Floor Statements

Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 4071.

Mr. President, I would like to state to the manager of the bill, if I could ask a question of Senator Dodd, one of Senator Reid's right-hand lieutenants asked me to ask for an additional 5 minutes on both the Corker and Carper amendments. I presume that has been cleared with him.

I ask unanimous consent that both on the Corker amendment and the amendment I have offered, we have an additional 5 minutes for a total of 20 minutes.

Mr. President, let me start off by thanking Senator Corker for all the time and energy he and Courtney and others on his staff have put into this issue, both in committee and as we come to the floor.

Last week, Senator Corker and I and about 11 other Republicans and a number of Democrats joined to offer the amendment he is offering at this time. When it became clear to me that we were not going to be able to muster the 60 votes to prevail on what was our amendment, we began working with Senator Dodd and his staff--I hope we kept our colleagues in the loop, as we went through the negotiations--to come up with legislation that enables us to get a half a loaf. I think we probably got more than half a loaf. Time will tell. History will judge.

I wish to back up a little bit and say what I think the authors of the legislation had in mind in the bill as it came to the floor. The idea is to create a new

unit I call the consumer bureau. Their job is to promulgate the rules and regulations with respect to consumer protections, not only for national banks or State-chartered banks, not just for credit unions or nonbank banks but for all of the above. That is a big part of the job. The job of the new consumer bureau is to promulgate rules and regulations going forward to protect consumers.

Does that entity have an enforcement responsibility as well? Yes, they do. Under the bill as it came to the floor, they would have the obligation for enforcing, among the largest national banks--roughly 100--the rules and regulations with respect to consumer protection which they promulgate.

I like to think of about three or four entities. One is nonbank banks, a second is credit unions, third is State chartered banks, and the fourth is the national banks. Of those four, the one for sure the consumer bureau actually enforces the rules that will be promulgated is with national banks and the largest ones there. Most of the banks we have in this country are State chartered. Under current law and under this legislation, not only would their safety and soundness regulator, the FDIC, be the regulator for consumer protections, but under current law, under the law going forward, State officials can also enter into those frays and again try to undertake actions to protect consumers. That could be done now, and it can be done the way the bill is written.

With respect to nonbank banks, under current law, the FTC has the responsibility going into this endeavor of enforcing consumer protections. They would have the responsibility of enforcing the protections of the rules promulgated by the consumer bureau. There is a good chance that going forward the FTC will also have responsibility for enforcing the consumer protections for the nonbank banks. Credit unions, correct me if I am wrong, I think the responsibility there lies with the NCUA. They are the safety and soundness regulators for credit unions, and they are also the responsible regulator for consumer protection. I am not sure that will change.

What will change is they will have some additional rules and regulations promulgated by the consumer bureau to enforce at least that much. This is where we have gotten into a big debate.

The question is, How about national banks that operate, in some cases, in all 50 States? Who is going to enforce the rules to protect consumers from them?

The way it has worked for years, we followed the guidance of two Supreme Court decisions in this regard. One of them is called Barnett Bank. It has been a part of the case law for about 14 years. The other is called Cuomo v. Clearinghouse. I am not sure why. That is what it is called.

Essentially, the first case law under Barnett attempts to say: We have these national banks. They are actually supervised by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. For the most part, States want to come in and exert their own desire and their own will and they can do that, to some extent, under current law. But when they come in and try to exert influence over national banks, if the national banks think the State is out of line, they can go to court and say: No, the State can't do this. This is preempted. This is something that is governed by the Federal Government, by our regulator, the OCC or by this new regulator. If the national banks think that what a State is trying to do, under Barnett Bank, if they think it is out of order, inappropriate, not permitted, it is preempted, they can go to their primary regulator, the OCC. That is what they can do now. If the bank thinks the States are acting in an inappropriate way, inconsistent with the Barnett ruling, the national banks can go to the OCC or they can go into court to have it cleared up. That is current law. That is the Barnett Bank ruling in its simplest form. What we do in this compromise is to retain that language, essentially to retain that language or the spirit therein. Where we make a change with respect to the amendment Senator Corker offers today and that he and I and others had offered to introduce last week, we make a change with respect to who else can enforce the rules and regulations among national banks that are promulgated by this new consumer bureau.

What we have said is, State officials and the AGs can enforce the rules and regulations of the consumer bureau. They can do that. Can they conduct class action lawsuits against with respect to the rules and regulations? They can't do that. Can they go across State lines? Can the attorney general from Alabama go into Florida and try to enforce the rules across State lines? The AGs can't do that. But what they can do under our compromise is, the State AGs in all 50 States can look at the rules and regulations promulgated by the consumer bureau and enforce those in their own State. For us, that is probably the biggest give with respect to what we introduced last week.

This is a confusing issue. It is arcane. I have tried to explain it to my colleagues with mixed success. I hope I am doing better today on the floor. It is not an easily understood issue.

For me, the question is this: If we are going to have national banks--and we have had them for 150 years--if there are going to be national standards and a tough regulator, let's make sure the consumer bureau has the resources and authority it needs to enforce these rules for national banks. When people say: What is the problem with letting the AGs come in, here is the problem. I like to use Washington, DC, as an example. I live in Delaware. I go back and forth on the train just about every day. Let's say I lived in Maryland, and let's say I worked in Washington, as we do. Let's say my bank is home chartered in Virginia. Let's say I travel all over the country, and I use ATM machines in many different States. If you have a situation where the States can impose their own laws or rules or regulations with respect to features of banking and checking accounts, with respect to my ATM cards and access to ATM machines, the fees I have for my debit cards, that authority sort of thing, how would you apply those rules and regulations in this one instance, someone who lives in Maryland, works in Washington, their bank is in Virginia, and they access banking services all over the country? That could be confusing, very confusing. It is not only going to be confusing for the banks themselves, as they try to comply with this patchwork quilt of 50 different rules and regulations, in addition to the national rules and regulations. It is going to be confusing for consumers too.

This is not something we are doing simply to make the banks happy. They are not doing handstands over the amendment I am offering as a side-by-side with the previous Carper-Corker amendment.

I am convinced of this: What we are doing is good for consumers, and it is fair for the banks.

Again, to Senator Dodd and his staff, I thank them for working with us. I express my thanks to our Republican colleagues who joined us as cosponsors on the amendment last week and those who support us today.

I retain the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. President, let me try to be clear on one point, as we come to the close of this discussion.

For States or their national banks, under what is proposed and what would occur under our amendment, if a State AG wants to try to enforce a State law on a national bank, the bank can go in and say to the courts, they can go in and say to the regulator, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, that State law is preempted. That cannot be enforced against a national bank.

The question here--and this is a point where I gave on and our side gave on in negotiations--how about if the State AG or State officials want to come in and enforce the rules that have been developed by the new consumer bureau? Under the compromise we have reached, while they cannot come in and enforce their own State laws, or, really, come in and enforce the Federal law we are debating today, the State AG can come in and enforce the rules, which have been worked out over a period of months--draft regulations, proposed regulations, common periods, revised regulations with guidance, and finally adopted regulations with guidance.

In those instances, when the regulations are adopted in their final form--gone through that whole process--then the AGs can come in and not selectively enforce them, but they have the right to enforce those, along with--for big banks, big national banks--the bureau, and if they are not so big national banks, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

That is where I think we have ended up here. I do not think it is a bad compromise. As our colleague from Tennessee and certainly the Presiding Officer and our two floor managers, Senator Dodd and Senator Shelby, know, we have been sent to govern, and sometimes I cannot get what I want. But what we try to do is to be willing to give, and in an orderly fashion we have a final compromise that I think meets muster.

