Floor Statements

Mr. President, first and foremost I want to thank my respective colleagues Senator Kennedy and Senator Domenici for their dedication and leadership on the issues of mental health parity. Your commitment and willingness to compromise has gotten us to the point where we are today--introducing a mental health parity bill that has the potential to be signed into law this year.

For many this is monumental. Parity for mental health benefits was first championed by the late Senator Paul Wellstone. Senator Domenici in memory of our late colleague took over as the lead advocate for this legislation after the passing of Senator Wellstone.

Today is a reflection of your hard work, Senator Domenici, as well as the groundwork that was laid by the late Senator Paul Wellstone.

The advocacy of my good colleagues Senator Wellstone and Domenici helped to get the Mental Health Parity Act of 1996 signed into law. This legislation acted as a catalyst for many states to take action in passing their own mental health parity laws. To date 38 States have passed some sort of mental health parity or benefit law. Many of these laws go much farther than the 1996 Act. However, there is a concern that while the 1996 Act requires parity for annual and lifetime dollar limits on coverage, group plans may impose more restrictive treatment and cost sharing requirements. This is a legit concern. There is a also a valid concern that requiring parity or mental health benefits will drive up the cost of insurance, and result in group plans offering less coverage or even worse dropping coverage for both mental and physical health. The bill introduced today recognizes both of these concerns and addresses them. This in turn breaks the log jam that has halted efforts in the past three Congress's to pass a Mental Health Parity Act that is more widely known as the Paul Wellston Mental Health Equitable Treatment Act.

The Mental Health Parity Act we are introducing today is a compromise between the proponents and those who opposed the Paul Wellstone Mental Health Equitable Treatment Act. It is a result of two years of discussion and compromise between the business and insurer industry and the mental health community. I want to thank both of you for coming together in good faith to find a middle ground on an issue has polarized stakeholders. Your support and input has been critical to making this process work. Your willingness to work together to accommodate each others concerns, makes it possible for a mental health parity law to be enacted this Congress.

A vital component of the Mental Health Parity Act introduced today recognizes the importance and need for treating mental health equal to physical health, without unfairly mandating group health plans offer mental health coverage. The legislation applies only to those group health plans that already offer physical and surgical benefits as well as mental health benefits. It does not mandate what types of mental health benefits must receive parity, but leaves that to be defined under the terms of the plan or coverage or as defined under State law. What this legislation does do, is require a plan to provide financial requirements and treatment limitations applied to mental health benefits equal to the financial requirements and treatment limitations applied to medical and surgical benefits that the plan covers. For example, deductibles, co-payments, coinsurance, out of pocket expenses, frequency of treatment, number of visits and days of coverage will now be treated equally for mental health and physical health. To allow for health plans to adequately manage the new parity requirement mechanisms are authorized to allow for medical management tools to be used by health plans. Provisions of this law will preempt provisions of State law that differ. But again, this bill would not preempt State laws mandating that mental health benefits be covered. Furthermore, States that elect to adopt the Federal standards would not be subject to preemption.

In addition, the legislation recognizes the stress many small business employers are under to provide health care to their employees, thus, this bill does exempts small employers. Any employer with 50 or less employees will not be affected by the Federal law, but must still comply with its State law or regulation.

Another critical component of this compromised legislation is a cost exemption. Under the provision, an employer may elect to continue to offer mental health parity if a group plan results in an increase of 2 percent in the case of the first plan year and 1 percent in the case of each subsequent plan year.

The compromises made in this legislation are of great importance to making sure this legislation will not burden employers struggling with health care costs, while not compromising the significance or effect this legislation will have in ensuring individuals have better access to critical mental health services. Approximately 1 in 5 Americans ages 18 and older, have a mental disorder that can be diagnosed in a given year according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration. However, their ability to receive treatment may be hindered due to cost issues or the stigma attached to mental illness. This legislation will help to address both by sending the message that mental health is just as important as physical health, and needs to be treated with the same amount of importance. This bill signals to an individual diagnosed with schizophrenia that his or her illness is as real as an individual diagnosed with diabetes and that they should not have to pay more for the mental illness than the physical. This legislation will help an employee covered by an affected plan who has a child with bipolar disorder better access to the treatment that child needs. In the past 20 years new technologies and treatments have advanced our understanding and ability to treat a mental illness. We now know with the right diagnoses, support, treatment and case management a person with mental illness can be a contributing member of society. It is time to update our laws to reflect this.

While introduction today is a huge step forward for a Mental Health Parity law, much more needs to be done to secure its passage. The legislation, as it is currently crafted, still must pass through the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee as early as Wednesday, the full Senate and then the House. At this point, a process has been created that allows for open and honest discussion. I encourage my colleagues and the stakeholders to continue this process and to remain together throughout each step of the way. By working together, instead of against each other, we can achieve passage of this legislation.

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

Madam President, I rise today to speak in support of final passage of H.R. 2, as amended. I think it is a very exciting time. I appreciate the wise direction this body has decided upon with regard to the minimum wage. Yesterday, 88 Members of the Senate correctly concluded that raising the minimum wage, without providing relief for small business that must pay for that increase, is simply not an option. Rather the option we did strongly decide on included tax benefits to help offset the impact on small business.

I wish to reiterate my hope that our colleagues in the House will not derail this bipartisan approach to offering real support and relief to the middle class and to the minimum wage earner. The minimum wage increase will shortly be in their hands. I hope they will be judicious and perhaps even forgo some of their jurisdictional concerns in order to see that this is done for the people of America.

The Senate's reasonable approach recognizes that small businesses have been the steady engine of our growing economy and that they have been a source of new job creation, and a source of job training. People with no skills often go to work at minimum wage and get the training they need to advance to higher levels of pay and to other more skilled jobs. That is all training which is done for free by small business.

The Senate's approach also recognizes that small businesses are middle-class families, too. I am proud that this body has chosen a path which attempts to preserve this segment of the economy, which employs so many working men and women. The Senate has acknowledged the simple fact that a raise in the minimum wage is of no benefit to a worker who doesn't have a job or a job seeker who doesn't have a prospect.

As this Congress moves forward, we will need to confront a range of issues facing working families: the rising cost of health insurance and the availability of such insurance, the necessity and costs of education and job training, and the desire to achieve an appropriate balance between work and family life. The lessons we have learned in this debate should not be forgotten as we approach new and equally complex issues.

In addressing minimum wage, we have rejected the notion that it will be a clean bill. Ultimately, we did so because it is not a clean issue, it is a very complicated issue, and around here, clean more often than not means ``do it my way'' and doesn't respect the democratic process of the Senate and allow the Senate to work its will.

There were claims that no Democrats offered amendments to the bill. That is false. The chairman of the Committee on Small Business, Senator John Kerry, offered two amendments, and the Senator from Wisconsin, Mr. Feingold, offered an amendment on ``Buy American'' standards. In fact, it is my understanding that part of the delay we are experiencing on final passage is that a Democrat was trying to figure out a way to get a vote for a third cloture and a Republican is also trying to do something very similar. While I believe these have now been resolved, that is kind of what has been holding us up here in waiting for a final vote. Throughout this debate, Members on both sides of the aisle were not aiming to delay passage but were offering amendments to improve the bill.

I remember when I first went into the Wyoming Legislature and presented my first bill, I thought it was a pretty simple bill. It only had three sentences in it. It dealt with unemployment insurance for business owners. Well, this little, simple, three-sentence bill, when it went to committee, got

two amendments, and when it went to the floor, it got three more amendments. When it went to the Senate, it made it out of committee without any additional amendments but had two more added on the floor. However, what I realized through the process was we had all of these different people from different backgrounds looking at the same problem from different perspectives, and every one of those amendments improved the bill. They looked at the bill and saw things that I hadn't seen.

Afterwards I hoped that in the future, as I went through the process of legislating, I would see those things and see bills from other people's perspective. But that is the beauty of the system we have here--100 Senators take a look at a bill and 435 people in the House take a look at a bill and that should result in some changes. No bill I have ever seen winds up the same as it started.

Of course, sometimes the biggest animosity around here is between the House and the Senate, and that is true in State legislatures, too. I finally figured out the reason for that is we here in the Senate work on a bill, we make it perfect, we send it over there, and they decide something else has to be done to it. That creates animosity. And they do bills and send them here, and we decide there ought to be changes to them, and that creates animosity here. Fortunately, we have a conference committee process that is supposed to get the two sides together to work out the differences. That also works, although it takes more time. So we are not the fastest in governing, but I think we are the most inclusive in governing. I think this bill has gone through a very similar process.

I am pleased we have proven to the American people that we can indeed work together and provide solutions to complex and difficult problems. The Senate chose the right course of coupling an increased minimum wage with provisions that will assist small business employers who will face the greatest difficulties in paying such increased costs. I hope we do not forget the wisdom of this approach as we address other workplace, economic, and social issues.

It has been mentioned that 10 years ago when the last minimum wage raise was done, that was the first time there were things put on the bill to offset the impact on small businesses. I was running for office and in Washington at the time that bill was being conferenced and finally debated, and I was pleased to see the former Senator from Wyoming, Mr. Simpson, was the chair on the conference committee, along with Senator Kennedy. The two of them worked out a package that had a raise in the minimum wage and some offsetting things for small business. When the bill was signed in the Rose Garden, then-President Clinton commented on what a great compromise it was that it would drive our economy. Senator Kennedy received a lot of the compliments for that, as he will this time. Senator Baucus and Senator Grassley will be complimented as well.

I can't emphasize enough how pleased I am that the two of them worked together to put this tax package together. It is not an easy job. In fact, I think tax provisions are some of the most difficult and complex matters there are to work on. The Senator from Montana, Mr. Baucus, and the Senator from Iowa, Mr. Grassley, have worked together on most of the Finance Committee issues. I have noticed through the years that they are most successful when they work together.

I tried to build on that knowledge when I became the chairman of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. It worked well for us for the last 2 years, to work in a very bipartisan way. Almost every issue the Committee had came through this body unanimously. Oh, we had the pension bill, which was a 980-page bill and very complicated and very difficult. And that one wasn't unanimous; it was only 98 to 2. I think my colleagues can see my point on this--that when we work together, we have amazing things happen in fairly short order. That bill took an hour of debate with two amendments and a final vote, and that was all agreed to before it was even brought to the floor. So when we work together, there can be good things, such as the bill we have right now.

The Senate has chosen the right course of coupling an increased wage with provisions that will assist those small business employers who will face the greatest difficulty in paying those increased costs. I hope we don't forget the wisdom of that approach, as I mentioned before. I am also heartened that in the course of this debate, we have begun to recognize what I know from my own life to be true; that is, that working families are not only those who are employed by businesses, they are also those who own the businesses.

I know from personal experience that all small businesses have two families--their own and the people who work for them. I also know that small business owners feel the pressure of rising costs, the dilemma of difficult options, and the uncomfortable squeeze of modern life in both of their families, as many workers do on their own. And I know that the smaller the business, the more likely it is that the employees and the employers recognize each other's difficulties and how interdependent and sometimes fragile their businesses and their jobs actually are. I think there is a greater tendency for them to work together under those circumstances.

America has heard a lot of partisan rhetoric during the course of this debate, such as the talk of the so-called war on the middle class and the claim of leaving people out. I would like to note for the record that such rhetoric got us nowhere. There wasn't an attempt to leave anybody out. The middle class is actually made up of those small businessmen who we are trying to help, and in some cases the employees who are working for them.

We didn't try to start a war over statistics, although we were tempted. I do have to mention there were some charts out here to show that wages used to be pretty close together, and the chart had five quintiles. I am more used to quartiles than quintiles, but this had five quintiles. So each 20 percent of the wage capability of the population was shown on the chart, and it showed that from 1943 until 1980, the numbers were pretty close together. Then we saw another chart, and it had this bar on the end which extended far beyond any of the quintiles. I paid a little bit of attention to that chart. It didn't just have quintiles on it; it had quintiles, plus one. If you look at the quintiles, they were almost the same today as they were at the time of the 1943 chart. However this big bar graph at the end--made it look so skewed that it made people look really rich and I guess by association holding the rest of the people down.

Well, instead of just having quintiles on there, the chart had quintiles plus the top 1 percent earners in the United States. I am pretty sure that if you go back to 1943 through whatever date you want and you take the top 1 percent earners in the United States, you will find that they earn drastically more than even the highest quintile. So the chart doesn't treat the wage data equally. I suspect that Bill Gates himself skewed that chart pretty badly. The top 1 percent always makes a lot more money than everybody else and I think that is pretty much the case through the history of the United States. So if we are going to talk about quintiles, we need to talk about the quintiles equally.

That is just one example of how we could have spent more time concentrating on the charts and arguing back and forth. But our point wasn't whether to increase the minimum wage; our point was whether we could do it and keep the economy moving by eliminating some of the impact of the increase on the small businesses that employ those minimum wage workers.

We are ending the consideration of this issue basically where it began and for many of us where we have been for the last few years-- with the majority of the Senate supporting a minimum wage increase as long as there are provisions to soften the impact of that increase on the small businesses which create minimum wage jobs. Every time I have had to debate this, I have had a bill that had an increase in the minimum wage and it also had some amendments that offset the impact. Now, I didn't take the Finance Committee offsets; I took some other offsets to do it.

One of the things I have noticed around here is that if you ever do an amendment on a bill like this, it will

be considered a poison pill, and the second time you try to do that bill, even if you have changed the wording, the arguments will be exactly the same as before you changed the wording. So we sometimes get locked into the concept and the history of what has gone on around here.

We could have had this increase done earlier had there been some willingness to offset it with a package, as was done the last time the minimum wage was increased and as I suspect will happen every time in the future that the minimum wage is increased because a higher wage is of no use when the job itself is gone.

The Senate chose to look at the whole picture this time around. The minimum wage could have been raised years ago had some on the other side been willing to accept the important role that working families and small businesses--those are a lot of the same people--play in providing employment in this country. Some people like to talk about two Americas. What the Senate is preparing to do today recognizes that there is one America. We are all in this together, and we don't need to do great injury to one group of Americans just to aid another. That kind of partisan rhetoric isn't accurate, and it is aimed at spreading a very skewed view of America. It is aimed to divide rather than unite Americans around the simple solution.

Mandating the wage increase without proper relief to the working families who employee many of America's low-skilled workers is an assault on the middle class. Let's get our facts straight. Passing the Senate's bipartisan minimum wage and small business relief package is good for low-skilled workers and it is good for the middle class working families of America.

It is time we did this. I hope we will have the vote soon. I look forward to the speeches we can do afterwards, thanking all of the people that have made this possible. I am very confident that is exactly what is going to happen.

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

Madam President, I would like to thank both the leaders for their kind words. I thank them on behalf of both Senator Kennedy and myself. We do have a philosophy of working together, and it does work. I am pleased we are at this point today. The bill the Senate has crafted is the right approach to take on this issue. The approach is combining an increase in the minimum wage with provisions that will assist those small business employers who face the greatest difficulties in paying such increased costs. The Senate has not forgotten that while we may be able to mandate a wage, we cannot mandate the existence of a job. I hope our colleagues in the House will not forget that either.

In legislating, it is often important to find a third way. The third way is represented by the substitute amendment that was the product of extensive bipartisan cooperation. Democrats and Republicans working together acknowledged the fact that mandated cost increases can have negative economic effects, and together we developed a means of addressing those concerns in the form of the bipartisan substitute amendment. It will affect millions of Americans. I am glad we are at this point.

I would like to thank all of the staffs who have been involved in this issue, doing research and getting information that will help us to be as sure as we can be that we have made the right decisions on the best information possible.

From my staff, that includes my staff director, Katherine McGuire, and Brian Hayes, Kyle Hicks, Ilyse Schuman, Amy Shank, Shana Christrup, Andrew Patzman, Randi Reid, Tara Ord, Greg Dean, Craig Orfield, and Michael Mahaffey. That is a lot of people, but it takes a lot of people to do something like the tax package and the bill we have before us, plus all of the other things that were considered during the process.

From the Republican leader's office, I thank Mike Solon, Malloy McDaniel, and Rohit Kumar. I also thank Ed Egee with Senator Isakson. From the Finance committee, I thank Russ Sullivan and Mark Prater; and from the Republican whip's office, Manny Rossman and John O'Neill.

