and the House did last year. We gave the States $8 billion to help fund their own unemployment programs-- especially those States that have high unemployment like Oregon. The Senator from Oregon was just on the floor speaking. We gave that money to the States to handle serious problems with individuals facing long- term unemployment.

What have the States done with that money? We gave them that money 2 years ago. In March 2002, we gave $8 million to the States. What have they done with it? Well, there is $4.3 billion the States have not used. Are our States not compassionate? Do they not care about people, as the other side would have us believe?

They have not spent over half of the money we gave from the Federal Government to the States.

So I think we have to look at what is going on today with this amendment. I believe this is very well intentioned by the other side, but what has happened is our mindset has changed. What used to be considered full employment is now considered high unemployment. All of us back in the early 1990s thought a 5.5 percent unemployment rate would be considered full employment in this economy, because there are always people who are changing jobs so they are temporarily unemployed. There are always people who have difficulty because of training, they are getting some new training so it takes them longer to find a job. Then sometimes, frankly, in a changing economy, people do have to move to find a job. Sometimes it takes a long period of unemployment for people to make that decision. It is a very difficult decision to make.

I think we need to be sensitive to people, but we also have to look at the reality we are facing. We are facing huge budget deficits today. How many of the people running for President have been talking about the budget problem? On the other side of the aisle, I have heard it talked about time and time again.

Well, the extension of the unemployment benefits costs almost $1 billion dollars a month. So if we extend it out to the end of this year, we are going to be talking about another $10 billion, or somewhere thereabouts, added to the budget deficit. That money will be borrowed from the Social Security trust fund, because when there is deficit spending, that is where it is taken out of. We all know that. It is a paper trust fund anyway, but we all know that is where it will be taken out of.

So I think it is important for us to understand, first, what got us here, what the historical implications have been as I have laid them out, and then what do we do to get out of this dilemma. What we do to get out of it is to make sure we have a strong enough economy so new jobs will be created.

What are all of the economists--and I do not care which philosophy the economists subscribe to, the one thing everybody agrees with is these large budget deficits we are experiencing today and that are projected out into the future are the No. 1 single threat to our economy. So if we want to have a secure future going forward, we must watch and curtail additional Federal spending.

The reason we have the deficit today, over half of it, is because of the poor economy. So when businesses and individuals are not making as much money, they do not pay as much in taxes. Over half of the budget deficit is caused by that. About another 27 or 28 percent of the budget deficit was caused by increased Federal spending. And about 20 percent of it were the last two tax cuts that were enacted. But without those tax cuts--it is widely accepted now those tax cuts have helped the economy--we would be in even worse shape.

The number one thing we can do for the economy, as a Federal Government is to create the atmosphere where those jobs are created. So the number one thing we can do is make sure we keep our fiscal house in order by restraining Federal spending.

Looking back at the payroll survey, eight months prior to the tax cuts we lost 386,000 jobs. Eight months after the tax cuts we produced 300,000 jobs. That is just the payroll survey statistics. That does not count the household survey, or all of those self-employed people I was talking about earlier. There are literally a couple of million jobs that have been produced since the tax cut, when you count self-employed people.

The other side says that doesn't count. Just ask somebody who is self-employed whether they think their job counts and should count in the national statistics. I think everybody who is self-employed out there, if you have a mom-and-pop business, if you are a doctor who used to work for a hospital and have your own practice, or you are a nurse- midwife and you decided to take the risk and go out on your own, does your job count? A nurse practitioner or a physical therapist, whatever the job is, should that job count? I believe it should. I believe that is why there are two different surveys, the household survey and a payroll survey. It is important that we have both of them so we can look at the big picture. The economy is changing. We have to have policies that reflect those changes.

I yield the floor at this time so we can go back and forth and continue the debate. I see my friend from Oklahoma. Next time I get recognized, I will yield some time to him.

I would like to ask the Senator from Washington a question.

I mentioned before that we gave the States about $8 billion a couple of years ago and that there is still over half of that money unexpended.

I wanted to know if the Senator from Washington was aware that her State was given about $167 million and so far the unexpended available balance to the State of Washington is about $165 million out of $167 million that was given to your state.

I realize you have a higher unemployment rate than the rest of the country. I am kind of curious why your State has not spent the money we gave from the Federal Government?

I will yield you 1 minute.

Mr. President, I will take a minute while the Senator from Oklahoma is getting ready to make a couple of other points.

At some point we have to have some fiscal discipline around the Senate. There are good arguments to make in support of extending unemployment benefits. There is always anecdotal evidence, stories of hardship cases. You can always find those. If we had a 1-percent unemployment rate, you could find people out there who were unemployed, and unemployed for a long period of time, no matter how low the unemployment rate.

The question is, by extending these benefits, do you create more of a problem than you are solving? In other words, we know that about 50 percent of the people who are on unemployment will get a job in the last 2 weeks before their benefits run out.

We have to have some discipline around here, put our fiscal house in order so that in the future we don't harm the economy, so that those jobs will be there for those people who want employment. For every person who wants to get a job and is willing to work, we need to have a job available.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, how much time does the Senator from Oklahoma wish?

I yield to the Senator 10 minutes.

How much time do I have remaining?

I will take a couple of minutes.

I asked the Senator from Washington a question a little while ago. Of the $8 billion we gave to the States, each of the States was allocated a certain amount of money and the State of Washington was allocated around $167 million. Up to this point, the State of Washington--this is money on which the legislature in the State of Washington has to act; they take that money and spend it on unemployment benefits--so far has only used about $3.5 million of the $167 million.

Earlier, the Senator from Massachusetts was in the Senate discussing with the Senator from Washington, saying it is difficult to access. Massachusetts has used every dollar they were given at that time--every dollar. So the Senator from Washington, the sponsor of this amendment, her own State has not used the money the Federal Government made accessible to them. It seems to me they ought to at least use that money to help the people in their own State.

Also, we had the Workforce Reinvestment Act that passed unanimously in the Senate. This act would help about 900,000 people in the United States to be retrained for new jobs. The other side is filibustering the appointment of conferees. We need to complete that bill if we want to help those people out of work get retrained so we can get them into other jobs.

I yield.

Yes.

There is $4.3 billion that has not been used that we gave the States.

They are filibustering the appointment of conferees.

For those people who do not know what that is, we have to appoint people to be able to work out the differences between the House and the Senate so we can bring the final bills back to both before we take it to the White

House. They are filibustering a bill that was passed unanimously.

The Senator from Oklahoma is correct, it is a rarely used tactic from the past that has been used increasingly more. It is obstructing the work of the Senate.

I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, I will wrap up my remarks. I have a couple comments.

First of all, the economy is improving now, it is not just going to improve in the future. We are in the middle of a recovery. We just had the strongest quarter of GDP growth in 20 years. Jobs are being produced.

Payroll versus household--I do not know how many times we have to say it, but self-employed people count. They count in the household survey. Over 2 million jobs have been produced within the last year. When you count the households and all those self-employed people, those jobs should count in what we are talking about here.

If somebody lost their job and then started their own company, that should count as a job. And that is what a lot of people have done. We know incredible success stories of when people have lost their jobs and then started their own companies.