Let me say, as a former Governor--I think there are five former Governors on our original amendment--I do not think anyone can accuse me or any of the other former Governors of not being for States rights. But sometimes we need a strong Federal regulator with strong enforcement authority, particularly when we are dealing with issues of interstate commerce and our national banking system, which we seek to preserve.

In closing, I wish to assure my colleagues that I believe the amendment I offer with a number of my colleagues preserves the ability of States' attorneys general to provide a backstop to the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. While the new bureau will be the main enforcer of its new rules, we have preserved the role for the

State AGs to ensure that the consumers are not put at risk because Federal regulators are asleep at the switch.

Again, I wish to thank Senator Corker for all his work on not just this issue but on others to try to get us to a better place.

With that, I believe our time is just about expired.

Madam President, while the Senator from Georgia is still on the Senate floor, I want to say it is great to have him back. He has been back for a couple of weeks, but he had some pretty serious health challenges and it is good to see him back on his feet and in full voice.

He mentioned in his remarks for the first time about 3 days ago the home buyers tax credit, which actually expanded a little bit the second time through, is coming to a halt, and we are seeing this enormous volume in terms of sales of homes in this country in no small part because of his leadership on this issue over the last year or two. I was pleased as a former member of the Banking Committee to be involved in that and encourage my colleagues to support what was a very good idea.

The other thing I want to say while he is still on the floor is, he and I don't agree on everything, but we agree on a lot of stuff. I would like to invoke the 80-20 rule, which Senator Mike Enzi from Wyoming talks about. I used to say to him: Why do you and Ted Kennedy-- when he, Senator Kennedy, was with us; they were senior Democratic and Republican on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee--I would say to Mike Enzi, he is one of the most conservative Members of the Senate, and Ted Kennedy, arguably one of the most liberal Members of the Senate: How come you and he can get so much done in a very productive committee, regardless of whether Ted Kennedy was the chairman or Mike Enzi was the chairman?

Mike Enzi used to say: Ted and I believe in the 80-20 rule; 80 percent of the stuff we agree on, 20 percent of the stuff we don't agree on. What we decided to do is focus on the 80 percent on which we agree, set aside the 20 percent we don't agree on, and we will come back and worry about that another day.

I think, hopefully, at the end of the day we will decide to do that. There is a whole lot more on which we agree than we don't agree. My hope is we will have an opportunity to bring this bill to the floor and do what we used to do in the Senate; that is, we have people actually offer their amendments, we have a chance to debate those amendments, and we vote them up or we vote them down; that one side wouldn't line up all together to vote against those amendments, and the other side line up to vote for them.

I think with a lot of amendments Republicans and Democrats have actually gone across party lines, and it will depend a lot more in some cases on geography, in some cases on the business climate in a particular State or the nature of their businesses.

We will have a couple of days voting not for cloture, not to bring the bill to the floor; I would say to my colleagues I will be voting with them, working with them on some of their amendments, and my hope is they will do the same on some of mine. But I hope we can get past this sticking point and actually do what we are sent here to do; that is, to legislate, to govern, and I know that is what is in their hearts as well. I wanted to share that.

It is out there. I thank my colleague. I want to take a minute or two to have us step back and think about how we got into this mess with the housing bubble and all that literally led us almost to the brink of disaster in this country.

Part of what happened is market forces were not allowed to work. Regulation was not enforced. The regulators were in many cases, too many cases, asleep at the switch. But I will talk a little bit about the housing markets.

I am a guy, as a Governor and as a Senator, I always pushed real hard--and as a Congressman before that--pushed real hard for home ownership. I love the idea that people own their own home, own a piece of the rock. For a lot of people the biggest part of their life savings is the home they own. They use that not just as shelter but to help send kids to school and borrow against for all kinds of things and at the end of their lives to live off of, in some cases, the equity in their homes. That is a good thing.

That is not to say everybody ought to be a homeowner. In some cases there are some folks who ought not to be.

As the housing market heated up and the housing prices were going up, folks assumed they would go up forever. They didn't. Few things go up forever, and that includes housing prices.

We had a number of folks looking around at other people who wanted to become home owners. People who did not have the ability to become a homeowner, didn't have the financial wherewithal to become a homeowner, were sucked in or duped into buying homes. They took on exotic mortgages in the hopes they would somehow be able to pay for those and the value of the homes would keep going up over time and people would come out whole. It didn't work out that way.

I think part of what went wrong, aside from the assumption that housing prices would go up, is the fact that regulators were asleep at the switch. The other thing that went wrong is kind of a basic concept that to make markets work, for there to be some market discipline, there has to be skin in the game.

Others have talked about this even today on the Senate floor. We had, in some cases, mortgage brokers who would say to people who did not have the ability to be homeowners: Don't bother telling us what your income is or showing us what your income is. You tell us you are OK and your income is good, we will take your word for that.

In too many cases that happened, and the regulators allowed that to happen. We had mortgage brokers originate a mortgage and pass the customer on to a bank or mortgage banker. They would write the mortgage, allow the mortgage to be done, and the person ended up with a home. They ended up with a mortgage. The mortgage was passed on, maybe bought by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, and they bundled

them together, a bunch of mortgages together, and created an investment instrument through securitization. Those securities were then kind of blessed by the credit agencies.

The credit agencies, the mortgage brokers, made their fee, and they were out of it. The bankers made their fee, and they were out of it. Fannie and Freddie got some kind of fee, as I recall, for securitizing the loans, and they were kind of out of it. The credit agencies made their fee and they were out of it. We ended up with folks owning these securities, in some cases, all around the world.

We sliced and diced these securities and they were acquired by different investors. Too many of the players in this business didn't have any skin in the game. At the end of the game, when folks started defaulting on the mortgages, not making the payments, those investments in mortgage-backed securities which were out there owned by different bunches of investors turned into what I call Swiss cheese. They had a lot of holes in them, holes created when folks stopped meeting their mortgage payments and eventually, instead of turning into Swiss cheese, they in many cases became illiquid, unmarketable, and they gathered, in some cases, on the books, the balance sheets of financial institutions.

Despite all these tricks we tried to create and gimmicks we tried to create or financial tools we tried to create to deal with the risk, they didn't all work. In the end it came tumbling down.

Among things we want to do, we want to make sure in the legislation we are working on regulators actually regulate. Second, one of the things we want to make sure of is we actually, when we are asking somebody what their income is, we want to verify it so some people don't end up taking on risks they obviously can't meet. We want to make sure people have skin in the game, the banks, the financial institutions have skin in the game; that the shareholders of those institutions are at risk; otherwise, what reason should they have--why should there be any discipline? There will not be in too many cases.

There are some people who think we ought to mandate capital standards and risky activities, raise the capital standards, and we should do that by mandates or legislative fiat. I don't know if that is a smart thing to do because we are working in this international marketplace, and our financial institutions, if they have certain capital standards that are dramatically different from the capital standards or requirements for liquidity different from other countries, that sort of puts our institutions at a disadvantage, a competitive disadvantage. We have to make sure our regulators are coordinating with other regulators around the world and we actually do have standards so financial institutions, when they are involved in risky behavior, the capital requirements are higher and the liquidity requirements are higher.

The last point I want to make, today somebody gave me some--I don't know if you call them talking points, if you will, what our vision is as Democrats, the idea we are on the side, not so much of the financial institutions, certainly not necessarily on the side of Wall Street, but we are on the side of regular people, many of whom have been damaged by all this.

Among the points I would want to leave us with in terms of the things we are for is, we want to have in place strict new regulations to stop Wall Street from gambling with money, our money, in the end. We are not interested in more taxpayer bailouts. The idea of creating this $50 billion fund that will be paid for by financial institutions themselves, to contribute to that so later on when these big institutions get into trouble, we actually have the money literally there, available to use to shut them down and retire them in an orderly way that doesn't disrupt the financial system, that is one of the things we are for.