But I would be very remiss if I did not thank those in Senator Kennedy's office and his staff: Michael Myers, Holly Fechner, Portia Wu, Missy Rohrbach, and Lauren McGarity. They have

done just an outstanding job of keeping us on track and also searching through all of the different things we have had to consider, even those that nobody ever saw discussed here on the Senate floor. It was tireless work, which often goes on late into the nights, well beyond the time Senators are around here--of course, I do not want to give you the impression that Senators are necessarily going home. Sometimes they are working late as well, just in a different building. We get to spend our days here and our nights in our office building. But without the help of all of those people, this bill would not be at the point it is now. We really appreciate their work.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum, with the time equally divided.

Thank you.

Madam President, I yield back.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce a very important bill, one that my colleague Senator Kennedy and I have been working on for some time.

For decades, the United States has been the standard bearer in bringing new drugs and medications to the world market. Like it or not, the FDA

has a very important role in all of our daily lives. The FDA is involved in ensuring the safety of the meals we are eating today, the pills we are taking, and even the cell phones in our pockets and briefcases. The FDA's role in our health and in our economy is broad.

Nearly half of all Americans take a prescription drug daily. Anyone who prescribes, provides or takes a prescription drug could benefit from enhanced safety and risk communication about these life-saving products. Over the last few years, a spate of safety issues, such as the withdrawal of the arthritis drug Vioxx and the labeling of antidepressants for suicidality in adolescents, has caused a crisis of public confidence in the FDA. I believe the American people are losing confidence in the FDA and its ability to evaluate and weigh the benefits and risks of prescription drugs. In addition, staff at the agency feel like they are under heavy fire, with little or no protection from the prevailing political winds, due to the lack of a confirmed Commissioner of Food and Drugs for most of the last six years. I believe that only Congress can restore the public's confidence in FDA and morale at the agency.

In 2005, the HELP Committee held two hearings on the issue of drug safety. We received over 50 recommendations from witnesses at those hearings. At that time, Senator Kennedy and I pledged to develop a comprehensive response to the drug safety issues raised. Last August, we introduced the Enhancing Drug Safety and Innovation Act. That bill, S. 3807, was the product of working across party lines, and created a structured framework for resolving safety concerns. Careful and comprehensive pre-approval planning of how drugmakers and FDA will identify, assess and manage serious risks post-approval is a better way to obtain safety information without compromising patient access.

In September 2006, the Institute of Medicine released its report titled ``The Future of Drug Safety: Promoting and Protecting the Health of the Public.'' The recommendations in this report had much in common with S. 3807. The Senate HELP Committee held a hearing in November 2006 at which representatives of the IOM, a physician and drug safety expert, patient groups, a consumer group, and a pharmaceutical company testified about the IOM report, the bill, and the relationship between them. In addition, other stakeholder groups made additional comments on the bill. Yesterday, FDA released their response to the IOM report. Newly confirmed Commissioner Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach has put forward a number of promising ideas to improve the internal processes and culture at FDA. His leadership is outstanding and his ideas are helpful, but internal change is not enough to alter public perception. FDA needs new drug safety authorities, and this bill provides those authorities.

While the bill we are introducing today reflects numerous refinements to clarify ambiguities or to address issues that S. 3807 had not addressed, we realize that there are thoughtful differences of opinion and ideas on how best to move forward with drug safety. I welcome any and all suggestions on improving this bill, and I look forward to working with my colleagues and other stakeholders to understand those concerns more fully and incorporate any necessary changes in the bill which will be considered in front of the HELP Committee in the next few weeks. I hope that all of my colleagues will take another look at this legislation and its goals and work with me to change the status quo. Everyone agrees: We must do more for drug safety.

Under the Enhancing Drug Safety and Innovation Act, FDA would begin to approve drugs and biologics, and new indications for these products, with risk evaluation and mitigation strategies (REMS). The REMS is designed to be an integrated, flexible mechanism to acquire and adapt to new safety information about a drug. The sponsor and FDA will assess and review an approved REMS at least annually for the first three years, as well as in applications for a new indication, when the sponsor suggests changes, or when FDA requests a review based on new safety information.

The development of tools to evaluate medical products has not kept pace with discoveries in basic science. New tools are needed to better predict safety and efficacy, which in turn would increase the speed and efficiency of applied biomedical research. The Enhancing Drug Safety and Innovation Act would spur innovation by establishing a new public- private partnership between the FDA, industry and academia to advance the Critical Path Initiative and improve the sciences of developing, manufacturing, and evaluating the safety and effectiveness of drugs, devices, biologics and diagnostics.

The Enhancing Drug Safety and Innovation Act also establishes a central clearinghouse for information about clinical trials and their results to help patients, providers and researchers learn new information and make more informed health care decisions.

Finally, the Enhancing Drug Safety and Innovation Act would make improvements to FDA's process for screening advisory committee members for financial conflicts of interest. FDA relies on its 30 advisory committees to provide independent expert advice, lend credibility to the product review process, and inform consumers of trends in product development. The bill would clarify and streamline FDA's processes for evaluating candidates for service on an advisory committee, and address the key challenge of identifying a sufficient number of people with the necessary expertise and the fewest potential conflicts of interest to serve on advisory committees.

I want to thank the dozens of stakeholders, including the Food and Drug Administration, patient and consumer groups, industry associations, individual companies, and scientific experts who have taken the time and effort to give us their comments and input on the bill. Their assistance has been invaluable, and I look forward to continuing to work with them as we go through this legislative process.

Senator Kennedy and I believe that this bipartisan effort will bring more consistency, transparency, and accountability to the process of assuring a drug's safety after it is approved. The 110th Congress will hold an exceptionally full agenda with respect to the FDA. In addition to updating the FDA's authorities as we are proposing today, Congress must renew the drug and device user fee programs, as well as the Best Pharmaceuticals for Children and Pediatric Research Equity Acts. The introduction of this bill today is the beginning, not the end, of the process, and I look forward to working with my colleagues to advance these important pieces of legislation.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce a very important bill, one that my colleague Senator Kennedy and I have been working on for some time.

For decades, the United States has been the standard bearer in bringing new drugs and medications to the world market. Like it or not, the FDA

has a very important role in all of our daily lives. The FDA is involved in ensuring the safety of the meals we are eating today, the pills we are taking, and even the cell phones in our pockets and briefcases. The FDA's role in our health and in our economy is broad.

Nearly half of all Americans take a prescription drug daily. Anyone who prescribes, provides or takes a prescription drug could benefit from enhanced safety and risk communication about these life-saving products. Over the last few years, a spate of safety issues, such as the withdrawal of the arthritis drug Vioxx and the labeling of antidepressants for suicidality in adolescents, has caused a crisis of public confidence in the FDA. I believe the American people are losing confidence in the FDA and its ability to evaluate and weigh the benefits and risks of prescription drugs. In addition, staff at the agency feel like they are under heavy fire, with little or no protection from the prevailing political winds, due to the lack of a confirmed Commissioner of Food and Drugs for most of the last six years. I believe that only Congress can restore the public's confidence in FDA and morale at the agency.

In 2005, the HELP Committee held two hearings on the issue of drug safety. We received over 50 recommendations from witnesses at those hearings. At that time, Senator Kennedy and I pledged to develop a comprehensive response to the drug safety issues raised. Last August, we introduced the Enhancing Drug Safety and Innovation Act. That bill, S. 3807, was the product of working across party lines, and created a structured framework for resolving safety concerns. Careful and comprehensive pre-approval planning of how drugmakers and FDA will identify, assess and manage serious risks post-approval is a better way to obtain safety information without compromising patient access.

In September 2006, the Institute of Medicine released its report titled ``The Future of Drug Safety: Promoting and Protecting the Health of the Public.'' The recommendations in this report had much in common with S. 3807. The Senate HELP Committee held a hearing in November 2006 at which representatives of the IOM, a physician and drug safety expert, patient groups, a consumer group, and a pharmaceutical company testified about the IOM report, the bill, and the relationship between them. In addition, other stakeholder groups made additional comments on the bill. Yesterday, FDA released their response to the IOM report. Newly confirmed Commissioner Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach has put forward a number of promising ideas to improve the internal processes and culture at FDA. His leadership is outstanding and his ideas are helpful, but internal change is not enough to alter public perception. FDA needs new drug safety authorities, and this bill provides those authorities.

While the bill we are introducing today reflects numerous refinements to clarify ambiguities or to address issues that S. 3807 had not addressed, we realize that there are thoughtful differences of opinion and ideas on how best to move forward with drug safety. I welcome any and all suggestions on improving this bill, and I look forward to working with my colleagues and other stakeholders to understand those concerns more fully and incorporate any necessary changes in the bill which will be considered in front of the HELP Committee in the next few weeks. I hope that all of my colleagues will take another look at this legislation and its goals and work with me to change the status quo. Everyone agrees: We must do more for drug safety.

Under the Enhancing Drug Safety and Innovation Act, FDA would begin to approve drugs and biologics, and new indications for these products, with risk evaluation and mitigation strategies (REMS). The REMS is designed to be an integrated, flexible mechanism to acquire and adapt to new safety information about a drug. The sponsor and FDA will assess and review an approved REMS at least annually for the first three years, as well as in applications for a new indication, when the sponsor suggests changes, or when FDA requests a review based on new safety information.

The development of tools to evaluate medical products has not kept pace with discoveries in basic science. New tools are needed to better predict safety and efficacy, which in turn would increase the speed and efficiency of applied biomedical research. The Enhancing Drug Safety and Innovation Act would spur innovation by establishing a new public- private partnership between the FDA, industry and academia to advance the Critical Path Initiative and improve the sciences of developing, manufacturing, and evaluating the safety and effectiveness of drugs, devices, biologics and diagnostics.

The Enhancing Drug Safety and Innovation Act also establishes a central clearinghouse for information about clinical trials and their results to help patients, providers and researchers learn new information and make more informed health care decisions.

Finally, the Enhancing Drug Safety and Innovation Act would make improvements to FDA's process for screening advisory committee members for financial conflicts of interest. FDA relies on its 30 advisory committees to provide independent expert advice, lend credibility to the product review process, and inform consumers of trends in product development. The bill would clarify and streamline FDA's processes for evaluating candidates for service on an advisory committee, and address the key challenge of identifying a sufficient number of people with the necessary expertise and the fewest potential conflicts of interest to serve on advisory committees.

I want to thank the dozens of stakeholders, including the Food and Drug Administration, patient and consumer groups, industry associations, individual companies, and scientific experts who have taken the time and effort to give us their comments and input on the bill. Their assistance has been invaluable, and I look forward to continuing to work with them as we go through this legislative process.

Senator Kennedy and I believe that this bipartisan effort will bring more consistency, transparency, and accountability to the process of assuring a drug's safety after it is approved. The 110th Congress will hold an exceptionally full agenda with respect to the FDA. In addition to updating the FDA's authorities as we are proposing today, Congress must renew the drug and device user fee programs, as well as the Best Pharmaceuticals for Children and Pediatric Research Equity Acts. The introduction of this bill today is the beginning, not the end, of the process, and I look forward to working with my colleagues to advance these important pieces of legislation.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Cloture Motion

Mr. President, I rise today to speak in support of cloture on the

underlying bill. I appreciate the wise direction that this body has decided upon with regard to the minimum wage. We have correctly concluded that raising the minimum wage without providing relief for the small businesses that must pay for that increase is simply not an option. I hope this is an approach that our colleagues in the House will not derail. This approach recognizes that small businesses have been the steady engine of our growing economy and they have been the source of new job creation. It, also, recognizes that small businesses in every sense of the phrase are middle class families too.

I am proud the body has chosen a path which attempts to preserve this segment of the economy which employs so many working men and women and trains them. The Senate has recognized the simple fact that a raise in the minimum wage is of no benefit to a worker without a job or a job seeker without a prospect.

As this Congress moves forward, we will need to confront a range of issues facing working families. Lessons in this debate should not be forgotten as we approach complex issues. Yesterday, we were referencing the so-called war on the middle class. That is partisan rhetoric which was never accurate and is now simply divisive. Who is more middle class than America's small business men and women? Tax relief to the middle- class small business owners who must pay the cost of this wage increase mandate is no attack on the middle class. An attack would be passing the bill without such tax relief.

I urge my colleagues to support cloture, and I yield the floor.

Mr. President, we have a process that is set up and a vote that is called for, and I think we ought to follow that process. I think we have made a lot of progress, and as long as we continue to have progress in a bipartisan way, this will make it through the process. It has been something everybody pledged themselves to early, and I hope we haven't broken that pledge. I object.

Mr. President, I rise today to speak in support of the motion to invoke cloture on the Baucus substitute to H.R. 2. At about the noon hour today, we will be voting to end the debate on the minimum wage bill. Regardless of how that vote turns out, I believe the direction this body has decided upon with regard to minimum wage is clear. And I appreciate it. The direction the Senate has taken is that raising the minimum wage without providing relief for small businesses would be wrong. And now we have a cloture vote on a bill that includes relief for small businesses, which will soften the impact that the minimum wage increase will have on small businesses.

We are trying to keep working families working. The people who run these small businesses are working families, too. They are taking a lot of risk and providing a lot of jobs. In fact, they are the engine that drives the United States. The big companies would like us to think they are. But small businesses create a lot of jobs.

Now, primarily, the jobs we are talking about are for people just entering the labor market, the ones often who dropped out of school, who have very low employment skills. Those small businesses teach them some skills and move them on up to the path of employment. They are a huge part of the job training system in this country and they rarely get any credit for job training.

We have had debate over the last week--and it has just been one week. I would like to point out that on Monday we did not have any votes. On Tuesday we were only allowed two votes. Through the whole week we only had 11 votes. We were not allowed any votes after Thursday, which included all of Friday and all of yesterday. That is really not an open process. That is only three days of voting on amendments.

When we began this session, we talked about having an open process, a very bipartisan process of doing things. I am not sure we got the message from the last election, which was that the American people want us to do these things, but they want us to do them in a bipartisan way. I am hearing some rhetoric on the Senate floor about the Republicans want to do this; and the Democrats want to do that.

What we need to talk about is what we need to do for America. We need to work together on these things. Right now we have a proposal for cloture that includes what both sides have been talking about, that takes care of the minimum wage worker and takes care of the businesses that employ them and gives them the training.

We in the Senate recognize that small businesses have been the steady engine for growing the economy and that they have been the source of new job creation. America's working families rely on small businesses, and small businesses rely on working families.

So I am proud this body has chosen a path that attempts to preserve this segment of the economy which employs so many working men and women. The Senate has recognized that our economy is interdependent. One simply cannot claim credit to be helping workers at the same time they are hurting the businesses that employ them. Recognition of this simple fact is the reason the bill before this body couples a raise in the minimum wage with relief to those businesses and working families that will face the most difficulty in meeting that mandate.

This body has also recognized the even simpler fact that raising the minimum wage is of no benefit to a worker without a job or a job seeker without a prospect.

I take this occasion to urge that these simple, real world truths be recognized by our colleagues in the other Chamber. I have gone through this process before on a number of bills and tried to figure out how it happens. A lot of time there is more animosity between the two Houses than there is between the two parties that serve in those Houses.

I know making any change to the minimum wage bill they sent over will upset them on that end, just as any change they make to a bill on their end upsets us. We send them perfect bills and they have to fiddle with it, and they send us perfect bills and we fiddle with it. There is some animosity between the two Chambers. And then we have to get into the rules as well. All tax measures have to start in the House. That is fine as long as they start them. But there has to be a way to get the process moving.

This bill has a way to get that process moving. It is more cumbersome than it probably ought to be, but I think with cooperation it will work, and I think the House will join us in this effort. It isn't as easy as just taking a small piece of something that affects the economy and doing it in isolation. When we start going to the broader economy, it gets more complicated.

That is why our forefathers designed this great system of cumbersome Government. We have 100 people with 100

views--I don't know, maybe we have 100 people with 200 views, and the House has 435 people with at least an equal number of views. The beauty of our system is that it has to get through this maze of all of these people with different backgrounds and different ideas and different ways of seeing the world, which results in amendments which result usually in things getting better.