Mr. President, it is time to end this continued unemployment benefit extension, this billion-dollar-a-month program and encourage people to go to work.

Mr. President, today the Senate resumes consideration of the motion to proceed to S. 2061, the OB/GYN medical malpractice bill. Senators who wish to speak on the bill are encouraged to come to the floor during today's session. The Senate will recess from 12:30 until 2:15 for the weekly party lunches.

At 5 p.m. the Senate will vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to the bill. As a reminder, last night the majority leader filed cloture on the motion to proceed to S. 1805, the gun liability bill. The cloture vote on the motion to proceed to the gun liability bill will occur on Wednesday.

I ask unanimous consent that the time until 12:30 p.m. be equally divided between the two managers or their designees; provided further that the time from 2:15 until 4:50 p.m. be equally divided in the same manner; with the final 10 minutes prior to the 5 p.m. cloture vote equally divided between the two leaders or their designees, with the majority leader in control of the final 5 minutes.

Mr. President, I wish to make a few opening comments on the medical liability bill. Last year we had a debate in the Senate on proceeding--not voting on but proceeding--to an overall medical liability reform bill. That vote was 49 to 48 in favor of going to the bill. Unfortunately, the rules of the Senate provide that one needs 60 votes. Otherwise, a filibuster, as it is commonly referred to, is continued. You cannot proceed to debating the legislation or to votes or amendments.

There are currently 19 States, according to the American Medical Association, that are in crisis. Nineteen States are experiencing some kind of crisis with their medical system because of problems with medical liability insurance. All but 5 States of the remaining are showing some problems, the type of problems that have led to those 19 States being in crisis.

We had the vote last year and couldn't get it done. Senator Gregg and I have introduced the bill before us today, the Healthy Mothers and Healthy Babies Access to Medical Care Act. This bill limits the scope of reform of the medical liability system to the practice of obstetrics and gynecology and the doctors involved in those practices.

Using my own State as an example, at the University of Nevada School of

Medicine there has been a dramatic decrease in the number of medical students deciding to go into obstetrics. This is happening at a time when Nevada is the fastest growing State in the country. Southern Nevada--Las Vegas, in particular--is by far the fastest growing metropolitan area in the Nation. Not only are we not adding the OB/GYNs we need, we are actually losing them.

The other side will argue that the General Accounting Office did a study and determined that doctors are not giving up their licenses. They said that doctors are not leaving their States.

The problem with what the General Accounting Office did is, they went to the State boards and only did a survey of licenses. I was a practicing veterinarian and still have a license in veterinary medicine. Once you have a license, you never give it up because you never want to take the exam again. So when the General Accounting Office asked the State board of medical examiners how many doctors have given up their licenses, and they found out nobody had given up their licenses, that should not surprise anybody because they are not going to give them up. That does not mean these doctors are not quitting practice in Nevada and other States--Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Washington State, Mississippi, and many others around the country. It means they haven't given up their licenses because they don't want to take the exam again. But they are limiting their practices. And many of them are leaving those States that are affected.

Several years ago, California gave us a good model. California is right next to my State of Nevada. California passed what is known as MICRA. It is a medical liability reform bill. Luckily, they passed it back then because the trial lawyers have become so powerful across the United States that you could never get the same piece of legislation passed in California. That would be a shame because it has worked so well. It is the model around which we built the legislation on the Senate floor today.

In California--Los Angeles, for example--OB/GYN medical liability insurance is somewhere a little over $50,000 a year. In Las Vegas, where we don't have and haven't had this wonderful MICRA law on the books, premiums can run anywhere from $110,000 up to $200,000 a year. Not only that, they are telling the doctors in Las Vegas, you have to limit the number of deliveries you do, especially if you are practicing on high-risk deliveries.

If you are a woman who has a high-risk pregnancy, you want the best possible doctor you can get. Unfortunately, those doctors are having to limit their practice or retire or leave the State because they cannot afford medical liability coverage any longer.

This is a crisis--a crisis of access to health care for women who need the health care, women who are in search of gynecological services or women who are about to deliver babies. The stories--there are many of them--are tragic in many circumstances.

This is, by the way, only one area of our health care system that is in crisis. Trauma is another place, and we are going to address that later this year--emergency rooms. As a matter of fact, the level I trauma center in Las Vegas closed a couple of years ago because the doctors could not afford to practice there because of the liability. There were so many lawsuits--not lawsuits that actually had merit to them; some of them did but most of them did not. Because of the potential liability, the doctors said we cannot afford to work here. So the level I trauma center that serves a four-State region had to close. That is the same level I trauma center, for those who followed the national news this last year, where Roy Horn of Siegfried and Roy was treated after the tiger had attacked him. It is an excellent level I trauma center. It saves many lives.

We had a press conference last year where a woman whose father was in Las Vegas and had an accident while the level I trauma center was closed. He had to be transferred to another hospital, and because of the delay in treating him, we could definitely argue that this man would be alive today if the trauma center had not closed. That trauma center was only closed for 1 week, and it was closed for that reason. The State of Nevada stepped up; our Governor stepped up and said we will cover that trauma center under the laws of the State of Nevada.

What are the laws of the State of Nevada? It has a $50,000 cap of liability--total cap. Not $50,000 for pain and suffering but a total cap of $50,000. That is not even close to what this bill says. This bill has a $250,000 cap on noneconomic, nonmedical damages. You can still get all the economic damages you would have incurred; for instance, loss of income or other types of economic damages. You can get all of the medical coverage you would need. It is just that $250,000 cap on pain and suffering awards. Those are the awards we have seen that are getting outrageous all across America.

That level I trauma center, luckily for Roy Horn, was open. Without the type of intense care you can receive in a trauma center, Roy Horn, I think it could be argued, would not be with us today.

Mr. President, even though we have limited this bill to the practice of obstetrics and gynecology, we do have a much bigger problem in this country, a problem that must be addressed. We are in a political season today. We know that. It is an election year for the President, the Senate, and the House, and there is a lot of politics going on. Some people say: You guys are just doing this with OB/GYNs to make a political issue out of it.

If people want to stand up and say that they don't want to fix the problem happening with access to care for women and children, then I guess that is a political issue. I think it is a legitimate political issue. People need to know where Senators stand. They need to know where our Presidential candidates stand on issues of this importance. I believe that when they find out where candidates stand, whether they are incumbents or challengers, this issue will make a difference in their vote come November.

It is that important to our overall quality of life in America. I believe it is wrong that we have to have people moving, or not moving, from State to State because they cannot get access to quality care because the medical liability costs are too high--one reason versus another reason.

Some States have enacted good reform. Colorado and California are the best examples. My State enacted a bill, but, unfortunately, it will take several years before we know whether that bill will withstand challenge in the courts. Also, there were two huge loopholes in that bill that the trial lawyers were able to get in that you will be able to drive a truck through. That is why many in the medical community in Nevada are trying to close those loopholes.

We need enactment at the national level. Sixty percent of all medical bills are paid by the Federal Government between Medicare, Medicaid, and veterans. It is a national priority. We must get this medical liability crisis under control so that our trauma centers are not closing, so that women have access to their OBs, gynecologists, and nurse midwives, who are also covered under this bill. They sometimes get left out of the discussion, but they are a very important part of our health care delivery system in this country and delivering healthy babies.

