Floor Statements

Mr. President, the President, the administration, and the Senate majority have failed to govern during a crucial time for our Nation. There is a willingness to kick our problems down the road, with the hopes that the next election will suddenly inspire action. Rome burned while Nero fiddled. We have had enough fiddling.

The President's answer to jobs and the economy was to have his failed budget. Three times it was voted on without a single vote in favor--not even a single Democrat in favor.

Over 23 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed. Government regulations and redtape stunt business growth. That is not leadership, that is being asleep at the wheel. Their answer to jobs is a bill with a good title and a poison pill that comes right to the floor, and it is set up so the poison pill cannot be amended out, and then they wonder why the bill does not pass. That is politics. That is not legislating.

What is their plan for America? We have yet to see one. The lack of a budget shows they do not have a plan, and inaction remains the status quo. Republicans are prepared to lead today and in the future.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, since this is a day of remembrance of 9/ 11, when I started my day this morning, I picked up a book I read from time to time. It is called ``One Simple Act'' by Debbie Macomber, and it is about gratitude and being generous. The very first paragraph I picked up happens to be about 9/11. It says:

Watch the Helpers

After the bombing of the twin towers at New York's Trade

Center, the nation was stunned. Parents didn't know what to

say to their children. They'd seen such evil things on

television that even adults couldn't put the events into any

kind of context. When a few parents wrote to Mr. Rogers, the

beloved children's television personality, to ask for advice,

Fred Rogers said, ``Tell them to watch the helpers.'' What

wise advice. I've thought about his answer many times. When

tragedy hits, don't focus on the faces of pain and horror.

Let your eyes follow those who are rescuing, feeding,

healing, sweeping, comforting, and rebuilding. On 9/11, it

was the selfless firefighters who took center stage. They

will be remembered long after the evildoers are forgotten.

What good advice: Watch the helpers.

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

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

Mr. President, I have often said how blessed I am to have found a group of people who are strongly committed to the future of Wyoming, the West, and the United States to serve on my staff. If being a Senate staff were an Olympic event, I have no doubt I would be the coach of one of the Senate dream teams. I believe they would be the gold medal winners. I am that proud of them.

Today I wish to express my appreciation to one of my long-time staffers who will be returning home to run a business in Wyoming. She is Wendy Gnehm, and although we are going to miss her, we are also proud of her decision to return home to raise her family with her husband Ed, because there is no better place for families and children than Wyoming. We wish them both the best and we are confident as she is that they have made the right decision.

Although Wendy has been part of my staff for quite some time, her family, her husband's family, and my own family have been close for a lot longer than that. Wendy's mother Sharon was

the one who first introduced me to Diana, now my wife, on a blind date in Denver when Sharon was in town looking for a bridal gown.

It was not long thereafter that Diana was looking for one too, which means we knew Wendy's parents long before she was born. So we have known Wendy for all of her life. I remember when Wendy was in high school. She set her sights on coming to Washington to serve as a page in the House of Representatives. It was a difficult goal, but with her determination, her abilities, and her good grades she was able to make it happen.

Wendy's time in Washington as a page must have given her the idea of coming to college here, which she then began to pursue in earnest. So when the time was right, I agreed to write her a letter of recommendation to the George Washington University, as an alum and Wyoming liaison for the school. I was glad to be of help, but Wendy's credentials spoke for themselves and soon she was headed back to Washington, DC, to attend one of the finest schools in the country.

Later, when I came to Washington to serve in the Senate, I had a swearing-in reception for friends and extended family to mark the beginning of this new and great adventure in my life. And of course Wendy was there. It was at that reception that she met the son of my college roommate, Skip Gnehm, and they started to date. Their romance blossomed while she served as an intern for me, and it started to occur to them and to Diana and me how all three of our families could soon be permanently intertwined. What a great gift for all of us. Soon Wendy was looking for a wedding gown of her own and she and Ed were married.

Not long after their marriage, Ed and Wendy moved to Kuwait to work. They absorbed a great deal of knowledge about the culture and the way of life in the Middle East. When they returned to the United States and made their way back to Washington, DC, I learned that Wendy was looking for a job. At the time I happened to be looking for someone who could help me handle constituent mail and services. She was quickly promoted to legislative assistant specializing in the foreign relations field. I could not think of a better individual to take on those responsibilities than Wendy. I was right. Wendy has been a great help with those difficult issues ever since. She did so well, in fact, that I did not hesitate to expand her responsibilities to include defense, veterans affairs, transportation, and the Judiciary Committee agenda when the opportunity presented itself. Wendy has worked on so many issues of importance over the years--defense, with the focus on the United States Air Force and missile communities, to helping start the Air Force Caucus, veterans health, United Nations reform, Cuba travel, immigration, gun rights, to name a few.

She is now my senior legislative assistant, a title and post she has earned with her hard work and determination to make a difference. As my senior legislative assistant, she has been a captain in the legislative office and she has always made herself available to help guide and direct our efforts as a legislative team. She is also there to provide some good advice on the issues that are coming up and how we can best focus our efforts to obtain the results we are working together to achieve.

Now she and her husband are packing up and moving to Sheridan, WY, where Wendy grew up. They will be running a business there and providing some good jobs to the community and some support to the local community economy. It is a restaurant, so they will be providing some good food to people in the area too. Although we are sorry to see them go, we could not be happier that they are returning to Wyoming. I always tell the people from Wyoming who come to work for me: Enjoy your Washington experience and learn all you can every day you are here. Tomorrow, when you find yourself married with children, do not hesitate to start looking for a way to get back home.

As I said, and it bears repeating because it is one of life's great truths: There is no better place to raise your family than Wyoming, where you were born, where your roots are strong, and your family is nearby to give you the love, guidance, and support that helped to make you the person you are today. Of course, it is no surprise that the place that is calling Wendy home is one of the most beautiful on Earth--Wyoming.

In the years to come, Wyoming will teach Wendy's children all about being individuals, trusting in your instincts, about facing the future with confidence and faith. It is a great lesson to be learned, and there is no better place to learn it than the great outdoors and open spaces and magnificent mountains of Wyoming, where life is centered around being a part of the great splendor and creation of God, and with a strong sense of community.

For team Enzi, this was a good-news, bad-news moment. The bad news is we are losing a very special staffer, a good friend, and a member of our extended family, someone who has given so much to everyone she has known or worked with here in my office. The good news is we are not only gaining a constituent who knows us and understands the work we do every day, Wyoming is gaining another family that will forever define for others what is so great about being from the West.

Diana and I send our best wishes to Wendy, Ed, and their children, who must be looking forward to the opportunity to live the life that made Wendy what she is today.

Wendy, we could not be more excited for you and for the great opportunities that lie ahead as you begin the new chapter in your life, the great adventure of coming home to Wyoming. We know we will miss seeing you every day, but when we are back home and traveling around in your area, we will expect to see you at our official functions and when we stop by your new business. May God bless you and be with you and your family. Good luck, Wendy.

I yield the floor

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

Mr. President, I came over earlier to speak and talk about a dedicated staff person of mine who is moving back to Wyoming, but I had to wait about 30 minutes while I listened to the Senator from Iowa talk about a Romney-Ryan budget. There is no such thing. Governor Romney hasn't put forward a budget for this group. Congressman Ryan, of course, was the chairman of the Budget Committee in the House, and he was obligated to do a budget. He did a budget--something the Senate hasn't done.

I don't think we can complain about a budget when we have gone 3 years without a budget. There is a timeline for a budget around here. We are supposed to have a budget finished by April 15 of each year, but we have gone 3 years with no budget.

The President submitted his budget to us, and that is what we are supposed to work from in the Budget Committee. I am on the Budget Committee, and we have had a little discussion in the Budget Committee. We haven't gotten to do the budget debate on the floor, which is one with unlimited amendments, but we have gotten to vote on the President's budget. At least Congressman Ryan got some votes for his budget. The President's last two budgets have been voted on by this body and there hasn't even been a single Democrat who was willing to vote for that budget--not a single one. The President couldn't persuade one person from his party to go along with the plan he had for this country.

You know what would happen in a corporation if the chairman of the board or the president presented a budget to his board of directors and they rejected it unanimously. He would be looking for a new job. I think I have heard some suggestions along that line.

Do we want to continue with out-of-control spending? That is what a budget controls. That is where the caps are put on and it lays out what is the most we can spend. We actually ought to be doing that, as we used to do it, where there were multiple-year caps, and we would be stuck with the far-out caps we projected. It is time we had a balanced budget around here.

I applauded the President when he named a deficit commission. That was a great thing. I was a cosponsor on a bill that came before us, and we didn't have enough votes to pass that bill, but the President went ahead and did a deficit commission and he appointed two outstanding people to chair that budget commission--Erskine Bowles, who was the Chief of Staff for President Clinton, and Alan Simpson, who was a long- time Senator from the West, a member of the revenue committee--and they did some diligent work with the commission and came up with a plan. They actually came up with a plan for how we could save America.

I heard the Senator from Iowa say: Some of these people who are talking are talking like we are broke. You know what. We are pretty close to broke. When the national debt is the same as the gross national product, we are in trouble. In the United States, every man, woman, and child owes a shade over $50,000. We have been seeing the riots in Greece and Italy. In Italy, they only owe $40,000 per person. In Greece, they only owe $39,000 per person. Yes, we are the most resilient country in the world, and that is why we have a little bit of breathing room. But it is not inhaling time. It is time to figure out what we are going to do about it.

I did expect, after the President appointed this deficit commission and when they came back with a report--

and it didn't have enough to force us to have a vote, but it was a report that would solve the situation--I thought for sure at the State of the Union speech the President would paint the same bleak picture they painted in order to get the deficit report they got. But instead, he promoted another stimulus.