It is often complicated, and that slows the process down. That is something we have to work through, but I think any mechanism we have that speeds things up usually results in us winding up with legislation we have to go back and correct. It is a tough system, a long system, but it works.

Unquestionably, as this Congress moves forward, we will need to confront a range of issues facing working families. We have to face the rising cost of health insurance and the availability of that insurance, the necessity and costs of education and job training, and the desire to achieve an appropriate balance between work and family life.

These are important issues, and the way this body has determined to address the minimum wage should give us an outline as to the way such other issues could be approached as well. We need to listen to each other and include those issues that make a difference without upsetting the whole world. It can be done. It has been done.

Senator Grassley and Senator Baucus work together on legislation. They are the ones who put together this tax package. They said: No, this isn't exactly what I like or you like, but it is something we can like together, and it has a chance of passing this body.

I have been pleased that there hasn't been a rage against the tax package they put together, just as there hasn't been a rage against raising the minimum wage. We appear to have two points on which there is agreement. I think that will be reflected later in today's vote, too.

There are other issues. Those other issues have been reflected in amendments from our side. There have been a few, contrary to what has been said on the floor, amendments from the other side as well. When we were in the majority, we didn't put in nearly as many amendments on bills as the Democrats did, and I recognize why offering amendments is important. It is important because we have issues we think are important, and the only chance you have to have them passed on the floor is to put them in a bill as an amendment, if you are in the minority.

So on our side, we will likely offer more amendments to the bills that come up this year than those who got to draft the bill to begin with. They are ideas we want to have considered. We hope they will be considered in a reasonable way and in a reasonable amount of time.

I will be emphasizing to our side the need to keep those reasonable and to keep them within a reasonable timeframe. If we do that, we can progress through a lot of issues, such as the ones I mentioned.

The rising cost and availability of health insurance in this country is at a crisis and we have to do something about it. There are a number of plans that are floating out there, and all of them--all of them-- have some good points to them. None of them is perfect. That bill will have to go through the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. It probably will. There are ways it can be written, I suppose, where it can be sent through the Judiciary Committee or sent through the Finance Committee. But usually that bill goes through the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

The chairman of the committee and I as ranking member of that committee--and it doesn't matter what session of Congress we are talking about or what decade of Congress you are talking about--the chairman and the ranking member in that committee often have a huge disparity of views on how to solve the health, education, labor, and pensions issues.

We adopted 2 years ago a little rule that I found to be very useful when I was in the Wyoming legislature, and that is the 80-20 rule. That is, people agree on 80 percent of the issues and 80 percent of any issue. This isn't just a philosophy for Congress, this is a philosophy for one's daily life. If you are working with other people, you will probably find you will agree on 80 percent of whatever you are talking about. On any particular issue, you usually agree on 80 percent of that issue. If you concentrate on the 80 percent of agreement, there are a lot of possibilities for getting things done. If you concentrate on the 20 percent on which you don't agree, there is very little likelihood that you are going to progress on whatever it is you are talking about.

That is something we have instituted in this committee, and I think that rule has moved it from the most contentious committee to the most productive committee. I don't know if people noticed during the last session of Congress, there were 35 bills brought out of that committee. We got 25 of them considered in the Senate and even helped the House to get 2 of theirs through. So we helped to get 27 bills signed by the President. That is at least 20 more than usual for any committee and probably about 24 more than usual for any committee.

There are disadvantages to that. The press likes a good fight, and the press is more than willing to report on a good fight. We didn't have fights on those 27 bills that were signed. The most contentious one was the pension bill. The pension bill was 980 pages. It covers how to save people's pensions, how to make sure when they retire they will get what they have been promised, what they deserve, what they want, something that will give them quality of life in retirement. We made the most significant change in pension law in 30 years.

I remember that we had an agreement before we ever brought it to the floor that there would be 1 hour of debate, two amendments, and the final vote. I went to the Parliamentarian at that time and explained what we were doing and made sure it was getting written up properly so we could do that the moment we began the debate.

I asked: When is the last time that complicated of a bill had that kind of an agreement?

The words I heard back were: Not in my lifetime.

So it is possible to take difficult bills and arrive at agreement that will move the people's business forward.

The unfortunate thing for the people of America is that when they are watching us on this floor, what they usually get to see is the 20 percent with which we disagree, the 20 percent we are not going to give in on, the 20 percent that defines us.

I will be urging my side, and I have said it several times, there are issues that define us, but every issue is not an issue that defines us. We will probably be trying to figure out a way on every bill to make it a defining bill. With the amendments we have done on this bill, there has been some defining. But we have an opportunity today--I think it is going to happen at 12:15 p.m.--to invoke cloture on the package that includes what was asked for by this side and delivered by the other side.

That is pretty landmark. That is pretty good. We do have the other business that needs to get done. It doesn't have to be done on this bill. Maybe in the meantime there are some issues we can work on--the issues we talked about in some of these amendments--where we can reach that 80 percent agreement and we can move on with those issues.

In addressing the minimum wage, we have rejected the notion that it will be a clean bill. Ultimately, we did so because it is not a clean issue. By that, I mean neither the real world nor questions of national economics nor social policy are as simple as we would like them to be. Quite the contrary. They are complex and they are interrelated. While pretending that economic or social issues are simple, it often makes for great rhetoric here, and it makes for great politics, but it seldom makes responsible policy. Around here, clean more often than not simply means ``do it my way'' and does not respect the democratic process and allow the Senate to work its will.

I am pleased we rejected such false simplicity and chose the course of coupling an increased wage with provisions that will assist these small business employers who will be facing the greatest difficulties in paying these increased costs.

I hope we do not forget the wisdom of this approach as we address other workplace, economic, and social issues.

None of these are simple and none, no matter how laudable the end, are without costs or free from the danger of unintended consequences where, in an effort to do some good, we wind up causing great harm.

I am also heartened that in the course of this debate, this body has begun to recognize what I know from my life to be true. Working families are not only those who are employed by businesses, they are also those who own the businesses.

I have noted many times that I was a small business owner, that my wife and I operated mom-and-pop shoe stores in Wyoming and Montana. My story is not unique, particularly in today's economy. I know all small business owners have two families: their own and the families of those who work for them. I also know that business owners feel the pressure of rising costs, the dilemma of difficult options, and the uncomfortable squeeze of modern life in both of their families as much as many workers do on their own.

One will find that small business people are more connected to their workers. They work with them shoulder to shoulder on a daily basis. They know what is happening in their lives. I believe we have begun to realize this reality in the way we approach the minimum wage legislation. I do not think we should lose sight of it as it moves through this Congress.

I also note that while I am pleased with the overall approach this body adopted, I am somewhat disappointed that it was not as complete as it could have been. In the event cloture is invoked, we would not have addressed a range of issues that were offered as early amendments and should have been considered and voted on. In this respect, I mention again those I mentioned late last week: Senator Gregg's amendment on employee option time, something we allow Federal sector employees to do; Senator DeMint's amendment dealing with the same matter, as well as Senator Burr's amendment on health insurance costs; and Senator Vitter's amendment that would have provided measured monetary relief for small businesses that make inadvertent paperwork errors in providing Government-required information--first-time basis, corrected, no impact to the employee.

All of these were well reasoned, would have provided benefits in addition to or in counterbalance to a minimum wage hike, and all were entitled to due consideration and a vote in this Chamber. We were not allowed to have a vote. Many have charged the majority denied us a vote on these amendments because they would have been adopted and that would have somehow represented a win for Republicans. Therefore, goes the theory, voting on these amendments was prevented.

Whether true or not, the lack of a vote on these amendments does nothing to lend credence to the view that Congress's partisanship too often trumps positive progress. The reality is good ideas do not simply fade away, and that if not here and now, then at some point in this Congress these and other good ideas must be given consideration and must be voted on. Fairness demands it, and our responsibility to working families and small businesses requires it.

A vote for cloture is a vote for small business and working families. It is a vote for a well-balanced and bipartisan solution. I am pleased that we are at this point. I will ask my colleagues to vote for cloture.

Mr. President, what is the time situation?

I yield the remainder of the time to the Senator from South Carolina.

Mr. President, the Republican leader has given me his time unless he should appear on the floor, and so I will do that.

I am a little disturbed about what I have heard here in the last several speeches this morning. The vote we are about to have is on whether the minimum wage will increase and there will be tax breaks for small businesses.

When we returned for this session of Congress, we had a number of bipartisan meetings, and I was pleased we had bipartisan meetings and talked about how we could work together and why we needed to work together for America. We talked about minimum wage a little bit, and I even saw newspaper articles where the majority leader and others on the Democratic side talked about the importance of having tax breaks for small business to take care of the impact from the increase in the minimum wage. I was encouraged by that. I thought: We are having some bipartisanship here. We are having some working together. I am encouraged.

Now, of course, the minimum wage came to the floor and I felt for a while it was a bait and switch. After Senator Baucus, the Senator from Montana, and Senator Grassley, the Senator from Iowa, worked together to come up with this tax package and the tax package was introduced as a substitute to the bill, I said: I think we are making progress. I think this is going to work. I think it can happen. I think we can work together. I think we can get it done.

Then, of course, we had the cloture vote on the straight minimum wage and I thought: What is going on here? Was that to get our attention and make us feel good and then rip it away? Rip away the comments that were made about the need to help small business? We don't need class warfare in this country.

I keep hearing about a book that was mentioned here, ``The War Against The Middle Class.'' Well, I am trying to figure out how the minimum wage worker made it into the middle class. I think we are talking about the small businessmen, who are being scrunched in from all angles, who are in the middle class, who are employing the people, sometimes at minimum wage, usually at a minimum skills position, and they train them to get better skills, and when they get better skills and can do more, they get paid more.

I always mention the McDonald's in Cheyenne, WY. A guy there starts people at minimum wage. Now, if they have to be at minimum wage more than about 3 weeks, they are probably not learning the job, probably not showing up on time. But the main point is he has had 3 people who started at minimum wage who now own 21 McDonald's. So there are opportunities out there, but you have to learn and improve to get more wages. We can raise the minimum wage and we are going to raise the minimum wage. And that will take the bottom step out of the ladder and people will be able to step up one more. Then, as we increase prices to help pay for that, unless we have the tax breaks, all we did was raise prices.

I hope we do not get into a class warfare. We do not need hostility to workers and between parties. It is 2 years until we have an election again. We do not need to start campaigns right now. We need to solve problems right now.

We have said one of the problems is the minimum wage, and we are going to solve it. They said we debated this six times in the last 10 years. We have. And every time it was brought up, we needed to do some decreases in taxes for the small businesses to take care of the impact this will have. That part got ignored every time. Consequently, raising of the minimum wage got ignored each time. Hopefully, we will not ignore either message and we will do both. The vote we will have this morning will be in regard to that.

Now, I will have to take some time after the vote and talk about some of the things that were raised because we cannot discuss them in a short period of time. There was talk about overtime taken away. We need to have debate on that. There was talk about unemployment. We need to have a little debate on it. When we are talking about safety officials at mines being cut back, we need to have a talk about that.

Senator Kennedy, I, Senator Rockefeller, and Senator Isakson went to West Virginia and looked at the Sago mine and talked to the people there. We talked to the mine officials. We talked to union officials. We talked to the families. We did a bill in 3 months that changed mine safety for the first time in 28 years because we worked together. We did not try to find divisions. We tried to find places we could come together.

Now, safety officials were cut back. They were cut back all over the Nation. The production of coal went down decidedly. Mines were closed. There were less mines. Of course, then the price of coal came back up and the mines opened again, and everything lags with the Federal Government.

There are problems we need to solve, but we do not need to make them into a war. We need to solve the problems that are involved in these instances and keep moving on for America. That is the vote we will take later today: a chance to move on for America. We will raise the minimum wage, and we are going to help out the small businesses, those people with all the risk out there who are employing people and training people so that they can continue to hire those people and pay those people so we can have the jobs and the training that the small business provides.

I hope that is the track we will go down. I know it will not be unanimous on either side, but we can get there if we work together.

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

I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, over the lunch hour, or shortly after that, the Senator from Massachusetts and I will work together to see what we can do on the amendments, to see if they can be voted on as expeditiously as possible. I, too, feel compelled to address the question of the Senator from North Dakota about the number of days we counted on this. The minority will always count the days on a bill as those days we are allowed to vote. We only voted three out of seven, until today when we got the second cloture vote. We will insist we get votes on amendments as we proceed through this bill and other bills.

I am pleased the Senator from Massachusetts is willing to work with us to see what we can do on the outstanding amendments.

Mr. LOTT addressed the Chair.

I was hoping to be able to speak on the bill at some point sometime, too.

I would allow the others to go first. I was trying to keep a longer queue from happening.

Mr. President, I am glad to have an opportunity to speak on the minimum wage bill that is before the Senate. I have spoken a little bit during the last week, but I have held in reserve a lot of time because we had amendments offered that other Senators wanted to explain. Normally when a bill is on the floor we have to stand down here and say: Please, if you have amendments, bring them to the floor so we can debate them. However, in about the first hour that this bill was on the floor, we had a dozen amendments that were suggested, and people were clamoring for time to debate them. We had amendments from both sides of the aisle. I think there were over 115 amendments that were suggested to this bill. Everybody realizes that 115 amendments are never going to be voted on with any bill. I don't think we have even come close to that on any of the bills that I have seen in the 10 years I have been here.

Later today, the majority leader is going to file cloture. He has given notice that he will do that. That is asking the Senate to garner 60 votes in favor of bringing the debate to a close on the Baucus substitute which contains the minimum wage increase and the small business tax incentive package. I congratulate Senators Grassley and Baucus for the tremendous effort they put into coming up with a package for small business that would help offset the impact of the minimum wage increase. It is something that was considered the last time there was a minimum wage increase, and I suspect that in the future it will always be a part of a package in some way to make sure that we don't harm these small businesspeople who provide a training ground for those with minimum skills so that they can get better skills and get better jobs.

The small businesses of this country are hiring people with no skills, teaching them how to operate a cash register, how to interact with customers, and often how to dress, how to cook--all kinds of services. I am reminded that in Cheyenne, WY, we have a McDonald's. They are always used as the example in minimum wage debates. They take a lot of grief, and they really don't deserve all that grief. They do a tremendous job of training young people in some very basic customer service skills.

The reason I am reminded of the Cheyenne McDonald's is that we like to point out that three former employees there who started at minimum wage now own 21 McDonald's. So it is an entry way to greater things. It is not for everybody, but for those with a desire to learn and succeed, there are possibilities. Any time we can hold out hope, we are helping people.

Yesterday there was a speech on the floor of the Senate and it was said that we had already spent 5 days on this bill and it was time to move on. Yesterday was actually the fourth day on the bill. Today is the fifth day. We will not be able to have any votes today. I don't know whether you count that or not because we were talking about how the Senate is supposed to work 40 hours a week just like other people do. I know a lot of my colleagues and I have our 40 hours in by about Wednesday, but at any rate, we have been talking about working a 5-day week. We are here, and we are talking, but we will not vote today. I don't know whether you can really count that as a day on the bill.

We talked on the bill on Monday, but we didn't have any votes Monday. So I don't know if you can count that as a day on the bill either. Next Monday we have the right to talk on it again, and then Tuesday morning there will be the cloture vote. That would be the next vote allowed on the bill. We really had 3 days on the bill.

How productive were we during those 3 days? We voted on 11 amendments. We have over 100 amendments. Many of the amendments deal with labor issues. There are some that don't deal directly with the minimum wage. But the minority side, as I have watched over the last several years, always has some unrelated amendments that they want to showcase and get passed.

Another thing I have noticed as I have been here is the unfortunate thing that we do to amendments that are suggested on a key bill. Once that amendment has been suggested, if the majority is the Democrats and the Republicans suggest the amendment, that is considered a poison pill, something just designed to take the bill down. I can say that because in the past on some Republican bills, when the Democrats would submit an amendment, it would be labeled a poison pill.