We are going to try to end too big to fail. We want to put a new cop on the beat in terms of consumer protection for consumers, at least working with the largest 100 or so institutions that have over $50 billion in assets among the bankholding companies, and we--I think this is important, too, a reminder in the course of this debate--we want to put consumers in control with information in plain English.

As I listen to this debate and a lot of folks coming to visit with us and talk about the issues before us, we can probably use more plain English on the Senate floor than not. Sometimes I hear my colleagues, certainly our staffs and folks who visit with us, talking about stuff that reminds me of the old saying--remember Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity? Somebody once asked Mrs. Einstein: Mrs. Einstein, do you understand your husband's Theory of Relativity?

She said: I understand the words but not the sentences. That is what she said: I understand the words but not the sentences.

I hear some of the debate on some of what is presented to us. I understand the words, but some of the sentences I understand but not all of them. I want to make sure at the end of the day when we are finished and we bring the bill to the floor and offer amendments, we actually understand the sentences and not just the words of the amendments and actually write defined legislation, go through conference with the House, and actually do understand not just the words but the sentences, the paragraphs, the pages, and the whole kit and caboodle so at end of the day we will have taken some big steps to greatly reduce the likelihood we are ever going to have to go through this again--certainly not in our lifetimes and certainly not again ever.

I know the things I mentioned that serve our Democratic vision--I hope the Republicans would share that. I think in many cases--maybe on an 80-20 basis--they probably do. If we ever get a chance to get a bill to the floor, we will find out. In the end, I think we will find out there is a lot on which we agree; that we will find common ground, we will address this issue and move on to other important issues and challenges that face our Nation.

Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce two pieces of legislation that I believe will help the Federal Government cut its energy bill, save taxpayers' money and benefit the environment. Today is Earth Day, when people are thinking about how they can take better care of our planet. Federal agencies need to do the same.

Also important, the last few years have underscored the need for our Nation to rethink its energy use. Constantly shifting energy costs and our Nation's severe economic problems have resulted in families, homeowners, and businesses all taking a hard look at how much they are spending, including for energy needs. Governments should be no different, and they are no different.

Over the past few months, my Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, Federal Services, and International Security held hearings to examine how the Federal Government can lead by example in being more energy efficient. We learned, among other things, that the Federal Government is the single largest energy user in the Nation.

In fiscal year 2008, the total energy consumption of Federal Government buildings and operations was roughly 1.5 percent of all energy consumption in the United States. The energy bill for the Federal Government that year was $24.5 billion. Of that $24.5 billion, over $7 billion was spent on energy to operate Federal buildings alone.

With a price tag that large, there are significant opportunities for savings. Today, I offer a series of proposals that I believe will allow the Federal Government to take better advantage of these opportunities.

The Government Accountability Office has noted that Federal agencies face a number of challenges in meeting their energy management goals. One of those is rapidly building and retrofitting our buildings with advanced technologies, without regard for the skills necessary to operate and maintain these facilities to their optimum efficiency.

The Federal Government has spent billions of dollars on technology and hardware to improve the energy efficiency of its buildings. However, if this significant investment is not safeguarded by well- trained individuals, we will never be able to achieve the biggest bang for our buck. New technology demands new skills. My legislation would better ensure that the individuals who manage our Federal facilities possess the knowledge they need to meet these demands.

The Federal Buildings Personnel Training Act of 2010, which I am introducing today along with Senator Collins, and Representatives Carnahan

and Biggert in the House, will ensure that the General Services Administration has all of the tools necessary to not only upgrade our infrastructure, but also guarantee that these buildings are properly maintained and operated at their highest performance levels. You wouldn't give a race car to an inexperienced driver and expect them to win the Indy 500. In the same way, we can't expect our Federal buildings to run at peak efficiency if we don't make sure our personnel have adequate training.

I am also introducing a second bill, the Improving Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Use By Federal Agencies Act of 2010.

Federal agencies are pursuing many ideas and technologies to reduce the amount of energy they consume, and adopt renewable energy such as solar panels on top of Federal buildings. These proven technologies have resulted in financial savings that have more than paid for the initial financial investment. This is in addition to the environmental and energy security benefits of reduced energy use.

In fact, earlier this year the Administration announced plans for Federal agencies to reduce its greenhouse gas pollution by 28 percent by 2020, representing between $8 billion and $11 billion in cost savings. These goals are part of a very useful and effective executive order signed last year directing agencies to not only devote more attention to energy reduction, but share their best ideas.

While the Administration's Executive Order, Federal Leadership in Environmental, Energy and Economic Performance, represents an important step forward, there is more we can do.

Federal agencies can make use of some creative financial tools where government partners with the private sector. For example, with Power Purchasing Agreements a Federal agency allows a company to use government land, for example an unused portion of military base, to build solar, wind or other renewable power production with private sector funding, and in exchange gives the Federal facility cheaper electricity. This means that governments can reduce the cost of its energy use and help clean up the environment by promoting renewable energy--all without having to spend a single taxpayer dollar. Not a bad way to do business.

Currently, DOD is more successful with Power Purchasing Agreements because their facilities are allowed to enter into longer term agreements, as compared to civilian agencies which are restricted to only 10 years. My bill will allow longer-term agreements for all agencies.

It is important to remember, the cleanest, most efficient--and cheapest--energy, is the energy we don't use. That is why I would like Federal agencies to quicken the pace of its efforts to implement energy efficiency measures. To help accomplish this, my bill establishes a $500 million revolving fund to provide financial support for Federal agency energy efficiency and renewable projects. This fund would increase the number of agency energy efficiency projects, such as new heating and cooling systems, which save on operations costs. Savings from the projects would be paid back into the fund over time, and eventually fund additional projects.

Other provisions of my bill adopt some good, common-sense ideas. For example, President Obama's fiscal year 2011 budget proposal outlined how the Department of Veterans Affairs is saving money by operating their computers more efficiently. Using new computers that use less energy, and software that automates when a computer is turned on and off, the agency plans to save around $32 million over the next 5 years. My bill would require other Federal agencies to consider and adopt steps similar to that of the Department of Veteran Affairs' successful example.

I am also interested in expanding cutting edge advanced metering technology throughout government. There's an old saying that goes, ``You can't manage, what you can't measure.'' It can easily be applied to energy use. At my recent hearings I learned that, with new digital technology, we can save energy and money by connecting facilities across an organization and monitoring buildings--and even parts of buildings and individual pieces of machinery--on their energy use in real-time. Wal-Mart uses this technology because they understand the financial savings it brings. From their headquarters in Bentonville, AR, they will know if a freezer door has been left open for too long at their store in Middletown, Delaware. The Federal Government should do the same so that building managers can make more effective decisions. The best part about deploying advanced metering is the fact that the investment pays for itself in less than a year.

As America's largest consumer of energy, Federal agencies can and should be good stewards of precious taxpayer dollars by using energy as efficiently as possible. The proposals contained in my two pieces of legislation will help the Federal Government lead by example, and demonstrate to the American people that energy efficiency efforts can pay real dividends in saving both money and the environment. I look forward to working with my colleagues and the Administration to get these two bills signed into law, and implement these important ideas.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of these two bills be printed in the Record.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to engage in a colloquy with Senator Ensign and Senator Scott Brown.

Mr. President, last week was the second of 2 weeks of the Easter recess. A number of us took that opportunity to travel to places around the world where our Nation is involved and has great interests. Senator Ensign, Senator Scott Brown, Senator Tom Udall, and a Congressman from Virginia, the First Congressional District of Virginia, named Rob Wittman, and I together visited--it was a 6-day trip--several days in Afghanistan and a couple of days in Pakistan as well, places I suspect the Presiding Officer has been or will be visiting.

