Floor Statements

Mr. 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 CDR Charles Doty. She would go on to successfully launch her entire complement of Tomahawks, earning a clean sweep for combat actions in the final 3 months of her 9 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 tug boat, 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.

CDR Richard Testyon, Jr., assumed command of the USS Cheyenne on June 4, 2006. I wish him well in his new command and thank CDR Charles Doty for his time at the helm. Commander Testyon 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.

Mr. President, I am rising in support of the motion of my colleague from North Carolina to pass the bioterrorism and BARDA legislation. It is vital we pass this bill before we adjourn because our Nation's biopreparedness should be strengthened now and not put off until some distant time in the future. I urge all Members to support this motion and the bipartisan bill.

As chairman of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, I know this issue has been a priority of both Democrats and Republicans on the committee. Senator Burr

is the chairman of the committee's Subcommittee on Bioterrorism and Public Health Preparedness. It has been clear to me that he has directed a very open process that sought to get input from all stakeholders. In the past 2 years he has held at least eight hearings and roundtables on this subject, with witnesses representing a wide range of views and opinions. I also know that he held a lot of meetings with stakeholders, people who had an interest in this bill and ideas on this bill. He also hired some extremely professional staff with a lot of experience who could provide input and work to find those third ways of doing things when things were difficult. I have been pleased with the bipartisan effort and bicameral effort that he has made on this bill: to keep the House folks educated on what we were doing, to try to keep the Senate educated on what we were doing.

The substance of this bill, accordingly, represents a consensus of what public health officials, experts, and public policy groups from around the Nation believe needs to be done immediately to protect the public health of our Nation's families and workers. While we have made remarkable strides in our efforts to identify and address our Nation's weaknesses to biological threats, the fact remains that our defense on these fronts is far from perfect. Despite our best efforts in Congress, and the administration's efforts, there are holes we must fill if we are going to adequately ensure our safety. Senator Burr has worked tirelessly in a bipartisan fashion in the HELP Committee to examine these conditions and construct a solution to appropriately address the current shortcomings of our biodefense. The product of that work is now the subject of this motion, and it deserves our support.

Before we go home we all want to be able to tell our families and workers that we are taking all steps necessary to protect us from a natural, an accidental, or a deliberate public health threat. Supporting Mr. Burr's motion this morning is an essential step toward enacting these protections.

The bill has two distinct parts. The first part is the creation of a new authority built upon the highly successful Department of Defense's defense advanced research projects. This authority would encourage the development of new bioterrorism countermeasures. It is a look into the future; a way to figure out, before it happens, what needs to be developed using experts who can then encourage people to develop those products.

The second part is the reauthorization of the Bioterrorism Act. Both parts are necessary to ensure our Nation's biodefense security. A few years ago we had hoped that, through the creation of the bioshield fund, the pharmaceutical industry would create the drugs necessary to protect Americans. We cannot close our eyes and pray they have done what we hoped. They have not. The pharmaceutical industry is not commercializing enough drugs to fight infections diseases, whether they are spread naturally or through the effort of man.

The rise in the incidence of antibiotic-resistant strains of diseases and the possible specter of bird flu is very disturbing and demands our immediate attention. It is clear that without the passage of this legislation little will change.

The bill before us addresses this deficiency in a very similar strategy and process that we have seen to be effective with the Army through DARPA. By applying the successes of the DARPA programs to bioterrorism, we hope we can spur the industry to address this urgent need.

It is not clear if this step is enough, but it is clear if we do nothing, nothing will change.

The second portion of this bill also is vital to our biodefense preparedness. This part would reauthorize the Bioterrorism Act. To be clear, the Bioterrorism Act, which we passed after the anthrax attacks, was a giant step forward. The law has done a tremendous amount to help State and local governments prepare. However, at the same time, the specter of a pandemic bird flu was not on the horizon. In addition, we have learned a lot from the biohazard experience after the effects of Hurricane Katrina in the gulf coast.

More needs to be done to assure that State and local public health agencies know exactly what needs to be done and how they should be prepared.

The bill strengthens what we have already started to do and gives us the flexibility to prevent biological events from happening in the future. We cannot put off for another day the vital biodefense preparedness provisions contained in this bill. Our families and workers need this help today.

I urge my colleagues to support the motion. I support my colleague from the State of North Carolina as he tries to address this legislation immediately. I thank him for all of his hard work to get us here today.

I have not seen anybody dig into an issue to the level that he has, to get the expertise that he has in a very difficult area. We were pleased when he came over from the House to be part of the Senate and brought the expertise on this kind of bill with him. He has done a tremendous job, and I appreciate the way he has reached out to get something done.

It is my understanding that there might be an objection to going ahead and doing this today. Normally, at this point we would read a unanimous consent request to get on the bill, but it is my understanding that no one is going to come down from the other side of the aisle to object, and I can tell you I am not going to object to that on anybody's behalf.

Civility in the Senate says if the other side doesn't show up to object, somebody is supposed to object on their behalf. I am not going to do that. Instead, I am going to put off the request until later, until somebody can actually be here to object because I have difficulty imagining that people would object to this kind of national security at this point in the history of the United States.

So with that announcement, I will allocate the remainder of the time to the chairman, who has been working diligently on this bill, and let him give a few more informational views and comments and allocate the rest of the time.

I thank Senator Burr for his tremendous efforts, the tremendous work that has gone on up to this point. We do need to finish it now.

I yield the floor.

Parliamentary inquiry: I think I have the next 45 minutes under the unanimous consent.

Mr President, soon the last remaining items of business on the legislative calendar for the 10gth Congress will be taken up and the current session of Congress will end. When it does, several of our colleagues will be returning home and leaving public service. We will miss them and we will especially miss the good ideas and creative spirit they brought with them to add to our work here in the Senate.

One of our colleagues we will all miss is Bill Frist, our good friend from Tennessee. In his two terms of service he has compiled quite a remarkable record of accomplishments as one of Tennessee's Senators and as majority leader here in the Senate.

Bill's interest in serving in the Senate began while he was attending Princeton as an undergraduate. He was an intern in the House when Representative Evins of his home State encouraged him to run. But, before you do, he said, do something else for 20 years or so. Then you will be ready to run for office.

He knew that was good advice so he began a career that interested him and challenged him as much as politics did. Bill Frist became a surgeon and established a reputation as one of the best transplant surgeons in the Nation.

We were fortunate that he chose that path in life, because his in depth knowledge of the practice of medicine and our Nation's health care system has been an invaluable addition to the debates we have had on those issues. His familiarity with health care from the perspective of the physician and his concern about rising costs as a member of the Senate helped to guide our efforts as we took up these and other matters in committee and on the Senate floor.

In the years he has served in the Senate, he has put his medical skills to practical use several times. When a gun battle had taken the lives of two Capitol Police officers, he went to the scene to help. Although he was unable to save the lives of either officer, he was ultimately successful in saving the life of their assailant. On another occasion, we were fortunate to have him with us when Strom Thurmond collapsed on the Senate floor and needed assistance. Finally, he was able to revive and save the life of one of his own constituents who had been the victim of a heart attack.

Many of our constituents remember Bill Frist the days in 2001, when the Senate was attacked with anthrax. Once again, Bill Frist was there to provide support and encouragement, and in that calm, reassuring manner of his, let the Nation know that we were doing everything we could to minimize the present danger and return the Senate to our normal pattern of work as soon as possible. The anthrax attack was a challenge that had never been faced before in the Congress, and Bill Frist showed his credentials as a leader during that difficult time for us all.

During his service in the Senate, Bill has taken an active role in the consideration of a great many thorny and complicated issues that regularly come before the Senate. We were fortunate to have a doctor as our leader because, on many occasions, it was only Bill's bedside manner that helped him to forge agreements and develop bipartisan agreements on the Senate floor.

Looking back, the record will show that one of Bill's greatest successes was the Medicare drug benefit. This new addition to the Medicare program is helping seniors to pay for their prescription drugs and it is having a great impact on the quality of the health care we provide our Nation's seniors. Although it is still going through its initial stages as it is introduced to the public, and we are working to ensure people understand the benefits it provides them, there is no doubt that we wouldn't have had a prescription drug benefit program enacted into law at all--if not for the role Bill Frist played in the effort. Working with program opponents and organizations in the public sector that opposed the new program, Bill was able to resolve many of the doubts and uncertainties that surrounded it, and ultimately, get it enacted by the Congress and signed into law.

In addition, and in what was perhaps his biggest achievement, Bill led a successful effort to pass an initiative to fight AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean. He had a heartfelt interest in the legislation and firsthand knowledge of the problem it was designed to address because he had done volunteer medical work for many years in Africa. His witness of the impact of the disease on the population of that country inspired him to do everything he could to address and try to put an end to the suffering it caused. Bill can be very proud of the great result he achieved in that effort. That initiative is his legacy and it will save more lives over the years than we will ever be able to count.

The record is clear. During Bill Frist's service in the Senate, especially his years as majority leader, the Senate and the Nation have faced challenges and addressed issues we had never had to deal with before. The war on terror. the detention of terrorists, the quality and definition of life, the future of our Nation's school system, partial birth abortion, stem cell research and so many more controversial issues have found their way onto the Senate floor for our consideration.

Through it all, Bill Frist's knowledge, deep understanding of the issues involved, and determination to develop a consensus on them, so typical of his leadership style, enabled the Senate to be a pro-active and fully involved deliberative body. The results he achieved during his years of service in the Senate will be his legacy and help provide the foundation for the work we will do together during the 110th Session of Congress.

Now Bill and his wife Karyn will have the time they have always wanted to spend with their children as Bill considers his next opportunity for public service. Bill Frist has been a major part of our day to day routine in the Senate for 12 years and we will miss his presence, his influence on our legislative routine, and his expertise on the issues we have considered on the floor.

paul sarbanes

Mr. President, there is always an element of sadness that touches us all when we come to the end of a session of Congress. As the clock winds down on the final hours of our legislative activities, it also signals the time when several of our colleagues will be retiring and ending their years of service in the U.S. Senate. One of our colleagues who will be leaving at the end of this session is my good friend Paul Sarbanes of Maryland.

I remember when I first came to Washington years ago. I wanted my staff and I to hit the ground running, so I was reading up on the people who would be my colleagues in the Senate. One name caught my eye--Paul Sarbanes. It was noted that Paul was a brilliant man who was one of the Senate's most noted authorities on the detached nuances of finance.

As the Senate's only accountant I found that comment to be a badge of honor. I knew Paul must be wearing it with great pride. I knew I would. I took an instant liking to him.

Through the years Paul and I served on the Banking Committee together. Our 8 years of service there gave me an opportunity to come to know him and appreciate his skills as a legislator. He has a great ability to solve complicated problems by piecing together workable solutions and then reaching out to his colleagues on both sides of the aisle to forge an agreement that could be passed and signed into law.

