Floor Statements

Mr. President, I would like to follow on the comments of my colleague from Florida, Senator Nelson, in support of the Children's Health Insurance Program bill.

This week, the House of Representatives passed the bill overwhelmingly, 265 to 159. Of my 18 Ohio House colleagues, about two- thirds of them voted for this bill. It is clearly something we know works in my State.

The Children's Health Insurance Program was passed 10 years ago in the House of Representatives and the Senate. It was established. President Clinton, a Democrat, with a Republican House and a Republican Senate, supported that issue, and it has clearly worked.

We have some 6 million children in this country now who benefit from the Children's Health Insurance Program. In my State, it is around 200,000 children. We also know this legislation will mean about 4 million more children in the United States will benefit from this health care program.

These are sons and daughters of working families. These are not people living in the lap of luxury. They are families making $20,000, $30,000, and $40,000 a year. They are families where they are working hard, playing by the rules, but they are not making enough money to buy insurance. Their employers do not offer insurance. So this is what we need to do.

Now, the President says he plans to veto this bill for two reasons that I can understand. One of them, he said, is the cost. This is $35 billion over 5 years; $7 billion a year. But just make the contrast: We are spending $2.5 billion a week--$2.5 billion a week--on the war in Iraq. Yet the President does not want to spend $7 billion a year to insure 4 million children. That is his first reason--the cost.

The second reason, the President says: I want private insurance to take care of these children. Well, so do I. So does Senator Grassley, who has been a major leader on this issue in the Senate on the other side of the aisle. We all do. But the fact is, private insurance is not taking care of these children. Again, they are sons and daughters of people with jobs paying $20,000, $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 a year, people without insurance and without the financial wherewithal to be able to take care of these children.

The President came to Cleveland a few months ago and said everybody has health care in this country. They can get it at the emergency room. I want children in this country to get preventive care in their family doctor's office, not acute care in the emergency room.

Before the President makes his decision, I would like him to meet three families in Ohio, people who really speak to this whole issue.

I want him to know about Dawn and Glenn Snyder and their son Cody, living in Bloomingdale, near Steubenville, near the Ohio River in eastern Ohio. Dawn works in a doctor's office, and Glenn works temporary jobs. Cody is 3 years old and has cerebral palsy. Until he was a year old, Cody had bleeding in his brain and seizures. Sometimes Glenn has insurance and sometimes he doesn't. It depends on where he is working. Dawn is going to lose the coverage for her family that she has gotten because they can no longer afford to buy it.

So even though Cody needs regular medical care from a neurologist and an eye doctor, as well as routine preventive care that all children need, he is in danger of having no access to health insurance. However, the Snyders will have coverage if this bill is signed into law.

If this bill passes, Cody will likely qualify for care under Ohio's new Children's Health Insurance Program. I would add also, on a bipartisan note, Governor Strickland, the new Governor of Ohio, with a resounding bipartisan vote out of the legislature, moved the eligibility to 300 percent of poverty so families making up to about $50,000 or $55,000 a year will have coverage.

If this bill passes, it means the Snyders will have a safety net for Cody's coverage and will be able to live with the security of knowing their son will receive the care he needs.

Then there is the story of Evan Brannon. Evan is a 1-year-old from Dayton in southwest Ohio. His dad Kenneth is currently not working, after losing his job as a repairman for a telephone company. Angela, Evan's mother, stays at home with him and has a baby on the way.

Evan was diagnosed with a congenital hernia of his diaphragm and is on a feeding tube, and he also receives medicine through a tube. He receives physical, occupational, and speech therapy. His parents looked into private coverage and learned they would never qualify for it because of Evan's preexisting condition. The family is faced with $5,000 to $6,000 a month in medical expenses. Angela can't go back to work. Kenneth is looking for a job but can't get a position over a certain income level or Evan will lose medical coverage. How is this family ever supposed to get ahead if they have to make sure not to make too much money out of fear of losing health insurance for their children? What kind of incentive is that to build into the system?

Passing this bill will fix that. This is just one way in which America's families' opportunities are limited by our

country's inability to provide the insurance the children's health insurance will provide.

One more story. David Kelley is a 13-year-old living in Erie County, right next door to where I live. He lives with his mother Heather and his stepfather Timothy. David has been diagnosed as bipolar, mildly autistic, and suffers from Asperger's syndrome. He also has a rare form of asthma. David was born 2 months premature. His doctors believe that a lack of oxygen and other complications may have caused the conditions he has coped with daily for 13 years, although the causes are not completely known.