I led a similar congressional delegation almost 10 months ago to both countries, Afghanistan and Pakistan. I had gone there right after the President had laid out his strategy for making progress in Afghanistan to restore the rule of law, to make sure the Taliban does not come back into power and provide sanctuary for al-Qaida to launch attacks against us or any other nation.

The President, at the time, my colleagues may recall, said we were going to do a couple of things. He suggested a year ago that we launch a military offensive, almost like a military surge on a modest basis, and we do the same thing with a civilian offensive. What he called for a year ago was to commit an additional 10,000 marines, commit 7,000 Army troops, commit 4,000 U.S. trainers to train the Afghan National Army and Afghan national police, and to also send over about 150 additional Black Hawk helicopters. That would be matched by a civilian surge as well to complement the military increase in resources.

When we were coming out of Afghanistan, we did a press availability with some reporters back home. One of the reporters asked me the question: What is our exit strategy in Afghanistan?

I replied: I think our exit strategy is to implement well the strategy the President outlined in April of last year. That was the additional marines, additional Army troops, additional trainers, additional Black Hawk helicopters for mobility, and the civilian surge to help us with the Afghans; to diversify the economy, the poppy seed trade where they produce enough opium to meet the demands of the world, to help them raise the kinds of agricultural commodities they used to raise to feed themselves and a lot of the folks in that part of the world.

We want to help them diversify their economy with respect to the mining and minerals industry. We want to make sure they would have the opportunity to exploit the oil and gas reserves, which are about three times what was envisioned a couple of years ago; at the same time, on the civilian side, work with the Afghans in cleaning up corruption which is rampant in most levels of Afghanistan and to help them to start developing a governmental institution to provide services, actually serve the people of that country. That is what was laid out a year ago.

I have been joined by Senator Ensign. I will yield to him in a moment.

In my mind, when I returned almost a year ago to America, I thought it was a smart strategy. The key is to implement it well. We met with the Afghanis last week, and we had an opportunity to see what we are doing well and not doing well. I think what is key in almost every endeavor I have been part of is leadership.

We spent time with General McChrystal, our top military leader, and Ambassador Eikenberry, who used to be a four-star general and is now Ambassador to Afghanistan. We met with President Karzai and the civilian and military leadership of Afghanistan, as well as the civilian leadership of the United States.

I came home not hopeless, not euphoric, but more hopeful than not that we have the right strategy, that we are beginning to implement it well. We have some 40 other nations involved with us in this endeavor. We are committing the resources to make this strategy potentially successful.

That is my take on it. I yield at this time to the Senator from Nevada, Mr. Ensign. I have already asked unanimous consent to engage in a colloquy. I will not ask that again. This is what it is about. It is not a monologue for me. I very much enjoyed the time I spent on the road with my colleagues, especially my colleague from Nevada. I was happy to be his partner and lead the delegation.

Mr. President, if I may respond, the Senator summed it up very nicely. One of the things Senator Ensign and I and our colleagues discussed with President Karzai and with the military leadership of that country and the civilian leadership of Afghanistan and with our own folks over there is the nature of the economy of Afghanistan. We heard a lot about corruption and heard a fair amount about their agricultural economy, which is largely dependent on raising poppies which feed the opium trade that provides a lot of money selling heroin around the world and to the Taliban and other insurgent groups.

The question on which Senator Ensign and I have gone back and forth with our folks over there and the Afghan leaders is, What is likely to be the most successful approach for us to take to eventually stop the addiction of the Afghan farmers to raising poppies? It was not that long ago that they had the ability to raise plenty of wheat and cotton and all sorts of fruits and nuts.

They make a fair amount of money on poppies. One problem is it is an illicit trade. It is an illicit and bogus way on which to base their economy. It subverts the government and corrupts the whole system over there. This is an important issue going forward. How do we help wean the farmers off an illicit agricultural economy to do something they used to do?

We sort of agree we need a tough love approach. We have to encourage and provide opportunities--seeds, fertilizer, advice, tactical assistance--on how to raise the kinds of products they used to raise.

Someone told us in one of our meetings that the people of India, not that far away from Afghanistan, would consume every pomegranate the folks in Afghanistan would raise. There are plenty of big markets and lots of hungry people to buy those commodities. The question is: Do we go out and eradicate all the poppies in the fields like, next week, or do we allow the poppies to be harvested but make it clear that is it? Then, next year we will help folks plant a different kind of crop, but we are not going to stand by next year and allow them to harvest poppies.

It is an issue that I think can be resolved, but I think it is a tough love approach. It is important, if we want to get rid of corruption in the government, in the country, we cannot avoid the widespread effect on it from poppies.

Yes.

I see Senator McCain is on the floor, and if I am reading his body language right, it looks like he wants to say something about our visit to Afghanistan and to Pakistan last week. I don't know if he wants to be a part of this colloquy or if he wants us to get out of his way so he can talk about something else, but I yield to the Senator from Arizona.

Mr. President, if I can reclaim my time.

Senator McCain, along with Senator Brown, spent a lot of time in uniform. I know our Senators felt a special pride in our troops who are serving over there. They are serving with troops from 40 other countries, and not all countries send troops. Countries such as Japan sent money. They are quadrupling their salaries so they can hire some decent people and keep them. But in the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine personnel we met with, morale was good. They understood their mission, they understood the importance of their mission, and they were proud to be serving. We are very proud to support them.

Before our time expires entirely, I will yield back to Senators Ensign and Brown for any closing comments they want to make, and then I think Senator McCain wants to talk a little.

Let me just close it down for our side. I say to Senator Brown, it was a great opportunity to travel with him and get to know him and to learn. I thank him so much for being a great part of our team. I also thank Wendy Anderson, who helped put that together, and Army MAJ Jen McDonough.

We have been joined on the floor by Congressman Robert Wittman from the First District of Virginia. I say, with him sitting there, how impressed we were with him and how delighted we were to serve with him.

The road ahead in Afghanistan won't be easy. It is an important road for us to travel. It is not one we have to travel by ourselves. A lot of other nations are involved in this with their time, their treasure, and their people.

We need the best efforts from the leadership of Afghanistan. We know he is under a lot of pressure. We made it very clear to President Karzai that we have no intention of being an occupying force. We have every intention of bringing our folks home within a reasonable period of time. This is not an open-ended commitment. My hope is it will not run up the cash register as much as Senator Ensign has suggested, but nevertheless it is an important use of our resources. This is the battle, in my judgment, this is the war we should have been fighting all along.

I thank my colleagues for their patience, and I yield.

Mr. President, today, as Chairman of the Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, Federal Services, and International Security, I introduce the Census Oversight Efficiency and Management Reform Act of 2010.

With exactly one week left until Census Day, I think we can all take pride in the excellent work that the Census Bureau has done over the past few months to get the 2010 Census back on

track. The Census Bureau's significance and the importance of its work cannot be overstated.

In fact, the requirement to enumerate the population is enshrined in the American Constitution. And the founding fathers asked us to do this each 10 years, as a cornerstone of their aspiration for effective representative democracy. They even went so far as to levy a $20 fine for noncompliance in 1790. They knew the fairness of our government required everyone to participate in the census.

Over the time, the Census process and procedure has changed remarkably from when the very first Census was conducted on horseback to today where Census workers utilize cutting edge technology to collect and transmit data. Even as the technology surrounding the Census has evolved the importance of its work has remained constant throughout American history. Yet despite its critical importance, the past three censuses have been deemed ``at risk'' and have been the subject of great controversy under Democratic and Republican administrations alike.