Had he painted that same bleak picture and at the end of his speech said, I am not telling you tonight how to solve it, but in 2 weeks, when my budget is delivered to the Senate, you will see what the deficit commission said we ought to be doing and we will do it. I think that by about May of that year, we would have hassled through that situation, and we would have adopted most of what they had in that. It would not have been easy. There would have been a little bit of pain, but it would have had a lot of gain. I think, by this point in time, the President would have been a hero--instead of hearing the question: Are you better off now than you were 4 years ago?

We can't continue the out-of-control spending we have had. Let me give an example of what we are doing. We are doing it without a budget, but here is what we are doing. The highway bill, that is one of the most important bills--everybody admits--for America. We have to have transportation in this country, and the highway bill is one of the major ways we do that. It creates jobs because people go out and build the roads or repair the roads, and it makes a difference.

But here is how we funded the highway bill: In the Finance Committee, I suggested we needed to increase the tax on gasoline. That is the tax that funds the highway trust fund, which is the sole source of money for building the highways before. But we haven't raised that since 1993, and it ran out of money.

The deficit commission President Obama appointed suggested we needed to raise the gas tax 5 cents a year for three consecutive years if we wanted to build highways. In the Finance Committee I said, I am going to put in something a little bit more modest to see if we have any support for it. I am going to put in something that just deals with inflation on the gas tax.

I was told we wouldn't have a vote in the Finance Committee on it-- and we didn't have a vote in the Finance Committee on it. And when it came to the floor, we did not have a vote on that on the floor because we weren't going to raise any taxes. Well, let me tell you what the bill does: There is a tax increase in the bill. We just didn't talk about it. I talked about it, but not many people talked about it. There is a tax increase in the bill. There is a tax on any private pension fund in America. That goes into a trust fund, supposedly.

I have a little problem with what we call trust funds around here, because I don't have trust any of them. That is going into a trust fund so that if a company goes out of business, the people who were promised a pension will get at least 60 percent of what they were promised. That is what that tax is for. That is why we do the tax on private pensions. The Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation guarantees that people will get a portion of what they were promised in a private pension, and so we raised the tax to make sure that would be there. Then, before it got there, we diverted it, we stole it, we stripped it, and we put it in the highway bill. And we didn't just take 2 years' worth. That is how long the bill covers highway construction. It says in the next 2 years all the highways that we will build and how much they will cost. But from the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation tax that we increased, we took all of that for 10 years to build 2 years' worth of highways. I don't know of anybody who would consider that to be good financial management. Highways are essential, but that is not good financial management. We have to stop this trend. And we particularly have to stop stealing from trust funds.

There is one other source of trust fund in there I am particularly sensitive to. There is an abandoned mine land fund. This is a fund that was set up where coal mines in the West would get an additional tax-- which we agreed to and the companies agreed to. Half of that tax would stay with the State where the coal was mined, and the other half would go to the eastern States to reclaim abandoned mines. It is a good idea. Well, Wyoming mines most of the coal in the United States, so Wyoming gets most of that money. There is a little provision that they stuck in there to affect Wyoming--and I don't think ought to be the sole source of revenue for funding all the highways in the United States, but they took that abandoned mine land money and said that would go into this highway fund. That is a trust fund too. We heard about it at 2:00 in the morning the day before we voted on this bill, and it was a total shock to us that they were giving this to the trust fund that was billed as a massive coalition between the East and the West, between companies and between miners who relied on the companies that went out of business for their health care. And abandoned mine land money takes care of that, too. But they said, Well, for Wyoming we think you get too much money, so we are going to strip out the half that you were promised and didn't get for years and years and years while they took care of their own problems. That is in there too and that is in there for a 10-year period for 2 years' worth of highway construction.

So when we say that America is not broke, America is not broke. But it isn't fixed either. It needs to be fixed, and it needs to be fixed legitimately, upfront, telling the people exactly what we are doing. There is going to have to be a lot of things that have to be done in order to do it.

I have suggested one way it can be done--and I have tried to cut things before, and I know that if we try to cut a single program, any single program--and we have to cut a lot of programs--that program will inundate Washington with a few good examples of what that program has done, even though audits of it say that is not what happened. But those people will flood here, they will talk to their Senators, we will feel sorry for them, we will approve the program, and we will continue the program. It is almost impossible to cut a program around here. It is hard to cut the amount of increase that program gets, let alone make an actual cut to a program or--Lord help us--eliminate a program altogether.

So what are we going to do? I have a 1-percent solution. That is to take 1 penny out of every dollar the American government spends and eliminate that, cut that, save that--1 penny out of every dollar. People across America, when I talk to them about this, say, I have personally had to make a bigger cut than that. I could make 1 percent; the government ought to be able to take 1 percent. And if the government made 1 percent for between 5 and 7 years, our budget would balance. That is a lot of discipline, but it is a little pain for a lot of gain. And I am pretty sure if we were able to do that, at the end of 1 year people would say, You know, that didn't hurt that badly, and we ought to go for 2 and speed this thing up. Because I don't know how much time we have before interest rates go up, and when interest rates go up, they can use up all of the revenue we have from taxes to pay the interest on the loans we have out there. We have tremendous debt out there, and we had better start taking care of it. I have looked at some ways to do that, and I will share those at another time.

But I hope I don't hear a lot about the Romney-Ryan budget here on the floor when there hasn't been a budget presented and voted on by the other side. You have got to have the courage to make some cuts. You have got to have the courage to put forward a budget that is on a track--a track somehow to getting us back to solvency. And it better happen pretty fast.

So I think I am going to feel sorry for whomever gets elected President, and perhaps whomever is going to be in this body and in the House next year, because it is not going to be a pleasant task. We are going to have to buckle down and do the right thing.

I got to meet earlier with the new Prime Minister of Italy, and I was very impressed with him. He was talking about what he has to do right now to pull them out of their deficit. Remember, we owe $50,000 per person. They owe $40,000 per person. They are taking the hard steps. He has laid out a plan, he has talked to the people involved. Over there they have strikes whenever they get upset with the government. He had to talk to some of the labor

unions. He said, I talked to them and they went out on strike for 2 hours. Of course, usually a minimum strike is 3 days over there, so he felt pretty good about that. But he said with the changes that he has to make--and it was a reflection on what we are looking at too-- probably none of the people will be there next year. Those in the cabinet who were sitting next to him were a little bit shocked to hear that. I think if he does the plan, people will appreciate the way he is saving their country and they will put him back in again.

But we are looking at some difficult times and we need good solutions. It is going to mean working across the aisle to make sure that gets done. Our time is short. But this is the most resilient country in the world, and the rest of the world is relying on America.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the remarks I deliver on July 11 at the Brumidi Gold Medal Ceremony be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I rise to speak on behalf of Joel Bousman who will be inducted into the Wyoming Agriculture Hall of Fame later this month at the 100th Wyoming State Fair. Since 1992, Wyoming has recognized the individuals each year who have made substantial contributions to agriculture in our State. This year I have the honor of presenting this award to Joel with my colleague Senator Barrasso.

Joel Bousman is a fourth generation rancher and operator of Eastfork Livestock in Boulder, WY. Actively involved in the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, he is admired for his leadership in the State's livestock industry. Having served as regional vice president of the Wyoming Stock Growers and president of the Green River Valley Cattleman's Association, Joel is a determined advocate and defender of agriculture.

Wyoming ranchers are known nationwide for their stewardship and Joel leads by example with his own operation and when grazing on public lands. In 2003, he was presented with the Wyoming Stock Growers Environmental Stewardship Award and was most recently presented with the 2011 Guardian of the Range Award. Bousman's nomination letter reads, ``He was a pioneer in initiating grazing monitoring that is conducted jointly by the federal land agencies and the grazing permittees.'' To this day, he remains active in promoting joint efforts to improve grazing and wildlife habitat on Wyoming's working lands.

Wyoming Agriculture Hall of Fame Award recipients are also expected to serve their communities and Joel has been no exception as the chairman of the Sublette County Board of County Commissioners. Joel has not only served his community as a commissioner but has regularly come to Washington to bring his message before congressional committees and directly to Members. Wyoming Governor Matt Mead writes that Joel is, ``a proven leader who is well respected in all circles--from the halls of Congress to the Wyoming Capitol and from the Sublette County Building to a constituent's kitchen table.''

I am proud to have the opportunity to recognize Joel's achievements with Senator Barrasso as a 2012 inductee into the Wyoming Agriculture Hall of Fame. Wyoming and its public lands are well served by his lasting and continuing contributions to our State.

Mr. President, the Senator from Tennessee, Mr. Alexander, is far too modest. Yes, I have been working on this since I got to the Senate, but he is the one who got it shortened down to 11 pages and made it a States rights bill. The States are realizing their rights anyway, and there are attempts at making changes in the sales tax law in order to cover this huge loss of revenue they are experiencing, but it doesn't work unless we do what the Supreme Court urged us to do when they issued the Quill decision back in the 1990s, which is to pass a national law that clarifies how this tax would be collected if the States choose to do it.

I am very pleased Senator Durbin joined us on this issue. Practically every State is losing money because of the tax that is only being collected for people who buy instate, and when they buy out of State, they are used to it being collected and it isn't collected. So half the time the State is not getting its money, and we need to change that before States come to the Federal Government and say we need some money for this project and then that sometimes gets worked into a bill. We are out of money at the Federal level. We have eliminated earmarks, so we can't do what we used to do, and we probably shouldn't have done it then. At any rate, we are borrowing 42 cents on every $1 we spend, so we don't have any money to give to the States.