Mr. President, we had a debate today--sort of a debate, because we are only debating whether to proceed to a debate on the issue of whether we are going to continue to allow obstetricians and gynecologists and nurse-midwives to be able to practice in this country because of the runaway cost of medical liability insurance. The Democrats are not even allowing us to proceed to the bill, just like last year, when we tried to pass a more comprehensive reform. If they don't like the bill, let's amend the bill. But to have no debate on the bill, it seems to me, they are completely turning their backs on the women and children of this country, and those babies yet to be born.

I had a discussion this afternoon with the President of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. I was talking to her about the numbers of students going into the field of obstetrics and gynecology. At the Nevada School of Medicine, the lowest number ever of students have applied to go into obstetrics and gynecology. She pointed out a statistic in the State right next door, Utah. That number actually was zero. Zero have decided to go into obstetrics and gynecology. Let me repeat--in Utah, there are no new physicians this year who decided to go into obstetrics and gynecology. That is an alarming figure for the future.

For those people who are saying it is a problem but it is not that bad--the problem is bad today and it is going to get much worse in the future.

There have been statistics bantered about as to why this happened and why that happened. However, the bottom line is shown pretty well in this picture. This building is located in a very busy thoroughfare in Las Vegas. This is a picture taken last week . The sign says, ``OB/ GYN--For Lease.'' The represents what is going on in many places in Nevada and other parts of the country--OB/GYN practices are shutting down.

There are obstetricians and gynecologists leaving my State. It is the fastest growing State in the country by far, yet we have OB/GYNs leaving. They are stopping their practices. Some of them are retiring early. Some of them are limiting their practices to only the practice of gynecology. For others to get coverage from the insurance companies, they have to limit the number of babies that they deliver each month.

My wife and I have had three wonderful children. Three of the most remarkable experiences of my life were the births of our three children. I know a husband and wife team, Joe and Kirsten Rojas, both of them OB/GYNs. They are passionate about what they do. They love to deliver babies. We have been out to dinner with them and often they get interrupted, and they have to go off and deliver a baby. Some of the hardest working people are OB/GYNs. Yet now they cannot afford to

keep practicing. They have to limit the number of deliveries.

The Rojases are our friends. We talk with them, and they have actually talked about leaving Nevada to go to California to practice their passion of delivering babies. They love Las Vegas. As a matter of fact, Dr. Joe Rojas, his father, was my mom's gynecologist. Actually, he did surgery on my wife when she had a medical condition. I graduated high school with Dr. Joe Rojas. He was born and raised in southern Nevada, and his wife now is in practice in Nevada, and they may have to leave their beloved home because they cannot afford the high costs of medical liability insurance.

I want to put up another chart that shows the comparison of the rates in States around the country compared with California. Some people are saying the insurance rates are rising or falling because of the stock market, or insurance companies are just raising the rates arbitrarily or because of some kind of actuarial tables. The bottom line is on this chart. This puts it into context.

The one State where we have had medical liability reform for any length of time, and it has been since the mid 1980s after surviving multiple court challenges, is the State of California. They enacted what is called MICRA. It is a strong medical liability reform law that, frankly, you could not get passed in the State of California today because the trial lawyers are so powerful. Over the years the trial lawyers have made so much money off of lawsuits that they are, I would argue, the most powerful political lobby in the United States today.

But in California they were able to enact a medical liability reform bill. Their rates are down here shown by the blue line. You see very little increase over the years all the way through 1999. The rest of the country is shown by this red dashed line. You can see the rates going up. This only goes through about 1999. If we took it out to the year 2004, to today, you would see another spike going up right now.

Actually the biggest increases in medical liability insurance we have seen have been in the last few years. This crisis is growing and getting worse year by year.

Let us just compare a few cities in two States that have enacted good medical liability reform versus cities in four States that have not.

Los Angeles in California: They have their MICRA law which is an effective medical liability reform law. Denver, CO: Once again, they have had a law on the books for about 10 years. They have an excellent law there.

Let us look here at OB/GYNs. There are some other specialties and the comparison is very fair, but us stay with OB/GYNs:

Los Angeles, a little over $54,000 a year; Denver, their premiums are about $31,000 a year; New York City, $89,000; Los Angeles, $108,000. By the way, this number, because this is 2002 data, is very low. In Las Vegas, it is somewhere between $140,000 and $200,000 a year, depending on how many babies they are delivering and whether they are dealing with difficult pregnancies. Looking on: Chicago, $102,000; and Miami, $201,000 per year in medical liability premiums.

Some people say these are rich doctors. Has anybody talked to an OB/ GYN and asked them how much money they make these days? In Maryland, they get paid $1,400 for a delivery--not just a delivery but all the precare, the delivery, and the aftercare--$1,400 for all of those visits, including the hospital time. In the State of Nevada, Medicaid pays $1,200. That is about what managed care pays in the State of Nevada as well. These are not rich doctors.

By the way, we are not just talking about doctors; we are talking about nurse-midwives as well. When was the last time you talked to a rich nurse-midwife? They are in a crisis as well. A lot of them are having to leave their practices. In 2 States, legislators they have enacted excellent reforms, in too few states, nothing has been done.

That is the simplest evidence we can give as to why it is so desperately needed to enact the bill we have on the floor today. It will protect people involved in the delivery of babies and those involved in the practice of gynecology.

We have heard anecdotal stories about women delivering babies literally on the side of the road because they had to drive too far because their obstetrician left town. This is happening in my State, in Arizona, in Mississippi, in West Virginia--there are 19 States currently in crisis. Of the States that are left, all but five are showing signs of heading into crisis. The one thing we know, unless this problem is fixed, is that all of those States showing signs of crisis will head into the crisis as well.

How bad does the situation have to get before this body and those who defend the trial lawyers finally say enough is enough? How bad does it have to get? How many women have to be denied the care they need?

In the State of Nevada, sometimes politics drives this argument. Sometimes it drives many pieces of legislation around here. In the State of Nevada, our level I trauma center closed a few years ago. Just prior to its closing, the Democrat leaders in our State said there was no way they would pass medical liability reform--no way--it would never see the light of day. Our level I trauma center closed. What happened? Because of that closing, 3 weeks later a medical liability reform bill was passed in the State of Nevada. That medical liability reform bill is not a good one--it does have some good components, but it certainly does not go far enough. In the State of Nevada, we are trying to close the loopholes that were left open by that bill.

The politics that can be generated out of debating the bill and going forward can be a positive thing for actually getting this bill passed. The level I trauma center that closed in my State is the same level I trauma center where Roy Horn--the famous entertainer from Siegfried and Roy who was attacked by the tiger this last year--was treated. Had that level I trauma center not been reopened, Roy Horn would probably not be with us today.

The reason it is so apparent that this legislation would work is because we have the numbers here to show that in the States who have strong medical liability laws, much of the costs have been constrained. Case in point, the reason our level 1 trauma center was allowed to reopen was that our Governor stepped in and said: We will cover the level I trauma center under the State's liability protection.