Just over 2 years ago, there were serious last-minute census design changes due to the failure of a project involving the census takers using handheld computers which threatened to derail the 2010 Census. Further, the cost of census taking has continued to escalate over the years. The cost of the 2010 Census is estimated to be $14.7 billion, making it the most expensive census in history.

Looking ahead, research and development for the 2020 Census is already underway and we must begin to think now about how we can advance the Census Bureau into a 21st century statistical agency.

The legislation that I am introducing today would make the Director of the Census Bureau a presidential appointment of 5 years, creating continuity across administrations. The bill would also require annual reporting on the Bureau's performance goals and risk mitigation strategies.

This will provide Congress with regular updates throughout the decade on the progress being made and an earlier warning when there are problems on the horizon. Further, encouraging the use of the Internet for data collection in the decennial census presents important opportunities for cost reductions and improvements in data quality.

I believe that these legislative reforms will ensure that the 2020 Census will be conducted without the operational problems we have seen in the past and with the most efficient use of taxpayer dollars possible.

I urge my colleagues to support this legislation.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, we are in full mode on health care reform. I am going to stick to that subject this afternoon. I have heard my colleagues say a couple of things I am going to emphasize, but I am going to have a different take on some of this as well.

It is not that I actually am writing down what some of my constituents in Delaware have said to me about health care and concerns about our legislation which may or may not pass, but among the things I heard is: We have the best health care system in the world; why mess with it?

I heard: What we are going to do will be government run, it will be government funded and the government doesn't do anything well.

I heard concerns about the size of our budget deficits and how this is going to add to those budget deficits and make them worse.

I heard folks who expressed concerns about whether we would be robbing Medicare to provide health care to illegal aliens and other folks and set up death panels.

I heard concerns about abortion on demand and using tax dollars to pay for that.

I heard we are not going to do anything on medical malpractice reform, and we ought to do something.

I heard a lot about process, how we are going to use the process of reconciliation, the House might use a process called ``deeming'' in order to pass health care reform legislation.

Let me take these one at a time.

Do we have the best health care system in the world? Sadly, we do not. Did we ever? I am not sure we ever did. We do not have the best today; we have the most expensive.

A couple weeks ago, I hosted exchange students from all over the world, including Japan. We talked about a lot of issues. One of the issues we talked about was the health care system, what ours is like and what theirs is like. There were kids from Japan. In Japan, they spend about half of what we do as a percentage of GDP. They spend about 8 percent of GDP for health care. We spend almost 16, 17 percent. They get better results. It is not even close. By any objective measure, they get better results. They cover everybody. We have 40 million or 45 million people whom we do not cover. Think about that. They spend 8 percent of GDP, we spend twice that much; they get better results than we do and they cover everybody. We have a lot of people who are not covered.

My thinking in reflecting on that, the Japanese are smart people but they cannot be that smart and we cannot be that dumb. We can do a lot better than we are doing.

Does it have to be government run or government funded? We actually have a system in this country that is government run and government funded, and it is called VA. I am a Navy veteran. The VA system is a great system. It is not inexpensive, but it is a great system for our veterans. The closest thing to a government-run system is VA.

Look around the world at other health care delivery systems. One that is government run and government funded, where the government pays for stuff and basically you show up and get care and are provided for by government doctors and government nurses is Great Britain. We are not interested in doing that here. We are not interested in making the rest of our health care delivery system look like the VA.

What we are trying to do is borrow from something that works, and that is creating large purchasing pools, much like we have for Federal employees, including us, but it is a large purchasing pool of about 8 million people. We only get to choose from for-profit health insurance products. A lot of companies want to sell their products to us. We have very low administrative costs because when you have 8 million people in a purchasing pool, you drive down the administrative costs.

The role of government I think is to row the boat, not steer the boat. I think those are the words of David Osborne--row the boat, not steer the boat. The role of government is as Lincoln said. Lincoln said the government should do for the people what they cannot do for themselves.

What we propose to do in our legislation is to replicate what works, to take this idea of a large purchasing pool and say to every State: We want you to create a large purchasing pool. We will call it an exchange. In the military, if you go to an exchange, you go on base to buy something. We talk about an exchange where people go over the Internet to buy health insurance.

Who can do it? Small businesses, individuals, families, people with coverage, without coverage. They will have a bunch of health insurance products from which to choose. It will not be government funded or government run, but they will have a lot of choices. The idea there is to get the kind of competition in each of those State exchanges we enjoy as Federal employees under the Federal health benefits plan.

Some would say we ought to be able to sell or buy health insurance across State lines. I am sympathetic to that argument. What we do in that legislation--use Delaware as an example. Our neighboring States include Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. Currently, we cannot buy health insurance products that are sold in New Jersey, Maryland, or Pennsylvania. But under this legislation, Delaware can enter into an interstate compact with Maryland or New Jersey or Pennsylvania or all of the above. We would create a large purchasing pool, a regional purchasing pool with millions of people in it to help drive down administrative costs, and the insurance sold in those four States could be sold across State lines, increasing the number of options and increasing consumer choice and competition that I think will benefit not the insurance companies but consumers.

A side note here. The beauty of having a large purchasing pool, such as the one we are in, the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan, is that our administrative costs are 3 percent of premium dollars. If we were to go on the outside and try to buy for a family or small business, we would not pay 3 percent administrative costs--maybe 33 percent but not 3 percent.

What we want to do is replicate what works. Large pools work, the ability to sell across State lines works, the idea of having a lot of options for consumers works. In fact, to take it one step further, among the health insurance plans that we can choose from as Members of Congress or Federal employees, Federal retirees, or dependents are multi-State plans, almost like national health insurance plans. They will be offered on the exchanges so people who are buying their health insurance in my State, Illinois, Alabama, or any State in the future may be able to choose from amongst the same plans that Members of Congress can choose.

Another concern that has been raised that has already been addressed by previous speakers--and I want to mention it again--is that we are going to further blow up the national debt. In the first 8 years in the last decade, from 2001 to 2008, we literally ran up as much new debt as we did in roughly the 208 years of our Nation's history. We are adding to that every day. It is an enormous concern to me, and I know it is to our Presiding Officer and to others.

As it turns out, the referee for us when we pass legislation, whether it is

tax legislation or whether it is spending legislation, is the Congressional Budget Office. It is not Democratic or Republican. If I want to cut taxes or raise taxes, if I want to cut spending or raise spending, I have to go to the Congressional Budget Office and ask them to tell us what the estimate is, what it will actually do to the deficit going forward.

Whenever we have tried to offer different approaches on health care reform legislation, we had to go to the Congressional Budget Office and say: What is going to be the impact on the budget and the deficits going forward? They have dutifully, for months now, been scoring the different approaches.

The approach we have already voted on in the Senate for the most part--and in the House they will be taking up this weekend--the Congressional Budget Office has announced this morning that the legislation, when you put it all together, does not increase budget deficits. They are saying it lowers budget deficits I think in the next 10 years by about almost $140 billion. It is a $140 billion deficit reduction over the next 10 years.

The real question, though, in my mind, is: What does it do for the 10 years after that? For the 10 years after that, the CBO says the deficit will be reduced over those 10 years by as much as $1.2 trillion. Think about that. It is hard to estimate with any great accuracy what we are going to do over the next 20 years. I would much rather be looking at estimates that say deficits go down by $138 billion in the first 10 years and deficits down by another $1.2 trillion in the next 10 years. I would rather be looking at the arrow going that way than the arrow going the other way.

Think about it, though. I think what CBO is telling us is that the budget savings in what will be this final combined legislation will save more money, reduce the deficit by more than either the House or Senate bill. This legislation will cover more people--95 percent of the people in our country--than either the House or Senate bill. They also add that it will make insurance more affordable for a lot of people and better quality health care, better coverage for a lot of people.