Unfortunately, the people of America don't get to see the debate that occurs off the Senate floor. They are not often invited into the committee meetings. They are not invited into the bipartisan task force groups that work across the aisle on solving problems before they even get to committee. There is a good reason for that. If the media were invited, they would take some of the dumb ideas that are thrown out-- and I have to admit when I am throwing out ideas, I throw out a lot of ideas; some of them stick and some you really recognize as being dumb-- and concentrate on those few dumb ideas because people get enjoyment out of that.

Some of these meetings where there is brainstorming and trying to find common ground have to be held separately. These are often very productive talks. There are a number of them going on right now on key issues. I think that this is the best way to handle a bill. But what America gets to watch is us debating on this floor, the attitudes we project, and the arguments that we project. I know most of the people out there watching are always rooting for one side or the other. I don't think it is the vast majority of independents who are spending their time addicted to the television. So our constituents kind of expect us to ram home the arguments from our side, and we do.

I contend that what we get to talk about on the floor of the Senate is the 20 percent of the issues we are never going to agree on.

We have to get past that point and get to the point where we look at all proposals in a very serious way and figure out a way that we can accept it or modify it in some way that makes it acceptable. What I usually do is try to find a third way. We have to do a bit more of that around here, and if we do I think we will find that the Senate will be a lot more successful.

Senator Kennedy and I have been practicing that for the last couple of years. We have been working prior to committee meetings, in committee meetings, and after committee meetings. We have been very successful at not having much floor debate on things that came through committee. We got 35 bills through committee, and the longest debate we had on the floor was over the pension bill. That bill was very important, one of the most important bills in the last 2 years. It was 980 pages long in the Senate, which is not a small bill. We already had agreement

before we came to the floor that there would be one hour of debate equally divided, with two amendments and a final vote. Check back through the years and see how often that has happened. That was an extremely difficult bill, and we had 1 hour of debate, two amendments, and a final vote. It can be done around here. In fact, we wound up with 27 bills signed by the President. We are checking to see how many committees have had that kind of production. Most of those didn't get debated here at all because there wasn't that 20 percent of disagreement. We had the 80-percent agreement and we went with it. That is not possible on all bills, and I understand that.

I am certainly encouraging my colleagues to get together, work on bills prior to them becoming what might be considered a poison pill, and see if something cannot be worked out. Hopefully, we can go back through some of these amendments that have been offered before and look at them with clear eyes and see if there isn't a way that what is being talked about in principle cannot be achieved somehow.

I want to let the people watching this debate that they are not seeing the real story on bills. There is a different and better way we could do it. I hope that is how we will do it more often.

Now, I will speak a little more on the bill before us. I am going to be disappointed if we don't have a few more votes on the bill prior to having the cloture vote. Again, it is a request from the minority to have an opportunity to vote on some of their amendments. So I urge my Democratic colleagues to allow a vote on a few very important amendments that my Republican colleagues have offered to the bill. I know the Democrats don't want to vote on the amendments because each of them is reasonable enough that it could pass. I know that may sound silly, but that is how things often work here. I have offered amendments--and the Democrats have sounded the trumpet that they will allow an open process on amendments offered, but they have chosen to filibuster by delay. When we only get 11 votes and only 3 days on which we are allowed to offer amendments, it is hard to claim it was a full week. Often bills that are very important here take 3 weeks. In fact, I think that is probably the normal range for a bill around here.

So they have the opportunity right now to let the clock run out. But we could have already voted on the minimum wage and small business incentive package if we could have received some votes on the important amendments that have been offered. We said we were going to cull down the number of amendments, and we obviously did.

I call for a vote on four amendments we still have outstanding-- although there are many others outstanding. I want to reiterate my conviction that as we move to raise the minimum wage, we must also provide a measure of relief to small businesses which will bear the cost of the increased wages.

Let me first turn to the four amendments I have noted. Over the course of this debate, we have heard many times that the minimum wage is an issue of fairness, an issue that affects working parents and working families. The minimum wage is not the only relevant matter before us that implicates issues of both fairness and family life. One of the most significant dilemmas that face working men and women is the struggle to maintain a balance between their work and family life.

Senator Gregg offered an amendment that reaches to the core of this issue by providing the opportunity for private sector employees to enter voluntary--I stress the word ``voluntary''--flexible work arrangements with their employers. Senator Gregg requested and deserves a vote on his employee option time amendment. However, more importantly, working families in this country deserve a vote on this amendment.

Twenty-eight years ago, this body gave Federal employees this highly valued benefit. Now the other side of the aisle wants to deny private employees the same right. Where this can be a big problem is where you have a private employee who is married to a public employee. The public employee can rework his or her schedule to be able to do what the family needs to have done, and the spouse cannot do that because it is illegal. They say, why can my husband or wife do it? Well, because it is legal in the public sector. Even unions recognize this benefit is coveted by employees. In a union-sponsored health care worker survey, scheduling options was the second most important factor in accepting a job.

Working families are striving to find the right balance of work and time with their children, spouses, and other loved ones. The Gregg amendment will remove a major obstacle to finding this balance. Nobody should properly invoke the importance of providing relief or help for working families, while simultaneously denying a vote on this amendment. This is not only fair, but this is giving the employee the right to choose, in cooperation with their employer, the best work schedule for their family in the workplace.

Senator Kennedy has talked about the children of low-wage workers in this country. Allowing employees more flexible work schedules will cut down on unscheduled leave, sick days, child care costs, and the loss of productivity that occurs when an employee is on the job but their heart is somewhere else tending to the needs of family.

Public sector employees have enjoyed flextime benefits for nearly three decades. We have not heard a lot of problems about it. At the same time, it has been denied workers in the private sector. Where is the fairness in that result? The amendment offered by Senator DeMint goes to the heart of this discriminatory result. It says if we are going to allow flextime benefits to some and not others, we ought to correct the system the other way; if it is not good in the public sector, maybe we ought to eliminate it under the Federal sector. Senator DeMint deserves a vote, provided the other one fails. Fundamental fairness demands it. By eliminating flexible work schedules for Government employees until private employees have the same rights, we hope to force our friends on the other side of the aisle to acknowledge and address this disparity. If flextime is such a terrible proposal and so dangerous to private employers and employees, one would think they would support this amendment to protect Government employees. But there is a reason they will not support this amendment. Employees who have flextime like it: 79 percent of the women who have it use it; 68 percent of the men who have it use it.

There are many Senators in this Chamber who offer their employees flexible schedules. Why is it good enough policy for Senators and Government employees and not for the private sector? It is long past time for the Senate to give this popular benefit full and open consideration. Once again, if we are truly concerned about our working families and about being fair, we should not deny a vote on this amendment.

Another amendment I hope we will vote on is Senator Burr's health flex proposal. All of us know health insurance costs are a major issue for both working families and small employers. This amendment would give employers the option to provide a $2.10 increase in wages or spend the increase on health care benefits. We have to recognize the tough choices employees face every day and how the underlying bill will make those choices even tougher.

Most Americans get their health care through employment, but it is becoming more and more difficult for small employers to keep up with escalating health care costs. Everybody in the country recognizes the difficulty of keeping up with health care costs. The small businessman, like everybody else, wants to have insurance for his family and his employees. As most of us know, 46.6 million people in the United States, or one in seven Americans, lacked insurance during 2005. There is no pretending that a minimum wage increase is going to make that number any smaller. Senator Burr's amendment addresses this negative side effect.

The availability of affordable health insurance is clearly an issue for all families, and any time this body has an opportunity to address or examine ideas designed to achieve that end, I don't think we should refuse to do so. Senator Burr has asked for a vote and he, too, deserves a vote on this important issue.

Finally, Senator Vitter also offered an amendment that directly relates to the group of people I feel will be most harmed by this mandated increase in the minimum wage. His amendment is

one of fundamental fairness, also, to the small employers who create the jobs and try their best to play by the rules. Senator Vitter's amendment recognizes that small businesses often do not have the in- house resources or the outside experts they need to assist them in complying with the ever-growing amounts of paperwork they are required to provide to the federal government. They cannot afford to hire expensive consultants to do this for them. Paperwork in the Federal Government is voluminous, and learning how to do it correctly often takes very thick manuals. The information they are required to give to the Federal Government is very extensive. I used to file some of those forms and reports, and I was amazed at the textbooks you had to go through to be able to fill out the forms properly. Part of that is a problem we have with the Paperwork Reduction Act. We ought to take a look at the Paperwork Reduction Act again.

Our income tax forms could be much easier to fill out. I went to the IRS when I first got here, as the only accountant in the Senate, and told them that I have done a few of those forms. I could not understand them; I could not understand the logic behind them. There are a couple of places where a line could be added and you would not have to go to another form. I found out there is a huge penalty to Government agencies who add a line to a form. But there is no penalty for adding another chapter to the book that explains the form. Therefore, it is easier to add another whole chapter than to add a simple line. The Paperwork Reduction Act is creating some problems for small business that keep the paperwork from being plain and simple.

As a result, small businesses sometimes make inadvertent errors in complying with these obligations. His amendment would relieve small businesses from monetary fines for certain first-time violations that pose no threat to health or safety. This is a very important criteria. The Federal Government should not be playing a game of ``gotcha'' in these circumstances, particularly with small businesses. What they should be doing is playing fair. If we, too, are being fair, we would allow a vote on this important amendment.

Apart from these amendments, I believe we need to focus on the central question before this body. Everybody in this Chamber knows we will approve an increase in the minimum wage and that we will do it very soon. The debate, as I keep reminding people, has not been over whether to do the increase, it has been whether we can keep people in business at the same time we do the increase and the ways to do that. We have made some progress on that issue, I believe.

There is a long road ahead to do the tax package Senator Baucus and Senator Grassley so capably worked out in a very bipartisan way because those bills are supposed to start in the House and that will be part of the argument, too. There will be some argument. Some of the offsets are opposed by some people--and I think, if you look at the list of those who oppose them, it is big businesses, not small businesses. I believe they think they are being left out of this process. However, this is a small business issue, and I am trying to solve some of those small business problems. The approval of an increase to $7.25 is simply not an issue; and, further rhetoric on this point adds nothing to the important public debate that remains.

The debate is simple: How do we go about mandating this increase without harming the small businesses that have to pay for it? These small businesses have been the engine of our economy and employ the bulk of the minimum wage workers. We do great harm not only to these small businesses but to all those workers who rely on them for their livelihood if we don't provide the practical means for businesses to afford such mandated increases. We have failed in our responsibilities if we do not balance an increase in the minimum wage with the appropriate relief for small businesses. For a worker without a job, a higher minimum wage is meaningless.

As a former small business owner--my wife and I had three shoe stores--I know how difficult it can be to meet payroll every week and meet all the other obligations a small businessman has to face. Here are the realities: Raising the minimum wage to $7.25 imposes a 41- percent increase in labor costs for a small employer with minimum wage workers. Many of them will see this as a tax. That is why some on our side have problems voting for an increase in taxes. It goes to a very important segment of our population, but it is a 41-percent increase in labor costs. Every employer has to face the very real issue of how he or she will deal with this increased cost and still make the payroll week after week.

This cartoon appeared in one of the papers. It says:

The good news is the U.S. House voted to increase the

minimum wage. The bad news is I can't afford to pay any more.

Although this cartoon may, at first, appear humorous, these are very real and very difficult questions that impact our small business employers dramatically. It is not a laughing matter. These payroll increases have to be paid for by employers, and money doesn't grow on trees. A lot of the things we look at as options often are not available to them. The fact is that competition regulates prices-- unless we have price controls--and employers must make hard decisions as how to meet these increased payroll obligations.

When costs go up, businesses must first look to cut expenses. The choices they have can be very difficult. To meet higher mandated payroll costs, the smaller employer may be forced to consider cutting back on benefits, such as health insurance, retirement, and leave plans. It is simply too easy to forget that fringe benefits have a significant cost, and if a small employer must reduce expenses to meet payroll, these costs are often the first to go.

Beyond cutting fringe benefits, small businesses may need to consider cutting back work hours or eliminating overtime or eliminating some duplication on a shift. I mentioned a video store that has always had two people to close up because they think two is the minimum for safety. They are now talking about having to go to one person to close up. Cutting hours, eliminating overtime, laying off workers or not hiring more are traditional and often necessary responses to meeting increased costs. Unfortunately, these actions ultimately hurt the very workers the minimum wage increase is designed to help.

Another thing we need to do--and I have avoided putting it into the bill as an amendment--is to reauthorize the Workforce Investment Act. The HELP Committee has passed it unanimously twice. The Senate has passed it unanimously twice. But we have not been able to get a conference committee. Part of the reason for not getting a conference committee is worrying about where the conference committee will go. There ought to be a lot more confidence in the conference committee on the side of the Democrats right now because they will control the conference committee.

I am hoping that the Workforce Investment Act can be a way that we can help get more job training. Small businesses also provide some job training for which they do not get paid. That does not come under that bill. As I mentioned, small businesses often hire people with minimum skills and teach them the skills they need to move up the wage ladder.

Incidentally, of the businesses I checked on, the average time that a person stayed at minimum wage was 3 weeks. If they had the capability to learn, they moved up quickly.

We must also remember that when confronted by higher labor costs, employers will naturally gravitate toward filling positions with the most highly skilled, experienced, and productive workers available.

Once again, this phenomenon of replacing low-skilled workers with high-skilled workers in the face of rising labor costs winds up harming the very workers the minimum wage seeks to help. Minimum wage positions are often the entryway into the world of work for those who lack skills and experience. Mandated increases in the minimum wage run the risk of closing that entryway to many.

Beyond these cost-cutting measures of eliminating benefits, reducing hours, downsizing, laying off employees, and reducing low-skill and entry-level employment, employers might have to face the prospect of increasing the price for goods and services. Such increases drive inflation and cause all

consumers to ultimately pay the price of these mandates. The irony is that as the cost of these labor increases is passed through to consumers, it affects everyone, including the minimum wage workers whose recently increased wages are suddenly devalued by the increased price of goods and services that impact them as well.

My colleagues and I feel strongly about the working families of this country and the businesses they work in and the businesses they run. I wish to emphasize that point. I consider the working families of this country to also include small businesses. A lot of us don't realize the ``wake up in the middle of the night wondering what is going to happen with the business'' concern and the real risks these people take. A lot of them are just mom-and-pop businesses that hire 3, 5, 15 people.

There is support for raising the minimum wage, but we recognize that by doing so, we put people out of business or make them cut their workforce. If we end up putting someone out of work, we are not doing them any favors. That is the reason we have offered a number of amendments to H.R. 2. This bill never went through the committee process, either in this body or in the other body. I think the committee process helps the chances of moving a bill along and takes care of a lot of the amendments we maybe ought not debate on the floor.

We have not had a chance to offer any amendments at all to this legislation until this week. When a bill goes directly to the floor and circumvents the committee process, Members have no choice but to go through the committee amendments process on the floor of the Senate. We only got to vote on 11 amendments, and have only gotten 3 days to vote on amendments.

Once again, I urge the Democratic leaders to allow us to vote on the amendments we have offered, and I strongly urge them not to forget the working families of this country who employ low-skilled workers. They will need real relief in order to keep their businesses growing and their employees working under this mandate. This body must commit in a bipartisan way now to the real issue at hand; that is, providing a responsible increase in the minimum wage that allows small businesses to continue employing and providing job opportunities to the very people the minimum wage is designed to help. The simple answer is before us.

Amendments Nos. 135 and 138, En Bloc, to Amendment No. 100

Mr. President, on behalf of Senator Cornyn, I ask unanimous consent to set the pending amendment aside and I call up amendments Nos. 135 and 138.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Whitehouse.) Without objection, it is so ordered. The clerk will report.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Mr. President, I would make a brief comment, if the Senator will allow that, prior to his speech.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Massachusetts for his comments. He makes some very persuasive arguments in a very short period of time on the four amendments I talked about, and I am sure we could reach an agreement and have a very short debate, probably 10 minutes equally divided, on those four and then a vote, and that would simplify things a lot. I understand his comments about how we have over--I don't remember how many amendments--but I need to mention, there are amendments on the Democratic side. It is a little easier for them to forgo their amendments, because they are in control. The other side doesn't have a way to bring up issues. What I am saying right now is what the Democrats said for the last 2 years and what Senator Kennedy said a minute ago is what our leadership had to say on issues as we filed cloture. This is a very common procedure, and we all know how it works. So we will be dusting off arguments from the other side, they will be dusting off arguments from us, but hopefully we can progress through these issues in a very substantial way and get them done.