But the States do have this authority, an authority to do a sales tax. Of course, they didn't anticipate they were just going to tax the businesses that were in their State that were paying a property tax and were hiring local people and were participating in all the community events and telling everybody out of State they didn't have any responsibility in it. There has always been an effort to get their responsibility too. I am glad we have this opportunity to discuss the small business jobs and tax bill, but in this amendment to it--which would be known as the Marketplace Fairness Act--we are talking about fairness. We do expect everybody will be treated fairly.

So let's start with a common-day practice that is happening in our Nation's retail markets today. If someone buys the book ``The Hunger Games'' at the local bookshop in town, they will pay more for the book from the brick-and-mortar store than if they bought the book online. There is nothing different about the brick-and-mortar store's book versus the book purchased on the Internet except the sales tax they have to pay. If they choose to do so, States should have the flexibility and the ability to fix this inequality.

Sales taxes go directly to State and local governments. They bring in needed revenue for maintaining our schools, fixing our roads, and supporting our law enforcement. As I like to add, have you ever tried to flush your toilet on the Internet? If sales over the Internet continue to go untaxed and electronic commerce continues to soar, revenues to State and local governments will plummet. But if Congress fails to authorize States to collect tax on remote sales and electronic commerce continues to grow, we are implicitly blessing a situation where States will be forced to raise other taxes, such as income or property taxes, to offset the growing loss of sales tax revenue. Do we want this to happen? No, we don't.

The Marketplace Fairness Act was written in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's 1992 Quill decision. Congressional involvement is necessary because the ruling stated the thousands of different State and local tax rules were too complicated and onerous to require businesses to collect sales tax unless they had a physical presence-- store, warehouse, et cetera--in the purchaser's home State.

The Supreme Court essentially stated Congress needs to decide how to move forward. I strongly believe now is the time for Congress to act. Many Americans don't realize when they buy something online or order something from a catalog from a business outside their own State, they still owe the sales tax. For over a decade, Congress has been debating how to best allow States to collect the sales taxes from online retailers in a way that puts Main Street businesses on a level and fair playing field with the online retailers.

The Marketplace Fairness Act empowers States to make the decision themselves. If they choose to collect already existing sales taxes on all purchases, regardless of where the sale was--whether it was online or in a store--they can. If they want to keep it the way they are, the States can do that.

I have been working on this sales tax fairness since joining the Senate in 1997. As a former small business owner, it is important to level the playing field for all retailers--in-store, catalog, and online--so an outdated rule for sales tax collection does not adversely impact small businesses and Main Street retailers. As a State legislator, I know we never passed a law, as I said, that discriminated against the instate people. We never put a burden on people who pay the property tax, who hire local residents and participate in the community events while telling those out of State we want them to have our

money, but they do not have to do anything in return. We never intended to give the out-of-State businesses a free ride. That is what the local legislators are all concerned about.

On November 9, 2011, Senators Durbin, Alexander, Tim Johnson, and I introduced, with six of our other colleagues, in a very bipartisan way, the Marketplace Fairness Act to close this 20-year loophole that distorts the American marketplace by picking winners and losers, by subsidizing some businesses at the expense of other businesses and subsidizing taxpayers at the expense of other taxpayers. All businesses and their retail sales and all consumers and their purchases should be treated equally and fairly.

I wish to provide some highlights of what the Marketplace Fairness Act accomplishes:

The bill gives States the right to decide to collect or not to collect taxes that are already owed. The legislation would streamline the country's more than 9,000 diverse sales tax jurisdictions and provide two options by which States could begin collecting taxes for online and catalog purchases. The bill gives States two voluntary options that would allow them to collect the State sales taxes that are already owed if they choose.

The first option is the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement, supported by 24 States that have already passed laws to simplify their tax collection rules. The second option puts in place basic minimum simplification measures States can adopt to make it easier for out-of- State businesses to comply.

The bill also carves out small businesses so they are not adversely affected by the new law by exempting businesses with less than $500,000 in sales online or out-of-State sales from collection requirements. It is very important there is an exemption for startup and small businesses if they have less than $500,000 of sales in 1 year. Once they reach the $500,000, then the next year they have to begin collecting the tax. This small business exemption will protect small merchants and give new businesses time to get started.

Don't let the critics get away with saying this kind of simplification cannot be done. In the early 1990s, when the Quill decision was handed down, the Internet was still in diapers and cell phones came with bags and looked like bricks. Cell phones now have Internet capability, and software, computers, and technologies have all advanced at an exponential pace. The different rates and jurisdiction problem is no problem for today's programs.

As a former mayor and State legislator, I also strongly favor allowing States the authority to require sales and use tax collection from retailers in all sales, if they choose to do so. We need to implement a plan that will allow States to generate revenue using mechanisms already approved by their local leaders. We need to allow States the ability to collect the sales taxes they already require, if enacted. This would provide $23 billion in fiscal relief for the States for which Congress does not have to find an offset. This will give States less of an excuse to come knocking on the Federal door for handouts and will reduce the problem of federally attached strings. It will give States a chance to reduce property taxes or other taxes.

The Marketplace Fairness Act is not about new taxes. No one should tax the use of the Internet. No one should tax Internet services. I do, however, have concerns about using the Internet as a sales tax loophole. Sales tax collection is already required by my home State of Wyoming no matter how or where we buy something, if it is not taxed by the State we get it from. We are supposed to fill out our own form and submit the information. Nobody is used to filing that kind of form or doing that kind of tax collection, and they never know whether the tax is owed or how much it is, particularly on small purchases.

It is always collected at the stores by the stores in state. We have to make the system simpler so they don't have to fill out forms. Under Wyoming law, online purchases are already subject to a sales tax; it just can't be collected and given to our State. The situation is very similar to that of other States.

Senators Durbin, Alexander, and I have worked tirelessly to assist the sellers, States, and local governments to simplify sales and use tax collection and administration. We have worked with all interested parties to find a mutually agreeable legislative package to introduce. Many hours have been dedicated to finding the right solution.

I want to publicly commend and thank Senators Durbin and Alexander for taking a leadership role in working on this important policy issue.

Ten years ago, the bills we considered to try to close this loophole were not adequate to solve the problem. Marketplace Fairness does solve the problem. It is simple. It is about States' rights. It is about fairness. At a time when States' budgets are under increasing pressure, Congress should give State and local governments the ability to enforce their own laws. I strongly encourage my colleagues to support amendment No. 2496, known as the Marketplace Fairness Act, and get it enacted into public law this year.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I am extremely disappointed to be here today to discuss a provision in the conference report that impacts my home State and potentially impacts a number of other states. The provision relates to the abandoned mine land trust fund, and undoes a carefully construed compromise that occurred in 2006 between a coalition of Eastern and Western States, mine workers, and coal companies.

This provision was included at the last moment. This pay-for was not in either the Senate version of the Transportation bill, nor was it in the House version. Although it has a tremendous impact on Wyoming, neither Senator Barrasso nor I were consulted about the impact of the provision. We are extremely disappointed that is the case and seek commitments from our colleagues to fix this provision hopefully as a technical correction, but at any rate not later than the end of the year to reconstruct the careful compromise that occurred in 2006. While I respect the work of the conference committee, provisions like this are the reason that Congress is unpopular. I look forward to working with my colleagues to undo this terrible provision and make Wyoming and other impacted states whole.

Mr. President, I come to floor to talk about a bit of a crisis the United States is in right now. We are out of money, but we are not recognizing that we are out of money. We must make that realization soon. We are going to have to do some work for this country to keep it operating so that the next generation has the same hope as the present generation.

I think the best example of where we are is probably this highway bill. Highways are important to this country. We need them to get from one place to another. We need them to move the goods across this country to keep the economy going--highways are extremely important. Highways have always been funded from a gas tax, until now. Using different funding is a prime example of what is about to happen in all of the bills that we do because we have run out of money and we haven't taken the necessary steps to solve that crisis.

When the highway bill came to the Finance Committee, I suggested that we ought to change the gas tax so that there was an inflationary rate added each year for the following year. That was the least that I could think of to do for highways. It would have added half a cent a gallon. The price fluctuates at the pump more than half a cent a day.

I have to tell you, though, that I really thought there would be strong support for doing something like that, taking a minimal step. I had the amendment devised so that it could be changed easily to increase that amount. The Simpson-Bowles deficit commission said--and this was over a year and a half ago--that for the next 3 years, we needed to raise the gas tax 5 cents per year for 3 years. So we really ought to be at 7\1/2\ cents or 10 cents in increase already. Now, if we did that, the highway bill could be funded from highway funds. And that is a user fee. If you drive, you buy gas. If you buy gas, you pay for the highways on which you drive.

I have been talking about this ever since we started on the highway bill, and I have not had anybody say to me: You are wrong, we should not raise the gas tax. I was really surprised. I thought there would be a huge outcry and that I would be in a lot of trouble for suggesting a raise in the gas tax. But America understands we are broke better than Congress understands.

Both parties told me we would not vote on my amendment. And we didn't vote on that amendment in committee, and we didn't vote on that amendment on the floor. Of course, by my count, I think I had two Democrats supporting me and two Republicans supporting me, but we didn't even really get to debate it. We should debate it. We should go to the logical spot for highway money, the spot that through the history of highways has been used to fund highways.

So where are we getting the money? Well, we did raise the tax on people who have pensions, and that is very important. There is a trust fund--the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation has a trust fund to see that if a company goes out of business and it had promised pensions, then the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation's trust fund makes up part of that. They do not make up all of it, but they make it part of it. So it is an insurance policy for people across America who have pensions. And we said: That needs a little bit more of a jolt. So we did a couple of things. One of the things was to do some smoothing so companies would not have to put quite as much money into the fund, and therefore they would have maybe more profit, and on the profit they would pay taxes, and we can steal those taxes to put in the highway trust fund so that we can build the highways. We have never stolen money to pay for highways before. Never use the Pension Benefit Guaranty trust before. But this bill does that. And then there is another little bit of money that comes right out of the Pension Benefit Guarantee trust fund that goes into the highway bill. That is the wrong way to do business. We should not violate trust funds.