Another concern we have had is what we are going to do will somehow badly damage Medicare. Medicare, as we know, is running out of money. It is estimated to run out of money in about 7 or 8 years. I believe this legislation will pretty much double the life of the Medicare trust fund; not forever, but it will double it. That is a pretty big step in the right direction.

We need to do more, and we will be coming back to this later this year when the Presidentially appointed and congressionally appointed deficit panel comes back with a recommendation.

Some of my senior citizens said to me: I am concerned you will be taking a lot of money out of the Medicare trust fund and reducing services to us. What we are doing is we are trying to say to Medicare Advantage Programs that are spending, in some cases, way more money than I think can be substantiated or supported, that they are going to be getting less money. And they do not like that. It is not for all Medicare Advantage programs but the ones that get the highest premium dollars and the most support from taxpayers that are going to get less money in the future.

Another concern about Medicare, though--one of my concerns--is that we don't do a very good job of primary care in this country. A lot of people never get a physical in their life. They never get an annual physical.

I became a Navy midshipman at Ohio State when I was 17 years old. I think almost every year of my life since then I have gotten a physical. I was in the Navy for about 27 years, so all those years and even now I get an annual physical. I know my colleagues do as well. We have a lot of people who never get a physical in their lives.

A few years ago, when we adopted the Medicare prescription drug legislation, we said Medicare beneficiaries, Medicare recipients should get at least one physical in their lives. Now, under current law, when they turn 65 and join Medicare and are eligible, they get one physical under the Medicare Program. That is it. If they live another 40 years, they do not get another physical provided for by Medicare. This legislation we will pass, every year a person who is eligible for Medicare will be eligible for a physical. That is the kind of preventive care and prevention we need to do.

The Medicare prescription drug program, if you happen to be poor, is a really good program. If you happen to use a whole lot of expensive medicines, it is a pretty good program. If you happen to be somewhere in between, it is not such a good program because of the so-called doughnut hole, where if a person's prescription drug costs exceed $2,500 a year, up to about $5,500 a year, Medicare doesn't pay for any of that. In the legislation that is before us, Medicare will dramatically increase its participation and support for prescription drug costs for people who run in that area between $2,500 and $5,500 on their prescription drug costs. They call it filling the doughnut hole. And over time, I hope we will fill it completely, but this will at least get us started in the right direction.

Another problem I hear about with regard to our health care system is that doctors are doing what we used to call in the naval aviation trying to protect their 6 o'clock or cover their 6 o'clock, which means protecting themselves from lawsuits. They provide more tests, more visits, more MRIs, more everything--more lab tests, you name it--in order to reduce the likelihood they will be sued. I don't blame them, but it runs up the tab for health care. It is the cost of defensive medicine, and we need to do something about that. We need to try to do anything in terms of figuring out what works to reduce the incidence of medical malpractice, what works to reduce the incidence of defensive medicine, and what works to improve outcomes. While we reduce lawsuits, reduce defensive medicine, how can we do that and improve outcomes?

There are some pretty good laboratories of democracy out there in the States. As an old Governor, I like to look to the States to see what is working.

Let's say the Presiding Officer is my doctor in Michigan. At the University of Michigan, he performs a procedure I don't like. He botches it, and the outcome is bad for me, and he knows he screwed up. In Michigan, they provide an opportunity for the doctor and the patient to have a chance to meet in private. The doctor will apologize, he will offer a financial settlement to the patient, and the patient accepts it--either they can or they can't--and that has reduced by 50 percent the incidence of medical malpractice lawsuits. Most of the offers are accepted, and most patients feel it is a pretty good thing. That conversation that takes place between the doctor and the patient can never be used in a court of law against the doctor. And that works.

We have what are called certification panels in a number of States. They are a little different from State to State. For example, ``Dr. Burris''--actually, Senator Burris--performs on ``patient Carper'', in one approach, a procedure I don't like. I am unhappy with it, and I want to sue him. Before I can go to court, I have to go to a certification panel. Some have a right to say: You don't have a case. That is it; you are out. Others can say: You can go forward, but if you lose, you pay the doctor's legal fees. Others say: Well, bring the case to the certification panel, and if they say you don't have a case, you can still go forward. That is pretty much the approach in my State, and it has literally cut by 40 percent the number of medical malpractice lawsuits.

There are other ideas out there--health courts. We have bankruptcy courts where the judges are lawyers. How about health courts where the judges are medical specialists. Another idea which I think has a lot of virtue is what we are calling safe harbors. Again, a doctor is working with a patient and does everything he or she should have done--or a nurse or hospital--given the symptoms and the medical history and all. Everything is done by the book; everything that should have been done is done. The idea is to provide the doctor a safe harbor from lawsuits, allowing that doctor at least a rebuttable presumption.

Those are all ideas that are working in different places around the country--maybe around the world but especially around the country. Let's figure out which of those will work best to reduce medical malpractice lawsuits, reduce the incidence of defensive medicine, and improve outcomes. And there

is money in the legislation before us to robustly demonstrate and test those approaches and figure out which ones work best and try to replicate those all over the country.

There is a last point or two I want to make. One of those is that if we can accept that we really don't have the best medical system in the world, that we actually do have the most expensive and we don't get the best outcomes--we can get by that argument; if we can sort of get by the argument that what we are trying to do is to set up a government- funded, government-run system; if we can get by the idea that not only are we not exploding the deficits but that we will reduce them by $138 billion, roughly, in the next 10 years and maybe another $1.2 trillion in the next 10 years after that; if we can get by the idea that we are not stealing money out of the Medicare trust fund and paying for abortions and health care for illegal aliens; if we get by the arguments that we are not doing anything on medical malpractice or reducing the incidence of defensive medicine, well, then, what are we arguing about? Well, what we can argue about is process. We can argue about process. And we are having a big argument about that today.

While I won't get into all the details of this process called reconciliation, it is basically used at the end of the budget process to reduce deficits. It pretty much focuses on deficits--either raising revenues or reducing spending in order to reconcile the budget deficit and make it smaller.

It sometimes is used to pass major legislation. When the Republicans were in the majority here, we used it to pass welfare reform legislation and to create the Children's Health Insurance Program. When the Republicans were in the majority, we used it to provide for major tax cuts adopted during the Presidency of George W. Bush. Those were all adopted during reconciliation. I think maybe 20, 22 times, since 1980 or so, reconciliation has been used to pass significant legislation, and 16 out of the 22 times were when our Republican friends were in the majority--not Democrats but Republicans--and we didn't hear criticism of using reconciliation as an approach during those times.

Let me say that I objected when the idea was first raised about using reconciliation to pass comprehensive health care. I have been vocal about that. I didn't like that. It is the wrong thing to do. We end up with legislative Swiss cheese because through the reconciliation process it is hard to legislate prevention, primary care, insurance reform, and those sorts of things. That process doesn't lend itself to health care reform legislation. So we have proceeded along regular order here and passed health care legislation, unfortunately on a partisan basis--60 to 40--at Christmastime last year.

I must say that one of my great regrets here is that we didn't pass a bipartisan bill. We would have had a better bill if we had a bipartisan bill. But it is what it is.

Over in the House, they are trying to determine whether to deem the legislation as passed, through some kind of process in the Rules Committee. But where did they get that idea? Well, they got the idea from when the Republicans were in majority in the previous Congresses. It worked a number of times for them, so maybe the House Democrats will use it as well. There is an old saying that imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. In this case, for better or worse, I think we are seeing the Democrats trying to emulate what our Republican colleagues have done in past Congresses.

One last point on focusing on what works. I took a day and went to Ohio State. I spent some wonderful years of my life in Ohio. I went to Cleveland a time or two, but I went back to Cleveland last year to the Cleveland Clinic.