As I came to know him, I came to greatly respect him, the hard work he puts into his job every day of the year, and his commitment to serve his constituents which directed his every effort on the Senate floor.

A few years ago I had the chance to work with him one on one as we crafted the provisions of what came to be known as the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation. We became good friends during the process and developed a mutual respect for each other's positions on the issues.

That was back during the days when several scandals had rocked the accounting and financial industries of our country. Determined to find a solution, Paul rolled up his sleeves and went to work. I don't think anyone gave him much of a chance to succeed, but those were people who didn't know him or his determination to find a way to solve a problem once it had captured his attention.

As he began to work on his bill, he knew he wouldn't be able to pass it without the help of some Senate Republicans. On the other side of the aisle, we knew we couldn't get anything through the Senate without the support of several Senate Democrats. So Paul reached across the aisle and got us all to work together to bring his bill to the Senate floor where it was ultimately passed and signed into law.

As he worked for the people of Maryland and I worked for the people of my State, we found, despite our political and philosophical differences, we were always able to find common ground on the 80 percent of every issue that unites us. That is why Paul has a well earned reputation here in the Senate for his willingness to work out problems for the greater good. He is known for his ability to navigate through partisan waters and arrive at solutions which are appreciated by the thoughtful majorities of both sides of the Senate. If you ask me, those are the abilities that have proven to be the secret of his success.

Back home, his constituents appreciate his workhorse style. He has served Maryland in the Senate for almost three decades and through it all he has earned the support of the people back home for his hard work and determined effort to make their lives better. The issues that were important to the people who sent him here always led Paul to the Senate floor to take up the cause and do everything he possibly could to protect and promote the interests of those who were counting on him to get results. Needless to say--more often than not--he did.

Now three decades of service in the Senate have come to an end and Paul is returning home to Maryland. I know we will all miss his ingenuity, his creativity, and his ability to focus our efforts and lead on both local and national issues. It is a well known adage that all politics is local and that is a lesson that Paul learned and practiced as a master craftsman.

Now he and Christine will have time to enjoy their families together, and be a part of all that Maryland has to offer. I have a hunch he will not be slowing down so much as changing direction. I also expect I will continue to hear from him from time to time on matters that will still draw his interest.

It is a phone call expect and look forward to receiving in the years to come.

jim jeffords

Mr. President, as the session draws to a close and we complete the consideration of the bills before us by casting our final votes of the session, I rise to express my gratitude and best wishes to one of our colleagues who will be retiring when the final gavel brings to a close the current session of Congress.

Jim Jeffords, my good friend from Vermont, has decided to return home so that he can spend more time with his family. Although I will miss him, as will we all, I understand the reasons for his departure. There is nothing more important than family and the bonds between us and our children--and grandchildren--are stronger than any other in our life.

As the Chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, I will miss Jim's 'good ideas, his commitment to making a difference, and his strong determination to make our education and health care systems operate more effectively and efficiently. He was an important presence on the Committee and he and his staff were always willing to work long and hard on the initiatives they proposed to help make our Nation a better place for us all to live.

Looking back, 1974 was a good year for both Jim and me. I was elected to my first term as Mayor of Gillette, WY, and Jim was elected to his first term in the House of Representatives. We both took office full of great hopes and dreams as we looked forward to doing everything we could to make a difference in the lives of the people we were elected to serve.

From the beginning, Jim was very clear on his mission in Congress. He had come here to make sure that our most precious resource--our children--were well taken care of. For Jim, the issue of education was not something he took lightly. It was a commitment that came from his heart. He took the problems of our schools personally and he was determined to do something about them. He wanted everyone to have the same advantages in life that he had. That was his goal and it inspired him and drove his active involvement in the consideration of the education issues that would come before the House and the Senate.

Jim's passion for education not only drove his work on the subject in Congress, but it also led him in the years to come to serve as a tutor at a public school on Capitol Hill each week as part of a literacy program he created. That program reaches out to involve us all in supporting our public schools. Its philosophy is simple. Anyone can make a difference in our schools. All it takes is a little investment of our time and a willingness to share our talents with the students of a local school.

Not long after Jim had taken his oath of office in the House, he began working on what was to be one of his greatest successes, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA as it has come to be known. Over the years IDEA has ensured that students with disabilities have equal access to a good education--and a promising future. Thanks to this landmark legislation those living with disabilities will receive the education, support and encouragement we all need to help us become all we can be and reach our full potential in our lives.

As he served in the House, Jim's commitment to working today to make things better for us all tomorrow led him to fight for meaningful environmental protections, a more effective and responsive health care system, and a sound fiscal budget that didn't overspend our present resources and leave a bill behind for future generations to pay.

That is the philosophy that directed and guided Jim when he ran for and won a seat in the Senate in 1988. It wasn't long after he had taken the oath of office for his new position that he began working on the reauthorization of the Clean Air Act--another part of his legislative passion that will continue to be a key part of his legacy in the Senate. Even though he had just

begun his service in the Senate at the time, his good ideas and commitment to the protection and preservation of our natural resources made him an important part of the team that would write and promote this important bill.

No one was surprised that Jim was a key Member who was involved in so many difficult and important projects as soon as he arrived in the Senate. He preceded me as Chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee and, under his leadership the committee took a close look at our schools and the quality of the education we provide our children. It considered how we might improve the training we provide our Nation's workers so that they might find and keep better and better jobs. And, it continued to look for ways that we might provide support and empower those living with disabilities so that all Americans are able to maximize their potential and live their own version of the American dream.

Back home, Jim has deep roots in his State that date back for generations. His father was a Chief Justice of the Vermont Supreme Court and I am sure he learned a great deal about politics, life and the law from his Dad.

In addition, coming from Vermont, Jim has a great understanding of the challenges faced by small and rural States and the local industries they depend on to keep local and State economies healthy and strong. It has been said that Jim knows as much about the dairy industry as anyone directly involved in it in his State. He knows firsthand that one size fits all solutions that work well for the big States, all too often penalize the smaller ones and leave them without the support they need to address the same problems the large states face.

In the years to come, when I think of Jim I will remember how he shared his dream of a better America with us. By daring us to dream, too, he encouraged us to work together so that the future would be a brighter one for us, our children and our grandchildren.

There is an old saying the Native Americans in Wyoming know well. We have not inherited the earth from our ancestors, we are borrowing it from our children. It's a philosophy that Jim took to heart and put into practice every day during his many years of public service.

I ask unanimous consent following my remarks and Senator Dayton for 20 minutes, Senator Hatch be recognized to speak for up to 15 minutes.

Earlier this afternoon, there were comments made in the Senate by the Senator from New York, Mrs. Clinton. Some of those comments distressed me a little bit. We have been trying to get the Ryan White Care Act, which passed out of committee and passed on the House floor, to pass in the Senate. This is one of those rare bipartisan, bicameral bills. We worked it out in advance with the House so the bill the House passed is essentially the bill we passed out of committee. It is a modernization act that would ensure equitable distribution of funds for HIV/AIDS treatment in the United States.

I am compelled to discuss some of the points that the Senator from New York made today about the Ryan White Care Act and our bipartisan bicameral legislation. I will talk about each of her claims in turn.

Senator Clinton claimed that when you look at the funding for the whole bill, New York is not receiving the most funds per case. I don't doubt those figures. However, those are deceptive numbers. As an accountant, I have to point that out. They are deceptive for two reasons. First, her statement dealt only with funds per AIDS case. We have been talking about including HIV cases as well. Why would she neglect to include HIV? I assume it is because 25 States have 50 percent of their HIV/AIDS cases not being counted today because those individuals have HIV, which has not progressed to AIDS.

Please note that all of my numbers have included both HIV and AIDS. We must include HIV in the funding formulas. Before, including only AIDS made sense because we were just waiting for people to die. Now, we have lifesaving treatment for those with HIV; therefore, we must count each person who can receive lifesaving care.

Additionally, Senator Clinton is looking at more than just the formula funding. Her figures include funding for community health centers, health care providers, providers who reach out to women and children. Thus, her figures include a lot of extra funding that is not at the heart of the debate.

If Senator Clinton wants to rely on these numbers, numbers outside of the formulas, then she can do so under the current bill. She can trust that the other portions of the CARE Act will assist those who she is saying are being harmed by the bill.

As for her claim that her State has not spent Ryan White funds for things such as dog-walking, I will note that the Senator from Oklahoma provided information for the record regarding that.

Now, Senator Clinton further claims that New York only carried over $3 million. Well, I find that surprising, given that New York, on the average, has carried over $29 million.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a document from the Health Resources and Services Administration documenting the funds carried over for New York.

Now, the Senator from New York mentions her 1-year extension bill. I will also discuss the Senator's 1-year extension, her resolution for Ryan White, her solution that would simply delay the reauthorization for another year. It simply says to those States that have not been getting adequate funds: We do not care about you, and you are not going to get adequate funds. We are going to re-debate all of this again next year. We are not even going to move toward making it fair.

The underlying bipartisan, bicameral bill has a provision providing 3 years of hold harmless funds for New York. For 3 years, New York will not have to follow the formula. They would like to have 5 years. The 3 years already in the bill is at the expense of the other States. The 5 years would be at the expense of the other States, although I will cover a question that was asked yesterday in a little while.

This is not a time to delay. This is a time to act. We absolutely cannot delay the much needed updates to current formulas that ensure that all Americans with HIV and AIDS are treated fairly and have access to life-sparing treatments no matter their race, their gender, or where they live.

We have a chart that shows the losses that would occur under current law versus the gains that would occur after this reauthorization. The red States here are going to lose significant funding under the current law, beginning on October 1. One hundred thousand Americans are going to be left out. The chart on the right, the blue chart, shows the gains under the Ryan White authorization. All States gain except five, who lose less funds under the reauthorization than they would under current law. Only two of the five are asking for a difference.

The time is now or never. As soon as the clock strikes midnight tomorrow, thousands of Americans will begin losing access to life- sparing treatment unless we pass this bill now. This amendment does not address this fact. This amendment would extend a formula that will cause dramatic reductions in funding to many States and thousands of Americans.

The House has passed this critical legislation, and now five Senators must decide if they will stand in the way of bipartisan legislation with broad support--a bill that will ensure equitable treatment for all Americans living with HIV and AIDS. I would say, I believe that is down to four Senators now.

Now, my second problem with the bill of the Senator from New York is that it shuts out Americans infected with HIV and does not provide them with equal access to treatment. Rather, it focuses on outdated funding formulas that only examine AIDS, not the full spectrum of the disease.

Just like her numbers on funding per person, the Senator from New York refuses to acknowledge those with HIV. This chart shows that today, in over 25 States, half of the cases in those States are not counted because those Americans only have HIV, not AIDS. These States receive funding for less than half their total HIV/AIDS cases because of the current, outdated, failed formula. Half the Nation does not receive enough funds to provide the most basic care to their residents. Now, my third problem with the bill of the Senator from New York or the Senator from New Jersey is that it ducks the key issue. Rather than more equitable distribution for funding and more equitable access to treatment for all Americans, my colleagues supporting this bill are simply throwing more money at the problem, assuming it will ensure more equitable access to lifesaving treatments. We know this is simply not the case because it does not solve the inherent flaws in the funding formulas.