Wait until the seniors who said ``don't touch my Social Security'' realize that Social Security is a trust fund and that we are stealing from trust funds. I think we will hear a furor across this country that will be unmatched if Social Security is touched. So we are not touching that one--yet.

We have maxed out our credit cards. You know what a maxed-out credit card is. That is when you buy something and the clerk says: I am sorry, but there is a hold on your card. When you check on it, you find out that you have so much debt with that credit card company that they are not going to let you charge any more. Well, we have maxed out a lot of our credit cards. We are relying on foreign countries to help us out with our debt. There is a problem in Europe right now. The euro is having a real tough strain. Eight of the banks that have a lot of euros have invested that in U.S. bonds because we are the safest place in the world. But if those banks collapse, they will need their money. Between those eight euro banks and the four Japanese banks, that is 40 percent of the money, almost 40 percent of the money we borrow from other countries in order to keep our government going. We are at $16 trillion worth of debt. What is worse, we have quadrupled the bottom line on the Federal Reserve. We have made money--we have printed money to four times the amount of money we had 3 years ago.

We are facing some really difficult times, and we are going to have to deed up to those. One of those ways would be to raise the gas tax and to do the highway bill the way the highway bill ought to be done.

Now, I mention these trust funds, and I mention them for a very specific reason; that is, they found a trust fund

they could violate. They did it very cleverly. They did not mention it to anybody who is going to be affected by the trust fund. Fortunately, there were some diligent people who took a look at that highway trust fund bill, and they said: Wow, they are going after abandoned mine land money in this bill.

That is an abandoned mine land trust fund. The money comes from coal that is mined, and the money, the tax on that coal, is supposed to go to fix abandoned mines across the country. The conference report's drafters found $700 million in that trust fund. That trust fund hasn't maxed out its credit cards because, so far, we are still mining coal in this country, and so far there is money going into it.

But there are uses for that money that need to be achieved. It helps fix abandoned mine lands. Another use is taking care of orphan miners. I mentioned the pension folks before; when their company goes out of business, they get a little help. Under the abandoned mine land trust fund, if a coal company goes out of business and the miners don't have any health insurance then part of this abandoned mine land money goes to make them whole in the health insurance area.

This system was part of a grand coalition that came together to solve some problems that are involved with mining in America. The companies and the employees and the States that were involved said this probably isn't the perfect solution, but it helps a lot of people, so we were going to do it, and we did it. We were able to override a point of order on the budget in order to maintain that trust fund and move the money from the trust fund to where it was supposed to be used.

For more than a decade, the money wasn't even taken out of the trust fund, and do you know why? Anytime I asked about it and said we needed some of the money, the government said: Oh, I am sorry. You will have to put some money in there so we can take the money out. I said: What kind of a trust fund do you have to put money into twice before you can get money out? The money already went in there once before. Here is how it works. The money goes into bonds and the bonds go into the drawer and the money gets spent. Think about that. Seniors have been complaining about the Social Security trust fund and how we have been spending money from the Social Security trust fund. They were more clever than most people who are involved in trust funds because they figured it out.

The Social Security trust fund has a whole bunch of bonds in the drawer. It doesn't have money in the drawer. But don't worry, those bonds are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States of America, and Europe is about to have a huge problem.

It is kind of interesting. In America, every single man, woman, and child owes more than $49,000 in national debt--and it is growing daily. In one meeting I attended, I mentioned that figure and somebody said: Can I pay my $49,000 and not be responsible for the rest of it? I said that is not the way it works. Even if we could do that, that is not the way it works. So it is $49,000 for every man, woman, and child in the United States. If a child is born today, we can tag him or her with a $49,000 debt immediately.

Why is that significant? You have probably watched Greece and Italy. Greece and Italy had to do 19 percent cuts. They cut pension plans 19 percent. They cut employees 19 percent. They cut the number of employees 19 percent. They cut the services they provide by 19 percent. They cut everything by 19 percent. You probably saw there were some riots in their countries. If we cut 19 percent, there would be riots in this country. Here is an interesting fact. In Italy, they only owe $40,000 per person. In Greece, they only owe $39,000 per person. We owe $49,000 per person. We are considered to be the safest place in the world to put your money, and I think that is right--at the moment--and it will change if we don't act soon.

If we keep doing what we are doing in the highway trust fund--and it shows better there than any other place I can think of--we won't be a secure place to invest. The way we are fiddling with funds and shuffling credit cards so we are not using the maxed-out ones, has to stop, my friends.

With the highway bill before us, the conferees did construct a bill so they could get quite a few votes on it. They put a limit on the amount of money certified states could get from the abandoned mine land trust fund. It doesn't discriminate against very many States. It does discriminate against Wyoming, and so I make a plea that they not do that and remove the section of the bill. Trust fund money needs to go for what the trust fund said the money would go for.

Even if they decide to steal from Wyoming--and I hope they don't--but even if they do, the money ought to go into the other States that are a part of the trust fund that need to do mine clean up. Over the 10 years of the bill, it takes about $715 million worth of money from the abandoned mine land trust fun--10 years. I did mention 10 years.

There is a reason I mentioned 10 years. This highway bill we are talking about doesn't get all the money from all the places we are stealing from in a short enough period to pay for the highways we are going to build over the life of that bill. After the bill expires and all those things have been built, we will still be trying to collect the money from the sources it has been stolen from in order to pay for what has already been built. OK. What happens when we get to the end of this highway bill, and we are still waiting for all the places we stole the money from to get the money in? Where do we steal the next money from? We better raise the gas tax. We better take a look at what we are doing, and make changes. If there is a user fee--and that is what the gas tax is--if we use the highways, we buy gas; if we buy gas, we pay into the trust fund. We should use the user fee to pay for highways. We have an additional problem that is the user fee is probably diminishing because there are cars that run on electricity now, and that will probably be increasing. Alternative fuels will be increasing, and that will affect how much money goes into the trust fund.

But just to meet the immediate needs, there needs to be something done, and stealing from other trust funds is not the way to do it. If we get in the habit of stealing from trust funds, Social Security will have to watch out. Of course, that will be the end of the road for a lot of people in this body if they start stealing from Social Security. But it ought to be the end of the road for people if they are stealing from other trust funds because it starts the habit, and we can't afford that habit.

Madam President, it is disappointing that the Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of the new health care law. Just because it is constitutional doesn't mean it is the best policy, the perfect policy, or even good policy. And just because the Court upheld the law does not change the fact that the American people have overwhelming concerns about it--not all of it but a lot of it.

In fact, the Court affirmed that the new health care law is a massive tax increase on the American people. Congress must get serious about fixing our broken health care system. We can start by changing this misguided health care law that has divided the American people and failed to address rising health care costs. Congress should work together to make commonsense, step-by-step health reforms that can truly lower the cost of health care. I was pleased to see that the Supreme Court narrowed the Medicaid expansion because States can't afford them. Hard-working Americans are still struggling in this anemic economy and need real action to make health care more affordable.

Reforms do not have to start here in Washington. Our Nation's States are laboratories of democracy and can play a significant role in addressing the health care crisis in America. Governors are in a special position to understand the unique problems facing their States, and fixing health care, like most problems facing our Nation, cannot be a one-size-fits-all solution. Efforts underway by Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels provide a great example of what different States are working on. He is moving forward with the Healthy Indiana initiative, which is an affordable insurance program for uninsured State adults aged 19 to 64.

Outside Washington, some health insurance companies have already stated they will adopt several reasonable provisions to lower health care costs. These include allowing young adults to be covered until age 26 while on their parent's plan, not charging patients copays for certain care, not imposing lifetime limits, and not implementing retroactive cancellation of health care coverage. They said they would do that regardless of how the Supreme Court case came out.

One of the most effective ways Congress can address the rising costs of health care is to focus on the way it is delivered as part of the Nation's current cost-driven and ineffective patient care system. America's broken fee-for-service structure is driving our Nation's health care system further downward, and tackling this issue is a good start to reining in rising health care costs. What is fee for service? This method of payment encourages providers to see as many patients and prescribe as many treatments as possible but does nothing to reward providers who help keep patients healthy. These misaligned incentives drive up costs and hurt patient care.

The new health care law championed by President Obama and congressional Democrats did very little to address these problems. The legislation instead relied on a massive expansion of unsustainable government price controls found in fee-for-service Medicare. If we want to address the threat posed by out-of-control entitlement spending, we need to restructure Medicare to better align incentives for providers and beneficiaries. This will not only lower health care costs, it will also improve the quality of care for millions of Americans. In the health care bill, we took $500 billion out of Medicare and put it into new programs. Then we appointed an unelected board to suggest

cuts that can be made, and the only place left for cuts are providers, hospitals, home health care, nursing homes, and hospice care. I don't think that is where we want to be cutting Medicare.

Shifting the health care delivery system from one that pays and delivers services based on volume to one that pays and delivers services based on value is an idea that unites both Republicans and Democrats. We have been mentioning a number of simple steps that can be taken while Congress weighs the larger fixes needed for preventive care. We can encourage insurers to offer plans that focus on delivering health care services by reducing copays for high-value services and increasing copays for low-value or excessive services. Consumer- directed health plans provide another avenue for linking financial and delivery system incentives and have the potential to reduce health care spending by $57 billion a year. Bundled payments will support more efficient and integrated care. All of these options have already been utilized by a number of private sector firms with great success. The Federal Government should be willing to support viable reforms where it is needed, but also refrain from handcuffing innovative private sector designs with excessive regulations or narrow political interests.