I had been hearing a lot about Cleveland's clinic and the Mayo Clinic and Geisinger Health Care from Pennsylvania and how Kaiser Permanente in California and Intermountain in Utah and these big health care delivery systems are able to deliver better health care and better outcomes for less money. I was intrigued by that, so I went to the Cleveland Clinic to spend a day with them. I found out that the health care delivery systems in Cleveland and at the Mayo Clinic and Geisinger and Intermountain are all pretty similar. They have a number of things in common. First of all, their doctors and nurses are all on salary. They are not out there as free agents, they are all on salary--for example, at the Cleveland Clinic. Second, they focus on primary care. Third, they focus on prevention. They focus on wellness. All the patients have electronic health records. They coordinate their care. They focus on diseases such as diabetes, cancer, heart, pulmonary, and they treat them in a holistic way. They coordinate their care and the delivery in those places, and they get a better result for less money.

They have been able to go to high-cost areas--for instance, Mayo went down to Florida to provide health care down there in a high-cost area, and they replicated what they do in Minnesota.

Part of what we try to do in this legislation is to incentivize other health care delivery systems in the country--other than the ones I have mentioned--to learn from what works to lower health care costs and provide better outcomes in Minnesota through Mayo, at Geisinger in Pennsylvania, and so forth.

Let me close with this, if I can. I was invited to attend the Delaware annual agricultural dinner about a month ago in Dover. It is an annual event. Probably those kinds of things happen in Illinois, in North Dakota--I know they have them in North Dakota--and in Alabama as well. People had already gone through the buffet line by the time I arrived--I was a little late--but as I went through the line to get my food, a guy came up to me and said: Don't vote for any health care. Don't vote for any health care. I said: Why? And he mentioned some of the arguments I have raised here before.

So I thought about that as I sat down and was eating my dinner, and when I was announced and got up to speak to the audience that night, I said: I know some of you aren't in favor of our doing anything on health care because you have heard the argument that it is going to blow up the deficit or you have heard about death panels and you name it--all this stuff. Let me just ask you this. You raise food. You are farmers. You feed us, and you are pretty good at it, too, because too many people in this country are overweight. I said: Let me change this from talking about health care to talking about food. Let's put it in a food context. What if we lived in a country where we paid twice as much for food as every other nation--twice as much. What if we lived in a country where the food was not as good--in fact, it was so bad it was unhealthy for us. What if we lived in a country where 40 million people went to bed every night hungry. What if we lived in a country where tens of thousands of people died every year because of starvation. What if we lived in a country where our goods and services--the products we are selling in marketplaces in the world--cost way more money, our cars cost $15,000 or $20,000 more than cars they build in Japan because of the cost of food in our country. What if the rest of us paid more money for our food--maybe a thousand more for our food per year--to provide food for other people who didn't have anything to eat. That is pretty much the situation we are in in this country, but not with respect to food, with respect to health care.

We can do better than this. The legislation we passed, that is before the Congress--before the Senate and the House--if we pass it, will not be perfect, but it is sure going to be better than our living in a nation where we pay twice as much for health care as any other advanced nation, where they get better results and they cover just about everybody and we don't. They can't be that smart and we can't be that dumb. Hopefully, not just with this legislation but with what may flow from it, we will improve on it in years to come, and we will show just how smart we have become.

I yield back.

Madam President, today I wish to recognize Mrs. Mary Scott, former Smyrna School District superintendent, whom I have been privileged to know for the past two decades. A role model of integrity, Mrs. Scott served the Smyrna School District in a series of roles of increasing responsibility from 1965 until July 1998, when she retired as the district's superintendent.

Born and in Wilmington, DE, Mrs. Scott attended public school until she was 10. When her family moved to Smyrna, a town some 40 miles south of Wilmington, she attended a two-room school there that housed grades 1 through 8 before attending the Booker T. Washington Elementary School in Dover for grades 9 and 10. Mary Scott graduated from the laboratory high school for students in grades 11 and 12 that was located on the campus of Delaware State College, now Delaware State University. Four years later, Mrs. Scott graduated from Delaware State College with a bachelor of arts degree in English and a minor in biology, after which she went on to receive her masters of arts degree in psychology from Washington College in Chestertown, MD.

The first minority educator to join faculty of the Smyrna District, Mrs. Scott began her career as an English teacher at Smyrna High School, the home of the Eagles. Later, she served the district as assistant to the president and as human relations counselor at the high school until 1978 when she became director of the Title 1 Program and supervisor of the Early Childhood Education Center, serving in that capacity until 1985. Next, she was appointed principal of North Elementary School and held that position until her promotion to the district's supervisor

of education in 1988. Finally, from 1991 to 1994, Mary Scott served as the district's assistant superintendent until her appointment as the superintendent of schools in the Smyrna District in October of 1994. She was the first African-American to serve in that role in that district.

The Smyrna School District has served the towns of Smyrna and Clayton in Kent County for more than 125 years and currently includes more than 4,800 students in central Delaware.

The core values of the district include compassion, perseverance, respect, responsibility, and integrity. At the recent ``I Love Smyrna School District Day,'' Mrs. Scott was honored as a role model of integrity. The Smyrna District community committee defines integrity as ``being honest, fair, good, and trustworthy.'' Mary Scott is the epitome of all of these things and more. A person of deep faith, Mary believes in giving back to her community, her church, and her State and has been recognized for her service to education by numerous educational, civic, and religious organizations. On top of all this, Mrs. Scott has been married to William L. Scott, a retired probation and parole officer, for 56 years. They are parents to 3 children, Sheldon, Jeffrey, and Rachel, grandparents to five, and great- grandparents to two.

Through her tireless efforts over a third of a century, Mary Scott has made a profound difference in the lives of thousands of students in the Smyrna District--many of whom remain dedicated and committed alumni of the district. Mrs. Scott leaves a legacy of commitment to public service for her children, grandchildren, students, and for the rest of us to follow. On behalf of all who have benefited from her tireless and enlightened leadership, I thank her for her commitment to educating every child and for the inspiration she provides through a lifetime of caring.

On behalf of all Delawareans, I congratulate her on being honored for her service and extend to her my very best wishes for every success in the future.

Mr. President, let me just express my thanks for those 17 minutes.

I would ask the Chair to please advise me when I have used 15 of those minutes.

Mr. President, listening to the debate today reminds me of, among others, a famous quotation from Winston Churchill, who, I believe, said: ``The worst system devised by wit of man''--he was talking about democracy. He said it was the worst form of government devised by wit of man, and then he added ``except for all the rest.''

We like to sort of lecture the Iraqis and Afghanis on how to run a democracy, and we still struggle with it after more than 200 years. In the 8 or 9 years I have been here, I have never seen us struggle as much as we have on the issue of health care. Part of the reason is because it is just enormously complex, and it is just confusing.

As to the people who are following the debate, if you listen to folks on the political left, mostly in our party, what you hear is: No public option, no Medicare buy-in, we are not doing enough to make health care affordable. What you hear from the right, mostly on the other side of the aisle, is, this is government run, this is government funded, this is a government takeover.

So you have the two extremes out here trying to take shots at one another. Those of us in the middle are sort of collateral damage or road kill. But at the end of the day, a lot of times when you find neither the left nor the right are entirely pleased with the outcome, sometimes that suggests that the outcome is not all that bad.

I am not saying this is a perfect balance, but it is not a bad balance. For those, especially in our party, who feel as though we should have done more, I am sure in 1965, when Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Medicare legislation, there were probably some who did not vote for it--and I am told it was mostly Democrats who voted for it, not so much our Republican friends--but I am not sure how many Democrats who voted for Medicare at the time said: It does not do enough for our senior citizens. It does not provide for hospice care. It does not provide for home health care. It does not provide for disability benefits for those who are under the age of 65. There is no prescription drug program. There is nothing for outpatient surgery. None of those things were in the original Medicare legislation. Over time, they have been added, and I think the Medicare legislation, the Medicare law, has been improved to make it a better program.