David's health conditions require him to regularly visit a psychiatrist, a psychologist, and a primary care physician. His medications cost $2,000 each month, and Medicaid covers it. His mother Heather has said her greatest fear in life is of David losing his medical coverage. She herself has multiple sclerosis and is unable to work. No private insurance plan will ever cover David because of those preexisting conditions. Heather has made navigating the Medicaid and social service systems a nearly full-time job just to maintain David's benefits. Here is another family in need of help from the Senate.

I hope our President will not leave the Kelleys, the Brannons, or the Snyders behind, without the health coverage their children so desperately need. I hope he can have compassion for those families struggling so hard to make ends meet and whose greatest wish is to provide the most basic of needs for their children: housing, food, and health care. I hope the President can see what a sound investment this is. This isn't spending $7 billion a year; this is investing $7 billion a year in the future of our families, the future of our children, and the future of our country. Four million American children will receive health insurance if the President signs this bill. He must sign it into law. Too many people are counting on it.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, although we are in morning business, I wish to add some comments to what Senator Mikulski said about privatization because what we have seen throughout our Government--whether it is Medicare, the efforts to privatize, which, unfortunately, have been partially successful at privatizing but not so successful in serving the public, serving seniors, and the totally unsuccessful effort to privatize Social Security--what we have seen in public education, what we have seen in the prison system in my State of Ohio, what we seen in several kinds of efforts to privatize have often resulted in more taxpayer dollars being spent, a reduction in service, to be sure, less efficiency, and less accountability.

So her amendment is right on the mark. Her efforts in privatization generally are very important. I thank the senior Senator from Maryland on that.

Mr. President, our Nation's haphazard trade policy has done plenty of damage to Ohio's economy, to our workers--from Steubenville to Cambridge, from Portsmouth to Wauseon--to our manufacturers--in Bryan and Cleveland and Akron, and Lorain--and to our small businesses in Dayton, Cincinnati, and Springfield.

Recent news reports of tainted foods and toxic toys reveal another hazard of ill-conceived and unenforced trade rules. They subject American families, American children, to products that can harm them-- that in some cases can actually kill them.

Our trade rules encourage unsafe imports. Our gap-ridden food and product inspection system lets those imports into our country. Our lax requirements for importers let those products stay on the shelves. And our foot dragging on requiring country-of-origin labeling leaves consumers in the dark. It is a lethal--all too lethal, all too often-- combination.

With a total lack of protections in our trade policy, we do not just import goods from another country, we import the lax safety standards of other countries. If we relax basic health and safety rules to accommodate Bush-style, NAFTA-modeled trade deals, of course, we are going to find lead paint on our toys and toxins in our toothpaste.

Just think of it this way: When we trade with a country, when we buy $288 billion of products from China, for instance--a country that puts little emphasis on safe drinking water, on clean air, on protections for their own workers, on consumer protection, and then they sell those products to the United States, why would they care about products, consumer products, toys that are safe or food products that are safe, when they do not care about that in their own country for their own workers and for their own consumers?

Add to the fact that U.S. companies put tremendous pressure on their Chinese subcontractors to cut the cost of production to cut their own costs, and the Chinese are going to use lead paint because it is cheaper. They are going to cut corners on safety because it is cheaper.

At the same time, the Bush administration has weakened our Food and Drug Administration, Department of Agriculture, and Consumer Product Safety Commission rules, and that is compounded even further because they have cut the number of inspectors. So why should we be surprised when we see toys in our children's bedrooms that are dangerous, or when we see vitamins in our drugstores and food in our grocery stores that are contaminated?

Due to trade agreements, there are now more than 230 countries and more than 200,000 foreign manufacturers exporting FDA-related goods-- FDA-regulated goods--to American consumers.

Before NAFTA, we imported 1 million lines of food. Now we import 18 million lines of food. One million lines of food in 1993; today it is 18 million lines of food.

Unfortunately, trade deals put limits on the safety standards we can require for imports and even how much we can inspect imports. I will say that again. We pass a trade agreement with another country. It puts limits on our own safety standards, and it puts limits on how much we can inspect those imports.

Our trade policy should prevent these problems--not bring them on.

Now the President, though, wants new trade agreements with Peru, Panama, South Korea, and Colombia--all based on the same failed trade model that brought us China, that has brought us NAFTA, that has brought us the Central American Free Trade Agreement.

This Chamber will soon consider--maybe even next week--a trade agreement with Peru. Some may wonder why we are entering into new trade agreements right now considering we have had five straight years of record annual trade deficits.