What does the State of Nevada have for liability protection? It has a $50,000 cap for total damages, which is much more severe than we have in this bill. We have only a $250,000 cap on noneconomic damages. You can get as much as you want out of economic damages, and you can get as much as a jury says. Whatever your medical costs, you can get all of those. But on pain and suffering, with some of the most outrageous runaway jury awards, we limit it to $250,000.

Some say you are limiting the access to courts when you do that. In the State of California, once again, there have been tens of millions of dollars awarded in loss of income. For instance, a child was injured, and in one case $84 million was awarded by a jury. We are not limiting the access. We are trying to get rid of the frivolous lawsuits that are plaguing this Nation and leading to this crisis. There is a direct correlation.

Senator Daschle stood on the floor earlier today and said this bill would not help doctors. I question that statement because the doctors are supporting this bill. Virtually every medical association in this country is supporting this bill today. If it is not providing relief to the doctors, why are they supporting this bill? The answer is obvious. The answer is, it will help. It will help our entire system, and it will help those women and children who are being denied access to care right now. Unfortunately, if we don't do something, this situation in the future is only going to get worse and worse and worse.

The bill we have before us today, Senator Gregg and I introduced. I appreciate all of the great work he has done on this bill, which is a narrowed down version of what we tried to pass last year. What we tried to pass last year was a comprehensive bill. If we are not able to move to this bill today, we are going to try to do emergency room and trauma care and a good samaritan bill packaged together. If we can't get that done, we are going to do inner-city and rural health care areas-- underserved areas.

We are trying to drive this issue home to the American people. They realize where their representatives stand.

Some have said you are trying to get a rollcall vote. You are darned right we are. We are trying to let people know who stands with patients and who stands with women and children with this bill and who stands with the trial lawyers.

Another friend of mine in southern Nevada, whom I was talking to about 6 months ago, is one of the best OB/GYNs we have in southern Nevada. He focused his practice on difficult pregnancies, on the high-risk pregnancies, pregnancies with complicating factors. Maybe there is diabetes involved. That is a very common problem. One of my goddaughters who babysits our children has gestational diabetes. It is not an uncommon problem among women. During that time, there can be complications develop because of diabetes. It can be a very serious problem, but if handled by highly trained physicians, usually you do not end up with any problems.

Because my friend is in the high-risk category--by the way, he has never had a lawsuit against him--his insurance company this past year said he had to severely limit the number of babies he could deliver. This is his passion, and now he has to limit the number of high-risk deliveries. That means some other OB/GYN who is not as highly trained is going to have to deliver those babies.

If you are getting ready to deliver and you have a high-risk pregnancy, you would want the best possible medical care you could get. You would want the most highly trained physician. If you were told that because of our medical liability crisis in this country--I am sorry, you cannot go see your doctor--the one you have come to trust, because they had to limit the number of babies they could deliver in this month, imagine how that whole family would feel--the father, the mother, the grandparents. It puts an unnecessary risk on that delivery we should not be facing.

While no one wants to have medical malpractice cases, there are mistakes that occur in medicine. I am a veterinarian by profession. There are human mistakes. There is gross negligence. Those people should have the right to access a courtroom. They should have the ability of a remedy. I argue that our legislation actually gets them the remedy faster. It limits the attorney's fees so more of the money goes to the victim. It also gets the money to the victim faster. Right now it can take 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 years. A lot of times the patient may have already died. Our bill gets them the compensation they need much more quickly and in a fair manner.

I have heard it described that this bill discriminates against women. That would be like saying the whole State of California and the whole State of Colorado discriminates against women. That is ridiculous. California and Colorado are the two best examples of medical liability reform having been enacted and have been enacted for enough time to see it work. The patients who are injured actually get the compensation they deserve and we do not have the proliferation of frivolous lawsuits we see in the rest of the country in the healthcare field. There are many areas of tort reform we need to address. This happens to be one of them.

Anyone who has delivered or seen their child's birth knows the anxiety that builds up; it is a tense time. Every time one of our babies comes out of the birth canal, we are hoping and praying everything is going to be all right. The biggest fear of any parent is for something to go wrong. We want to know the best possible health care and the best possible health care provider is going to be there. That is not happening in too many cases. That is not happening because, I believe, the trial lawyers have been too powerful in the United States. We have to break that power base if we really want to care about the mothers who are expecting or about the level of gynecological care they have come to expect and deserve in this country.

This legislation is critical to the future quality of life in the United States. It is critical that we put special interests aside and the interests of patients at the forefront. That is what we are debating today. Are we going to put expectant mothers, midwives, OB/ GYNs first? Or are we going to put the trial bar first?

I yield the floor.

I agree to the unanimous consent request with the caveat that if a Member of the majority comes over and seeks recognition, they will be recognized.

Madam President, what is the situation regarding time?

Of the 10 minutes remaining, 5 minutes is for the minority and 5 is for the majority leader, is that correct?

The majority leader has the last 5 minutes.

Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I want to sum up this debate telling one story and making a few other points. Some on the other side of the aisle claim ``they want to make health care a birthright for every single child born in this country.'' Yet they are driving the very doctors who bring America's babies into the world out of their medical practices.

Let me remind you of Melinda Sellard's story. She is the unfortunate woman who went through a horrifying experience of delivering a baby on the side of the road in the middle of the night because her doctor had quit obstetrics altogether due to exorbitant insurance premiums. En route, she and her husband had to drive right past the Copper Queen Community Hospital, which closed its maternity ward 2 months earlier because of the medical liability crisis. Instead, the Sellards were forced out onto the highway to try to get to the only hospital within 6,000 square miles with obstetricians who could afford malpractice insurance.

After enduring the excruciating pains of labor without anesthesia, Melinda was forced to give her newborn infant CPR, since the baby was not breathing immediately after delivery. She finally got her newborn breathing, wrapped him in a sweater she was wearing, and drove the rest of the way to the hospital where the emergency staff cut the umbilical cord in the parking lot.

I urge my colleagues to think of Melinda and the other mothers in this country who have lost their doctors and to stand up to the trial lawyers and support cloture on this bill. The ``objects in your rear view mirror that are closer than you think'' should never be a woman and her newborn child on the side of the road.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Dr. Rita Redberg, a legislative fellow for Senator Hatch, be granted floor privileges during consideration of S. 2061, the Healthy Mothers and Healthy Babies Access to Care Act.

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

Mr. President, I rise today to speak on the issue of medical liability reform and the bill pending before the Senate. This legislation is a narrowed-down version of what myself and Senator Gregg introduced last year, which in contrast was a broad-based medical liability reform bill. Today we pared it down to limit it just to OB/ GYNs, nurse midwives, and any other provider involved in the delivery of babies.

The reason we have done this is fairly typified in my State and in many other States around the country by this picture. It is a real life picture taken only days ago: the building moniker reads ``OBGYN,'' and next to it, a sign now hangs that reads ``For Lease,'' and call a particular number. This sign indicates how OB/GYNs are leaving practice in my State and in other States across the country because they can no longer afford their medical liability premiums.

This is a problem that some describe as not that big a deal. But if you talk to the women who cannot get obstetrical and gynecological services, it is a crisis to them.