I appreciate those comments, and I will learn from them. I did notice the dates we talked about for quick resolution on the minimum wage happened before this Chamber had television. I suspect a lot of the debates we have here have more to do with television than they do with the substance of the amendment we are working on. I hope Senators can forgo that possibility, although I am not sure in this culture we can. I would hope the pundits out there, radio talk shows and television talk shows, could forgo on some of the issues trying to foment each of their sides so they argue and fight.

It would be a lot easier if we had some civility that went with it. I appreciate the other side's civility through these debates and I would ask that they allow these four more amendments.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I yield to the Senator from South Carolina such time as he might consume.

Mr. President, could I ask what the time situation is?

Mr. President, I ask to have the Senator from South Carolina yield me 8 minutes.

I need to address a few of the things that were said. ``We are on the fifth day of this debate.'' Yes, we are. ``It's a simple bill.'' No, it is not a simple bill. It is simple in the one proposal that is out there, but it has a lot of interlocking implications. We had some debate yesterday, separate from an amendment on tip credits. We talked about work opportunity tax credits. We talked about earned- income tax credits. All of those tie in with the minimum wage, so it has a lot of implications.

It has a lot of implications for small businesses, too. I showed some quotes from a lady who would lose hours, another from someone who would lose their job. They were all in situations where they can't afford to do that. There have been charts showing that on the aggregate it helps the whole economy to raise the minimum wage. But on an individual basis it affects people individually. Small business employees understand. They are really connected to their business. They know how much the employer is making. They know what the markup is on things. And they know whether their job is in danger or not, so there is that concern.

But I want to clear up something. There has not been an argument against raising the minimum wage. The argument has been for doing something to help counter the impact on small business. We have been acting in a bipartisan way on some things; we can act in a bipartisan way on this. I contend that as soon as there is some assurance to the minority that there will be some tax offsets for the small businesses, this process will speed up dramatically. But until there is that assurance we will be using our opportunities, the process, to make sure we can take care of small business at the same time and not put them out of business.

There has been some cooperation, at least through the press. I would mention that Senator Reid said:

If it takes adding small-business tax cuts to have a

minimum wage tax increase, we're going to do that. Maybe we

can get 60 votes to invoke cloture on a straight minimum

wage. I'm not sure we want to do that. . . . A one-party town

doesn't work. We have a majority of 51-49. We're going to

accomplish the possible; that's what we're going to do.

That was on January 5 at a press conference. I have some other quotes from him, too, but Senator Baucus said:

Small business is the engine that drives our economy and

creates jobs on Main Street. That's why I'm proud we are

getting them some tax relief from Uncle Sam. . . . It's high

time our workers get a raise. At the same time we are going

to give a boost to small business.

That was a January 17 press release.

Senator Kerry:

I support the majority of the provisions of the Small

Business and Work Opportunity Act of 2007. I would have

preferred that this package moved separately rather than in

tandem with a minimum wage bill. However, the reality is we

need a tax package in order to advance minimum wage

legislation.

That is from a January 2007 committee report, Small Business and Work Opportunity Act of 2007.

I have a whole lot of quotes from the other side of the aisle that have encouraged me that we can do both things--raise the minimum wage and have some offsets for small business.

I have talked to the Senator from Massachusetts about this before. I understand his desire to have just the minimum wage increase and his concern that any other discussion takes away from that. I suggested that it wouldn't take away from it if it were a whole package to begin with; that it would be a minimum wage increase and our concerns about having some tax breaks for the small businesses would overcome that. But we have not gone that route yet.

The debate we had yesterday, the cloture vote we had yesterday, would have excluded the possibility of doing the tax breaks. I have to tell you, to get those tax breaks to offset the impact on small business has a long road to go because the House didn't pass any of those. In fact, the House has made some very detrimental comments about it. There is a process over here that enforces the rights of the minority and can provide some protection for the small businesses, the mom-and-pops out there trying to make enough living for their own families and provide for some workers that we can take care of at the same time. But it is

going to take some showing that there is some dual concern, both for the employee and for the mom-and-pop businesses, before we move along much faster.

That is what the debate is about. It is not about whether to raise the minimum wage. The minimum wage will be raised. I hope there are a whole lot of other things that will be done in the process, too, because we need to move these people to more skilled jobs, and we need to get a Workforce Investment Act through, too, and I would have liked to see this be part of this same bill, too, so we could increase the skills of the employees and get them into better jobs. We don't want to just remove the bottom rung of the ladder and have them have to make a bigger step to get a job to begin with. We want them to have better jobs. Better jobs do not hit the inflationary core quite as much.

I want to be sure people understand we are not talking about whether to do a minimum wage, we are talking about whether to do a minimum wage increase and offset some of the impact for small businesses.

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

Madam President, I wish to compliment both sides on working on amendments. We have not had any shortage of amendments being offered. In fact, we have a whole bunch of people who would like to offer amendments that have already been filed. So it is not the usual problem of trying to get people to come down and offer amendments; it is a problem of being able to get some agreements so we can have votes on those amendments.

Both sides are working diligently to try to get it set up so we can have a whole series of votes yet today and move along substantially on this legislation. Of course, what we are kind of waiting for is to get some assurance that there will be a small business tax package to offset the impact of this before we get some progress.

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

Mr. MARTINEZ addressed the Chair.

Yes.

Can I inquire as to the time remaining? I was under a little different impression on the time to vote, I guess.

I had hoped that the discussions that are happening on health care would continue to happen and that they would not be a focus of this particular bill. But, again, until we get some assurance that there is going to be a tax package that provides for some of the impact for small business, we will be discussing a variety of topics. I can tell by the amendments that have been put in.

I need to do some clarification on this particular amendment. While I encourage people to keep working across the aisle on a whole variety of proposals, this particular amendment deals with helping to pay premiums for high-deductible plans in the individual market, not in the group market. This is in the individual market. I think everybody who works with health care pretty much agrees that one of the difficulties we have with health care is that primarily the premiums are paid

for by companies that get a huge tax deduction for doing that. When the premiums are paid for that way, the insurance is paid for that way, there isn't nearly as much responsibility on the part of the individual to see that they are getting the best care at the lowest cost. It has allowed the system to blossom and grow.

But this particular amendment deals with the individual nongroup market. At the present time, while we allow companies to deduct anything they put in for premiums, we don't allow individuals to do that. We do allow individuals to buy health savings accounts. That means they pay a premium for a high deductible, which helps to bring down that premium and puts people in a market that they could not have been in before. But the part that they get the deduction on is the part that covers the deductible, the high deductible. They can put that in a savings account, and they can actually roll that over from year to year if they don't have to use the deductible on it. But nobody helps them with the tax on their premium.

For most people it is the premium that is the biggest cost. For individuals it is the premium that is the biggest cost. If they work for a company that provides insurance, they don't have that cost. But if they are an individual, they get taxed on the money they pay to pay their premium.

What this amendment is suggesting is that we need to level the field a little bit, and while they are paying a smaller premium on a high deductible and allowed to deduct the portion that would be the deductible, if they put that in a savings account, allowing them to take part of that savings account and pay it for the premium so that their premium would also be deductible.

I don't know where the $8 billion comes from. There is not a formal score on this, but there is a 2006 informal opinion from the Treasury staff. It indicates that the cost is probably going to be about $50 million over 5 years, which is pretty modest compared even to the cost of other proposals for HSA expansion. The intent and effect would be to make this HSA high-deductible option more easily available and affordable outside of the employment context.

We have to admit, if it is an individual buying the policy, it is the most portable there is in the United States. We also talked about the need for portability. When someone loses their job there are some ways they can still get insurance, but that runs out. But if you have a health savings account, that is completely portable. It goes with you. The whole works goes with you.

There are some small businesses that have been taking advantage of this and paying the premium for their employees and then paying a portion of the deductible that goes into a savings account. They found that this is the only mechanism by which they could afford insurance for their employees. So we are not even talking about those folks because this is about ones in the individual market, which limits it considerably.

Everyone recognizes the difficulties with health care costs and obtaining health care coverage in the United States, and real solutions to this growing problem has to allow individuals and families to make decisions based on their unique health care needs too. We can't just limit health care to those who work for particularly big corporations who, also, are having problems being able to fund the insurance they are buying for their people. The cost is dramatically escalating in the health care area. I think it is the No. 1 concern of people across the United States.

We have a lot of proposals that will help to bring down or at least stabilize those costs. I appreciate the help we have had from people on both sides of the aisle in coming up with those proposals. A lot of times we have agreed on principle and now we are trying to get down to details and the detail is always the tough part, but I think we can make some progress.

I am for choices. I am for individuals and families having more options for obtaining health care insurance. I think more options help to bring down the cost; it is a competition factor. For that reason, I support Senator Ensign's amendment to provide more choices to allow individuals and families who work--not the ones working for companies where the company is getting a tax deduction to buy their insurance. This is for the individuals and families so they will have additional options for obtaining health care coverage, especially when the employer does not provide adequate options for health insurance. Senator Ensign's amendment does that. It provides more choices by allowing individuals without employer-based health coverage to use funds from their health savings to pay for their high-deductible health plan premiums. Right now they only get to use the money they have in savings to take care of deductibles. We would like for them to be able to take care of some of the premiums, too, which takes some of the pressure off that end, and since most people in the country already get that benefit through their company, which gets the tax deduction, we thought it would be nice if individuals had that too.

I think this is a modest proposal, with an estimated score of $50 million over 5 years. There will not be a lot of people who will take advantage of it, but there will be some people who will take advantage of it, and it will provide additional options for individuals and families without employer-based health coverage.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I yield the remainder of the time to the Senator from Nevada.

Mr. President, the flexible time proposals we are debating today could have a monumental impact on the lives of thousands of working men, women and families in America. There are some fortunate Americans, including most State and Federal workers, who already have the right to flexible time scheduling. In fact, according to a national study, some 43 percent of all U.S. workers have this right, and they love to use it. Seventy-nine percent of the women who have to use it, and 68 percent of the men who have to use it, Study on the Changing Workforce, Families and Work Institute)

But the majority of Americans do not have access to flexible time scheduling, and they deserve it, too. It could help the 67 percent of Americans who say they don't have enough time with their children and the 63 percent of Americans who say they don't have enough time with their spouses. At the very least, it would remove one of the barriers for achieving a work-life balance.

So who are the people who are prohibited access to this type of benefit? Well, it isn't any Member of this Senate. Salaried employees are not penalized for flexible work arrangements. Employers don't have to increase pay for these employees if they work more in one week and less in another. It isn't government employees, either. Flexible work arrangements have been available in the Federal Government for almost three decades.

In fact, this program has been so successful with government employees that in 1994 President Clinton issued an Executive order extending it to parts of the Federal Government that had not yet had the benefits of the program. President Clinton then stated, the ``Broad use of flexible arrangements to enable Federal employees to better balance their work and family responsibilities can increase employee effectiveness and job satisfaction while decreasing turnover rates and absenteeism.

I couldn't agree more, but now we need to go further and extend this privilege to private sector workers. It is long past time to give employees the choice--the same choice as Federal workers. There is no reason that government employees need greater flexibility in meeting and balancing the demands of work and family than private sector employees.

There are two proposals under consideration today. Senator Gregg has offered an employee option time amendment. This would give employees the option of ``flexing'' their schedules over a 2-week period. Basically, hourly employees who wish to could voluntarily have their work hours calculated on a biweekly rather than a weekly basis. This way a working mother could work 50 hours in one week and 30 hours in the next week, while her husband worked an opposite schedule and their children enjoyed an extra 10 hours a week with a parent. If such an arrangement were made and agreed to by both the employee and the employer, the employee would still be entitled to overtime for any hours beyond that agreement. For example, if an employee was asked to work 32 hours in a week that was scheduled to be a 30-hour week, the employee would be paid overtime for the additional 2 hours.

I have to emphasize again, because I know my friends on the other side of the aisle don't always understand this, that the flexible time arrangement is entirely voluntary. In fact, the Gregg amendment requires written consent from the employee, and only employees with at least a year's tenure would be eligible. No employee could be pressured to enter into one of these agreements. Such coercion is specifically prohibited and punishable with monetary penalties.

The second amendment which has been offered to this bill is a little different approach. Senator DeMint's amendment addresses the disparity between government and private employees that has existed since 1978. It essentially says government employees cannot exercise this benefit until private employees have the same right. I hope we will pass the Gregg amendment today and the DeMint will not be necessary. There is no reason this shouldn't be the case.

There is a long history of support for flextime on both sides of the aisle. I hope my friends won't mind if I remind them of a little of this history. Although Democrats may now be attacking flextime proposals and calling it a ``wage cut'', some seem to be forgetting that flextime is not a new issue but one with a long, bipartisan history.

In the early 1980s Senator Stevens led the effort to secure Federal worker access to compensatory time off and flextime. In 1985 former Senator Nickles shepherded a bill through the Senate that extended these positive benefits to State and local employees.

These Senators did not foist an unpopular program onto unsuspecting workers over the objections of Democrats. Both of those laws passed the Senate with overwhelming, bipartisan support. Senator Kennedy voted to ensure that Federal employees would have access to flextime to have the scheduling options necessary to balance work and family life.

Senator Kennedy, along with 11 other Democrats, cosponsored the Nickles bill to extend flextime and comp time to State and local employees. Flextime was not a pay cut for State and local workers when Senator Kennedy and other Democrats endorsed it in 1982 and 1985. And it is not a pay cut for private sector employees now.

We are coming together--Republicans and Democrats--to raise the minimum wage in this bill, and to do it with fairness for the employers who will be subject to this mandate. Let us

also come together to give fairness to the employees who have been left out in the cold for 28 years. Let's give private employees the same right to arrange flexible work schedules as government employees. I urge my colleagues to support the Gregg amendment and, if it becomes necessary, the DeMint amendment.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, quickly, for the benefit of my fellow Senators, we are trying to get as much done as possible. I appreciate the cooperation we have had. Usually the problem managers have is getting people to offer amendments. We have many amendments that have been offered. We need to get votes on them. Some are: Senator Smith's on education tax incentives, which I think we will have in a moment; Vitter's on paperwork violations; Kyl's on extended depreciation provisions; Sessions' on Federal contract torts; Burr's on more flextime; DeMint's on involuntary donation collections, and an amendment regarding American Samoa. A lot of them are ready to go. If we lock in limited debate time and get votes, it will be helpful. I hope we move forward on that.

I yield the floor.

It is my understanding they do not wish to speak. I would like to reserve the time until I hear some of the other comments. I have nothing to say at the moment.

Madam President, before the Senator yields back his time, I need to say that Senator Smith is on his way to the floor to make a couple more comments.

Mr. President, I ask the chairman that the 10 minutes be divided between Senators Burr, Chambliss, and Allard.

So the unanimous consent request is to divide the 10 minutes, or the time until 4:45, between Senators Burr and Chambliss, and after the vote, 7 minutes for Senator Allard.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside, and I call up amendment No. 169.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today in support of Senator Gregg and Senator McConnell's ``Second Look at Wasteful Spending'' amendment. While I would prefer that this issue be addressed on a separate bill, I understand the procedural reasons behind why my colleague from New Hampshire is offering this amendment to the minimum wage package. I am treating this amendment as separate from the rest of the minimum wage debate and I hope my colleagues will do the same. I am pleased, however, that the Senate is able to debate this important issue on the floor.

This amendment is a responsible step towards spending accountability. It provides for a greater level of accountability which is critical to enhance the fiscal well-being of the country. Senator Gregg's proposal allows both Congress and the President the opportunity to seriously reconsider both mandatory and discretionary spending. By allowing the President to single out wasteful spending and giving Congress the final say through vote on a rescission package, this amendment will help eliminate waste, rather than perpetuate the current out of control spending habits.

By forcing Congress to take another look at spending, this amendment gives the President the ability to send up to four rescission packages a year. Congress then has up to 8 days to act on the President's proposal through a fast track process. However, a simple majority of both Houses of Congress must approve before any of the rescission package can become law. Finally, any savings from the rescissions must go to deficit reduction.