Our Nation has made great strides in improving the quality of life for all Americans, and we need to remember that every major legislative issue that has helped transform our country was forged in the spirit of compromise and cooperation. These qualities are essential to the success and longevity of crucial programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. But when it comes to health care decisions being made in Washington lately, the only thing the government is doing is increasing partisanship and legislative gridlock. I wish to leave the Senate with some words of wisdom from one of our departed Members, and that is Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a Democrat from New York, who served in this body. He said in 2001, shortly before he retired:

Never pass major legislation that affects most Americans

without real bipartisan support. It opens the door to all

kinds of political trouble.

Senator Moynihan correctly noted that the party that didn't vote for it will criticize the resulting program whenever things go wrong. More importantly, he predicted the measure's very legitimacy will be constantly questioned by a large segment of the population who will never accept it unless it is shown to be a huge success.

That is a quote from Daniel Patrick Moynihan, former Senator.

Truer words were never spoken. We have seen each of these scenarios play out over the past 2 years as the new health care law polarized the Nation. I hope this distinguished body has the courage to learn from our mistakes, because our Nation needs health care reform, but it has to be done the right way. Providing Americans with access to high- quality affordable health care is something I am confident Democrats and Republicans should be able to agree on.

Two-and-a-half years ago, a Democratic President teamed up with a Democratic-led Congress with only Democratic votes to force a piece of legislation on the American people that they never asked for and that has turned out to be as disastrous as predicted. How so? Amid an economic recession, a spiraling Federal debt, and accelerating increases in government health spending, they proposed a bill that has made the problems worse.

Americans were promised lower health care costs. They are going up. Americans were promised lower premiums. They are going up. Most Americans were promised their taxes wouldn't change. They are going up. Seniors were promised Medicare would be protected. It was raided to pay for a new entitlement instead. Americans were promised it would create jobs. The CBO predicts it will lead to nearly 1 million fewer jobs. Americans were promised they can keep their plan if they liked it, yet millions have learned that they can't. And the President of the United States himself promised up and down that this bill was not a tax. That was one of the Democrats' top selling points, because they knew it would never get passed if they said it was a tax. The Supreme Court spoke today. It said it is a tax.

This law was sold to the American people under deception. But it is not just that the promises about this law were not kept, it is that it has made the problems it was meant to solve even worse. The supposed cure has proved to be worse than the disease.

We pass plenty of terrible laws around here that the Court finds constitutional. We need to do some commonsense, step-by-step reforms that protect Americans' access to the care they need, from the doctor they choose, and at a lower cost. That is precisely what I am committed to doing.

The American people weren't waiting on the Supreme Court to tell them whether they supported this law. That question was settled 2\1/2\ years ago. The more the American people have learned about this law, the less they have liked it.

Now that the Court has ruled, it is time to move beyond the constitutional debate and focus on the primary flaws of this law because of the colossal damage it is doing and has already done to the health care system and to the economy and to the job market, which needs to be turned around. There are things that need to be done and can be done.

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

Mr. President, I thank the chairman of the committee. I thank him for his kind words, but I also thank him for his leadership on this issue. We have had a great teamwork effort both between the Senators and between the staff. This isn't something that just came together a couple of weeks ago. This is something that has been worked on for about 1\1/2\ years, with pretty constant meetings on Fridays of all of the interested groups and then stakeholders. It takes a tremendous amount of work to put something like this together and have it be in a bipartisan way like this. It is largely because it came to committee.

In committee we took a look at all of the amendments that were suggested, we got the people together who had very similar amendments, and they usually were able to work out something to satisfy everybody in that instance, and we came up with a bill. As Senator Harkin mentioned, it passed 96 to 1. Anytime we get something to pass, it is kind of a landmark success. But when we get something that bipartisan, it is even more landmark.

We have been trying to get this bill wrapped up before the Supreme Court decision came out on health care. The reason we have been trying to do that is, who knows what it is going to say or what kind of ideas people will come up with when that happens. This is a group of 100 idea generators, so we wanted this cleared up by that time. We are on a path to get that done right now and a path that will keep the people employed who are taking a look at new drugs and devices and generics and biosimilars and continue to get those on the market so people will have the latest innovations.

One of the things we included in the bill was some use of foreign clinical trials if they were approved by the FDA, and that should even speed up the process. Of course, when we went to conference there were a lot of things people wanted to have that they brought up as amendments. It is very critical in the bill, and we get some of them and we don't get others.

I know Senator Alexander played a huge role; he had seven items in the bill and we got six of them. Senator Burr had 12 items in the bill, and we got 11 of them. I have to mention, of course, that the one we did not get is a particularly important but particularly difficult issue that is going to take more time to get worked out. It is one that deals with drug distribution security, and that is something we cannot avoid. We have to do it. But it is going to take longer to work that out. It deserves some extra time and some more understanding on both sides of the aisle on that one and in a number of different States. It doesn't just involve the Senate; it doesn't just involve the drug companies; it also involves the whole chain that these things have to go through, including the local pharmacist whom we don't want to overload with work, and the people who have to transport these drugs whom we don't want to overload with work or make it extremely complicated when they cross different State lines and have to do different kinds of reporting.

Senator Isakson had four amendments, and we were able to get three of them. Senator Paul had two, and we got one. Senator Hatch had six, and he got all of them. Senator McCain had two, and we got one. Senator Roberts had two, and we got both of those. Senator Murkowski had two, and we got both of those. Senator Kirk had two, and we got one of those. Senator Grassley had two, and we got one of those. Senator Portman had two, and we got both of those. And Senator Coburn had two, and we got one of those. Senator Corker had two, and we got both of those.

So there are a lot of things we did on the Senate side that became possible on the House side. There are a number of things they did on the House side that we couldn't agree with on this side either. But we did reach agreement--and we reached it in pretty much record time. We now have a bill that can go ahead and be passed and go to the President for signature to assure that the level of safety we have in our drugs not only continues but improves, and drugs can get on the market faster than they had before by streamlining the process and also making sure there are better foreign inspections so the ingredients that go into the drugs don't cause problems.

So this legislation reauthorizes the Food and Drug Administration's user

fee program, and it ensures that Americans get better access to safe innovative medicines and medical devices. It will make significant changes. It will improve the FDA's review and approval of new drugs and devices.

Unfortunately, FDA's current process for reviewing and approving medical devices too often creates delay and unpredictability. This in turn threatens patient access to the best possible treatments for their conditions. In some cases, this has forced American patients to travel overseas to obtain access to lifesaving new devices that FDA has not approved in the United States.

The bill goes a long way toward solving these problems and makes the most significant changes to the law of governing FDA's review of devices in decades.

This bill will speed the approval of devices by reducing the redtape associated with the ``least burdensome'' standard that FDA uses to approve such devices. The bill will also make it easier for FDA to approve devices for patients with rare diseases who might not otherwise be able to have their conditions treated most effectively. It will also enable FDA to expedite safety determinations, to resolve appeals, and to improve their postapproval surveillance activities to detect problems as they occur. It is not good enough to get them approved, we also want them watched after they are approved, and this will do it.

The bill also contains important reforms to foster drug innovation and patient access to new therapies. It modernizes the accelerated approval pathway for drugs to reflect advances in science over the past 20 years. It formalizes a new process to expedite the development and approval of breakthrough therapies. These changes are particularly important for patients with rare diseases where there are no therapies available, and it is not feasible or ethical to require large conventional clinical trials.

Nobody wants to be the one who is a test case when there might be something that would work for them, and there aren't the sizes of the populations to do the conventional clinical trial anyway. The patient community strongly supports these improvements because these will save lives.

The bill also contains important reforms that will help mitigate the problems associated with drug shortages. It will require better coordination within FDA as well as the other Federal agencies such as the DEA. It will also allow FDA to move faster, to take actions, and to address shortages through expedited reviews and approvals.

The bill also makes important changes to how FDA uses Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies, REMS. REMS play a critical role in protecting patients and public health and this bill includes a provision that clarifies the process for modifying REMS--especially with regard to minor modifications.

The provision in the bill being passed today does not change Congress' expectation that a non-minor modification will generally be based on the best available science including an assessment demonstrating that the modification is necessary or appropriate. Nor does the clarification indicate that a modification should be approved if it would reduce the REMS' effectiveness in addressing the drug's known risks.

The bill follows what I call the 80 percent rule. When we focus on 80 percent of the issues on which we can reach agreement rather than focusing exclusively on the parts and the issues we can never resolve, we can achieve amazing results. Over 1 year ago staff began to work on identifying the 80 percent. A group of staff from Republican and Democratic offices on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee began a series of standing meetings and proceeded to meet every week for several months. They met with stakeholders and discussed policy solutions that each member thought would solve the problem.

After much discussion of the benefits, costs, and possible unintended consequences, members agreed on a list of policy concepts. If there was not a consensus on a particular policy, it wasn't included. This is the 80 percent rural in action.

As this process has progressed, my staff also met with the Republican staff on the Health Committee for at least 2 hours every week to keep them informed and to seek their input. I also personally met with the members of the committee before markup to ensure I understood their priorities.

This bill reflects the work of every member of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. All of them have at least one provision included in this legislation. Many members of the committee worked with us to find consensus measures that addressed their priorities as well.

As I mentioned, not everyone got everything they wanted. We did, however, find the 80 percent of each solution that we could all agree would help solve the problem, and the bill passed the committee by a voice vote. This legislation could be a model for how the process can and should work regardless of the political environment. We followed this model as we transitioned from the committee process to the Senate floor. We worked with members who filed amendments in committee to address some of the concerns in the manager's amendment. We also worked with Members who filed amendments on the Senate floor.