Southern Nevada is the fastest growing population center in the country. We have 6,000 new people moving in a month and are we not getting as many new OB/GYNs as we need. We need a lot of new doctors coming to our State. But instead of new doctors arriving to practice in Nevada, we have doctors limiting their practices and stopping either the practice of obstetrics or leaving our State altogether.

The American Medical Association has identified 19 States that are in crisis, and all but 5 States are showing signs the crisis is building in their State.

Some people have said: Well, this is about rich doctors versus rich lawyers. This is not about doctors versus lawyers. This is about access to care. This is about a woman who is thinking: ``I want to have the best possible care for my baby,'' and she cannot find a doctor.

I have a good friend who lives in Las Vegas. He delivers high-risk pregnancies. These are the people you want to have as your best doctors. However, because of the huge increases in rates, his insurance company has limited him on the number of deliveries he can make during the year.

That is not what we want to be doing. We want to have the best people delivering babies, especially for high-risk pregnancies which require the most skill.

It is our legal system that is out of control. Unfortunately, we have trial lawyers out there who are taking advantage of our broken civil justice system. They are even advertising on TV. I am sure many people, when they watch TV, have seen these 1-800 numbers you can call to find somebody to sue. It is basically: Bring your Rolodex and we will figure out who you are going to sue. That goes for almost anything today, but it is especially prevalent in the field of medicine.

Across America the crisis is happening not just with OB/GYNs. As a result, in this bill, we have decided to focus also on nurse-midwives, the overall practice of delivering babies, and providing gynecological care because it is the most acute problem we are seeing across the country.

In my State, we did pass a medical liability reform bill in August of 2002, but the only reason that it was able to pass was because our trauma center closed. It was the only level I trauma center for a region of 10,000 square miles, and it closed because of the medical liability crisis. The only way that trauma center was able to open again was because the State decided to step in and put its liability cap on anybody who provided care through the level I trauma center. People have been arguing that $250,000 is not enough. Well, the State of Nevada's cap on damages is $50,000 for anyone who chooses to sue a healthcare professional that provided care at the trauma center. That alone allowed the level I trauma center to open.

This is the same level I trauma center where Roy Horn, the famous person from the duo of Siegfried and Roy, was treated when he was attacked by a tiger. If it was not for the State of Nevada applying its $50,000 damage cap, that trauma center would not have been available for Roy. He certainly would be in much worse shape today if that had not been the case, and maybe he would not have made it at all if that kind of care was not available. This example indicates the politics of what can happen when a crisis gets so great that the trial lawyers cannot stand up and keep their stranglehold on our legislatures around the country.

Today, we need to have the same thing happen in the Senate where people around the country call their Senators and say the crisis is too severe. We need to have special interests, especially trial lawyers' special interests, put aside, and we need to put the practice of medicine first. We need to put first access to quality care for women and those new babies coming into the world. We need to put their care above all else.

Last year, the University of Nevada School of Medicine had the lowest number of students entering obstetrics and gynecology it has had since 1999. And, equally disturbing, each year since 2000, that number has continued to go down and down and down.

This chart shows the very clear contrast of what has happened in my State and other States versus California. Why do I put California up versus the rest of the States in the country? The reason is because California enacted what is known as MICRA. MICRA is their medical liability reform law which they enacted in 1975. After withstanding eleven years of court challenges, it has now been in effect for about eighteen years and we know it is working.

By the way, the people in lawsuits are getting plenty of compensation in California. But the difference in premium increases--California compared to the rest of the country--is stark. In California, from 1976 to today, there has been a 167-percent increase. For the rest of the country, however, it is over 500 percent. Moreover, these percentages do not reflect the last couple of years. If the last couple years were

shown, this red line showing the 500 percent would almost be spiking because it is going up so rapidly.

To put this in real dollar terms, so you can get a comparison between different States, here are some really good examples. This is 2002 premium survey data for selected specialties. We are comparing the cities of Los Angeles--once again, California has the MICRA law it enacted--and Denver, which is in another State that has enacted very similar legislation. The laws in California and Colorado are the ones Senator Gregg and I based our legislation on. These two States have strong medical liability reform in their States. These other States shown on the chart do not. Let's see the difference. Let's go down on the lower portion of the chart because we are talking about OB/GYNs. Let's talk about the difference in the States. For Los Angeles, $54,000 a year--still a lot of money, but $54,000. In Denver, it is around $31,000. In New York, it is $90,000. In Las Vegas, where I live, it was $108,000 in 2002, and you cannot get it for $108,000 anymore. Currently, it is closer to $140,000 or $170,000 in my State, and even higher. In Chicago, it is $102,000. In Miami, it is over $200,000 a year.

Is there any doubt in anybody's mind these laws are working when you look at the comparisons? Like I said, this is data from 2002. If you had 2003 data, the numbers would be even more stark. Consequently, I think we need to call on our Senate colleagues to at least allow us to debate this bill.

We are going to have what is called a cloture vote on the motion to proceed tomorrow. All that is is a parliamentary term here in the Senate as to whether we can proceed to the bill. The other side of the aisle is blocking us from even proceeding to the bill, blocking us from having a reasonable debate on whether we are going to allow women to have access to their OB/GYNs and to their nurse-midwife practitioners.

I have talked to so many people in my State, including patients, doctors, nurses and other people throughout the healthcare system, healthcare industry, and they know it is a crisis. But I have also visited with people from around the country. My State is not the only one that is in this type of a crisis. We are seeing severe problems from Pennsylvania to Mississippi to West Virginia to Washington State to Oregon, and all across the country. State after State after State has a serious problem today. When debating whether to debate this bill--that is all we are doing today, debating whether to debate this bill--we need people to step up to do the right thing. We have a Presidential election coming up this year. I think the candidates need to explain where they are on this bill. Some of them are going to be out running for office and may not be able to vote on this, but they ought to at least take a position on this bill to let people know where they stand. Do they stand with the trial lawyers? Or do they stand with pregnant mothers and unborn babies who need to come into this world?

I think it is clear where we should stand as a body. This body should, in no uncertain terms, stand with protecting the patients of America, with making sure when a woman needs care, whether it is obstetrics or gynecology, that the healthcare provider will be there. Too many of these providers are leaving practice today because of the high cost of liability premiums.

I want to respond to a couple points the other side always brings up. They say the reason is not because of jury verdicts; rather, the reason for these premium differences is because of investments in the stock market the insurance companies made and then they went bad.

The stock market went crazy last year. It went way back up. So if the insurance companies were investing in the stock market, they would be doing fine, and we would not see these types of increases. The insurance companies in California and Colorado were invested in the stock market, just as the insurance companies in New York and Nevada and Illinois and in Florida. Yet there is this difference.

The only thing you can point to for the difference--and these are cities with similar population bases--is the reform laws that have been passed. They all invested in the same stock market. It was not the stock market that caused the premium increases. It was and is runaway jury awards. Our country, unfortunately, has become too litigious. It is not about personal responsibility anymore. Jury awards are just out of control.

People say: Injured patients deserve their just compensation. Well, they get just compensation in Colorado and California. I don't think one could look at California and ask: Do they discriminate against women? That is one of the arguments you hear: Because women don't make as much money, that they are being discriminated against. Are we saying the whole State of California discriminates against women? It is a ludicrous argument.