Now, this chart shows that under the current law, more than 3 percent of Ryan White funding is returned to the Treasury each year. That is more than 3 percent--much of this coming from New York and New Jersey, the very States that objected to the passage of the bill that would more equitably distribute funding across the Nation.

Again, you will see here that under the current law, New York is receiving $509 per case more than the national average. Under the new bill, they would still get $304 more than the average case per person across the United States. And they have an average $29 million unspent. New Jersey, the other State, is receiving $310 above the national average. They would still get $88 above the national average. This bill does not get to equity. This bill moves toward equity. And it does not move there until 3 years from now. Other bills we have done start transitioning immediately.

Now, I am surprised that the Senator from New York or New Jersey would offer a bill to increase funding, ignoring the outdated formula issues, only to increase the inequity of the program and allow more funds that could save lives to be returned to the Treasury each year. Why would we offer more money to States that are already grossly overpaid and unable to spend their money and increase the disparities of outdated funding formulas, further harming those States with an emerging crisis?

This amendment would have us give a few States even more money than they are receiving now, while the majority of the States will receive significantly less funding over the next year. The Senators from New York and New Jersey want to extend this inequity rather than fixing the formula, fixing the formula now, fixing it before the tomorrow-night deadline, to allow fair and equitable treatment and access to care for Americans who have none now.

I can tell you that the HIV/AIDS community and families want this bill now. Now, perhaps my colleague can explain why she wants to give more money to States that cannot spend what they already have, while taking money away from States that are struggling, as we speak, to provide the basic life-sparing treatments to their residents. We are talking about life and death here. It seems they want to throw money at States where the epidemic started and ignore the areas where the epidemic has spread, underfunding areas in a growing crisis.

When you look at the money being spent, what we are talking about in this amendment is saving institutions, not saving people, not saving lives. This is not an economic development bill. This is not meant to assure that institutions that might be interested in providing these services still get the same amount of funds to do so even though they do not have as many people to provide the services to as they are being paid for.

I wish putting more money into the program could fix these inequities but, unfortunately, these inequities stem from outdated funding formulas and a lack of accountability. We must address the problem at its core and ensure that we are not denying the growing number of minorities and women living with HIV and AIDS equal protection under the Ryan White CARE Act.

Now, another comment by the Senator from New York was that she needs more money because it is more expensive to provide care in New York. The big cost driver is HIV/AIDS medication, costs that are similar in every State. Therefore, I do not understand that claim, unless it is protection of the institutions rather than the people.

I have another unanimous consent request that I intend to propound, and I, again, am hoping that someone will be here to object who is actually objecting to the bill instead of sending a surrogate who has had to go through this ritual several times already, even though he supports the bill, because the request earlier, of course, was to have a chance to vote on the bill of the Senator from New York and the Senator from New Jersey. And I am going to offer that. I am going to offer a short time for debate and a vote on that and then a vote on the bipartisan, bicameral bill that has already passed the House.

I am hoping that somebody actually involved in the substitute bill will come to the floor to either agree or object. That should be fair. They can have a vote. It seems reasonable to me. But it really ought to be the people offering the amendment who say they have the better idea, even though it leaves out the HIV folks, hundreds of thousands of Americans. This amendment doesn't even provide a quick fix for 1 more year, because it keeps the flawed formulas that will cause tremendous funding shortfalls in place. They will come back in another year then and ask for 5 more years of being held harmless.

I want to get a vote on the bill that includes HIV and follows the patient.

We need to do that. We need to do it today, not tomorrow, not next month. Tomorrow night, a bunch of States will be in crisis--and their residents with HIV/AIDS will begin losing access to care. I would imagine in their amendment they have slipped in a little thing to protect the States that will fall into a trap tomorrow. But let's not just throw money at the problem, let's do the right thing for the long- term, for the entire Nation. Let's solve the formula. Let's do what we have done on a number of other bills that have gone through my committee, which is to look at the formula and say: What is fair to all the States?

I have to say, there are some people on my committee and others in this body who have said: If I look at the charts and I see what is happening to my State, yes, I may lose some money, but we are trying to come up with a solution that solves a problem across this country. And that is what we are here for, to solve problems across the country. I can tell you that the HIV/AIDS families and community want it to be fair and want the bill we have been asking unanimous consent on for several days now.

So I will be asking for unanimous consent. I will throw in this opportunity to have a vote on the other bill, to see if people want to do more of the same or if they want to fix this over a period of time, again, holding all States harmless for 3 years before we move into a transition to full fairness.

Just last night the House passed this critical, bipartisan, bicameral legislation by an overwhelming bipartisan vote, 325 to 98, and sent it to us to act upon it immediately. The House understood the critical, time-sensitive nature of this legislation. Now the Senate must act quickly to reauthorize this critical program by September 30; otherwise, hundreds of thousands of individuals in States and the District of Columbia will lose access to lifesaving services. The only thing standing between us and the President's signature to enact this bill is a Senate vote on the House bill--or perhaps a Senate vote on the possible substitute amendment and then a vote on the House bill.

Now, I have asked the Senate to move this critical legislation two other times. Currently, four Senators from two States are blocking a vote and thus may prevent many individuals and families from receiving critical AIDS and HIV treatment under a more equitable program.

I appreciate the number of my colleagues who have been on the floor to talk about the people in their States who are dying because they are on a waiting list and cannot get the treatment, because they have had huge influxes of population, huge increases in the number of people who have been infected by HIV and AIDS. We cannot let that happen. We cannot continue that. We cannot continue to say: Well, if we have been shipping money to one part of the country, we are going to continue to ship money to that part of the country even though the problem has shifted. So four Senators are blocking us.

Mr. President, I would like to take this opportunity to recognize the hard work of the Senators from California on this legislation. I appreciate their willingness to continue to talk to us to address their concerns. They have indicated they are no longer objecting to this legislation. I thank them. However, this bill, due to other objections, is still not moving forward.

This legislation ensures that Federal moneys are distributed more fairly and the dollars will follow the person. This is something our outdated funding formula failed to do. Hundreds of thousands of people living with HIV and AIDS, who live in these States, will be needlessly harmed if a few Senators continue obstructing good policy.

What is more, these four Senators will not come to the floor to defend their objection to this critical legislation at a time when we are talking about it. So today I will ask again for the Senators from New York and New Jersey to come to the floor themselves, lodge their objections, listen to the unanimous consent request, where I am going to offer them the right to have a vote on their bill, in exchange for the right to vote on the bill that came out of committee--the bill that is bicameral and bipartisan.

Now, as part of the unanimous consent request, I am also allowing those Senators to offer that amendment, of course, the opportunity for them to put forward their best solution for dealing with the concerns they have. We have run hundreds of programs trying to come up with the most equitable way to do this. The one we are presenting is the one we found that had the most people to support it. I was told this is identical to the bill introduced by the New York and New Jersey delegations this week. That is the amendment we would be voting on. This bill and/or amendment is not a solution; rather, it is a harmful delay, putting off what we should and must do today.

These States simply raise objections about what funds are received this year compared to last year. These States were grossly overpaid last year and will continue to be overpaid next year. However, they will no longer be grossly overpaid under the bill I am proposing. These few Senators keep saying they will lose money under the reauthorization. No matter the dollar formula they say they may lose on a given day, it doesn't add up to the amount of dollars they would stand to carry over from the current flawed formula. The State of New York would carry over an average of $150 million over 5 years.

According to GAO data, even with the formula adjustment that will allow for more equitable treatment, save lives in more places, New York would still carry over about $115 million based on their past spending. In the past, New York and New Jersey have been able to under-spend hundreds of millions of leftover dollars. At the same time, 25 other States are struggling to provide even the most basic life-sparing medications to their residents living with HIV/AIDS. Because of the current flawed formula, this amendment doesn't even count Americans living with HIV. New York can afford to generously offer more than 495 different medications to their residents. That is 23 times the number of medications that Louisiana is able to offer their HIV/AIDS residents because of a lack of appropriate funding. While New York offers a range of elective drugs, many other States are unable to provide the basic life-sparing treatments that every American should have access to. This is indefensible. New York carries over an average of $30 million each year; yet, 25 other States are having significant difficulty providing the basic drugs to all of its eligible residents. Eleven States have waiting lists--that is right, residents in 11 States are unable to receive life-sparing treatments because their States do not receive appropriate funds.

New York, in 2005, spent an astonishing $25 million on administration costs for just two titles of this law. That is more than the entire amount of money received by 38 States in 2005 for those two titles to provide care to their residents with HIV/AIDS. This inequity must be addressed, and it is addressed in this reauthorization. Stalling now because a couple States stand to lose a fraction of the money they already cannot spend is indefensible. Lives are at risk and a solution is on the table today. A solution has been passed by the House and is before us now.

I hope those four Senators will defend their objection and allow a vote on their amendment. The continued expansion of the AIDS epidemic in this country is a certainty. While the epidemic continues in the urban areas in the country, the number of new cases not diagnosed in small urban, suburban, and rural areas are reaching alarming levels. As the epidemic expands in all these areas, local health care systems have often been unable to meet the growing demands for medical and support services.

The problems created in rural areas are often similar to those experienced in large cities. However, these problems are exacerbated by poor health care infrastructure and limited experience with HIV/AIDS care. The lack of trained primary care providers, the absence of long- term care facilities, the scarcity of resources, and a scattered population are additional obstacles that may be faced in a developing, coordinated outpatient service program.

If New York thinks it is more expensive to handle a new problem, they ought to deal with the distances these people have to travel in some of the rural areas to get care for some of the most basic ailments. Small areas are

also often not able to provide the specialized services required by some persons with HIV. When primary services are unavailable, individuals and families must travel long distances to receive the necessary care. Furthermore, rural health care systems must address not only the epidemic but also other conditions, including substance abuse, mental illness, and sexually transmitted diseases which they may be poorly equipped to deal with.

Thus, as we think of the problem today in its expansion into rural areas, we must provide the same effort to those areas we did for urban areas in the early 1990s. We must target resources to those in need and assure that those infected with HIV and living with AIDS will receive our support and our compassion, regardless of their race, gender or where they live.

Finally, I want to answer the question posed by the Senator from Minnesota last night. Senator Dayton asked what it would cost to give these States, over the next 5 years, the same amount of money as they receive presently. Alarmingly, to keep those States whole, it would cost $614 million a year. That is over half a billion for the next 5 years.

It is not possible just to provide increases to New York and New Jersey due to the funding distribution; therefore, to ensure that everybody receives as much money per person with HIV that New York is currently receiving, it would cost over $3 billion--if we went to equity, it would cost $3 billion, or a 30 percent increase in Ryan White funding to maintain States' funding level that are grossly overpaid and unable to spend the money they do receive.