When I first ran for Congress in 1992, on the other side of the Capitol, to be a Member of the House of Representatives, our trade deficit was $38 billion. Today, it exceeds $800 billion. Our trade deficit with China was barely double digits 15 years ago. Today, it exceeds $250 billion.

The NAFTA/CAFTA trade model has driven down wages and working conditions for workers in Marion and Mansfield and Bucyrus and Canton and all across the United States and abroad.

This kind of trade has torn apart families' health care and pension benefits. It undermines our capacity even to produce equipment vital to our national security.

Contrary to promoting stability in Peru and the Andean region, as this trade agreement's supporters would say, these trade agreements are actually more likely to increase poverty and inequality.

This month, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development issued a report warning developing countries--poorer nations that are doing trade agreements with us--to be wary of bilateral and regional free trade deals. The U.N. Report cited the North American Free Trade Agreement as an example of a trade agreement that may have short-term benefits for poor countries but has long-term harm. We know what NAFTA did to Mexico's middle class. We know what NAFTA did to its rural farmers. Well over 1.3 million farmers were displaced since the North American Free Trade Agreement in Mexico.

Let's look at Peru for a moment. Nearly one-third of Peru's population depends on agriculture for its livelihood. The development group Oxfam estimates that 1.7 million Peruvian farmers will be immediately affected by this trade agreement. When those farmers can't get a fair price for wheat or for barley or for corn, they are forced to produce other crops--almost inevitably, including coca. That means more cocaine production, it means more illegal drugs in the United States. We have been there before. We have seen that before. We have seen the rural dislocation in Mexico, after NAFTA, and there is nothing to suggest the Peru trade agreement will be any different.

Scholars, including former World Bank Director Joseph Stiglitz, note that rural upheaval from trade deals means more violence, more U.S. money spent on drug eradication.

An archbishop in Peru said:

We are certain this trade agreement will increase the

cultivation of coca, which brings drug trafficking,

terrorism, and violence.

So if we are talking about combating terrorism around the world, the exactly 180-degree wrong thing to do is a trade agreement with Peru because it will mean, as the archbishop said, the increased cultivation of coca because we will put some of their corn farmers, their barley farmers, their wheat farmers out of business. More coca, more drug trafficking, more terrorism, more violence, more instability.

We need a new trade approach in our policy, one that benefits workers here and promotes sustainable development with our trading partners.

This Peru agreement has some improvements in labor and the environment. It is important to note that this change in the administration's view toward labor and environmental rules of trade agreements would not have happened without voters' demand for change last year. But the demand for change in trade policy runs deep. We have heard workers in Ohio and around the country call for big changes in trade policy, and we are hearing consumers in Avon Lake and in Kettering demand accountability for the unsafe imports that are on our shelves. Passing a trade agreement with Peru is not the change we need. We want trade. We want more trade. We want trade under different rules and, most importantly, our responsibility is to protect our family's health and protect our children.

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

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Judiciary Committee be discharged and the Senate now proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 210 and S. Res. 336, en bloc.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolutions be agreed to, the preambles be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, en bloc.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Veterans' Affairs Committee be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 327 and that the Senate then proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment at the desk be considered and agreed to, the bill as amended be read a third time, passed, and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statements relating thereto be printed in the Record, without further intervening action or debate.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 3625, which was received from the House and is at the desk.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read the third time, passed, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table; that any statements relating thereto be printed in the Record, without intervening action or debate.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 3668, which was received from the House and is at the desk.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read the third time, passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table; that any statements relating thereto be printed in the Record, without intervening action or debate.

Mr. President, I understand that H.R. 2693 has been received from the House and is at the desk. I ask for its first reading.

I ask for its second reading and object to my own request.

Mr. President, as in executive session, I ask unanimous consent that when the Committee on Homeland Security reports the nomination of Julie Myers, PN 93, to be Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security, it be sequentially referred to the Judiciary Committee for up to 30 calendar days; further, that if the nomination is not reported by the completion of that time, the nomination be automatically discharged and placed on the Executive Calendar.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 10:30 a.m., Friday, September 28; that on Friday, following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders reserved for their use later in the day; that the Senate then resume consideration of H.R. 1585.

Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand adjourned under the previous order.

Mr. President, I echo the words of the Senator from Oregon and thank him for his leadership on health care issues and especially his urging the President of the United States to sign the children's health insurance bill. We are hoping for a strong vote in the Senate tomorrow in passing that very important legislation.

Mr. President, I rise this evening in support of the Kennedy amendment, the hate crimes amendment. Our Nation's strength lies in its diversity, its tolerance, its respect for the individual. Hate crimes borne of prejudice and ignorance, of fear and cowardice, contravene these core principles which our Nation for more than two centuries has held dear. They are perpetuated by individuals who fear, in some sense, individuality. Terrorism is a hate crime.