We did the same thing in our discussions with the House. You can see that the results are very positive. We preserved and we improved policies to foster drug innovation and patient access, and to promote accountability and transparency at the FDA. We also made significant improvements to the Senate's medical device reforms for startup and emerging growth companies, and with respect to the 510(k) process.

We thank Senator Harkin for his tireless effort on this bill. I know he spent countless hours and attended dozens of meetings, working with Senators and stakeholders and advocates to address their concerns. This bill would not have had such broad bipartisan support without all of his work.

Senator Harkin's staff has also worked tirelessly on this bipartisan bill. Their knowledge, professionalism, their graciousness were instrumental in addressing all of the issues in this bill. They worked many late evenings, they worked through weekends, they worked through countless working group discussions to be able to get the bill where it is today.

Specifically, I want to recognize Elizabeth Jungman, Bill McConagha, Kathleen Laird, and Kate Wise for all their work. I thank Pam Smith, Senator Harkin's staff director, for her leadership getting this bill to the finish line. I especially want to recognize Jenelle Krishnamoorthy, whose organization and diplomatic skills helped us resolve the most difficult challenges and made sure that the priorities of all the members of the committee are reflected in the bill.

I also wish to thank the staffs of the Legislative Counsel, the Congressional Budget Office, and the Federal Drug Administration for all of their technical assistance. Again, there are people in those groups who had to work through the weekends when we were finishing up.

Finally I would thank my staff--Keith Flanagan, Melissa Pfaff, Grace Stuntz, Katy Spangler, Rob Walton, and my health policy director, Chuck Clapton.

I would be really remiss if I didn't thank my staff director Frank Macchiarola for his work on this bill, especially as the bill progressed through the HELP Committee, the Senate floor, and discussions with the House. My staff has been working around the clock for many days, for weeks, and for months. I sincerely appreciate their dedication to getting this bill passed and for helping to work with the 80-percent rule.

I urge my colleagues to support this bipartisan bill that makes important changes to the FDA and I ask them to support this process that expedites getting the conference done. We will have a real and meaningful impact on millions of American patients.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Sergio Perez, Peter Bautz, Bill McConnaughay, and Sean O'Connor of my staff be granted floor privileges for the duration of today's session.

Madam President, I have come to the floor to speak in favor of Senator Rubio's amendment No. 2166, the Rewarding Achievement and Incentivizing Successful Employees Act, known as the RAISE Act. It is a catchy title, and sometimes here in Congress catchy bill titles can be very misleading. Sometimes the bill title means the exact opposite of what the bill would do, such as the Employee Free Choice Act, which actually would have taken away the right to make a free choice through a secret ballot. But in this case, I congratulate my colleague Senator Rubio for a title that conveys precisely what the amendment aims to do.

The RAISE Act would allow employers to give employees raises, bonuses, incentive payments, and other monetary rewards whenever they are earned, whether the union boss approves or not. As all of us know, we are in extremely difficult economic times. Unemployment has been above 8 percent for over 40 months, now and a striking number of individuals are dropping out of the workforce altogether. When we do recover, as I know we will, we are likely to face a skills gap that will further hamper hiring and growth. One of the keys to our economic recovery is the health of small businesses.

For small businesses to reach their full potential, and grow into job-creating machines, they need the flexibility to maintain and attract the key employees who will get them there. Any small businessperson will tell you that their employees are their most important asset. They literally make the difference in whether the business succeeds or fails.

Once your company is unionized, you learn one way or another that it is now an ``unfair labor practice'' under section 8(a)(5) of the National Labor Relations Act to give an employee a raise or a bonus or an incentive or even a gift card for a job well done without the approval of the union boss. All compensation issues must be negotiated with the union, which allows the union to take credit for securing the raise. We have come across scores of cases where employers wanted to thank employees for good customer service, impressive sales growth, or attract employees to fill a critical manpower shortage, and the National Labor Relations Board, NLRB, penalized the employer for it. In a time of global competition, the last thing we need is a Federal agency punishing companies for trying to perform better by rewarding employees.

Believe it or not, there is opposition to this amendment. At least four of our largest labor unions AFL-CIO, AFSCME, SEIU, and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters--have opposed allowing employers to give raises.

Critics of this bill have said that if employers want to be able to reward employees beyond the union-approved wage floor, they can negotiate that provision into their contract. This is true. An employer can make the ability to incentivize employees one of their ``asks'' in negotiations, and they probably have to give up something else in order for the union to agree to that. But it is also true that getting such a provision in the bargaining agreement is not enough to protect employers from a charge of unfair labor practice from the union and penalty from the NLRB. In my research on this issue, I came across several cases where employers had negotiated a raise clause, but since the collective bargaining agreement expired and was in renegotiation, the NLRB ruled that the provision did not apply.

Let me cite an example from just a few years ago. A Montana water and mineral drilling company had negotiated a contract clause with their union to ensure that union-negotiated wages were only a floor and superior wages could be given with or without the consent of the union. When the company's orders increased, the company wanted to share the profits and decided to give employees unilateral raises, increase the per diem for meals, and raise the clothing and safety allowance reimbursement by 167 percent. But the union objected, and the NLRB agreed and stopped the raises. Why? Because although the company had negotiated the right to give raises, they were currently in the process of renegotiating their collective bargaining agreement and there had been no explicit extension of the clause allowing for superior wages and benefits. O'Keefe Drilling, Case 19-CA-29222(2005)

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated case. NLRB has repeatedly punished employers in similar situations.

An Oregon newspaper publisher had historically offered

commission for sales of certain long-term advertisements. As

it was adapting to having an online edition, it decided to

qualify internet ad sales for commissions, as well, and added

signing bonuses for new advertising clients. Although the

newspaper had specifically negotiated for a

contract provision allowing it to pay wages in excess of the

established wage, the bargaining agreement was in

renegotiation. The NLRB sided with the union. Register-Guard,

339 NLRB 353 (2003)

The fact that raise provisions are negotiated into union contracts negates another criticism I have heard about this proposal. Some say that it would allow an employer to favor employees based on gender or race. This is entirely false--all race, sex, national origin and religion Federal discrimination statutes are and would remain in full effect.

I would like to share a few more examples of why this legislation will not just benefit American workers but everyone who relies on the services they provide. For example, there is a great deal of concern about the quality and availability of health care services in this country. You would think that any Federal agency would congratulate hospitals that strive to improve the service they provide. Unfortunately, that was not the case in these two examples.

During the nationwide nursing shortage we experienced in

the last decade, a nonprofit New Mexico hospital was

desperate for nurses. It was concerned about the ability to

provide care and comply with mandatory staffing levels, so

the hospital decided to offer $8000 signing bonuses and $2000

relocation bonuses. These generous bonuses were available for

new applicants as well as current nurses--union members--who

transferred to fill critical needs. But the union objected

and the hospital was ordered to stop offering bonuses. St.

Vincent Hospital, Case 28-CA-19039(2004)

In another case, a Brooklyn hospital was concerned about

poor reviews of their nursing staff from patient satisfaction

surveys, which had been an ongoing problem. The hospital

decided to reward its best nurses, so it honored high-

performing nurses with a breakfast, a pin, and gave them $100

gift cards since it was the winter holiday season.

Unfortunately, the union objected to this honoring of

exceptional nurses and filed charges with the National Labor

Relations Board. Although these nurses earned $67,000 to

$150,000 a year, the NLRB found that the gift card was not a

one-time, de minimis gift but, rather, should be considered

compensation and should have been a subject of negotiation

with the union. The hospital was banned from giving such

bonuses again. Brooklyn Hospital Center, Case No. 29-CA-

29323(2009)

Clearly something has gone very wrong here, and I want to thank Senator Rubio for offering us the ability to make it right. The ability to reward and incentivize employees is critical to the success of any enterprise. Instead of fixating on who gets credit for anything beneficial, our national labor-management policy should be to strengthen unionized and nonunionized businesses and encourage job creation. This will be good for all Americans, no matter what their union membership status.

I urge the Senate to support the Rubio amendment and adopt this commonsense change to allow American companies and their employees to thrive.

Mr. President, I rise to express my support for legislation that will force a partial cease-fire in the Obama administration's war on coal.

If we move forward with Senator Inhofe's resolution of disapproval, we will end one of the most egregious rules promulgated by an administration that, in the words of President Obama, hopes to see the price of electricity necessarily skyrocket.

Coal is our Nation's most abundant energy resource. It provides approximately half our Nation with low-cost, reliable electricity. In my State of Wyoming, more than 6,800 people are employed directly by the coal industry. They make an average salary of more than $77,000 each year, which is $35,000 more than the average wage in the State. When we count those employed directly and indirectly, nearly 30,000 people in Wyoming depend on the coal mining industry for jobs.

Nationwide, the numbers are much larger. The coal industry employs 136,000 people directly, with an average salary of $73,000 per year. For every coal mining job in the United States, we see 3.5 jobs created in another part of the economy. Simply put, the coal industry puts people to work. In an economy that is struggling to recover, the coal industry provides high-paying jobs for workers in Wyoming and in other States such as West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

Coal provides low-cost electricity across the country that can power our Nation's manufacturing base. It provides high-paying jobs across the country at a time when our Nation's unemployment rate is at an unacceptable 8.2 percent, and the most recent jobs report shows no signs that the economy is recovering. With the tremendous benefits coal can provide, it is so puzzling to me that the administration seeks to end our use of this important, affordable energy source.