Our obligation as Senators is to the people of the United States. We still have four Senators who continue to obstruct the Senate from passing a bill because of the September 30 deadline--a bill which passed the House 325-to-98, a bill that can save more than 100,000 lives, including the lives of the growing number of women and minorities who are afflicted by this devastating disease, and provides the money to where it is needed most.

As I said last night, this is not an economic development project. The bottom line is simply, where States have more people with HIV/AIDS, they should get more money. Where States have less people with HIV/ AIDS, they should get less money. As we all know, the Ryan White program provides critical health care services for people infected with HIV and AIDS. These individuals rely on this vital program for drugs and other services. We need to pass this legislation so we can provide them with the treatment they desperately need.

I urge the Senators who are holding up the bill to stop playing the numbers game so the Ryan White CARE Act funding can address the epidemic of today, not yesterday.

I ask the Chair how much time remains.

Mr. President, I will yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Alabama, Mr. Sessions.

Mr. President, I yield 10 minutes to the Senator from Utah, Senator Hatch, who has been actively involved in the HIV/AIDS discussion for years. In fact, he selected the Ryan White name for this bill many years ago when he chaired this committee.

Mr. President, it is my understanding that I have 9 minutes remaining?

I thank the Chair, and since there is a Senator now here from one of the two states objecting to us moving on with the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Modernization Act, I would like to propound the unanimous consent.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 6143, which was received from the House. I ask unanimous consent that the only amendment in order be an amendment by Senator Lautenberg, which is the text of S. 3944, with 30 minutes of debate equally divided. I ask consent that following the disposition of that amendment, the bill, as amended, if amended, be read the third time and passed, a motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statements relating to the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I am sorry to hear the objection. We have been trying to find a way, any way, to be able to move on to a vote on this bill that is bipartisan, bicameral. It has already passed the House and I am sure it would pass here. So I am really disappointed.

Mr. President, I allocate 5 minutes of time to the Senator from North Carolina, Mr. Burr.

Mr. President, for the last few seconds I am going to just mention that the bill by the Senators from New York and New Jersey was introduced on Tuesday. Surely they have had time to think about having that amendment debated and voted on in that amount of time. I am really disappointed that they won't give some kind of an answer that will allow a vote on that amendment. If that is what they need for cover, that is OK with me. I just need to get this done.

New York and New Jersey are stealing the future from those with HIV, and that just cannot happen in the U.S. Senate. We have to worry about all the people from all of the United States, and that is what the reauthorization would do. That is why it is important to do it. I have asked those questions numerous times now trying to find a way to bring this bill up for a vote, and am being denied in every way--I am not being denied--those with HIV, those with AIDS, their families are being denied the right to have a vote on this bill in the U.S. Senate.

Mr. President, it is my understanding that the Republicans have an extra 15-minute slot.

I have been allocated in that slot.

I would assume that the Senator from New Jersey has had adequate time to look at the unanimous consent request that I presented earlier, and I will be making that unanimous consent request again. He must be ready to debate the AIDS bill that New York and New Jersey have proposed, and I am ready to grant time to have a vote on that bill as well as the bipartisan, bicameral bill passed by the House last night. I have no fear of that. This Nation has a lot of problems with HIV and AIDS that need to be taken care of. There is one bill that does that fairly--a bill that the House overwhemingly passed. A bill with a comprehensive, fair and equitable solution. There is another one that merely extends the time where we keep doing the same thing that we have been doing. A quick fix that would give us the same results that we have been getting--people across the country are dying because of not getting treatment, because of unfair, inequitable funding formulas that ignore the new, emerging epidemic of HIV in rural areas and the Southeast.

I am happy to yield for a question.

I thank my neighbor from Colorado. As we set it up earlier, we have been alternating times. I am glad that I have the opportunity to speak right after the Senator from New Jersey. I know he turned down the unanimous consent request earlier. I am hoping that he will accept the unanimous consent this time.

Tomorrow is a very critical time for people in the United States. These States, the red states in this chart in particular, will start losing significant funds at midnight tomorrow night if the current failed formula is not fixed. California loses $18.78 million; Connecticut, $3.2 million; the District of Columbia, $6.93 million; Delaware, $1.52 million; Georgia, $9.68 million; Illinois, $12.48 million; Oregon, $1.38 million; Pennsylvania, $9.25 million; Washington, $2.42 million; Maryland, $11.64 million. We can fix this formula tonight. A solution, passed overwhelmingly in the House, is before us now.

I appreciate the letter that I got from the Senator from Maryland, Ms. Mikulski, reminding me that this goes into effect tomorrow and asking me to get the Ryan White bill done.

Now, when we reauthorize this program by using the bill that came out of my committee and passed overwhelmingly in the House, there will be some changes to the formula--saving many States from significant and critical losses. Instead of California losing $18.78 million, they will gain $15.38 million because the money is going to follow the cases, and they are not going to get the penalty that they would have under current law. I have the chart that shows the gains for a number of States. All the ones that I mentioned would have gains instead of losses. So this is a critical piece of legislation to all of these States.

We are talking about unfairness and inequity. This isn't the only bill on which we are changing formulas so they more accurately address the problems they were meant to address. The reason we have reauthorizations is so that on a regular basis we can review the monies going to States, see how it is allocated, see if it needs to be allocated on a different basis so that it is more fair. Our committee ran several hundred evaluations to see different kinds of formulas at the suggestion of members of the committee and Members of the Senate to see what the fairest way would be to do this bill.

Now, not only did we pick the fairest way to transition, by holding those States harmless for 3 years, but we chose the fairest formula in the long-term that ensures that Americans with HIV/AIDS get the treatment they need on an equitable basis no matter their race, gender, or where they live. I have to tell my colleagues, there is not another bill we have done that allows this kind of inequity--under current law--to continue to give those States time to prepare for the formula shift. Of course the States that do not obtain equality for 3 years are usually pretty upset. They think that the equality ought to come in much earlier in the process.

So we had a number of States that said, How come it gets to be unfair for

that long? We said we are going to try to protect these States so they have a time to transition, so they prepare their systems for the change in the funding.

One of the things that was raised earlier this afternoon was that it is more expensive to live in New Jersey. It is more expensive to live in New York.

It is pretty expensive to live in DC, too, and DC is going to lose $6.93 million, if we don't pass this legislation. If we pass this bill, they are going to gain $4.35 million. It is a change for a lot of States, but it is a change to fairness based on the number of people with HIV/AIDS, not the number of institutions that we have been funding in these States. This program is not for economic development. It is not a way to keep jobs. It is a program to keep patients alive.

On these other bills I have been working on--the Older Americans Act--includes a 5-year transition. Some of the States said, By golly, we have been cheated for years. We ought to get our money faster, but they have agreed to a 5-year transition.

The ones who are losing money have said: Okay, we understand, that is fair. You gave us a time to transition.

We have 9 or 10 bills that my committee has to do that deal with formulas. I can tell you the first reaction of every Senator, including myself, is to say: Print the chart out, see what happens to my State. Naturally, you get upset if your State is not going to get as much money as they got before. But, fortunately, the majority of the Members around here look and say, Is the amount I am getting fair?

Higher costs--I want to go back to that again. What we are providing are the AIDS drugs, and the AIDS drugs cost the same all over this country. It doesn't cost more for an AIDS drug in New York than it does in Wyoming. As for expenses, we only have a couple of big cities in Wyoming--Cheyenne is 52,700-and-some people, that is our biggest city; Casper is next with a little over 50,000, and then it drops off significantly.

If a third of your towns have less than 250 people in them, how many of those do you think have a hospital? How many of those even have a doctor to look at somebody with HIV/AIDS? They have to travel a long way at great inconvenience and great cost. We don't cover that. We cover the treatment.

When we crafted the current funding proposal, we ran dozens of these various formula options to see which was the fairest way to do it, which one created the least amount of disruption. That is how we came up with the current funding formulas in this bill. We are being asked, of course, to consider another bill, introduced on Tuesday of this week by the Senators from New York, New Jersey, and Florida. I believe we should debate this bill. However, I have problems with this bill because what that other bill does is delay this argument over funding formulas for 1 year. It doesn't do the equity for sure at any time. So in our bipartisan, bicameral bill, what we said is we will delay equity for 3 years. Three years is better than 1 year, so I really don't understand why anybody is holding this bill up.

I understand that they lose money. I understand that. However, they are grossly overpaid. As I have shown before, under the current law, the State of New York gets $504 more than the average per patient across the rest of the Nation. New Jersey gets $310 more per person than the average across the rest of the Nation.

Under the reauthorization, New York will still get $304 per person more; New Jersey will still get $88 per person more. As I have mentioned, all of the funds have not been spent every year. So we are saying New York does not want to share even what did not spend.

I can understand Senators being concerned over losing the money. What I am just asking is we take a look at the whole national picture, just like we are taking the whole national picture in some other bills pending before the HELP Committee. For all of those bills, I pledge that during this next year we will have hearings where we look at the formulas in these other bills and see how we can transition more quickly than we have been doing, to move toward equity.

If you have people who are dying of AIDS and you have people who cannot be treated for HIV, you have a real problem. We are not talking about parks or things that might be considered luxuries. We are talking about life and death. The earlier we start treating people, the more chance they have for survival.

Fortunately, very fortunately, there have been a lot of drugs that have been developed for the market that make a difference, now, for those infected with HIV; these drugs will extend their lives. We don't have to wait until they are in the AIDS category to do that. We don't have to do that to give them as good a life as possible. We can start providing life-saving treatment when we know they have HIV. We can positively extend their lives.

That is what we are trying to do with this bill. Under the other bill, introduced on Tuesday of this week, the supporters are eliminating, again, the count of HIV, the ability to treat those with HIV. As far as fairness, don't you think we ought to treat as early as we can with the capability that we have instead of just waiting until they have AIDS and then counting them and pay for them?

The other bill doesn't take into account the HIV folks at all. If I were one of the Senators from those two States, and I have been holding out this long, I would be here yelling too, I guess, because I would have to explain why I was doing what I'm doing--and not just to the people in my State. I would have to be explaining why I was being an obstructionist for life-saving care to the whole Nation. Of course, those outside my State don't get to vote for me, but we do have an obligation to all of those folks across the Nation.

When we have equitable funding formulas, if States come up with a higher HIV/AIDS population than we thought they would have, we may have to put more money into it. But the additional money ought to come with the additional cases. We ought to have some numbers to back up what is happening, and not everyone has the numbers to back up their current funding. We have some waiting lists, waiting lists of people who are waiting for life-saving treatment. But if they look at the waiting list they may say, I am not going to gain treatment anyway, so why would I even get on a waiting list? Thus, there may be thousands more, not seeking treatment because, where they live, we are not treating them equitably. I do know there are some difficulties out there.