The amendment offered by my colleague, Mr. Kennedy, ensures that hate crimes be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. It enables Federal investigations of what are clearly Federal crimes. Hate crimes target individuals because they are part of a community. In the national community, all of us have a stake in fighting back against these crimes.

My colleague's amendment sends a strong message. The message is this: Our Nation will not turn the other way when individuals try to divide us. We will not tread softly when individuals use violence to perpetuate hatred. We will prosecute to the fullest extent of the law crimes that reflect a vicious disregard for individual rights and our Nation's core central values.

Our Nation is a community of people who care about one another. Hate crimes destroy our cohesiveness and our mutual respect and replace those values with paranoia, with divisiveness, and with destruction. Hate crimes weaken our Nation. This amendment strengthens it.

I urge my colleagues to support the amendment.

Mr. President, in July, I introduced S. 1792, the FOREWARN Act of 2007, a direct outgrowth of legislation that one of my predecessors, two predecessors ago, Senator Metzenbaum from Ohio, introduced called the WARN Act, legislation he got through the Congress in the 1980s, but legislation that now needs an update. It is about plant closings and job loss.

Job loss, whether it is in Ohio or whether it is in Seattle, does not just affect a worker or a worker's family. Job loss devastates entire communities and local economies.

While notice of a layoff is no substitute for a job, the WARN Act of 20 years ago was supposed to give employees time to find a new job and for help to be provided. Under current law, however, fair notice has proven to be the exception, not the rule, because too many have gamed the old WARN Act.

Employers have laid off workers in phases to avoid the threshold level of the WARN Act, used subsidiaries to evade liability, and pressured workers in too many cases, in too many places around Ohio to waive their rights.

Whether one lives in Toledo, Columbus, Cleveland, Akron, Cincinnati, or Lebanon, it is absolutely critical that in these situations, workers and groups have sufficient notice to begin working to attempt to limit the damage this causes a community.

The new legislation which I introduced in July, with Senator Clinton, Senator Obama, and Senator Stabenow, S. 1792, will close these loopholes and provide the tools necessary for the enforcement of the rules.

The legislation gives the Labor Department the authority to take civil action for violations, as well as giving authority to State attorneys general if the Labor Secretary fails to act within 6 months. So if the Labor Secretary today refuses to act, if this happens in Zanesville or Lima, Attorney General Marc Dann of Ohio may take action.

The legislation reduces the closing plant threshold from the current number 50, which is gamed all too often, to 25 employees. It recalculates the mass layoff figure. The current mass layoff figure is calculated from at least one-third of the employees, or 50. FOREWARN sets the number at 100 in all events, or one-third of employees if there are between 50 and 100 employees.

Our legislation, S. 1792, reduces the employer size to 50 employees and lengthens the notification period from 60 calendar days to 90 calendar days. It requires employers to provide written notification to the Labor Secretary, as well as local stakeholders, including early warning networks and mayors. It increases penalties for violations of the WARN Act from back pay to double back pay.

Mr. President, I know you have had this problem in the State of Pennsylvania, the problem of lost manufacturing, and you know that the worst thing a community can face is a major plant closing or major reduction of workforce in a plant. And you know that as bad as that is, there are some things employers can do to make it better, and many do. But you also know that the law passed 20 years ago has not always made sure that the transition from losing their job to going back into the community and getting work, getting their family through the hardest times, getting the community through the hardest times--the law has not always addressed the best way to do that, and I think this legislation, S. 1792, does that very well.

I ask my colleagues to consider this legislation. It is time to update the 20-year law, the WARN Act, which passed and was approved by President Reagan. I think this legislation will help ease the lost-job problems. We need to do much more. We need to train differently, we need new trade law, different tax laws, and all the different kinds of things the Presiding Officer and I have worked on already in our time in the Senate, but the FOREWARN Act will matter for communities such as Steubenville, Portsmouth, and Chillicothe, and it will matter for families who have suffered the indignities and the tragedies and the hardship of lost jobs and plant closings.

Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I thank Senator Stabenow, my friend from Michigan, for the comments about children's health. She is right-on about that. Look at the choice. We are going to spend $2.5 billion a week in Iraq. Yet we are unwilling per year to spend $7 billion to insure 4 million additional children--some 75,000 in my State and 50,000 or 60,000 in the State of Michigan next door. We are spending $2.5 billion a week in Iraq. Yet the President says he is going to say no and veto this bill on children's health.