Since being sworn into office, President Obama's rulemaking machine released rule after rule designed to make it more expensive to use coal. The administration's greenhouse gas standard would make it impossible to build a new coal-fired powerplant in the United States. The stream buffer zone rule would make it more difficult to mine coal. Those are just 2 of the 11 regulations the President is considering that would grievously wound the coal mining industry and hurt an already ailing economy. In total, the regulations could cost up to $130 billion to retrofit existing coal-fired powerplants and could, by some estimates, lead to shutting down as much as 20 percent of the existing coal-fired powerplant fleet.

Today, we have a chance to stop one of those regulations. In February, the EPA finalized a standard that requires a strict reduction in air emissions from electric generating utilities. It is known as the Utility MACT rule. Similar to many of the rules coming from the EPA, the costs of this regulation are great and the benefits are limited. EPA estimates that the rule would create between $500,000 and $6 million in benefits related to mercury reductions, at a cost of nearly $10 billion annually for implementation of the rule. The cost-benefit ratio, assuming the EPA's best-case scenario, is 1,600 to 1.

These costs will be passed on to consumers and will result in higher electricity prices. According to the Industrial Energy Consumers of America, a nonpartisan association of manufacturing companies with more than 650,000 employees, these increased costs will lessen competitiveness, threaten U.S. manufacturing jobs, and make our electric grid less reliable. It is everything not to like in a policy-- all costs, no benefits.

National Economic Research Associates has studied the Utility MACT rule and found it would cause between 180,000 and 215,000 job losses by 2015. Further, it found that the Utility MACT rule would increase electricity rates by 6.5 percent on average and by as much as 19.1 percent in some areas of the country. An average household could see their electricity bills go up by at least $400 per year--a cost that will disproportionately impact those with lower fixed incomes, such as many older Americans.

This resolution is the best opportunity to begin fighting back against President Obama's war on coal. By passing S.J. Res. 37, we can take a stand against this administration's goal of higher electricity costs. I plan to vote for Senator Inhofe's resolution and urge my colleagues to do the same.

I yield the floor and reserve the remainder of the time.

Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Minnesota for her comments. This is an amendment that has come up on a regular basis-- always started from New Hampshire, always defeated by the Senate.

I encourage my colleagues to table Reid amendment No. 2393. This measure is known as Senator Shaheen's amendment to phase out the Federal Sugar Program.

First, I would like to commend Chairwoman Stabenow and Ranking Member Roberts for their work on the underlying bill. They proved that the Agriculture Committee is able to take a serious look at the farm bill programs and improve what is working while cutting what is not.

The Sugar Program is an excellent example of what works in the farm bill. Since its early years, the Sugar Program has evolved to ensure that beet and cane growers can continue to provide the United States with a safe and reliable source of sugar products. I underscore ``reliable'' because sugar is a unique commodity. Not only are sugar crops extremely limited in their seasons, but an added component is that both sugar beets and cane must be processed immediately after harvest. Processing involves what is essentially a refinery.

In Wyoming we have three facilities that process sugar, all of which are grower owned and operated. People can always tell its October back home when the large piles of sugar beets begin to appear outside the sugar plants. Workers race to produce raw sugar before the beets go bad. Any number of complications can spoil the crop and put the sugar refineries out of business.

Such unique conditions produce risk that is not common with other agricultural commodities. Because much of the year's sugar is produced in such a small window, a sugar program is needed to stabilize the price of sugar through the entire year. This policy benefits the very people who opponents of the Sugar Program wish to protect.

With stability in the sugar markets confectioners, food manufacturers, and beveragemakers have a steady supply of quality sugar without wild price swings. Not only are U.S. sugar prices stable under the program, but the United States offers sugar users some of the lowest prices in the developed world.

I also wish to add that the U.S. Sugar Program works to ensure that other nations have access to sugar markets. Some claim the U.S. Sugar Program is a protectionist policy. This could not be more false. Mr. President, 17 of the largest sugar exporting countries in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Central America, and South America have all expressed support for the U.S. Sugar Program.

As a matter of fact, the United States is the second largest net importer of sugar behind only Russia. The program is operated to ensure that we fulfill our trade obligations, especially within the WTO, and continues to provide a sugar market for developing nations wishing to export their product.

Finally, the U.S. Sugar Program has been run for the past 10 years at zero cost to the U.S. taxpayers, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture predicts it will remain that way in its current form for at least 10 more. As other colleagues have mentioned, this is all while the U.S. sugar industry has helped to generate nearly $20 billion in annual economic activity in our country.

Wyoming offers just a few examples of how much of an economic impact the sugar industry has on rural communities across our Nation. As I mentioned, the growers and local communities in my State own the plants that refine the raw sugar we use every day. Those plants produce jobs and keep economic activity local. With all the inherent risks in sugar production, these communities are able to continue providing the United States with a safe and reliable supply of sugar for the United States.

The U.S. sugar policy not only helps growers but keeps prices low for consumers. Some American food manufacturers will claim that it is the price of sugar causing them to shed jobs or move overseas. However, sugar represents only a small portion of the input costs that go into food production. Instead, it is the cost of labor, environmental standards, and regulatory burdens that play the biggest role in whether U.S. firms can compete with food markets overseas. In recent years, U.S. candy production has actually gone up, and the U.S. Sugar Program has played its role by keeping prices stable.

With that, I ask my colleagues to table amendment No. 2393 and keep the programs that work in this farm bill.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, when the Senate rejected this legislation 20 months ago in a bipartisan vote it did so for the right reasons. The fact is, discriminatory pay practices are already illegal, and properly so. Congress has put two laws on the books to combat such discrimination--Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Pay Act of 1963. These are both

good laws that have been well-utilized to combat discrimination where it exists, and I support full enforcement of those laws. When a female or male employee is being paid less simply because of gender it must be corrected and penalized. According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, EEOC, employees received more than $150 million through successfully-resolved Title VII and EPA discrimination claims last year, the largest amount awarded in 15 years.

I am confident that there is no member of this Senate who would tolerate paying a woman less for the same work simply because she is a woman. As husbands, fathers and mothers of working women, I believe we all recognize the gross inequity of discrimination in pay based on gender. But what the majority is trying to push through here today is of a very different nature. The so-called Paycheck Fairness Act is misnamed. It should actually be called a Profiteering Trial Lawyers Bonanza bill. The primary beneficiary of this legislation will be trial lawyers. They will be able to bring bigger class action lawsuits without even getting the consent of plaintiffs, and they will have the weapon of ``uncapped damages'' to force employers to settle lawsuits even when they know they have done nothing wrong. The litigation bonanza this bill would create would extend even to the smallest of small businesses, only further hampering the lagging economic recovery.

With unemployment trending back up to 8.2 percent, this is simply not a chance we can afford to take. When the Senate last rejected this bill, unemployment had been above 8% for 20 months. Now, it has doubled to 40 months, and it is trending higher. If we include the significant numbers of people that have simply dropped out of the workforce, the unemployment rate is over 14 percent. The United States is in very dangerous territory right now. This is not the time to pass this harmful legislation.

There are a number of other concerning provisions of this bill, such as authorizing the government to require reporting of every employer's wage data by sex, race and national origin. Had this bill gone through committee mark up under regular Senate order, we may have been able to address some of these concerns. But this bill, like so many others this Congress, has circumvented regular order.

The Senate rejected this identical bill on a bipartisan basis 20 months ago because it will insert the Federal Government into workplace management decisions like never before. This intrusion will benefit trial lawyers and harm job growth and employment, which will affect both women and men.

Supporters of the bill cite wage data that the Bureau of Labor Statistics itself says ``do not control for many factors that can be significant in explaining earning differences.'' In fact, studies show that if you factor in observable choices such as part-time work, seniority and occupational choice, the pay gap stands between 5 to 7 percent. Some of these choices are simply personal prerogative, and I would not question the choices that anyone makes with regard to family obligations, job security and the quality of fringe benefits such as health, retirement and childcare. But to a large extent this remaining gap is due to occupational choice. It is unfortunate that this Congress has not done more to foster a job growth environment and improve job training programs like the Workforce Investment Act that could prepare more women to enter higher earning occupational fields. Surely this would be a more reasonable solution than a trial lawyer bonanza sure to disadvantage all employers and depress job growth to the disadvantage of all employees.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record letters of opposition to S. 3220. I urge my colleagues to oppose this motion.

Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the McCain amendment No. 2107, which would facilitate the importation of prescription drugs from Canada. We are not talking about bus trips of seniors to reputable brick-and-mortar pharmacies right across the border. We are talking Canadian Internet pharmacies, which may not even be in Canada, which pose a significant threat to American patient safety.

This amendment would require the Food and Drug Administration to allow individuals to import prescription drugs into the United States from Canada, notwithstanding any other provision of the Federal Food Drug and Cosmetic Act.

Drugs that supposedly come from Canada can originate in any country in the world, and merely be shipped to the United States from Canada. Canadian law does not prohibit the shipment of drugs from any country into Canada and then into the United States. They do not care.

In 2005, FDA conducted an investigation of drugs that American patients thought they were ordering from Canada. Eighty-five percent of the drugs represented as coming from Canada actually came from 27 other countries. A number of drugs were found to be counterfeit.

A letter from Assistant Deputy Minister of Health, Canada, to the U.S. Surgeon General again said that Canada does not assure that products being sold to U.S. citizens are safe, effective, and of high quality, and does not intend to do so in the future.

The pending amendment would allow importation from Canadian Internet pharmacies. Canadian Internet pharmacies openly acknowledge they obtain most of their drugs from other countries. The specific language of the pending amendment gives rise to the additional safety concerns. For example, it will not prevent the importation of drugs that need special handling, such as refrigerated or photosensitive drugs. It would not prevent the importation of special drugs, such as those inhaled during surgery or administered intravenously.