I know the time to vote on Ryan White is now or never because as soon as the clock strikes midnight tomorrow night thousands of Americans will start losing access to the life-sparing treatment unless we pass the bill now. I can't understand why four Senators are denying people suffering from HIV/AIDS to vote on this critical legislation to create a more equitable program.

Earlier today, the Senators from New Jersey and New York suggested that the answer to the inequities in Ryan White is more money. I say we can talk about more money in Ryan White as soon as the States that are hoarding funds allow current dollars to focus on those in need, individuals on waiting lists throughout the country. We have to address the current inequities, not compound them by just adding more dollars to a failed funding formula. We don't want to continue to have the rich States get richer while the poor States get poorer.

The Senator from New Jersey also suggested this bipartisan bicameral bill was not supported by minorities because the National Minority AIDS Council did not support the bill. One council does not capture all the minorities. In fact, over seven minority organizations, including the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, Brother 2 Brother, Latino Coalition, League of United Latin American Citizens, the National Black Chamber of Commerce, the National Minority Health Month Foundation, and the New Black Leadership Coalition support this bipartisan bicameral product.

In addition, 34 other organizations support this key legislation, including key national advocate organizations such as AIDS Action, AIDS Healthcare Foundation and the Southern AIDS Coalition.

I ask unanimous consent the full list of supporting organizations be printed in the Record.

May I ask my time?

I would like to propound a unanimous consent request and ask unanimous consent to be able to propound the request.

Unanimous Consent Request H.R. 6143

I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 6143, which was received from the House. I ask unanimous consent that the only amendment in order be an amendment by Senator Lautenberg or one of the Senators from New Jersey or New York, which is the text of S. 3944, with 30 minutes of debate equally divided. I ask unanimous consent that following the disposition of the amendment, the bill as amended, if amended, be read the third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statements relating to the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I rise today to encourage my colleagues to pass H.R. 6138, which would provide for a temporary extension of the Higher Education Act of 1965 by extending its provisions through June 30, 2007.

This extension, unfortunately, is the sixth time the Higher Education Act has temporarily been extended. It is now critical to move forward with the Higher Education Act and reauthorize the remaining discretionary programs. As my colleagues know, the mandatory portions of the higher education law were reauthorized in February under the Deficit Reduction Act of 2006.

We have the bill out of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, but haven't had the floor time to debate it. I am making the Higher Education Act a top priority for 2007 because postsecondary education is the key to the future successes of our students, our communities, and the economy.

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

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

I ask unanimous consent that David Schmickel be granted the privilege of the floor.

I ask unanimous consent to grant floor privileges to Lesley Stewart of my staff for the duration of the day.

Mr. President, today I would like to talk about a very important piece of legislation sent over by the House of Representatives to the Senate last night. The Older Americans Act Amendments of 2006 will reauthorize the vital programs to assist the quickly growing elder population. During the reauthorization it became apparent that the elderly population is growing more quickly in certain areas than others. This was highlighted in newspaper articles this week and has been a key issue for my colleague from North Carolina.

In light of this, I propose that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions hold hearings during the coming Congress to review formulas for federal programs and how those formulas are developed to determine the fair and equitable distribution of funds. The committee will focus its attention on how funds must follow the people and the need. In other words, how do we make sure that federal monies are going to the areas of greatest need which are in many instances the fast growing areas of our country and how do we eliminate inequities in funding that exist under current formulas and which in many instances disadvantage high-growth states. Finally, I propose that the committee begin its reauthorization of the Older Americans Act no later than 3 years after the passage of this bill.

I would like to thank my colleague from North Carolina for his support of our bill. He was very important in the drafting of this legislation. I urge my colleagues to support us in this important legislation for our growing elderly population and to work with Senator Burr and me, in the coming Congress, to ensure that federal funds follow the need and their intended recipients.

Mr. President, I rise today in support of the passage of the Older Americans Act Amendments of 2006. I am pleased at the support that this bill has received in the Senate and in the House. I especially want to thank Senator Kennedy, the ranking member of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. In particular, I thank Senator DeWine, the chairman of the Subcommittee on Retirement Security and Aging. Senator DeWine provided immeasurable leadership in the passage of these amendments, as did Senator Mikulski, the subcommittee ranking member. In addition, I thank the members of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce for their diligence in moving forward with this legislation: Representative Buck McKeon, Chairman; Representative George Miller, ranking member; Representative Patrick J. Tiberi, chairman of the Subcommittee on Select Education; and Representative Ruben Hinojosa, subcommittee ranking member.

The Older Americans Act Amendments of 2006 is the primary source for the delivery of social and nutrition services for older individuals. Enacted in 1965, the act's programs include supportive services, congregate and home-delivered nutrition services, community service employment, the long-term care ombudsman program, and services to prevent the abuse, neglect and exploitation of older individuals. The act also provides grants to Native Americans and research, training, and demonstration activities.

Title I of the Older Americans Act sets broad social policy objectives to improve the lives of all older Americans. It recognizes the need for an adequate income in retirement, and the importance of physical and mental health, employment in community services for older individuals and long-term care services.

Title II establishes the Administration on Aging, AOA, within the Department of Health and Human Services to be fhe primary Federal advocate for older individuals and to administer the provision of the Older Americans Act. It also establishes the National Eldercare Locator Service to provide nationwide information with regard to resources for older individuals; the National Long-term Care Ombudsman Resource Center; the National Center on Elder Abuse; the National Aging Information Center; and the Pension Counseling and Information Program. The

2006 amendments authorize the designation of a person to have responsibility for elder abuse prevention to develop a long-term plan and national response to elder abuse prevention, detection, treatment, and intervention. It also authorizes the Assistant Secretary to designate an individual to be responsible for administration of mental health services and authorizes Aging and Disability Resource Centers. Further, the 2006 Amendments strengthen the leadership of the Department of Health and Human Services through an interagency coordinating committee to guide policy and program development across the Federal Government with respect to aging and demographic changes.

Title III authorizes grants to fund 655 area agencies on aging and more than 29,000 service providers nationwide. Title III services are targeted to those with the greatest economic and social need, particularly low-income minority persons and older individuals residing in rural communities. The 2006 amendments will authorize organizations with experience in providing volunteer opportunities for older individuals to be eligible to enter cooperative arrangements; require state agencies to promote the development and implementation of state systems that enable older individuals to receive long-term care and community-based settings in accordance with needs and preferences; encourage both States and area agencies on aging to plan for population changes; improve access to supportive services that help foster independence; require nutrition projects to prepare meals that comply with the most recent Dietary Guidelines; and reauthorize the National Family Caregiver Support Program.

Title IV supports a wide range of ongoing research and demonstration activities that will enhance innovation, identify best practices and provide technical assistance for older individuals. The 2006 Amendments will permit competitive grants for planning activities that will benefit the aging population; assessment of technology-based models to aid in remote health monitoring systems, communication devices and assistive technologies. Further, it includes Hispanic serving institutions among those eligible to compete for grants to provide education and training in the field of aging; reauthorizes grants to improve transportation services for older individuals; ensures increased awareness of mental health disorders among older individuals; and authorizes development of innovative models of service delivery to ensure older individuals may age in place, as they are able and as they choose.

Title V authorizes the community service employment program for older Americans--known as the Senior Community Service Employment, or SCSEP-- to promote part-time opportunities in community service for unemployed, low-income persons who are 55 years or older and who have poor employment prospects. It is administered by the Department of Labor. This program represents approximately one-quarter of Older Americans Act funds--$432 million out of $1.78 billion in fiscal year 2006. This program is operated by States and national grantees awarded competitive grants and supported 61,050 jobs and served approximately 91,500 individuals in fiscal year 2005. The 2006 amendments establish 4-year grant cycles for the competitive program and prohibit poor performing grantees from competing during the next grant cycle. It expends participation for eligible individuals who are underemployed and establishes a 48-month time limit for participation in the program with a waiver for particularly hard-to-serve individuals. It establishes an overall grantee average participation cap of up to 27 months and authorizes a waiver of up to 36 months.

Title VI provides funds for supportive and nutrition services for older Native Americans. The 2006 amendments will provide increase the Native American caregiver support program through 2011. Also, Title VII authorizes programs for the long-term care ombudsman, elder abuse, neglect and exploitation prevention, legal service developers and vulnerable Native American elder rights. The 2006 amendments will enhance the elder abuse prevention activities by awarding grants to States and Indian tribes to enable them to strengthen long-term care and provide assistance for elder justice and elder abuse prevention programs. It will create grants for prevention, detection, assessment, treatment of, intervention in, investigation of, and response to elder abuse; safe havens demonstrations for older individuals; volunteer programs; multidisciplinary activities; elder fatality and serious injury review teams; programs for underserved populations; incentives for longterm care facilities to train and retain employees; and other collaborative and innovative approaches.

Finally, the National Resource Center for Women and Retirement is a highly successful program run by the Women's Institute for a Secure Retirement''--WISER--a nonprofit organization dedicated to ensuring the security of women's retirement income through outreach, partnerships, and policy development. We know that many older Americans lack financial knowledge, and that financial education is needed. This program provides a helpful service and should continue to be funded so as to expand its various programs for older Americans, including financial literacy.

The proportion of the population aged 60 and over will increase dramatically over the next 30 years as more than 78 million baby boomers approach, or have already reached, retirement. It is essential that in the coming years Congress and the Federal Government take a leadership role in assisting the States in addressing the needs of older Americans. The bill we offer today will ensure that our Nation's older Americans are healthy, fed, housed, able to get where they need to go and safe from abuse and scams. The number one resolution of the 2005 White House Conference on Aging called upon Congress to reauthorize the Older Americans Act during the 109th Congress. I am pleased that the Senate and the House are accomplishing this goal on behalf of one of our Nation's greatest resources--our older Americans.

Before closing, I want to thank certain staff of the committee for their hard work and long hours in making this reauthorization a reality. I would especially like to thank the following staff members: Katherine McGuire, Ilyse Schuman, Greg Dean, Lindsay Morris, Karla Carpenter, Kori Forster, Lauren Fuller, Michelle Dirst, Brittany Moore and Will Green. Also, I would like to thank the many others who have supported this effort, including Carol O'Shaughnessy and Richard Rimkunas of the Congressional Research Service, and most notably the work of Liz King in the Senate's Office of Legislative Counsel in supporting the drafting of this legislation. Also, I thank the work of the many staff on the other side of the aisle for their contributions toward passage of the bill.

I urge my colleagues to support this legislation in light of the growing needs of our population to ensure that the services they need in the coming years are available to them.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. President, I rise again today to ask unanimous consent that the Senate pass S. 2823, the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Modernization Act, and I will make the formal request in just a few moments.

I want to make a few comments first in hopes that some who have a hold on this bill will come down and lodge the objection themselves. Just last week we requested the unanimous consent agreement to pass this bipartisan, bicameral legislation as it passed out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee last week. At 9:30 tonight it will pass on the floor of the House, and I expect by significant margins. But five Senators from three States are blocking a vote to create a more equitable program for providing life-sparing treatment for individuals suffering from HIV and AIDS.