We have to have reasonable reform. That is what we have put forward today, reasonable reform, so that access to care is there. If access to care is not there, that is when discrimination against women will happen. The OB/GYNs, which is what this bill addresses, are the part of the medical profession that is in crisis the most. Of all of the various specialties, this is the one that is in the most severe crisis. Obviously, it affects women more than it affects men. So in effect, if we are not allowing women to have access to the OB/GYN care, not passing this bill will discriminate against women. People not voting for this will be discriminating against women. That is why we need to pass this legislation.

If you are opposed to the final version of the bill, at least let us go to the bill, debate it, and amend it. But it seems the other side of the aisle, the Democrats in the Senate, don't want to have any part of this debate. The American people need to stand up to that. They need to stand up and make their voices heard, because this debate is too critical. We are having, and we will continue to have, babies not delivered with the kind of care they need. High-risk pregnancies need the absolute finest modern medicine can bring them. If those people are limiting their practices, and OB/GYNs are having to limit the number of deliveries they make, then those high-risk pregnancies will not have the kind of highly qualified medical care they need and deserve.

I could go into a lot of other statistics. I could talk about various anecdotes of people I have met. I would rather just sum up with this: In a day and age where America has the finest health care system in the world, where we have the finest quality, the best doctors, the best research institutions, the best hospitals, and where people from all over the world who can afford it come to America because of the high quality of care, if we want to keep the highest quality of care, we must enact medical liability reform. This bill that is limited down to just affecting the practice of obstetrics and gynecology, we at least must start here. I want to go much further than this, but let's at least start here so American mothers who are having babies or American women who are seeking gynecological care can have access to that type of care.

One last point has to do with the uninsured. I have heard in the Democratic debates talk about the 43 million uninsured. They want to do something about it. The main thing they could do to make healthcare insurance more affordable would be to enact reasonable medical liability reform. That is what we have before us today. So for those who are trying to make this a political issue, let's make it an issue that we actually do something about instead of just talking about it on the campaign trail.

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

Mr. President, I want to make a couple comments about the bill in general and spending.

We are debating whether to waive the budget point of order. There is a point of order in order simply because this transportation bill goes way over--tens of billions of dollars over--what we voted on as a body and agreed to last year. That is why a budget point of order stands against this bill.

Transportation spending is one of the most legitimate uses of government dollars. Everybody benefits by it. I don't think there is any question. Anybody you talk to agrees it is a legitimate use of dollars. But there are people who want to go above the budget, who want to spend more than the trust fund brings in. The trust fund is that money that comes in because of user fee taxes paid into a fund that are supposed to build our roads and the like, the rest of the infrastructure.

Instead of putting this tax on our children or on the next Congress because we are deficit spending and passing debt, when you pass debt on to the future, you are going to have to raise taxes in the future. We have seen Congress doesn't cut spending. So because you are passing taxes on to the future, the people who want a higher highway spending bill should have the courage to raise the taxes. I don't believe we should. But if those people want to spend more money, they should at least have the courage not to put it off to the next Congress to raise taxes. That is why this point of order should be sustained.

To put this in the context of the economy and other spending, they are touting the jobs that will be created. Alan Greenspan testified that the biggest threat to our economy and to jobs is runaway Federal spending. The markets are watching us right now. Whether somebody is a supply side economist or a Keynesian economist, it doesn't matter what view they take, the one thing they will all agree on--whatever causes the deficit, they may disagree--is the deficit is a huge threat to the future growth of our economy and jobs in America. And they are all watching us right now. The markets are watching; the Federal Reserve is watching what we are going to do on this very bill right now. That is why it is so critical we exercise some fiscal discipline on such an important issue.

It will help us all by voting for more transportation spending; it helps us all for reelection. That is why this bill is so popular. We politicians can get up here and tout how much money is coming to our States; it is going to help you for reelection. But we have to think about not just our parochial interests in our States but put that into the broader context of the overall economy and also in the context of what we are doing to future generations.

If we keep deficit spending, we are putting taxes on to the future generations. We did the farm bill, the Medicare prescription drug bill, this transportation bill--we have passed so many things, plus all of the other discretionary accounts, on top of a war. And Americans understand that sometimes you have to deficit spend during recession and war. But we are out of the recession now. The war is still there, so we have that aspect of it. But to continue to add to the deficit with all of this other discretionary spending and going above the trust fund I think is wrong.

That is why I call on colleagues, if they really want the $311 billion, or whatever the spending amount is they come up to, not to play games, not do this shadow game being done with a lot of the numbers.

I appreciate what the chairman of the Finance Committee has tried to do. He was given a task and he has done the best he possibly could. I think too many games have been played. We ought to be honest. If we want to spin that number and if people want that number, they ought to vote for a gasoline tax increase to pay for it. That should be the only way we do this.

Mr. President, I will conclude my remarks by saying I hope we act in a more fiscally responsible way than we are doing within this bill. I am applauding the President for putting his foot down and saying enough is enough. We have to get our fiscal house in order.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I want to make a couple of points. Point one is that we have seen that the economy is recovering. We are at about a 6 percent unemployment rate nationwide. Back in 1993, the Democrats controlled the House of Representatives, they controlled the Senate and they controlled the White House. Extensions of unemployment benefits had been going on for a period of time because of the recession. And with the Democrats in control of both Houses and the Presidency, they terminated the program when the national unemployment rate was at 6.4 percent. The national unemployment rate was .4 of a percent higher than it is today.

The current extension of unemployment benefits does not end until the end of December. In December, individuals currently receiving extended benefits will still maintain those benefits. And based on all the projections, the national unemployment rate should be lower at the end of December than it is today.

There are a couple other points that need to be made in this debate. First, when the unemployed are about to exhaust their unemployment benefits, over half of those unemployed individuals get a job in those last 2 weeks. And we have seen that a lot of people lately have been exhausting the full time on their unemployment. Why is that? Well, for one reason: The States have been reducing the amount of job searching required by each individual. Basically, they are making it easier to stay on unemployment insurance and taking away the incentives to go out there and get a job.

The welfare reform bill, signed into law by President Clinton, characterized Republicans as throwing women and children out into the streets, that we were cruel, heartless, hard-hearted people. But we knew something about human behavior. We knew that if we gave some assistance, some temporary assistance, and gave individuals an incentive to be employed, in other words that it was better to get a job than it was to be on welfare--we knew that a lot of people would go out and get jobs. What we didn't know was the staggering number of them who did.

Unemployment insurance is the same way. The more generous the benefit, the easier you make it to stay on unemployment insurance, and the less incentive there is for people to actually go out and do what it takes to get a job. So this is not about being cruel and heartless. It is recognizing the fact that our unemployment rate is less today than it was in 1993, when the Democrats were in control and every single Democratic Senator and House Member voted to end the program when the unemployment rate was higher than it is today.

Every single Democrat voted to end the program. With that, I appreciate the work they are trying to do. I know their hearts are in the right place. But on policy grounds, I object.

Will the Senator yield for a unanimous consent request? I ask unanimous consent that I be recognized following the Senator from Iowa.

I ask unanimous consent that Senator Grassley be recognized for 2 minutes to make a point, and then I will follow.