I believe that ``A Second Look at Wasteful Spending'' is a simple, clear-cut proposal that stands within the parameters of the U.S. Constitution. This amendment includes the same principles of fiscal responsibility that have received bipartisan support since the passage of a comprehensive veto in 1992, and strongly echo the Daschle-Byrd proposal of 1995. Here is a chance for both Republicans and Democrats to help restrain frivolous spending.

I emphasize the gravity of fiscal responsibility because it sets the standard for the success or failure of our Nation. We need to take action now to avert an even larger economic crisis in the future. ``A Second Look at Wasteful Spending'' is a step in the right direction, though there is more work to be done. Many of my colleagues in this Chamber have supported this concept in the past, and I urge my colleagues to support the Gregg amendment.

As I stated in my maiden speech in 1997, the American people continue to demand an end to runaway spending. We need to show the American people that we are responsible. I said those words about the balanced budget amendment in 1997, and they also hold true for this amendment today. By adopting the ``Second Look at Wasteful Spending,'' we would show that Congress is willing to take a much needed step toward fiscal restraint.

I stand in full support of this amendment and am proud to be a cosponsor. This outstanding amendment is worthy of your consideration and support.

Madam President, for those who have been listening for the last 2 days, the argument has not been about whether we would raise the minimum wage. There seems to be agreement to raise the minimum wage. The difficulty has been how do we take care of some of the impact to small business that will result.

The Senator from Massachusetts, Mr. Kennedy, has mentioned that the last time we passed the minimum wage, there was a small business tax package in it. That somewhat set a little different level for doing this kind of action. Incidentally, it was Senator Simpson from Wyoming who headed up that effort at that time.

This bill could have happened earlier if we had some assurance that there was going to be this tax package. I congratulate the Senator from Montana, Mr. Baucus, and the Senator from Iowa, Mr. Grassley, for the way they have worked together and the way their committee worked together to put together a tax package that will benefit small business and reduce some of the impacts of the increase in minimum wage. The minority just needs some kind of a sense that will be a part of the bill, and we can move forward with the whole thing. We are trying to make sure we don't put the mom-and-pop businesses and their employees out of work and their services lost to the community.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to submit a letter from the Coalition For Job Opportunities supporting it.

I ask my colleagues to vote no on cloture.

Cloture Motion

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in recess subject to the call of the Chair.

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

There is no objection. I ask unanimous consent that following the majority's speakers, we give time for Senator DeMint and Senator Sununu.

Mr. President, I listened to the Senator from Minnesota earlier today, Ms. Klobuchar, and thought she had some very convincing comments regarding the tip credit. In conjunction with that, she suggested that States ought to be able to do what they want to do. That is what this bill does.

Even if one accepts the idea that the minimum wage should be used as a tool of economic policy, it is quite obviously a tool that should be used with precision, not indiscriminately wielded like a sledge hammer.

State and local economies are vastly different, however, one-size- fits-all Federal legislation totally dismisses those important differences. It also misses the point that states are in a far better position to determine what is best for their local economies. Federal ``solutions'' often ignore local and regional experience and judgment, or worse still, just arrogantly cast it aside.

There is just no room for debate over the fact that there is a vast difference from State to State in terms of the cost of living, the cost of doing business, and the purchasing power of a dollar. A nationally based minimum wage adjustment simply ignores these important differences. It discriminates against both employees and employers based solely upon where they choose to live and work or to establish their businesses.

Proponents of an across-the-board Federal minimum wage increase might be able to ignore these realities and claim that somehow the Federal Government was ``forced'' to act because States ``refused'' to do so. Unfortunately for those who make this argument, nothing could be further from the truth.

State legislatures have been, and continue to be extremely active in considering minimum wage legislation that is appropriately tailored to the economic realities of their respective States. Consider that 6 states this year have passed ballot initiatives raising their State's minimum wage law, and 29 States now have minimum wage rates higher than the current Federal level. I urge my colleagues to consider that States and localities may have a better idea of what their appropriate minimum wage level should be than the Federal Government. When the Federal level does not fit, States and localities act.

I urge my colleagues to support the Allard amendment.

Mr. President, I yield myself 3 minutes.

Mr. President, I rise today in support of the amendment offered by Senator Snowe, Senator Landrieu, and others, to provide regulatory assistance to our Nation's small businesses.

This amendment requires that when Federal agencies issue new rules and regulations that impact small business, they also must issue compliance guides for small businesses. The amendment also requires that the compliance guides be written in plain English and made available in a timely manner.

I think this is a commonsense requirement. It not only reduces the administrative costs for small business, but it also increases the level of compliance with such new rules and regulations. I think the work opportunity tax credit is an example. That isn't a program that a lot of small businesses have taken advantage of. Part of it is because they don't know about it, and part is they don't know how to comply with it. They don't have the opportunity to hire the specialists that might be needed to understand it or to do the recordkeeping on it. So they don't take advantage of it to the level they could. It is a provision in the tax bill that could make quite a difference to small employers.

Many small employers simply lack the resources, the outside consultants, the experts necessary to continually advise them of changes in Federal rules that impact the way they must run their business. As it now stands, smaller businesses currently pay disproportionate per employee compliance costs when compared to larger employers. The average per employee cost for Federal regulatory compliance in a business with less than 20 employees is 45 percent higher than the same cost for a business with 500 or more employees. So it is about $7,600 for a small business to comply versus $5,200 for a big business to comply. Those numbers stagger me--the cost for small business to comply with Federal rules and regulations. That doesn't count the cost of complying with the Tax Code, which is a whole other range of costs.

Cost mandates, such as a minimum wage increase, impose significant financial burdens on our small employers. We must do everything we can to help alleviate this burden and ensure that small businesses remain the well-run engine of our economy, and providing the kind of compliance assistance called for in Senator Snowe's amendment is one of the ways we can assist small businesses in meeting the administrative costs associated with Federal regulation.

I commend Senator Snowe for her efforts on behalf of small businesses and am proud to be a cosponsor of this legislation with her. She has put in diligent efforts to hold hearings and get this into place in the committee that she chaired, the Small Business Committee, on which she is now the ranking member.

I urge my colleagues to support this amendment that not only provides assistance that reduces employer costs but also assistance that increases employer compliance. That is two goals. This amendment will do both of those. I ask for your support.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum, and I ask unanimous consent that the time be equally divided between the sides.

Mr. President, how much time is remaining on our side?

I thank the Chair.

I appreciate the comments of the Senator from Massachusetts and the diligence with which he has worked on this issue and the number of times we have debated it. I appreciate the majority leader making it possible for us to consider amendments on this bill. I understand how some people would like

to have this as a clean amendment, that we just do the increase. The debate the last three times we have done it has been about whether we can have some provisions for small businesses to offset the impact of the raise in the minimum wage.

I want to bring a more personal face to this small business. We confuse that sometimes even with General Motors and some of the airlines. Those are big corporations. In fact, the ones I am particularly concerned about are the ones with 50 employees or less, and even more concerned about the ones that only have 2 or 3 employees. The impact and their ability to adjust is much more limited. We are talking about the inventors in their garages who have an idea and who will employ another person to help put their product together and market it. We are talking about the corner grocery store. We are talking about the laundry. We are talking about the little shoe store, the independent one.

These are families that are eking out a living. These are not families that are getting rich. These are families that took on a lot of risk for the American dream. They are hoping that with all of the loans they put in place to be able to do this business that they always dreamed of doing, they might make a return on their investment and enough to keep their family going. But there is no guarantee.

These are the people who--and I know; I used to be a small businessman. I used to own shoe stores. One of my definitions of a small businessman is the guy who wakes up, sits up straight in bed in the middle of the night and says: Tomorrow is payday; how do I meet payroll? And they figure out a way because the employees get paid first.

These are people worrying about how to stay in business, how to make a living, and taking on a whole lot of risk to make sure other people have jobs.

We have to remember that the small businessman will be forced to come up with additional funds to pay his or her workers on what we are mandating today. Those funds don't come from a money tree or some pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. They come out of the pockets of the Nation's small businessmen. It is the penalty they pay for taking the risk associated with running a small business.

I have about 3 minutes. I yield the remainder of the time to the Senator from Maine.

Madam President, I echo what the Senator from Massachusetts said, that this does provide for authorization. There is room for that to be included, and we can help look for the resources to do something on that.

I commend both Senator Roberts and Senator Dodd for their tenaciousness and their active work to be able to bring this to the Senate at this point in time. I note that Senator Roberts has been working on this for about 10 years. Six years is the average for a bill around here. That should qualify.

I ask we make this part of that package.

Madam President, on behalf of Senator Ensign, I call up amendments Nos. 152, 153, and 154.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendments be dispensed with.

Madam President, in a while, we will take some action on Senator Sessions' amendment. I would like to make a couple comments on that amendment before we get to that point. This might be an appropriate time.

Last year, Congress undertook the most sweeping changes to pension law since the enactment of ERISA. It was a major milestone and resulted in the most comprehensive change to workers' and their families' pension and retirement savings in the past 32 years.

The Pension Protection Act could not have been enacted without bipartisan cooperation, but it took more than Republicans and Democrats working together. The Pension Protection

Act resulted from a deep commitment toward cooperation between the Finance Committee, which oversaw the tax provisions of the bill, and the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, which oversaw the pensions provisions.

On the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, we had previously taken a strong bipartisan look at retirement issues and retirement savings as part of our pension oversight duties. The new chairman of the committee has stated he will continue the committee's strong pension oversight responsibilities in order to protect and strengthen the retirement savings so that workers and their families may prosper long into their retirement years.

The sense-of-the-Senate resolution before us expresses the sentiment that saving for retirement is important. We all agree with that point. The fact is that savings opportunities are available almost everywhere, but many workers do not take advantage of it. By this sense-of-the- Senate resolution, we are not advocating any particular retirement programs or initiatives over others on the books already or proposed to be introduced. We are simply saying that people ought to save enough to maintain their standard of living during their golden years, and they ought to invest prudently so that their savings will be safe when they do retire.

Better financial education and investment advice is needed. Automatic enrollment rules that were enacted in the Pension Protection Act will help people learn to save. New default investment regulations, when finalized, will help too.

In that respect, progress has been made in saving for retirement, but much needs to be done.

I am happy to join with my colleagues in reiterating the commitment by supporting the sense-of-the-Senate resolution.

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, too often when we debate the issue of minimum wage, we focus on abstract ideas and proposals and fail to consider the impact of our actions on the small business community that lives and breathes in the real world. I appreciate the cooperation with Senator Reid and others, focused around Senator Baucus and Senator Grassley, working in a very bipartisan way to put together a package that would help to relieve some of the impact of the minimum wage increase. I hope everyone has noticed that in the minimum wage debate we have been having, the debate has not been over whether to raise the minimum wage. The debate has been on what we can do to alleviate some of the impact on small business. I hope that is the way we can continue the discussion on this, too.

I mentioned earlier today that you need to meet some of these small businessmen. They are in your neighborhood. You can meet them easily. They run the laundry, corner grocery, little retail stores. For the most part they are families who are eking out a living while they are taking on a lot of risk. They do have these moments that they wonder why they undertook that risk and how they are going to continue to fund that risk. Sometimes they are paying employees when they can't even afford to pay themselves, and their families are relying on the business to support them as a family, too, particularly considering all the risks they are taking.

Sometimes they are forced to come up with additional funds to pay their workers on what we will be mandating. Those funds do not come from a money tree or some pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. They come out of the pockets of the Nation's small businessmen. It is the penalty they pay for taking the risks associated with running a small business.

The first hearing I held in Wyoming was as part of the Small Business Committee. We had a hearing on some of the problems of small business. When it was over, one of the reporters came up and said: You only had about 100 small businessmen attend this. Why do you suppose it was such a poor turnout?

I said: That wasn't a poor turnout from small business. If small business had an extra employee to send to a day's conference, they would fire him. They can't afford extra people.

With that realization, it was a good turnout and there were a lot of good suggestions. I always like to go back to Wyoming and meet with the people and actually talk to the guy on the end of the shovel because he usually has the best suggestions for changing the shovel. I found that to be true of the small businessmen.

This afternoon we agreed to an amendment that will provide for easier compliance with Federal rules and regulations, and I appreciate the bipartisan action that was taken. That will make a huge difference to small businessmen.

We could consider that the action we are about to take will be making it bad business for people to hire people who need some help and support in developing their skills by that method, making them higher wage workers. That cannot help but cost some people their jobs. In other instances, the hours they need will be cut back, hours that they need to get a good paycheck.

We cannot leave the floor today feeling better about having helped ease the income strain for many of the workers of our States but having left the employers wondering how to pay for the increases we have mandated. Once again, we have the best of intentions, but, once again, we have to remember one simple rule: It is not our money. We are, once again, reaching into the pockets of the small businessmen in our community and taking their money and telling them the amount of wages they will pay their employees without regard to the talents and abilities of the employees they can hire.

We have this huge job training corps out there. It is called small businesses. They take people who don't have the skills that are necessary for the small business they are operating and they teach them how to run a cash register, how to count change, how to interact with a customer, how to dress appropriately.

You might think these are all things that might be covered in school classes, and they are, if you take the right classes. But there are a lot of people who not only don't take the right classes, they drop out of school. They need to earn a living and they have to start somewhere earning a living. To earn that living they have to have some training, some basic job training. A lot of these small businesses are where they get that basic business training, and they kind of get it for free. The businessmen provide that information, and most of the people in the minimum wage level move up rather quickly. As they learn those skills, they get paid more. I know a lot of businesses where they have the minimum wage situation that lasts about 3 weeks if the people learn enough to advance so they can actually wait on the customer.

What we are talking about is a blanket increase that will warm the hearts of those who lack the skills for higher wage jobs as it leaves the employers out in the cold, unless we do the Reid package. Any increase in the minimum wage must be offset by a small business tax incentive package.

As a former small business owner of mom-and-pop shoe stores, let me walk through the realities of how business owners may address a mandated Federal minimum wage hike. Raising the minimum wage to $7.50 imposes a 41-percent increase in labor costs for a small employer with minimum wage workers. Every employer must face the very real issue of how he or she will deal with this increase in the costs and still meet the payroll week after week.

These are very real and difficult questions that impact our smallest employers most heavily. These increases must be paid for by employers and, as I said before, the money doesn't grow on trees. An employer must make hard decisions about how to meet these increased payroll obligations.

When costs go up, most businesses first look to cut expenses. The choices they have can be difficult and have often already been used. To meet higher mandated payroll costs, a small employer may be forced to consider cutting back on benefits such as health insurance, retirement, or leave plans--although a lot of small businesses can't afford to provide those in the first place.

It is simply too easy to forget that fringe benefits have a significant cost. Most employees don't realize the benefit they are getting when they get those. If a small employer has to reduce expenses to meet payroll, those are often the costs that go.

I know of a video store--I was talking to a young man who works in the Senate now, and he used to work in the Senate and part-time in a video store. When the minimum wage went up last time, what the video store did was instead of having two people at the store at the close of business, they only had one, and only having one isn't nearly as safe as having two. But that was the choice that the owner had to make in order to be able to meet the payroll.

We have seen some charts where, in States where there has been a raise in minimum wage, there has been an increase in number of jobs as well. I appreciate those charts and believe those charts to be accurate. What those charts are doing, though, is aggregating for the entire State. What we are doing is imposing this on one business at a time, one employee at a time. It really gets down to as local as politics ever gets. Those small businessmen believe that individuals matter, that people matter, and they are forced into some of these choices. There are not a whole lot of ways they can compensate for the change.

I have a chart that shows how to cut costs when there are none to cut. This came from the Washington Post. It says:

We're at the bottom. If the minimum wage went up, I don't

know how we would make the cuts to cover it . . . the

employee said.

The lone salaried employee, she works 80 hours a week to make up for the lack of workers. ``I have mixed feelings,'' she continued. ``I know that people can't afford to live on $5.15 an hour. But on the business side, small businesses can't afford to pay it.''

There are examples like that that are real-life situations that do make it difficult. That is the lone employee in a store.