Now, 2 days ago I made this same request to pass this critical legislation, and the five Senators who are holding up this legislation chose not to come to the floor to discuss their concerns or to debate their issues. Instead, the Senator from Minnesota, Mr. Dayton, was gracious enough to notify us of his objection, even though he stated he would vote for the bill.

So today I ask again the Senators from New York, New Jersey, and California, those who have holds on this critical legislation, to come to the floor themselves and lodge their objections to explain why their parochial interests should be permitted to deny lifesaving care to people who don't live in their States.

Now, I have a chart here that shows the New York and New Jersey situation. You can see that New York, under the current law, receives $509 per case above the national average. Under the reauthorization, they would still receive $304 above the national average per case. And not only that, at the end of the year, they have $29 million left over.

In New Jersey, they get $310 per case above the national average. Now, under the reauthorization, they would still get $88 more per case above the national average, and they have a little slush fund at the end of the year: $17.7 million.

These States have simply raised objections about what funds they will receive this year compared to last year. These States will still be overpaid per case, just no longer grossly overpaid. For example, New York is paid $509 more per AIDS case, as I showed my colleagues, than the national average and would get $304. They have been unable to spend $29 million in Ryan White funding. They can't spend the money they are taking in now. Yet those States' Senators still want more at the expense of many other States that are currently underfunded.

Now, these States have not objected to the underlying policies. Again, I must emphasize that these couple of States have been grossly overpaid for years, receiving well over the national average per patient with HIV. Even under this new bill, they will continue to be overpaid, although not quite as much.

Now, California is a little different situation. When the law was passed last time, we put some provisions into law, and we set a deadline for HIV/AIDS cases for fiscal year 2005 to have a conversion. Now, the Secretary opted to delay that until 2007 to give the States more time, and the CDC in 2005 urged all the States to transition immediately. California decided to transition in 2006. CDC offered resources and people in 2006 to help them make the transition. California declined.

There is a deadline. California will lose $74 million in 4 years under the current law for not meeting the deadline. When we pass this bill, under the new law, California would gain $60 million over the 4 years and have more time. So it is kind of a win-win situation for California. Under some of the formula, they were hoping, I think, to gain even more. But they can meet the deadline; extra help has been offered. So if they would take the extra help, they could meet that timeline, and under this bill, they would gain $60 million over 4 years instead of losing $74 million over that same 4 years by not complying with the transition language.

This bill would ensure that every State in the Nation has the appropriate funding to care for their residents living with HIV and

Mr. President, I thank the Senator for his reluctant objection, although it still counts as an objection.

Mr. President, I will go ahead and answer the questions, then, and hope this changes your mind on being the one willing to make the objection.

Would I protect my State if my State were losing money? I think we are elected to the Senate by the people in our States, but our obligation is to the people of the United States. And were my State grossly overpaid on an average, and I was still going to be grossly overpaid afterwards, and my State couldn't use the money each year that it received, I think I would have a terrible time trying to object to this bill. I hope we do not play that kind of numbers game, we don't get that parochial on bills around here.

Another bill I have been working on is the Older Americans Act, and it has a formula in it. Again, there are States that lose under that bill. But there are people who have been willing to work out a formula like we did on this. We must have run about 300 different programs trying to come up with something as equitable as possible. We even put in the 3 years hold harmless for people who were being grossly overpaid.

I think we have come up with as reasonable a bill as we possibly can. We need to get it passed, and we need to get it passed by September 30 so the penalties don't kick into effect for those States that have a big penalty coming up and that are desperately in need of making sure they get enough money to take care of the cases they presently have.

I have one more answer that I need to do.

I will yield for some other questions as soon as I finish answering this question.

There aren't 14 States that would lose money unless the new bill doesn't pass. There are only five States that will lose money under the new bill, the bill we are trying to get passed by unanimous consent--the bill that we are at least trying to be able to bring up by unanimous consent. We tried a number of different ways. There are just five States that are involved in losing money. Of those five, three have said we have to be fair. Two have said we don't care whether we are fair or not.

Mr. President, I don't have that number. Like I say, we ran about 300 different iterations of different formulas. I will get the Senator that number.

But there is 3 years hold harmless in this. You are talking about 5 years hold harmless. Hold harmless means

that the dollars don't follow the person, that the State gets the money even if they have run out of people with HIV/AIDS, and if there are decreasing numbers of them they should not continue to get those dollars. What you are asking is we continue to give those dollars even if we run out of people. All we are trying to do with this bill is make sure the dollars follow the person. You get more people, you get more money. You get less people, you get less money. It is take care of the people.

It is not an economic development bill.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Alabama for his kind comments and even more so for his passion and understanding on this issue. I thank the others who have spoken.

We had given those who are objecting to the Senate completing this bill an hour to state their case; no one showed up. We were pretty sure of that based on the fact they had one of the Members who is not running for office to be the one to object. They sent someone from a State that actually gains by having the bill completed. That tells something about how willing they are to defend the position they have on this bill.

This bill is critical to people all over the United States. There are HIV/AIDS families in every single State asking Congress to pass this bill and to pass it immediately.

Thirteen States, on September 30, will have huge losses in revenue. We are getting more calls, naturally.

This is not just a bill. This is not just policy. This is life and death to people across this country

We have heard people are on waiting lists that cannot get drugs because the money does not follow the person. The money goes to the States that had the money before. This bill readjusts that so the people who need the drugs get the drugs. It sounds like an American principle to me.

As I mentioned before, there are other bills we work on where we are changing the formula. I have been very fortunate the people working with those bills have said, yes, we have to be fair. We always transition into these things. This is no exception. Three years of hold-harmless. That means they get the same amount of money whether they deserve it or not for 3 years, while they count again to see if they have more or less people affected.

standards conversion

The 2000 reauthorization stated that States need to have CDC accepted HIV data as early as 2005 but not later than 2007. Therefore, States have already had seven years to make this change.

Under the bipartisan, bicameral product, California and Pennsylvania will have 4 more years to make the change. Thus, you both will have had over a decade to convert your systems. However, in fiscal year 2011, only CDC standards for HIV cases will be used for the funding formula.

According to a February 2006 report by the GAO, Pennsylvania would lose $9 million and California would lose $18.5 million in 1 year. With this bill that allows those States to still count the people that matter while the systems are transitioning, Pennsylvania would instead gain $4.8 million and California would gain $15.4 million.

CDC has offered to provide assistance to States throughout the process. In fact, I recently confirmed today that CDC has already offered California technical assistance--up to six staff for up to 6 months--to help them make this change. Further, given some confusion about that technical assistance, I have asked CDC to send a letter to California, restating that they would provide that assistance.

Mr. President, Senator Hatch was the chairman of this committee when the original Ryan White HIV/AIDS treatment bill went through. He is the one that selected the name of Ryan White. He has an explanation of how that came about and the differences this bill has made and the urgency with which this needs to be done right now.

I am very distressed. I have had a lot of success on other bills we are trying to get through. People have been willing to listen to reason and understand the urgency of a lot of the issues, particularly in the health area, but also in the education, labor, and pensions area.

As a committee, we work on these things across the aisle and across the building. As a result, we have had 12 bills signed by the President. Of those 12 bills, we have only spent about 2 hours total in the Senate debating them because we work across the aisle and across the building. We work on important issues. We solve the parts we can and we bring them here. This is one of those where we thought we had the parts solved that we could. There are a lot of moving parts to a lot of these things. We work to get as much consensus as we can, but occasionally we reach a sticking point like this.

I am really disappointed we have reached a sticking point like this where people are going to die. If, by tomorrow, we have not passed this bill and in case we go longer than tomorrow, I am going to ask the leader to file cloture on this bill so we can see if five Senators can hold up a Senate bill.

If we leave tomorrow or the next day, it won't ripen yet, but it can ripen as soon as we can get back. We can spend the time debating it, and those States that are losing money on September 30, while they will not be able to retrieve all the money they will lose, they will have some breathing room for the future.

I am desperate. I usually do not have to do that sort of thing. I am willing to do it on this bill. I am very distressed. Usually we are able to get agreement. We went a long ways toward giving concessions to those States.

In all fairness, if you do not have the cases, you really should not have the money tomorrow, let alone 3 more years. We have tried to be reasonable. We have tried to help out States. We have run a bunch of formulas to make it as fair as we possibly could and to protect the States as much as we can, but it is time to be fair to the people with HIV/AIDS and to be fair to the families of people with HIV/AIDS.

I ask unanimous consent that a Washington Post article be printed in the Record.

I have a unanimous consent that has been agreed to by the majority and minority leader. I yield back all time on the Defense appropriations conference report.

Mr. President, I ask that the Senate now proceed to a period of morning business with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

I further ask that all time after 9 p.m. tonight be counted postcloture, notwithstanding the adjournment of the Senate.

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

Mr. President, in a moment I will request unanimous consent that the Senate pass S. 2823, the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Modernization Act.

Just last week, we made a unanimous consent request to pass this bipartisan, bicameral legislation. That means Members from both sides of the aisle and both ends of the building have agreed to the language in this reauthorization. It passed out of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce last week. However, Senators from three States are blocking the vote that would speed reauthorization programs that provide life-sparing treatment to individuals suffering from HIV and

I am sorry to hear we have an objection. We need to find a way to work through this objection. I have been working desperately across the aisle with Senator Kennedy, who has been joining me in this effort to help get it out of committee. We have been trying to find a way that the formula would work. One of the ways was to include in the bill 3 years of hold harmless for them to finish updating their system to the point where if they truly have the HIV numbers, they will truly get the money. If they don't have the HIV numbers, yes, they will lose the money.

Now, I don't know if the Senator from Minnesota is aware that our Ryan White reauthorization bill increases the funding for Minneapolis by $2 million and $2.5 million for the whole State. It is a net benefactor. There have been increases in HIV and AIDS cases in Minnesota, and this would move money to where the cases are. That is where the numbers show that his city and State would be significant beneficiaries.

I have a lot of statistics I can go through, but I wonder if the Senator is also aware that these increases are due to the inclusion of HIV/AIDS in the funding formula and that Minnesota has more HIV cases.

Mr. President, I appreciate that clarification.

I will ask the Senator for his help. He said he would vote for the bill. Anything we can do to move this forward. We have put a 3-year hold harmless in there for everyone.

On September 30, the world falls apart for a number of people. California, for one, will lose $18.5 million of their funding. There are a number of big losers. There are no big losers if we pass the bill, provided the numbers back up what they have.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator for his words. The increase in knowledge that I am sure he has created across the country--and also the

comments of the Senator from Oklahoma--both of them have made an excellent case for why we need to do this. We need to do it immediately. We need to do it for people who have HIV/AIDS. I would note that the person who raised the objection to us adopting the bill is not from one of the three States that have a hold on the bill. I would hope those people would take a look at the situation in their State, and take a look at the fact they are getting more than the average number of funds being expended on patients across the rest of the country, and see that the surpluses their States are running at the end of the year greatly exceed the rather minute loss they would have, and that they would agree for us to move forward on this bill and get it in place before that September 30 deadline that is going to be devastating to 13 States that will lose money for having done the right thing.