The pending amendment would not require Canadian wholesalers that would be involved in the importation to be licensed or registered in any way. There would be a list but not a licensing or registration. Do we want anyone, even someone under investigation or with a suspended or revoked license, to be in the business of importing drugs, given the well-known risks?

FDA advises consumers that some imported drugs, including those that bear the name of U.S.-approved products, may, in fact, be counterfeit versions that are unsafe or completely ineffective. You know, they can have all of the ingredients to it, but if it is not put together the right way, it will not even dissolve as it goes through the body, and therefore there would be no benefit from that drug, even though it looked like the real thing, it tasted like the real thing, it went down like the real thing. But if it is not the real thing, it can cause some real trouble with people's health.

This is not a hypothetical concern. Last year Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano testified that counterfeit drugs are a growing problem. Two months ago, FDA testified about the dangers of purchasing counterfeit, unapproved, or diverted prescription drugs on line. My colleague Senator Mikulski has highlighted the growing involvement of organized crime in this area. Prescription drug counterfeiting can be dramatically more profitable than narcotic smuggling. Imported drugs pose additional dangers because their labels may lack important information or warnings.

FDA advises consumers that an imported medication may lack information allowing patients to be promptly and correctly treated for dangerous side effects.

We know imported drugs pose severe risks to American patients. The FDA and the Department of Health and Human Services have repeatedly said they cannot assure the safety of imported drugs. A side-by-side amendment that we used to put on this all the time was that you could import drugs as long as the Secretary of Health and Human Services said it was safe. Well, there hasn't been a Secretary of Health and Human Services who has been willing to sign that drugs imported from anywhere--even Canada--are safe.

FDA's Web site advises consumers that imported drugs--including drugs imported from Canada--may not have been manufactured under quality assurance procedures designed to produce a safe and effective product. That is the FDA Web site.

The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act represents over 100 years of lawmaking to protect the public health. It gives the FDA authority to make sure drugs are properly approved, manufactured, labeled, shipped, handled, and stored, that factories are inspected, and that numerous other protections are in place for American patients. Adopting this amendment would endanger American patients, and I therefore urge my colleagues to oppose it.

There is a lot more that could be said. I have been saying this for years and trying to find a way it could be done. At the present time, the safety of it makes me oppose this particular amendment. They keep revising the amendment. It is still online and everybody knows how things online can be redone. They talked about putting an official seal on each Web site, but I know fourth graders who can duplicate any seal you can put on the Internet. Any list can be changed--and who checks lists, anyway? The problem is not knowing where the drugs come from that go through Canada to the United States. If they are counterfeit, they can sell them for less. The Canadian secretary of health also doesn't want to be the pharmaceutical supplier to the United States. They have a little different system up there. It is a way of driving prices down, which is something we would not stand for in the United States, a mechanism where they have to bid on the drugs. The people who make hard medicine bid against each other, and your doctor might prefer the one that doesn't win the bid. That is how they drive the price down. It is probably something we would not allow in the United States.

I ask my colleagues to oppose the amendment.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, while I agree with much of what the Senator has said, I hope this doesn't encourage other partisan diatribes to come to the floor when we are on a bipartisan bill and trying to solve getting necessary pharmaceuticals to the market as soon as possible. We have a limited time of debate, and we need to stay on the subject. So I hope others are not encouraged to come down to counter anything they may have heard or to make different charges.

We have some time left on Bingaman and some others, but I hope we can move forward on the bill.

I yield the floor to the Chair.

Madam President, I rise today to oppose the amendment addressing the patent settlements for generic claims.

I am sympathetic to the intent of the sponsors of this amendment. I believe that some drug patent settlements may be improper and could be unfairly increasing drug prices for consumers. If that is in fact happening, we should stop the bad settlements and encourage the ones that work.

The problem with this amendment, however, is that its scope is much broader and could lead to unintended consequences that could harm consumers and increase costs. That is why I must oppose it. The amendment uses a machete when a scalpel might solve the problem. Not all patent settlements are abusive. They do not all lead to higher costs. In fact, some settlements can actually expedite generic drugs coming to market. According to

one recent study by RBC Capital Markets, patent settlements helped expedite 24 of the 37 most recent generic drug approvals.

The amendment would allow competing generic manufacturers, in certain cases, to share the 180 days of exclusivity provided under the drug patent law known as Hatch-Waxman. This period of exclusivity was intended to create a market incentive for generic manufacturers to be the first to file a generic drug application with FDA.

The amendment is intended to discourage generic manufacturers from reaching settlements with brand manufacturers to delay generic competition. Unfortunately, it may also have the unintended consequence of discouraging generic competition generally.

The Hatch-Waxman statute, which first established our current system of brand and generic drug approvals, was a careful compromise of competing interests. It struck a balance between encouraging research and development of new cures and promoting competition to lower costs. By all accounts, this law has been a success. Our Nation leads the world in the creation of new drugs and therapies that improve the lives of countless patients across the world. At the same time, generic drugs have promoted competition and lowered costs to American patients. According to one recent estimate, generic drugs have saved the American health care system over $930 billion over the last decade.

This amendment would disrupt that system and reduce the incentives that currently encourage manufacturers to file generic drug applications with the FDA. Allowing competitors to share the 180 days of exclusivity will undermine the market incentives for manufacturers to make such filings. It will also create uncertainty about whether generic manufacturers will ultimately be able to recoup their investments and could mean that there will be fewer generic drugs.

That is why the generic drug manufacturers oppose this amendment. While I genuinely appreciate the desire to prevent abusive settlements, I believe that we must be very careful in disrupting a system that has worked so well for patients and consumers.

We should hold hearings in the HELP Committee to hear from all of the stakeholders who have a role in this system. We need to learn how any proposal will impact the incentives to encourage competition. We also need to learn how any proposed solutions will affect settlements and patent litigation.

This is clearly an important and very complex issue, but this amendment could have serious and detrimental consequences for patients. This is why I would urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I yield 3 minutes to the Senator from Tennessee.

Madam President, I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Ohio.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that when we begin the next vote, Senator Paul, who has 7 minutes left on his item, be given 2 minutes so he may explain his bill in exchange for those 7 minutes.

Madam President, I yield the Senator from Kentucky the time he is already entitled to.

Mr. President, I would oppose this amendment. We do need to combat health care fraud, but this amendment goes too far in several aspects. First and most important, it would discourage any settlement agreements. People would fight it to the death if they are going to lose their exclusivity.

Second, as drafted, the amendment would require companies to forfeit exclusivity anytime there is a civil or criminal liability under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. It is disproportionate. This could be triggered by a misdemeanor. In addition, such liability may not reflect fraud. The amendment would discourage the development of new cures for patients. If manufactures know they could lose exclusivity for even minor infractions, they will not invest the millions of dollars necessary to create new lifesaving therapies for patients.

I ask that the Senate oppose the amendment.

I yield the floor.

To receive accelerated approval, the managers' amendment requires that FDA determine that a surrogate or clinical endpoint is reasonably likely to be predictive of an effect on clinical benefit or on a clinical endpoint that can be measured earlier than irreversible morbidity or mortality as of the time of granting accelerated approval and the standards under section 505(c) of the FDCA or section 351(a) of the Public Health Service Act are met. In meeting such a requirement, it is appropriate for the Secretary to seek data and information to show that the surrogate or clinical endpoint is reasonably likely to predict an effect on irreversible morbidity or mortality or other clinical benefit.

I would just like to reiterate that nothing in these amendments to section 506(b) is intended to alter the FDA's historical practice of utilizing unvalidated surrogates to grant accelerated approval in appropriate cases or its practice of granting traditional approval under section 505(b) based on validated surrogates in appropriate cases.

Madam President, the chairman has said it well. We appreciate the bipartisan spirit in which people have participated, especially in committee for a year and a half, working out amendments, working out ideas, and coming up with a bill that had a good consensus.

I appreciate the action on the Senate floor, the people who were willing to do time limits on their amendments, and how quickly we have gotten through the votes.

I particularly want to thank the chairman for the way he has handled this in committee and the process since then. We had a couple of issues that were outstanding and those got worked out.

I also want to thank the staffs on both sides. Their dedication for a year and a half is what made this happen, and we have some outstanding staff on both sides. Every member of the committee and every committee member's staff helped on this one, and that makes a difference. So I ask everyone to support the bill.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I wish to provide a few comments regarding the introduction of the Bison Legacy Act. Senator Tim Johnson of South Dakota and I are introducing this legislation today because of the significant role the North American Bison has played in the history of our Nation. This bill honors that legacy by designating the bison as the national mammal of the United States.

The bison has been integrally linked to the economic and spiritual lives of many Native American tribes over the centuries. Since our frontier days, the bison has become a symbol of American strength and determination. The Department of Interior has depicted the bison on its official seal for 94 years and the buffalo nickel played an important role in modernizing our currency in the early 20th century. At one point in American history, bison were brought in to graze outside the original Smithsonian building here in Washington, DC.

I must also add that my home State of Wyoming is one of three states that recognize the bison as its official state mammal and has honored an image of a bison on the Wyoming state flag since it was first adopted in 1917. Today, thousands of American bison freely roam Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. The bison is also important to our state's economic well-being with a growing number of ranchers raising bison for consumers all over the world.

This bill is supported by a wide variety of stakeholders. I want to recognize the National Bison Association who represents the interests of the bison ranchers in nearly every single State. Also behind this bill is the Intertribal Bison Council supporting the cultural role the bison has played in Native American history. Finally, there is the Wildlife Conservation Society who wishes to honor the restoration of bison in North America since the 19th century.

I ask my colleagues to help me support and pass this legislation honoring the bison and designating it as our national mammal. The bison has and will continue to be a symbol of America, its people and a way of life.