Mr. President, I now want to take my time and talk about the Medicare reform and prescription drug bill that we have before us today. I rise to explain how and why I am going to vote on this bill.

From the day I was sworn into office in 1995 as a Congressman, I have spent as much time on strengthening the Medicare program as I have any other single issue considered by Congress.

On the Health subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee, I learned the details of how this comprehensive healthcare system works for our seniors and the disabled.

I have tried to keep true to the principle of making Medicare more oriented to keeping seniors healthy, not just waiting until they become ill to treat them.

With the growth of Medicare costs and the baby boom population, I also believe just as strongly that the structural security of Medicare must be kept healthy and reforms must not wait until the program is ill.

As a Senator, I have continued to pursue my passion for healthcare policy. I campaigned on and introduced my own Medicare prescription drug bill, along with Senator Chuck Hagel.

I was proud that our bill received the votes of a majority of the Senate when it was considered last year, although not adopted as the final bill.

Aside from the prescription drug benefit in the bill, I strongly believe that for Medicare to remain healthy, structural reforms must take place that control unnecessary costs through market forces and allow the program to operate more efficiently and more preventatively.

This bill contains a number of provisions that I hope will help drive down the increasing costs of health care, not just for our seniors, but throughout the entire healthcare market place.

Health Savings Accounts will give patients control over their care, to include who patients go to for care, as well as control over their individual expenditures. If shown to be successful, this would be the most sweeping healthcare reform since the managed care model over a decade ago.

Likewise, income-relating of the Medicare Part B premium, the disease management demonstration project, and the prescription drug card with a private account--by the way, that was a component of the bill Senator Hagel and I introduced--are all positive aspects of this legislation.

I am pleased that in the bill are two other critical reforms that I spearheaded in the House and now in the Senate.

Placing a 2-year moratorium on the outpatient therapy cap is a win for our oldest and sickest Medicare seniors. Those who suffer from life-threatening ailments such as Parkinson's disease and stroke should not have to pay every dollar out of pocket just because they require additional care.

The bill also includes a provision that eliminates the late penalty military retirees pay for joining Medicare. Our military retirees, who gave so much of their lives to our country, deserve access to the best healthcare benefits available without being penalized for changes in the system. They thought they were going to get lifetime Health Care. Then, when they were put into the Medicare system they were not informed, or at least many of them were not aware that if they did not sign up right away, later they would have to pay extra penalty costs.

Joining me in helping to get these passed was Senator Lincoln, and I would like to thank her for all of her efforts.

The reason I have struggled so fervently over the merits of this legislation is the substantial financial burden this bill places, not only on the Medicare program, but on the country.

The benefits in this bill will assist seniors and disabled Americans only to the degree that our Nation is fiscally able to sustain paying for it. That is why I drafted a bill that was responsible to the next generation of workers who will bear the burden of paying the price tag on Medicare prescription drugs.

I want to put up a couple of charts that help us understand what we are dealing with for the next generation.

Until 1970, we had about 20 million seniors in our Medicare Program. Today we have a little over 40 million seniors, 30 years later. Thirty years from now we will have close to 80 million seniors, equaling another doubling of the number of seniors.

This chart shows the problem. These are the number of workers per senior, per retiree, per person over 65 who we have in this country. In 1970, for every one retiree we had a little over seven people, on average. In 2000, that had slipped to 3.9. When that huge expanse

of the baby boomers is in full bloom in 2030, we will have 2.4 workers for every one retiree.

I remember Senator Phil Gramm telling us that means there are a lot more people riding in the cart and a lot fewer people pulling the cart.

I believe this bill threatens the fiscal security of the Medicare Program and compromises the continued growth of our economy by lacking the necessary cost controls to keep it from consuming our domestic budget. I personally believe the cost of this bill is grossly underestimated. By the time the drug benefit goes into effect in 2006, we will have a better understanding of the enormous cost of this bill but at that time it will be too late to do anything about it. Without measures to contain overutilization, the Government or the private sector plans will be forced to ration prescription drugs for our seniors, similar to the way care is rationed in Canada.

While all major legislation requires legislative corrections after becoming law, I believe that before the ink is dry on this new benefit, a campaign will be underway to expand this program by closing the coverage gap that exists in the bill. I believe there will also be efforts also to reduce deductibles and reduce premiums as well, further transferring costs onto the next generation.

While providing seniors with a prescription drug benefit is so very important to all of us, it must be done in a way that does not bankrupt Medicare and threaten future access to care in our country for our seniors. It also needs to be fiscally responsible to the next generation.

I believe the Congressmen and Senators who put this bill together labored so intensively, and they did it for the right reasons. They had pure motives. I also appreciate the leadership the President has shown on this issue. In fact, if we would have adhered more to the principles that he laid out at the beginning of the year, I believe we would have a much better bill before us today--perhaps a bill I could support.

I am very disappointed in the debate these last few days in how people have politicized this bill. Unfortunately, I believe many have done so for their own political benefit. There have been many things said about this bill. You could say many negative things about this bill, and you could say many positive things as well. However, what we ought to do in this Chamber is at least talk about what is in the bill and what is not in the bill. To mischaracterize the bill, I believe, is patently unfair, and it is just wrong to scare senior citizens into thinking that Medicare is somehow going to go away.

We must remember that most of the private sector reforms in this legislation do not even kick in for several years. So to scare seniors I just, frankly, believe is wrong.

I have anguished deeply over this bill. There really are some positive things in it, things that I like. But, overall, I just believe the negative things in it outweigh the positive. That is why I, unfortunately, am going to have to vote against this conference report.

I look at the chairman of the Finance Committee who is on the floor right now, and there is just no finer person in the Senate than Senator Grassley.

So it is with a heavy heart that I announce that I am going to vote against final passage of this bill because I know that he did his best to put together a bill with all the different people he had to work with in the House and the Senate, the various interest groups and the like. But I believe this bill does not rise up to the level where I think the positives will outweigh the negatives in the future. I think the costs are going to be too great. Looking at the first 10 years, it is estimated to be around $400 billion. For the second 10 years, I know of estimates as high as $1.7 trillion. Do we really want to shoulder our children and our grandchildren with this burden? That is a question each of us has to least ask ourselves, and go into this with our eyes wide open. Twenty years from now when we look back on this debate and on our entire careers, will we be able to say we really did what was right for the future of our country? I hope that in fact we can.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, a lot has changed in the climate of the Middle East since I was there in 1995, but unfortunately not enough has changed.

In 1995, the Oslo Accords were signed and suicide bombers detonated themselves on buses around Jerusalem. Eight years later, Israelis continue to face the daily threat of terrorism on their buses, in their grocery stores, in their restaurants, and in their cafes. For them, every single day is September 11. It's hard to imagine that kind of reality and the strength it takes to continue each day not knowing where the next attack will occur.

I think about September 11 here in the United States, and the shock many Americans felt--not just at the terrible loss of life, but the fact that terrorists had targeted our people here in our own country-- where they live and work. I remember one commentator back then said-- today, every American learned what it is like to be an Israeli.