Beyond cutting fringe benefits, small businesses may need to consider cutting back work hours, eliminating overtime, or laying off workers. Such actions are traditional and often necessary responses to meeting increased costs--not just the increased costs of the minimum wage. Unfortunately, these actions ultimately hurt the very workers the minimum wage increase is designed to help.

Some would say raise the prices. That is not always possible in the short run. In the long run there may be some flexibility because this is going to be imposed on everybody and will drive up prices. Of course, when it drives up prices, it kind of eliminates the benefit of the increase in the minimum wage. In the real world, small employers have to consider these types of options to cope with mandated increases in wages. Small business owners who themselves favor a minimum wage increase nonetheless recognize that any increase may result in having to make these tough choices.

In a recent front-page Washington Post article, the owner of a discount store in Kansas noted that, while he felt a wage of $7.25 seemed fair, he also noted that his profit margin was thin and that wages are his biggest controllable expense. He said: If wages go up, hours will have to come down. And the question will become: Whose, his stockman who works 6 hours a day and takes care of a wife who is blind and arthritic or should it be another worker who is ill and is on a waiting list for an organ transplant and needs more hours rather than fewer or yet another employee who is 22 years old and pregnant? These are hard realities that are faced by many small employers and those who work with them.

I ask unanimous consent that an article from the Washington Post that came out recently--I congratulate the writer of that article--be printed in the Record.

The author of the article is really a master at showing how all of these things are intertwined. It is very revealing and makes a good case for the increase in the minimum wage. But it does show some of the decisions that will have to be made and how that will affect other people, some of whom will be in a similar situation.

In a similar vein, when confronted by higher labor costs, employers will naturally gravitate toward filling positions with their most highly skilled, experienced, and productive workers available. Once again, this phenomenon of replacing low-skilled with high-skilled workers in the face of rising labor costs winds up harming the very workers an increase in the minimum wage seeks to help. The minimum wage positions are very often the entryway into the world of work for those who lack skills and experience. I can't say that enough. I am hoping the Workforce Investment Act will kind of come out of this whole process, too, and provide some additional training so people with less skills can have more skills and get some of the choice jobs that this country has to offer. But mandated increases in the minimum wage run the risk of closing that entryway to many.

Another option, of course, for employers that has to be considered is automation as an alternative to a paid employee. Does this sound farfetched? Consider how the automated teller machines, the ATMs, have replaced tellers, how the self-checkout lane at many establishments has replaced the clerk, and the drive-through has replaced the waiter, and in toll booths the EZ Pass has replaced the toll collector--not all of them, but a lot of them who use the EZ Pass eliminate toll collectors. We have seen some charts on how productivity goes up when the minimum wage goes up. Sometimes productivity goes up when machines are instituted in place of people. They can work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. We don't pay them any health benefits. We may have a little bit of maintenance done on them. They don't get any vacation.

Employees are still necessary. I keep telling people that you can't outsource the fact when your toilet is plugged and you need some help or when your electric switch doesn't work, there are a lot of hands-on things that absolutely require people. But they are figuring out ways to automate a lot of these things. In Gillette, WY, where I am from, we have this huge worker shortage, and as I have said a number of times, I keep encouraging people to go west and find the new frontier and get some good jobs. But when they are pinched, they come up with some other ways of doing things. The drive-up for our McDonald's is actually handled out of California. When you drive up to the little window and you order your Big Mac, you are actually talking to someone in California who uses the Internet to send the order back to the people who are putting it all together to give to you when you get in your car. They have been able to increase the number of drive-throughs substantially using lower paid--this kind of amazes me--out of California. So automation is one of the answers.

Beyond these cost-cutting measures of eliminating benefits, reducing hours, downsizing, laying off employees, reducing low-skill and entry- level employment, and automating, employers may also have to face up to the prospect of increasing the price of their goods and services. Price increases caused by mandated cost increases bring their own catalog of ills. Such increases drive inflation and cause all consumers to ultimately pay the price of these mandates. The irony is that as the cost of these labor increases is passed to the consumers, it affects everyone, including the minimum wage worker, whose recently increased wages are suddenly devalued by the increased price for goods and services that impact them as well. So on this ladder of success, we have kind of removed the lower rung of it. So it is a little bigger step to get up there, and some of them aren't going to be able to make the step because of some of the ways that it has to be adjusted.

In the same Washington Post article I mentioned earlier, another small employer who owns two convenience stores noted that he simply does not have the option of cutting hours to meet his increased payroll burden. Instead, he noted: I am going to have to raise my prices. He indicated if he had the chance to talk with Speaker Pelosi about the minimum wage, he would ask one question, and that is: Where does she think the money will come from? Of course, it can be argued that his customers, if he raises the price for the candy bar or the cup of coffee, will go somewhere where it is cheaper, and that is a good possibility. That means that in order to maintain

the business, if he is going to raise those prices, he has to have employees who give better service, quicker service, and that goes back to the on-the-job training I was mentioning that a lot of these small businesses do. They have to have the good service in order to keep their loyal customers. Sometimes that doesn't just hinge on the price of the candy bar or a cup of coffee.

I believe almost all of us recognize these economic realities and that none of us want them to come about. It is for those precise reasons that the substitute amendment contains provisions designed to enable our smallest employers to meet the obligations imposed by a minimum wage increase without resorting to the difficult personnel choices, the consumer price increases or all of the other things I mentioned.

Yesterday, I spoke briefly about the fact that in legislating, it is often important to find a third way. In this instance, the third way is one that will provide an increase in the minimum wage but also provide relief to the most affected small businesses so that they don't experience employee dislocation, a reduction in employment opportunities for low-skilled and entry-level workers or an increase in consumer prices that takes away the real value of any wage increase.

The third way is represented by the real value of any wage increase. The third way is represented by the substitute amendment that was the product of extensive bipartisan support, Democrats and Republicans working together, acknowledging the fact that mandated cost increases can have negative economic effects. So together we developed a means of addressing those concerns in the form of a bipartisan substitute amendment. I can't emphasize enough how pleased I am with the cooperation I saw as people worked out different alternatives. There were certainly a wide variety of them that were done and I think with some concentration particularly on how they would affect small business. I would reiterate the bipartisan support of that small business tax incentive package. There are key Democratic leaders who have acknowledged the need for the package to offset any wage increase in order to not disenfranchise the employers and their workers.

So I hope we won't make this partisan now. As I mentioned yesterday, the Senator from Massachusetts, Mr. Kennedy, and I have gone head to head on raising the minimum wage three times in the past several years. Each time, the votes were set up for each side to fail. This time around, we worked to come up with a third way in order to get the job done. I hope that all efforts to try and unravel this third way that will most likely result in a minimum wage increase isn't abandoned for the sake of making partisan messages. I urge my colleagues to continue to support the small business incentive package as a much-needed offset to the increased Federal wage.

I think this is a tremendous opportunity for us to do the right thing in all aspects, and I hope there will be good bipartisan support. I understand the desire to have a clean minimum wage, but that is what we have been going through for a couple of years now, and we are finally talking bipartisan. I think that was something that came out of the elections. I am pleased to see it is operating, and we will see how long it continues. I hope it continues through the entire session.

Amendment No. 108, as Modified

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Sessions amendment No. 108 be modified with the changes at the desk, and I urge its adoption, as modified.

Madam President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Sessions amendment No. 107 be withdrawn.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

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

I yield back, with the consent of both sides, the 2 minutes that was to be available on both sides. I yield back that time.

I request the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I thank the Chairman for his kind words. I admire him for the passion he puts into every issue he works on, and people will notice that he works on a lot of issues. He and I have had this debate three times over the last 2 years. We have varied a little bit on the amount of the increase, and I have always tried to get something in there for small businesses to take care of the increase, or to offset the increase a little so that these small businesses can continue to function and provide employment opportunities.

I come from a small business background. But not from small business as defined by the Federal government. The Federal definition is a business with less than 500 employees. Any business that we had in our State that was that large--and I am not sure we have any headquartered in our State--would be considered big business. I am talking about the mom-and-pop shops where the person who does the accounting also sweeps the sidewalks and cleans the toilets and waits on customers--definitely not in that order. This is a significant segment of small business across this country. They generate 60 to 80 percent of the net new jobs annually over the last decade. Raising the minimum wage will affect them more substantially than businesses with as many as 500 or more employees.

In the context of a minimum wage increase, I have always asked that actions be taken to offset the impact of an increase for small businesses. I want to thank Senator Baucus and Senator Grassley for their work in the Finance Committee to come up with such a package. That package is now contained in the Reid amendment that has been submitted. I think this package makes a substantial difference and makes a raise in the minimum wage possible. I think had we worked toward this kind of a situation earlier, the minimum wage might have happened earlier. Unfortunately, the times that the minimum wage issue arose in the past 2 years were situations where it was unamendable. It had to be a take-it-or-leave-it--my proposal or Senator Kennedy's proposal, and we left them both.

Any proposal on which the two of us have been able to reach agreement has been very successful in making it through the Senate and the House and getting signed by the President. It is not an easy task to pass a bill. I don't have to tell the Senator from Massachusetts that. He has been around here practicing the art of legislating a long time. I am one of the newcomers; I have only been here 10 years. I have noticed, however, that legislating means either finding a compromise, or finding a third way.

On this particular bill, we may find that third way. There will no doubt be additional amendments to this bill. I like situations where bills can be amended. I have been in situations where they could not. I have been on the side with the majority of votes in those situations and have not always felt comfortable. So I thank Majority Leader Reid for having a situation where there can be amendments.

I ask my side of the aisle not to make amendments that are onerous or wide-ranging but that stick to the subject and see what the best possible package is that we can come up with.

I will speak first to the underlying substitute that has been laid down on this bill. There hasn't been any comment on that yet, even though we have had 2 hours 40 minutes worth of debate. Of course, we started first with Senator Gregg's amendment. I want to mention that this first amendment was an agreement to keep the ethics bill from having a different approach. I appreciate the effort of both parties to allow that to come up. While that will be voted on as a part of the minimum wage, it is not a part of the minimum wage. It allows a vote on that as an up-or-down vote. I am pleased there was some compromise on that and some ability to do that.

I listened to the hour and a half of debate on that amendment and the concern over whether trading votes would happen. Something this body ought to consider, perhaps, is a law that we have in Wyoming that prohibits the trading of votes on any issue and makes it a felony that has to be reported by both sides if an offer is made. It makes each issue stand on its own.

So I will speak first to the underlying substitute that was laid down on this bill because it provides the tax relief we have been talking about for a long time, and this is tax relief that has been agreed upon in a very bipartisan way. Senator Grassley and Senator Baucus often work together, and that is why the Finance Committee is so successful in moving things along. They have come up with tax relief for very small businesses that will aid them in meeting their burden of a minimum wage increase. I have long advocated that we must provide a measure of tax and regulatory relief to businesses that will face these higher mandated costs.

The substitute amendment consists of the following provisions: First, it would increase current section 179 expensing by extending the increased expensing of qualified business property allowed for small businesses until 2011. Without an extension, the amount which may be expensed will drop by more than 75 percent. If we pass this extension, we will allow small business owners who are making investments in the future of their business to retain more of their earnings, and these additional funds can be used to retain and hire new employees, thereby balancing out the effect of the minimum wage increase.

Now, we have talked about families and children, and I want to tell you the small businesses that we are talking about are the small businesses that are run by families that, in most instances, have children. Quite often, the small businesses are run by young people. In my own case, I got married, and a week later we started a shoe store. We had kids, and the kids got to learn a little about the retail trade by having to work and help us out. So I have some personal background and experience in running a small business.

Second, the amendment would provide a 15-year recovery period for leasehold improvements and certain restaurant buildings and related improvements. This provision improves current law by including new restaurants, retail space, and improvements by extending the broadened provision. Restaurants and retail employ a very large percentage of minimum wage workers and are most impacted by mandated increases in the Federal wage. This portion of the amendment extends relief to these businesses and seeks to avoid dislocation and decreased employment opportunities for restaurant and other workers.

Third, the amendment would allow noncorporate taxpayers with annual gross receipts of less than $10 million to use the cash method of accounting for purchases and sales of merchandise.

Under current law, those small business taxpayers are generally required to use the accrual method for such purchases and sales, even though they may use the cash accounting method for overall accounting. This simplification and clarification of accounting methods would assist small businesses by reducing their administrative costs, which would free up more resources to maintain employment levels.

I realize most people in America may not know the difference between cash accounting and accrual accounting. I can tell them, accrual accounting is a lot more complicated because one has to guess on the percentages of expenditures and then later make corrections for actual amount, whereas under cash accounting, one takes the actual money coming in and the actual money that goes out. It is a much simpler accounting system. We want to make sure those small businesses have that opportunity.

Fourth, the amendment expands work opportunity tax incentives. This allows employers credit against wages for targeted individuals, including those on welfare, qualified veterans, and high-risk youth. These populations, again, are most likely to lose jobs in an environment where employers are forced to bear increased salary costs. This program would be extended for 5 years.

Fifth, the substitute also creates a voluntary certification program for professional employer organizations that meet the standards of solvency and responsibility and that maintain ongoing certification by the IRS.

Lastly, the amendment provides for a series of clarifications and modifications to the tax and accounting provisions that govern subchapter S corporations. Many small businesses are organized under the provisions of subchapter S of the Internal Revenue Code. Incidentally, the ones that are organized under subchapter S pay taxes on the earnings each and every year as opposed to a corporation that only pays some corporate taxes and then on distribution has to pay the rest of the taxes.

I can't leave this topic of small businesses without commenting briefly on a matter of great concern to these businesses, the employees, and the families that depend on them. I am speaking, of course, about the rise in cost of small business health insurance.

Although cost growth has begun to slow a bit, premiums for small businesses have been rising unsustainably at near double-digit rates for more than half a decade, which is more than double the rate of inflation of wage growth. For much of the last Congress, my colleagues and I engaged in an aggressive and bipartisan effort to tackle this problem. Indeed, the small business health plan legislation I authored with Senator Ben Nelson came within just a few votes of overcoming a filibuster last May. Our legislation would enable small businesses to pool their negotiating across State borders to have a big enough pool to effectively negotiate against the big insurance companies and thus hold down costs and widen access to coverage while preserving the strong role for State oversight and consumer protection.

Progress on this critical issue is moving forward. I have had interesting discussions with people from both sides of the aisle. I think the discussions have been promising. There is a long way to go, but I think we have built a solid foundation, and that foundation continues to grow as we move into a new year and a new Congress.

Small business health insurance reform is vitally important, and I realize there may be some sentiment that the issue should be resolved in the context of the minimum wage debate. However, I firmly believe that offering a version of last year's small business health plan as an amendment to the pending minimum wage legislation would be premature and would not help us move forward toward securing meaningful small group health insurance relief in this Congress or minimum wage or help for small businesses. Rather, the best way to achieve real small business health care reform is to proceed forcefully to build on the significant progress we made last year.

Development of small business health legislation is a process that is well along, and I believe success is in sight. We are on a promising track, and we should stick with it. That promising track, of course, is having bipartisan discussions about what needs to be done in health to keep the insurance rates down, to provide better access to people.

Senator Kennedy and I have been having some discussions on principles. That is the way we have been attacking the pieces of legislation we do around here. We set down principles and then meet with stakeholders and talk about what difficulties those principles provide for them. Then we come up with a bill that will hopefully find a way through the maze. It is extremely difficult, but the increase in interest in health insurance has risen so greatly that I think this will be a prime topic for people in the next year and hopefully a solution within the next year.

I would also be remiss if I didn't mention, as I have many times in the past, that while an increase in the minimum wage will be a kick- start for some workers, it doesn't address the fundamental issue of chronic low wage earners. Regardless of how we increase the minimum wage today, those who earn it will still be the lowest paid tomorrow. The minimum wage needs to be for all workers what it is for most--a starting point. Our policy should be directed at giving all workers the opportunity to move up the wage ladder, not merely moving the ladder's lowest rung up.

As a former small business owner, I know these entry-level jobs are a gateway into the workforce for people without skills and without experience. Minimum wage usually goes to those with minimum skills. These skills-based wage jobs can open the door to better jobs and better lives for low-skilled workers if we give them the tools they need to succeed. My colleagues know that I strongly believe we must do more in this department. For the past two Congresses, one of my major priorities has been reauthorizing and improving the Nation's job- training system that was created by the Workforce Investment Act. This law will help to provide American workers with the skills they need to compete in the global economy. Education and the acquisition of job skills represent the surest path to economic opportunity and security in the global job market. Increasing skills increases jobs, increases wages, and lifts the lowest boat into a bigger boat.