Now, having said that, I know there will be people who will say the Republicans cannot get anything done. Well, that particular issue, and many others are not Republican issues. They are issues of the United States. And that is one on which we worked across the aisle and had a great deal of agreement on. And I have to thank Senator Kennedy, the ranking member on my committee, for the extreme work he did to help us find, among the thousands of formulas we looked at, the one that was the most fair so it would follow the patients. I do appreciate the work he has helped us do in the committee during the year.

Accomplishments of the Help Committee

Mr. President, I want to take just a few minutes to talk about what the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee has done this year. This Ryan White reauthorization is extremely important, but it is not the only bill we have been working on. Because of the way we have done our work, some people may not be aware of what has been done. In fact, I know that to be the case.

This is a committee that has worked across the aisle. When you work across the aisle, a lot of times you can work out many of the difficulties, and when you work out the difficulties, there is not a big floor debate. And when there is not a big floor debate, there is nothing for the media to write up about the blood; consequently, it does not get coverage. So I want to correct that here today, and I would like to discuss the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee's accomplishments for the 109th Congress.

We have heard some claims that this is a do-nothing Congress. Well, I am here to assure American workers, retirees, students, and parents that the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee has done a great deal to help you live more secure, productive, and healthy lives. Of course, we have more to do, but I am proud that during a time of intense partisanship on Capitol Hill, the HELP Committee has produced a lengthy list of legislative accomplishments.

Looking back over the past 2 years, most of these victories materialized when Senators were willing to work across party lines and across the Capitol to put finding a solution in front of exploiting an issue.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a list of bills and reports filed by the HELP Committee in the 109th Congress be printed in the Record

Mr. President, I joined the HELP Committee when I was first elected to the Senate in 1997. It was natural for me because of my small business background as an owner of family shoe stores. I had firsthand experience with burdensome government regulations, inadequate health care coverage for my workers, and adversarial workplace safety laws. I was energized about finding common sense solutions rather than more Washington bureaucracy.

Now, another reason I joined the HELP Committee is because its broad jurisdiction touches nearly every American.

Now, there were a lot of vacancies on the committee when I signed up. I asked why there were so many vacancies, and I was told, well, that is a contentious committee. I thought I knew what contentious committees were because I served on the labor committee in Wyoming. I found out that there is another level of contentious. I wanted to work with my colleagues to find smart solutions that would address some of the most important challenges faced by my constituents in Wyoming and, of course, other people across the country. I came from Wyoming as a firm believer in my 80-20 rule. The way that rule works is that we can usually find agreement on 80 percent of any issue. We agree across the aisle on about 80 percent the issues that comes up. Now, we are probably never going to reach agreement on the remaining 20 percent.

Unfortunately, for America, what they get to watch on any bill is the debate on the 20 percent we don't agree on, and probably will never compromise on. That is what makes this body seem so contentious--the 20 percent that we don't agree on, even though 80 percent can get done. The committee process will enable us to find that 80 percent, and that has been a principle that has guided my chairmanship.

I was honored and humbled when my colleagues selected me to chair the HELP Committee nearly 2 years ago. Since my chairmanship began, the vision for both the full committee and the subcommittees is to craft legislation that provides lifelong opportunities for people to be healthier, more competitive, and to be more secure at school, work, and in retirement.

Because we have such a broad jurisdiction, the HELP Committee has had an aggressive legislative schedule in the 109th Congress. Over the past 2 years, together with the subcommittees, we have held 57 hearings and reported 36 bills out of committee; 21 of these proposals were approved by the Senate and 12 were signed by the President and became public law. We also reviewed and approved 352 nominations that require Senate confirmation. I thank my colleagues, including their staffs, for doing the work needed to maintain this aggressive pace.

In this Congress, the HELP Committee has been privileged to have in its ranks active subcommittee chairmen and engaged members. This is largely the reason the committee has had legislative success. I thank them for their dedication, and I applaud them for the joint success as a committee. Our ranking member, Senator Kennedy, and I may disagree on a number of issues, but we have worked hard to find common ground and we share a commitment to improving the health, education, work, and retirement security of Americans.

The number of bills acted upon by the HELP Committee is certainly impressive. However, the numbers alone don't begin to tell the story of how the committee's activity will improve the lives of Americans now and in the years to come. One of the committee's most significant accomplishments came on August 17 of this year when President Bush signed into law the Pension Protection Act. That act marks the most comprehensive change to pension law since 1974. The Pension Protection Act is a real victory for working Americans who spend a lifetime working hard and saving for retirement. It dramatically strengthens pension funding rules and helps curb record pension failures. In doing so, the act better protects the retirement dreams of 45 million Americans. Not only were single employer fund rules significantly overhauled, but the rules regarding hybrid pension plans were finally clarified, and multi-employer funding rules were changed as well. The proposal strengthens current law and will better help Americans prepare and plan for retirement. It provides workers the security of knowing that moneys earned for retirement will be there when they are ready to retire.

It also secures the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation and secures that corporation without picking the pockets of taxpayers to keep the agency solvent. This legislation was no small undertaking. It took a year and a half of hearings, 5 months of deliberations in conference, and countless hours of negotiations on each provision of the bill.

Fortunately, pension issues are almost always handled in tag team fashion, involving both the HELP Committee and the Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over the Internal Revenue Code. While this tag team approach is a great asset and helped us get the bill through the Senate, it meant a complicated and extraordinarily large conference involving four committees in the House and Senate and 27 conferees.

Together with my ranking member, Senator Kennedy, Finance Committee Chairman Grassley, ranking member Senator Baucus, as well as HELP's Retirement Security and Aging Subcommittee Chairman DeWine, and Ranking Member Mikulski, our committees collaborated with House counterparts to make this sweeping reform happen. Because of this teamwork, the law passed the Senate 93 to 5. The result was a policy and a process that was truly bipartisan. Total floor time for the bill--Senate debate and conference report debate--totaled about one hour and fifteen minutes equally divided.

Some may think the conference took a long time to conclude, but history proves that it was ended in record time. The last big pension conference occurred in 1994. The conference was appointed in March of that year, but did not conclude until December. Prior to that, the most recent conference took place in 1987 and operated in the context of budget reconciliation. Again, that conference commenced in March but didn't end until December.

This year, our conference began in March and ended in July--just 5 months compared to a 10-month conference for earlier bills. Comparatively speaking, the Pension Protection Act conference finished quickly, but the impact will be felt for generations.

Another major accomplishment of the HELP Committee was the enactment of the Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response Act, MINER. From the tragic loss of life in the coal mines of West Virginia and Kentucky came the first reforms of mine safety laws in 28 years. These tragedies brought together leaders from the mining industry, from government, and from the labor unions, and helped to forge a commitment to improve mine safety. I traveled to the Sago mine with Senators Kennedy, Rockefeller, and Isakson. We met with the families of the miners who lost their lives. We met with other miners who worked there, and we met with people in the union. I felt a commitment to those families and miners in this country to try to ensure that this would never happen again.

The committee approved the MINER Act on May 17, and the President signed the bill in June. That has to be one of the fastest, most comprehensive changes to any safety law. I can't emphasize enough the cooperation of unions and company executives, and Republicans and Democrats.

Protecting the health and safety of those who work in the mining industry need not be a partisan issue. Mining, and coal mining in particular, is vital to our national and local economies, and to national energy security. Ensuring the safety of our miners is essential to protecting and preserving the industry and protecting the workers. I especially thank Senators Kennedy, Isakson, Byrd, Rockefeller, and McConnell for the tireless effort they extended. Their efforts contributed in large part to this proposal becoming law.

I should mention that the debate on the Senate floor was 1 hour equally divided with two votes. So nobody saw that. Nobody saw that debate, but it makes a significant difference for all the people in the country--the mining bill. You never saw any debate on the floor. It passed unanimously without debate. It passed in the House under suspension with limited debate--the same bill.

Sometimes the things that get done by unanimous consent that everybody agrees on nobody ever finds out about, except the people it does benefit; they know. That is why it is worth doing it that way. For a bill that has objections around here, there are ways to overcome it if you get 60 votes for it. But that is usually about a 3-week process. A unanimous consent doesn't use up much time, but it gets things done.

The committee has also made tremendous strides related to education and job training. This session the

HELP Committee initiated a comprehensive effort to authorize legislation that enhances knowledge and skills and helps American workers become leaders in the global economy. Some estimates suggest that 60 percent of the jobs created in the next decade will require skills that only 20 percent of the workers today currently possess, and 80 percent of the jobs will require education or training beyond high school. Eighty percent of the jobs will require education or training beyond high school. That is where the world is going. It is changing fast.

One important component of this effort is the reauthorization of the Carl Perkins Career and Technical Education Act. It was signed by the President in August, and it will help close the gap that threatens America's long-term competitiveness. The act addresses the needs of the Nation's changing workforce and prepares Americans for highly technical, higher-paying jobs. The reauthorization also made changes that will increase accountability at the State and local levels and will establish stronger links with businesses to build partnerships with high schools and colleges so they can better meet the needs of the changing workforce.

For many people, participation in these programs can mean the difference between a job with no possibility of advancement and a successful career. Passage of this legislation was a significant accomplishment. Again, limited floor debate, no debate on the conference report; unanimous consent across the aisle.

Another piece of this comprehensive effort is the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. As my colleagues know, the mandatory portions of the higher education law were reauthorized in February under the Deficit Reduction Act of 2006. Before I elaborate, I want to stress that it is critical to reauthorize the remaining discretionary programs under the act, which I intend to make a top priority for 2007. We have the bill out of committee but haven't had the floor time to do the debate on it. I am making that a top priority for 2007 because postsecondary education is the key to the future success of our students, our communities, and our economy.

As I stated earlier, we reauthorized the mandatory components of the Higher Education Act through the budget reconciliation process. We found over $20 billion in savings by eliminating corporate subsidies for lenders and reworking the interest rate structure for many borrowers, among other revisions. A portion of the savings was used to pay for over $9 billion in enhanced students benefits. The law makes higher education more affordable for students who finance part of their education through loans by reducing borrow origination fees and increasing loan limits.

Another benefit is a $4 billion grant program for postsecondary students who major in science, math, and certain national-security- related foreign languages. These funds are dubbed ``SMART grants'' and are an important part of making higher education more affordable for low- and middle-income families. We invested resources where we need them the most, which will help ensure we have a workforce that can compete globally.

I was in India earlier this year and saw firsthand what Thomas Friedman discusses in his book, ``The World Is Flat.'' It doesn't take long to figure out that by sheer numbers alone, India has only to educate 25 percent of its population to have more literate and educated people than the total population of the United States.