We came together as a nation to comfort each other, but also to do whatever we could to prevent another attack on our soil and to eliminate the world of the evil terrorists who had targeted our innocent victims. In those moments and days that followed, leaders from around the world called to express their condolences. There were no calls to the United States to show restraint in responding to the terrorists. And it there were, they would have fallen on deaf ears. The world knew that President Bush and the United States would do whatever it took to keep our citizens safe. The security of our nation would always be our priority.

But when September 11 happens on a daily basis in Israel, the calls they get are not to express sympathy, but to urge restraint in responding to the attack. Not only is Israel criticized for doing exactly what the United States has done--respond to attacks against its citizens by going after the terrorists where they hide--Israel is even criticized for taking steps to secure its homeland security and prevent further attacks.

So where do we go from here?

Well, the legislation I am introducing with my colleagues, the junior Senator from Florida, focuses on the fact that Israel has a right to make the security of their country a priority and that such security is a major and enduring national security interest of the United States.

The bipartisan Israeli-Palestinian Peace Enhancement Act of 2003 contains strong, unequivocal expressions of the Senate's support for the President's June 24, 2002, speech and the vision of two states living side-by-side in peace and security.

However, it expresses the Senate's expectation that the Palestinian Authority must meet certain conditions before a Palestinian state is recognized, including: a leadership not compromised by terrorism; a firm commitment to peace with Israel; the dismantling of terrorist infrastructures in the West Bank and Gaza; sustained security cooperation with Israel; and an end to anti-Israel incitement.

It provides concrete, positive incentives for the Palestinians to achieve the reforms called for by President Bush and a negotiated peace with Israel by authorizing significant United States assistance, and a commitment to organize international assistance, to build the new state when it comes into being and has been recognized by the United States and Israel--conditions that can only occur in the absence of terrorism.

Ambiguous promises of non-aggression are not enough. Lasting peace means the absence of terror. Without legitimate guarantees for the security of the state of Israel, there can be no lasting peace in the region.

Words are cheap--and nowhere are they cheaper than in the Middle East. Until there is Palestinian leadership that is committed to eliminating the terrorist infrastructure, that is serious about making peace with Israel, and that envisions two states existing together, peace will not be known.

Who can we trust to support Israel in this hour of crisis?

Well, I believe we can trust President Bush. Particularly after September 11, the President understands thee can be no peace without security. He made that clear on June 24, 2002, when he gave an address in the Rose Garden that went above and beyond any other official United States position on the Middle East. He made clear that unless and until Israel has a trustworthy partner on the Palestinian side, there can be no lasting peace. And he emphasized that a Palestinian state could become a reality only after new leaders--not compromised by terror-- were elected and a practicing democracy, based on tolerance and liberty was built.

That statement should be the road map to peace. That is why we have taken the principles the President laid out in his June 24 speech, and turned them into legislation.

In closing, I would like to thank the original cosponsors of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Enhancement Act of 2003, including Senator Bill Nelson, Senator Coleman, Senator Lindsey Graham, Senator Crapo, Senator Reid, Senator Bayh, Senator Edwards, Senator Allard, Senator Gordon Smith, Senator Allen, and Senator Boxer for joining me in working toward a lasting and true peace in the Middle East.

Mr. President, a lot has changed in the climate of the Middle East since I was there in 1995, but unfortunately not enough has changed.

In 1995, the Oslo Accords were signed and suicide bombers detonated themselves on buses around Jerusalem. Eight years later, Israelis continue to face the daily threat of terrorism on their buses, in their grocery stores, in their restaurants, and in their cafes. For them, every single day is September 11. It's hard to imagine that kind of reality and the strength it takes to continue each day not knowing where the next attack will occur.

I think about September 11 here in the United States, and the shock many Americans felt--not just at the terrible loss of life, but the fact that terrorists had targeted our people here in our own country-- where they live and work. I remember one commentator back then said-- today, every American learned what it is like to be an Israeli.

We came together as a nation to comfort each other, but also to do whatever we could to prevent another attack on our soil and to eliminate the world of the evil terrorists who had targeted our innocent victims. In those moments and days that followed, leaders from around the world called to express their condolences. There were no calls to the United States to show restraint in responding to the terrorists. And it there were, they would have fallen on deaf ears. The world knew that President Bush and the United States would do whatever it took to keep our citizens safe. The security of our nation would always be our priority.

But when September 11 happens on a daily basis in Israel, the calls they get are not to express sympathy, but to urge restraint in responding to the attack. Not only is Israel criticized for doing exactly what the United States has done--respond to attacks against its citizens by going after the terrorists where they hide--Israel is even criticized for taking steps to secure its homeland security and prevent further attacks.

So where do we go from here?

Well, the legislation I am introducing with my colleagues, the junior Senator from Florida, focuses on the fact that Israel has a right to make the security of their country a priority and that such security is a major and enduring national security interest of the United States.

The bipartisan Israeli-Palestinian Peace Enhancement Act of 2003 contains strong, unequivocal expressions of the Senate's support for the President's June 24, 2002, speech and the vision of two states living side-by-side in peace and security.

However, it expresses the Senate's expectation that the Palestinian Authority must meet certain conditions before a Palestinian state is recognized, including: a leadership not compromised by terrorism; a firm commitment to peace with Israel; the dismantling of terrorist infrastructures in the West Bank and Gaza; sustained security cooperation with Israel; and an end to anti-Israel incitement.

It provides concrete, positive incentives for the Palestinians to achieve the reforms called for by President Bush and a negotiated peace with Israel by authorizing significant United States assistance, and a commitment to organize international assistance, to build the new state when it comes into being and has been recognized by the United States and Israel--conditions that can only occur in the absence of terrorism.

Ambiguous promises of non-aggression are not enough. Lasting peace means the absence of terror. Without legitimate guarantees for the security of the state of Israel, there can be no lasting peace in the region.

Words are cheap--and nowhere are they cheaper than in the Middle East. Until there is Palestinian leadership that is committed to eliminating the terrorist infrastructure, that is serious about making peace with Israel, and that envisions two states existing together, peace will not be known.

Who can we trust to support Israel in this hour of crisis?

Well, I believe we can trust President Bush. Particularly after September 11, the President understands thee can be no peace without security. He made that clear on June 24, 2002, when he gave an address in the Rose Garden that went above and beyond any other official United States position on the Middle East. He made clear that unless and until Israel has a trustworthy partner on the Palestinian side, there can be no lasting peace. And he emphasized that a Palestinian state could become a reality only after new leaders--not compromised by terror-- were elected and a practicing democracy, based on tolerance and liberty was built.

That statement should be the road map to peace. That is why we have taken the principles the President laid out in his June 24 speech, and turned them into legislation.

In closing, I would like to thank the original cosponsors of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Enhancement Act of 2003, including Senator Bill Nelson, Senator Coleman, Senator Lindsey Graham, Senator Crapo, Senator Reid, Senator Bayh, Senator Edwards, Senator Allard, Senator Gordon Smith, Senator Allen, and Senator Boxer for joining me in working toward a lasting and true peace in the Middle East.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar item No. 236, S. 610.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the substitute amendment at the desk be agreed to, the committee amendment, as amended, be agreed to, the bill, as amended, be read the third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statements relating to the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Agriculture be discharged from further consideration of S. 1537 and that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read three times and passed; that the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate; and that any statements relating to this measure be printed in the Record.