Over the past few years, this bill has received unanimous support in both the HELP Committee, which has reported it out twice, and the full Senate, which has passed it twice. But I have to say that election-year politics and political positioning have prevented this important bill from becoming law.

We tried to preconference a lot of the bills that came out of the HELP Committee last Congress. We were successful on many. That means the House agreed with the Senate position with some changes prior even to the time the Senate passed a bill, and then the House would pass the same bill, and as a result, the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee got 27 bills through the legislative process and signed by the President. That is quite a contrast to what happens with most committees.

The Workforce Investment Act was not able to be preconferenced. I hope it can be now. I believe there is a little better understanding of some of the objections and also some of the benefits. I believe this bill will make it through the process and will start an estimated 900,000 people a year on a better career path. It can only happen if it is not a casualty of Congress's inability to overcome its worst partisan instincts. That would be inexcusable.

Outside the glare of election-year politics, I hope we can quickly pass this job-training bill that will truly improve the wages and lives of workers in this country. The Senate has passed it twice. We have spent 4 years working on it.

The potential skills gap facing American workers only deepens when we are compared to our competitors around the world. As chairman of the committee, I was able to travel to some of the foreign countries which are among some of our toughest competitors in the world market. I came home believing strongly that we must focus more seriously on the acquisition and improvement of job and job-related skills. While many of us feel good about what we are doing today when we raise the minimum wage, I intend to make sure we do not neglect to address the far more pressing concerns for American workers: the increasing skills gap and the availability of health insurance. I anticipate we will get to work on these issues at a separate time.

Amendment No. 103 to Amendment No. 100

Mr. President, at this point, I have permission to lay down an amendment on behalf of Senator Snowe. I send an amendment to the desk.

Mr. President, I rise today in support of the amendment offered by Senator Snowe. This amendment would provide some measure of relief to those small businesses which bear the economic burden of nearly 41 percent of the increase in the Federal minimum wage. Small businesses not only employ the bulk of the minimum wage workers, they have also been the engine for economic growth.

Small business has been responsible for the majority of new job creation, generating between 60 and 80 percent of the net new jobs annually over the last decade, and it is small businesses which have traditionally provided the only entry port for new workers into the job market.

I congratulate Senator Snowe for her persistence on this amendment. She has worked on it a number of times and revised it to the present situation. I suspect if there are any objections, we would be willing to work on it additionally.

But we must recognize that raising the Federal minimum wage, whatever else effects there may be, significantly increases the costs for many of these businesses. I mentioned that an increase of 41 percent in labor costs has to be accounted for somehow. Curtailing services, reducing employee complements, and forgoing expansions are some of the many options considered by these businesses in the face of increased costs. The inescapable fact is that increased labor costs heighten the risk of both employment dislocation and decreased job opportunity for the very individuals an increase in the minimum wage is designed to benefit. Unless we are prudent and balance such mandated cost increases for some measure of relief for affected small businesses, we risk serious unintended consequences. Simply put, an increase in the minimum wage is of no value at all to a worker who does not have a job or a job seeker who has no prospects of employment.

As a Senator from a rural, low-population State, I would like to point out another reality. In many cases, heavily populated areas with high costs of living have already, in fact, adjusted their minimum wage levels either by law or by market forces, which actually work.

The town I am from is a boomtown, it is an energy center. If one drives by the Arby's restaurant, the lit-up moving marque sign says: Now hiring, $9.50 an hour plus benefits; you name the hours. If you go in and apply, they will tell you that if they can pick the hours, it is $10.50 an hour.

In many areas, market forces are working. There are construction companies that go from one site to another hiring people away from other construction companies. We have a shortage of people to work in Wyoming. Of course, that requires relocating to the frontier, which is what a lot of people consider Wyoming. Horace Greeley said: Go west, young man. I would say: Go west, young man and young woman. There are coal operations out there, primarily surface mines. They need people to drive coal, or haul trucks. These trucks are 28 feet long, 28 feet wide, and 28 feet tall. They haul a lot of coal. We move 1 million tons of coal a day out of our county. How can we do that? We have a coal seam that is 50- to 90-feet thick, and it is only under 60 to 90 feet of dirt.

When I was mayor and Senator Rockefeller was Governor, he came out to see our mines. Taking him back out to the airport, I always remember what he said: You folks don't mine coal here.

I said: What do you mean?

He said: You just back up trains and you load them.

We have coal which is low in sulfur and other chemicals, which makes it useful across the United States. Some of the States also known as coal States take our coal and mix it with their coal, and they can help meet the clean air standards that way. We are low in Btu, so they increase the Btu by using their coal. If someone has a clean drug record and no experience and can drive anything, they can be trained to drive one of these coal haul trucks and make $60,000 to $80,000 a year, and even more with overtime. It is a very flexible market. So there are job opportunities out there. But they may be nontraditional jobs, and they may require moving to another part of the country.

One will find Wyoming can use a little bit more population. We are trying to reach a population of half a million people. We are 350 miles a side on our State, so we are bigger than most of the States.

At any rate, there are areas which would be most dramatically affected by the minimum wage increase and those are lower cost of living areas. They are often rural and sparsely populated. In those areas, employers will feel the most pressure on their bottom lines. In those areas, employees will have the fewest opportunities to find other employment if they are let go. So a reasonable approach to the minimum wage issue must take those realities into account. If we are going to dramatically increase the costs for some businesses by a wage mandate, we should provide some measure of relief to those same businesses. If we do not, we harm not only those small businesses, we ultimately harm the individuals they employ.

The sound and well-reasoned amendment that is offered by Senator Snowe accomplishes these ends through reasonable and targeted regulatory relief for those small businesses that are most negatively impacted by a wage increase mandate. I am pleased to be a cosponsor of the amendment along with Senator Landrieu. The Snowe amendment provides some regulatory relief by requiring that the Federal agencies which issue new rules and regulations which impact small businesses also provide those employers with plainly written and readily available guidance that explains what employers must do to be in compliance with these rules and regulations.

All employers incur costs keeping up with the obligations Government imposes on them and determining how to meet those obligations. Small businesses regularly incur administrative costs in monitoring Federal regulatory changes and developing compliance programs. There is no question that the burden of Federal regulations falls more heavily on small business. This chart shows the cost of complying with

Federal regulations. The per-employee compliance cost for firms with 20 or fewer employees is $7,647. The per-employee compliance cost for firms with 500 or more employees is only $5,282.

So the per-employee compliance costs are 45 percent more for our smallest employers than they are for our largest. Congress has previously recognized the necessity of providing small businesses relief from those compliance and monitoring costs, yet a GAO study has shown the goal of providing small businesses relief from high compliance monitoring costs is far from fully met. The regulatory provision in this amendment seeks to ensure that goal is finally realized. The need for this type of compliance assistance was recognized by my colleague from Maine, Senator Snowe, the author of this amendment and proponent of this proposal in this Congress as well as the last two Congresses. I am pleased to again cosponsor the bill authored by Senator Snowe. The bill continues to enjoy broad bipartisan support from our colleagues, including Senators Kerry and Landrieu. This regulatory amendment will not only have the benefit of decreasing administrative costs for small employers, it also has the further benefit of increasing compliance levels by ensuring that all employers know the rules of the road and the means to comply with them.

Through the Banking Committee, on which I also serve, we have been able to suggest and get several advisory committees started. Those advisory committees have small businesspeople on them who advise how different statutes as well as rules and regulations affect them, and their input has had considerable impact. This amendment is one of the type things those groups would suggest.

When we write Federal regulation, we often make it very complicated and it is in a very legalistic form. I helped Senator Sarbanes on the Sarbanes-Oxley bill. I brought an accounting perspective to that. I was pleased he listened to it. But one of the factors we missed in that legislation, or you cannot cover in that broad of a bill, is the impact of small business versus big business.

Again, the advisory committees have said what is needed is a better explanation for small business that they can understand. They do not have the specialists big business has. They can't afford them. Consequently, they do not have easy accessible advice on how these legalistic terms actually work. It is the significant difference in cost that we are concerned about here.

It is a relatively simple amendment, but one that could make a significant difference. The substitute amendment to the underlying bill, as I mentioned, went through the Finance Committee. It did not go through the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and it did not go through the Banking Committee, so there was no opportunity to suggest this kind of amendment at either of those points. But it is something the Small Business Committee has worked on a number of times. Senator Snowe has been the chairman and is now the ranking member of the Small Business Committee. I hope we will recognize her effort as well as the bipartisan effort coming out of that committee to provide this kind of a change.

I think when the week is done, or maybe even less time than that, we will be at a point where there will be both a minimum wage increase and some help for small businesses that will offset the impact and keep the economy moving.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I rise today to honor SSN 773, the USS Cheyenne, for her 10 years of service in the U.S. Navy in defense of our freedom.

On July 6, 1992, the keel was laid for the USS Cheyenne in Newport News, VA. She was launched on April 16, 1995. On September 13, 1996, Mrs. Ann Simpson sponsored the USS Cheyenne. I am pleased to now occupy the seat of Ann's husband, Senator Alan Simpson, in the U.S. Senate.

Since September 11, 2001, the USS Cheyenne has been engaged in important missions as part of the global war on terrorism. The USS Cheyenne earned the distinction of the first to strike when she was the first ship to launch Tomahawk missiles in Operation Iraqi Freedom under the command of Commander Charles Doty. She would go on to successfully launch her entire complement of Tomahawks, earning a clean sweep for combat actions in the final three months of her nine month deployment. That level of excellence continues today from her homeport in Pearl Harbor, HI.

The USS Cheyenne is the last Los Angeles class submarine built and the third ship in our Nation's fleet named in honor of the city home to Wyoming's State capital. The first USS Cheyenne, a tugboat, entered service in 1898. The second USS Cheyenne, BM 10, was originally the monitor class USS Wyoming. In 1909 it was renamed USS Cheyenne to make the name available for the battleship BB 32, the new USS Wyoming. Fiction writer Tom Clancy further cemented the legend of the USS Cheyenne when he made the submarine a central player in a battle for the Spratly Islands in his novel ``SSN.''

Cheyenne, Wyoming's motto is ``Live the Legend.'' The 145 submariners who are aboard the USS Cheyenne have adopted the motto ``Ride the Legend.'' The city of Cheyenne has formed a special bond with the crew of her namesake. Each year the outstanding sailors of the USS Cheyenne are the guests of the city of Cheyenne for Cheyenne Frontier Days, the world's largest outdoor rodeo, and the ``Daddy of them All''. Many of the sailors have never been out West or been to a rodeo. For a week the submariners enjoy Wyoming hospitality and have a chance to live the legend. It is a small chance for Wyoming and the people of Cheyenne to repay a debt of gratitude to the crew of the USS Cheyenne.

Commander Michael Tesar assumed command of the USS Cheyenne on June 4, 2006. I wish him well in his new command and thank Commander Richard Testyon Jr. for his time at the helm. Commander Tesar brings extensive experience to the USS Cheyenne and will lead SSN 773 well.

The best skippers are complemented by outstanding crew; I would like to honor the crew of the USS Cheyenne. They include EM3 Richard Akins, LTJG Andrew Alvarado, MM1 Cory Alvis, STS3 John Andrada, YNSA Alfonso Angel, STS2 Andrew Aubry, STSSA Raynor Barton, STS2 Adam Baugh, LT Brett Bayer, MM3 Gregory Benedict, ET1 Charles Berger, MM3 Tyler Bird, MMC David Blake, MM2 Steven Bolek, EM2 Nicholas Brechtel, MM3 Daniel Breedlove, ET3 Jeremy Brown, MM3 Jeremy Bruner, ENS James Bucklin, SK3 James Burnett, LTJG Rene Cano, LTJG David Ciha, MM2 Shayne Clemens, LTJG Christopher Clevenger, MMFN Clyde Comstock, FTC Jonathan Consford, CSSA James Couch, STSSN Colt Couture, MM1 Falanda Culp, LT Michael Darby, LTJG Drew DeWalt, MM3 Juan Diaz, ET3 Lucas Dunbar, MM1 Jack Durand, MM2 Jon Espinoza, YN1 Gregorio Familia, ET3 Joseph Filbert, ET3 Chad Fogler, STSSN Abraham Freet, MM2 Steven Frey, SKSN Christopher Fuller, ET3 Shane Garrod, MMFN Robert Gauld, LCDR John Gearhart, ET1 Christopher Ghramm, MM3 Warren Givens, FTC Russell Goltry, LT Parrish Guerrero, ET1 John Guthrie, ET3 Cory Hall, ET2 Long Han, MMFN David Harper, STS2 Christopher Heffernan, CSSN Jacob Holder, ET3 Stilling Horton, EM2 Angier Hsu, ETC Barry Hudson, EM3 Benjamin Huelle, CSCS Kenneth Hughley, ETC David Ingalls, ET3 John Ingle, EM3 Nicholas Jessee, MM2 Christopher Johnson, ET2 Robert Johnson, ET3 James Johnson, STSC Alan Jones, MM3 Edward Ketheley, EM1 William Lawrence, FT2 Sean Little, MM3 John Livengood, MM2 Justin Lynn, MM3 Jonathan Mac Dula, STS2 John Marsh, FT2 Xavier Martinez, ET3 Shaun McCarthy, STS2 Ryan McClure, MM3 Brian McEndree, MM2 Jeremy McLean, FT1 Nicholas Messina, SN Kenton Metzler, EM2 John Miranda, MM2 Thomas Mitchell, EM2 Ambrose Montera, EM3 Matthew Nesbitt, MM3 Hung Nguyen, MM3 Erik Nielson, ETSN Matthew Noland, STS2 Matthew Odom, MM3 Chad O'Hagan, ET1 Jonathan Okert, HMC Nathaniel Olipas, ET3 Steven Pack, CS1 Ted Paro, STS3 Brandon Pash, FT2 Donald Peachey, ET3 Errane Pearce, CS3 Wesley Peltier, ET1 Steven Perry, ETCS John Perryman, EM3 Michael Proskine, ET2 David Purser, ETC Raul Quintana, LTJG Eric Rasmussen, SKC Randall Riley, CS1 Harry Robinson, MM1 Alvin Rodriguez, FTC Damean Rogers, MM2 Douglas Ross, FT2 Anthony Rossi, LTJG Nicholas Saflund, ET3 Jacob Saylor, STSSN Charles Scaife, ET3 Derek Scammon, ET2 Kevin Scharkey, LCDR Ian Schillinger, ET2 John Schmidt, MMC Timothy Schreyer, LTJG William Sheridan, MMFR Grant

Shirley, STS3 Levi Shockley, ETCS Gregory Silvey, STS1 Michael Simonds, ET3 Tim Simson, EM1 Jerome Smallwood, YNSN Michael Smith, ET2 Anthony Spartana, MMC John St. Clair, EMC David Stephens, MM3 Kevin Stewart, MMC Gary Strong, MM3 Jesse Swain, EM2 William Tabata, CDR Michael Tesar, MM3 Joshua Tomlinson, LTJG Christopher Topoll, CSSR Joshua Towles, LT Carl Trask, MMFR Justin Trickett, ET2 Eric Trumbull, FT2 Landon RG, MM1 Christian Watson, ET3 Kevin Watson, MM2 Robert Wehrmann, ETC Michael Willison, MM3 Nicholas Wittmann, STS2 Robert Wood, EM2 James Workman, CMDCM Andrew Worshek, and MM3 Charles Wreede.

Again I congratulate the USS Cheyenne and her crew on the 10th anniversary of their service and thank them for their sacrifices in defense of our great Nation.

I ask unanimous consent the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action and the Senate return to legislative session.

I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 1245, Johanna's Law, which was received from the House.

I ask unanimous consent that the amendment at the desk be agreed to, the bill as amended be read a third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and any statements be printed.

I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 4113, the Native American Methamphetamine Act, introduced earlier today.

I ask unanimous consent the bill be read a third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and any statements be printed in the Record.