By using the reconciliation process for these higher education reforms, the HELP Committee was able to produce meaningful deficit reduction. In fact, I am proud the HELP Committee led the entire Congress in deficit reduction and produced $15.5 billion in savings over five years. That is 40 percent of the entire Deficit Reduction Act of 2006. It is not right to overspend now and pass the bill on to our children and grandchildren to pay later.

I thank Chairman Gregg for his leadership on the Budget Committee and for his contribution on the authorizing committee that helped make the meaningful deficit reduction a reality.

Enactment of the Perkins reauthorization and the mandatory revisions of the Higher Education Act were critical components of a comprehensive effort to strengthen knowledge and skills. However, this effort also includes the reauthorization of the Workforce Investment Act. The reauthorization is essential because it will help train American workers to fill the good jobs being created so we can continue to be leaders in the global economy.

The reauthorization of the Workforce Investment Act has been a priority of mine since I chaired the Subcommittee on Employment and Workplace Safety in the previous Congress. Last Congress, I worked tirelessly to report the legislation from the committee, only to be held up on the Senate floor when it came time to appoint conferees. Now, that means the bill made it out of committee and cleared the Senate floor. The House passed a different version, so we need a conference committee to resolve the differences. However, we weren't allowed to appoint a conference committee. That was 2 years ago. Mr. President, 900,000 new jobs could be trained under that program. This year, once again, I have been procedurally hamstrung in my efforts to move to conference. The bill must be completed. It made it out of the committee unanimously. It made it through the floor of the Senate, again unanimously. That means everybody agreed with what is in the bill. Now the only problem left is we have to reconcile that with what the House passed.

America is facing an economic challenge that threatens our ability as a nation to compete on the world stage. This bill sends a clear message that we are serious about helping our workers and our employers remain competitive and about closing the skills gap that is putting America's long-term competitiveness in jeopardy.

Our commitment to lifelong learning never ends. It begins with giving our children the proper tools for a start down the pathway that leads to their education. The committee approved improvements to Head Start this last year, and the completion of this process is one of my top priorities.

On the health front, eight committee bills were signed into law by President Bush. One of the most significant new health care laws is the Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act. The new law is a culmination of 6 years of work in response to the Institute of Medicine's 1999 report that found that nearly 100,000 Americans die needlessly every year due to medical errors.

The Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act creates a protected legal environment in which patient safety organizations can analyze why medical errors happen and develop strategies to stop those errors from happening again. The law provides critical legal protection for doctors, nurses, and other health care workers who might fear coming forward with information about mistakes because the information could be used in a lawsuit against them.

This new law is the first important step toward creating a new culture of safety and continuous quality improvement in health care.

This new law is one of just several important pieces of legislation the HELP Committee produced in this Congress. I would mention again that this too took zero debate time on the floor. Another one is the Patient Navigator Outreach and Chronic Disease Prevention Act of 2005, which will help patients with chronic diseases team up with health care experts who can help them find their way through the maze to the best treatment offered in this often complex health care system. Again, no floor debate time.

The Stem Cell Therapeutic and Research Act of 2005 supports the creation and maintenance of cord blood stem cells. Stem cells obtained from umbilical cord blood have already shown great promise in treating cancers, leukemia, and other diseases, and this law will accelerate our work in those areas. I have already had people who have reported back to me that their life may have been saved by that particular act already. I think we had 5 minutes of debate time on that bill.

The National All Schedules Prescription Electronic Reporting Act of 2005 enables physicians and other prescribers to find out whether patients are abusing and diverting narcotics and other dangerous drugs. Instead of enabling these patients and their self-destructive habits, physicians will now be able to identify them and treat them.

The State High Risk Pool Funding Extension Act of 2005 renewed a key law that funds State high-risk health insurance pools. These pools create access to health insurance for otherwise medically uninsurable individuals and are an important part of our strategy to make health insurance available to more Americans. The President also signed a bill to amend the Public Health Service Act and strengthen the National Foundation for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Finally, we passed two key laws to preserve access to medical technology. The Medical Device User Fee Stabilization Act of 2005 prevented the FDA's medical device user fee program from expiring. Without this law, patients' access to the latest medical innovations would have been compromised. Congress also acted to protect children from dangerous, unregulated cosmetic lenses, often used as part of costumes, by providing for the regulation of these lenses as medical devices.

The HELP Committee members worked together with our House counterparts in a bipartisan, bicameral way to complete action on these laws. I personally thank all of the committee members on both ends of the building for their active participation in this process.

We also scored a victory on the Senate floor this summer related to health insurance. Together with Senators Nelson and Burns, I introduced legislation that would allow business and trade associations to band their members together in small business health plans and offer group health coverage on a national or statewide basis. It would give small businesses the capability to group together across State lines to effectively negotiate against big insurance companies. It would bring down insurance rate significantly, particularly in the area of administrative costs.

This legislation, the Health Insurance Marketplace and Modernization and Affordability Act, is a direct response to the runaway costs that are driving Americans and businesses away from the health insurance marketplace. In May, this legislation received 55 votes on the Senate floor--a clear majority. Unfortunately, obstructionists used arcane Senate rules requiring 60 votes for passage to defeat consideration of the bill. I count this as a victory for the HELP Committee because the policy is supported by the majority of the Senate. This will not be a victory for Americans until it is signed by the President.

Enacting the Health Insurance Marketplace Modernization and Affordability Act will be a top priority for the HELP Committee and me personally in the 110th Congress. I intend to act on this legislation early next year and continue to work across party lines to find the solution that produces 60 votes in the Senate. The HELP Committee has a role to play in making employer-sponsored health care more accessible and affordable. Employer-provided health insurance is voluntary, and it is in critical condition. Sixty percent of the country's employers offer insurance today. That is down 9 percent from just 5 years ago. And the cost of health insurance for companies has nearly doubled in that same period, with employers expected to pay an average of $8,167 per employee family versus $4,248 5 years ago. My proposal would provide health care coverage to over 1 million small businesses and their working families.

This fall, I am also hopeful the committee can add two more victories to our list of accomplishments. That would be the Health Information Technology conference agreement and the reauthorization of the Ryan White Care Act.

Right now, my staff is working aggressively with the House to complete action on the Wired For Health Care Quality Act conference agreement. This legislation will enhance the adoption of a nationwide interoperable health information technology system, improve the quality of health care, and contain costs. Primarily, it will allow each individual to own their own health care record and to carry it around with them easily. They will have the permanent record to carry with them and release, to the degree they want to, to any health care provider. This will contain costs: just between Medicare, Medicaid and Veterans, this is expected to save $160 billion a year. The cost to implement: $40 billion, one time. A good investment anywhere.

The committee has also been working in a bipartisan, bicameral fashion to complete the reauthorization of the Ryan White Care Act. The measure was approved by the HELP Committee in May, and I am hopeful that we can swiftly clear compromise legislation through both Chambers by December--I was hoping we could pass it today, but I see it has been stopped. It is absolutely essential that this clear by September 30.

The reauthorization of the Older Americans Act will also have a significant impact on the everyday lives of Americans. The HELP Committee approved this legislation in June, and I am hopeful we can complete action on it this year as well. This reauthorization is important because it ensures that our Nation's older Americans, including 78 million aging baby boomers, are healthy, fed, housed, able to get where they need to go, and safe from abuse and scams. We have been in bicameral, bipartisan deliberations for several months. Again, there is a little hangup on the funding formula. Money has to follow the people in all of these programs.

The committee also conducted various investigations and held several oversight hearings that exposed waste, fraud, and abuse in Federal programs and used the findings to craft legislation to increase accountability. Our first oversight hearing last year focused on how an asset management company, Capital Consultants, defrauded workers out of approximately $500 million in retirement assets. The findings from this oversight effort were addressed in the new pension law.

The committee also held the first oversight hearing in almost 70 years on the Randolph Sheppard Act and the Javits Wagner O'Day Act. Both programs are supposed to find employment opportunities for people with disabilities. The committee's investigation and hearing established that some executives were using the programs for their own enrichment--making millions while exploiting people with disabilities. Following the hearing, Federal law enforcement took action against the worst actors, and we have collaborated across party lines to systematically overhaul both programs. My goal is to address these programs with legislation next year.

I thank my ranking member, Senator Kennedy, and his staff for their hard work these past 2 years. His assistance and cooperation are the main reasons we have been able to accomplish many of these priorities. We didn't always agree, but we were able to identify common ground to advance our mutual priorities.

I also thank each of our committee members. As I stated earlier, we have kept a full schedule. Many of the legislative victories were initiatives brought to my attention by our subcommittee chairs or individual committee members. Senators were also especially diligent about attending the committee hearings and particularly patient when we sometimes waited for a quorum during executive session. For the remainder of the year, I will be reaching out to each of our members to seek feedback on the 2007 agenda, which will serve as the blueprint for the year.

Finally, in closing, I would like to recognize two departing members of the committee: Majority Leader Frist and Senator Jeffords. We are fortunate they chose to serve, and we are grateful for their contributions. Senator Jeffords is a past chairman of the committee, and, of course, Majority Leade Frist has been the doctor on the committee and provided a perspective no one else could. I am proud of the work we have done here on the committee these past 2 years. By working together, we have established a track record of success.

I also wish to compliment the subcommittee chairmen for their extremely hard work. We gave them a lot of independence, and they didn't disappoint me. They took hold of programs. The competitiveness program is one of them that has reached a point where it can now be debated and pursued. The Senator from Tennessee, Mr. Alexander, did a tremendous job of working that bill, along with Senator Ensign, collaborating with three different committees on one piece of farsighted legislation.

Senators DeWine and Mikulski have done a marvelous job with the Elder Fall Act and Older Americans Act and have worked well together for a number of years across the aisle to make sure older Americans are taken care of.

I could go on and mention all of the subcommittees and the work they have done. Senator Burr has done some fantastic work on bioterrorism. He has put together a fantastic bill that contains new concepts which will allow better preparation for any of the possible terrorism acts that could happen on our own soil. Senator Isakson, of course, has been extremely active in handling labor issues. As I mentioned, he was a key player in the miner safety bill.

It has been an interesting year. I look forward to another interesting year. I am looking for suggestions from my colleagues on what needs to be done, and looking for that 80 percent that can be accomplished.

Our record of accomplishment is proof that we are a can-do Congress. Far from being a do-nothing Congress, we have shown our colleagues and our constituents that Congress can and is working hard to improve the lives of Americans.

One of the reasons America doesn't know more about this is because of the cooperation that has taken place. We didn't have to debate the 20 percent we didn't agree on here on the floor of the Senate, and consequently there was not a lot of coverage. But just the pensions bill and the miner safety bill, either of those, would be a major accomplishment for any committee during a 2-year period.

I am proud of the 12 bills the President signed and the 21 bills we got through this body. I think that is a record of accomplishment, and I thank all those who participated.

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