Now we face a day when the Medicare Program is literally running out of money. One of the less-told secrets in the legislation that is before us is that the life of the Medicare trust fund--life that has been down to about 7 or 8 years--I understand, thanks to the reforms that are in this legislation, should be pretty much doubled. That is not good enough, but we are going to stretch by about 100 percent the useful remaining life of the Medicare Program.

Another fact that is sort of lost in all the debate, all the tumult, is what this does with respect to our budget deficits. I am told by-- not us, not Democrats or Republicans--the neutral Congressional Budget Office, which is neither Democratic nor Republican--nonpartisan--that the legislation, if we adopt it in its current form, will reduce the deficit over the next 10 years by about $130 billion, and by as much as maybe $1 trillion, $1.3 trillion in the second 10 years beyond that.

In terms of what is going to happen as to the cost of premiums, we are told, again, by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office that rather than spiking premiums, we are actually going to see people get somewhat better coverage for, frankly, not more money in terms of their premiums.

In terms of those of us who just love the health insurance we have-- we are delighted with the coverage and the amount we pay for it--I would just remind all of us of a couple things: One, we have spent more money by far than any nation on Earth for health care--about 1\1/2\ times more than the next closest country. We do not get better results. In many cases, we get worse results.

We have about 14,000 people who woke up with health care coverage who will wake up tomorrow morning and they will not have it; they will have lost it. Over 40 million people in our country have no health care coverage at all.

Finally, we have big companies such as GM and Chrysler that have gone bankrupt because they cannot compete with foreign competitors because of the price of our health care; and that is true with a lot of smaller companies as well.

The idea of doing nothing is, to my mind, not a very smart thing to do. We have to do a number of things to accomplish three goals: No. 1, rein in the growth of health care costs. This idea of two, three times the rate of inflation in the growth of health care costs is not sustainable. Frankly, if we do not rein in the growth of health care costs, neither will be sustainable the coverage we extend to people who do not have it today.

The third thing we try to work on in this legislation, to the extent we can--a lot of interesting things are going on in the private sector, very interesting things going on in the private sector, regarding how to instill personal responsibility in employees, and how to get better transparency and better costs through the health care delivery system. That is going to be a part of this as well. But we have to figure out a way to get better outcomes, and there are a lot of good examples for doing that.

I want to take the remaining time I have today to just mention some things that are in the legislation that I think make sense because they are based and founded on what works. And as an old Governor--and Senator Nelson has already spoken from Nebraska--we are used to focusing on what works and trying to replicate what works, steal ideas from other States and try to work them in our own State. I want to mention a couple things we have taken that work. We are trying to grow them and, in some cases, on a national level.

One of things Senator Baucus and his staff in the Finance Committee focused on, I think, is maybe the best idea in the health care legislation, something called an exchange.

When I was a naval flight officer, we used to go to the exchange on the base which was a place to buy stuff. It was like a little department store. The exchange in health care delivery, which will open in January 2014--I hope we can actually stand up the exchanges and open the exchanges sooner--but that is going to be a place for people to go and buy health care coverage. When people do that, they will become part of a purchasing pool in their State or maybe in a couple of States to sort of band together and form a regional purchasing pool.

Why is a purchasing pool important? Well, because we are part of one, and we know that with 8 million people in our purchasing pool--Federal employees, Federal retirees, all of our dependents--we get a lot of competition. A lot of private sector companies want to offer us products to choose from. We don't get cheap insurance, but we get pretty good prices. With 8 million people in a purchasing pool, we really drive down administrative costs to about 3 percent for every premium dollar. That is a lot lower than folks who try to go out and buy it on their own in the open market. They may pay 33 percent of their premium dollar for their administrative costs. They are not paying 3 percent. We are going to try to replicate that. We do it in the exchange.

There may be 50 exchanges throughout the country, some regional exchanges as well. So we do exchanges as well. When States create interstate compacts across State lines, such as Delaware with New Jersey or maybe Delaware and Maryland or Delaware and Pennsylvania, maybe all four of us, insurance sold in any of those four States can be sold across State lines and introduce new competition, additional competition for business and for the folks looking for coverage for those two or three or four States.

Another thing that works is the delivery system, delivery of health care in outfits such as the Cleveland Clinic and the Mayo Clinic, Geisinger in Pennsylvania, not far from where we are in Delaware, Intermountain Health out in Utah, and Kaiser Permanente in California.

I actually went with Rachuel Russell, a member of my staff, to the Cleveland Clinic about 3 months ago. What we found was the Cleveland Clinic and the Mayo Clinic and Geisinger and all these others pretty much all have the same template. They focus on primary care. They focus on prevention and wellness. They coordinate the care of folks who are receiving treatment. All of their patients have electronic health records.

Medical malpractice coverage is provided by the entity itself, the Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, and all the docs are on salary. They have gone after what we call not just defensive medicine but fee-for- service, and they have done a very good job reducing the problems that flow out of fee-for-service which lead to more utilization and unnecessary utilization of time, tests, technology. They get better outcomes and they spend less money.

What we are trying to do with this legislation is to take those health care delivery ideas from those nonprofits and instill them into the delivery of health care, particularly through Medicare but also in other ways too.

I like to shop for groceries. We have a bunch of good grocery stores in Delaware. One of the places I shop for groceries occasionally when I am in my State is a place called Safeway, in Dover. A guy named Steve Burd is the CEO of the company, and they have really helped inform our decisionmaking in this debate in ways that are pretty remarkable by virtue of the way they provide coverage to their employees. It is not just Safeway. It is not just Pitney Bowes. There are a number of companies that are figuring out how to get better results for less money, and we are borrowing some of their ideas.

One of the ways we are borrowing is to say, how does Safeway provide--literally flattening out for the last 4 or 5 years--health care coverage for their employees? They haven't reduced their benefits. One of the things they have done is to incentivize their employees, use financial incentives to get employees to--if they are overweight, to control their weight, get their weight down, and if they do that, their payments are reduced. If they are smokers, they get rewarded for stopping smoking. If they have high cholesterol or high blood pressure, they get rewarded by reduced premiums for reducing their cholesterol and blood pressure.

What we have done with our legislation--and I thank the chairman and my colleagues for their support, Democratic and Republican, for supporting an amendment by Senator Ensign and myself where employers would be able to provide a 30-percent discount to employees who do the right thing for their own health. By doing that, they will reduce health care costs for not just their employer but for others in the group in which they are covered.

There is another piece in the legislation that really borrows from an idea that is popping up in a couple of cities and maybe a State or two around the country, and that is, Why don't we better inform people? We are interested in personal responsibility, people taking charge of their own health and reducing their health care liability. Why don't we do a better job of ensuring that--when I go into a restaurant or anybody goes into a restaurant, we look at the menu board of a chain restaurant and we know right then and there what the calories are in what we are drinking or eating, for an entree, for a salad or dessert. I know it right there by looking at the menu board if it is a chain restaurant. If it is a menu, not a board, they have to have that information on the menu. They have to have on site additional information on 10 other items, including fats, trans fats, cholesterol, sodium, and on and on.

The idea is to make us better informed consumers. As we try to fight obesity in this country--about a third of our country is obese or overweight, and adults are worse than kids. Kids are catching up with their parents, unfortunately. That is one of the things that is in the legislation. We call it the Lean Act. The idea is to try to provide personal information so people can assume personal responsibility.

Speaking of what we should eat or not eat, I wish to mention doughnuts, and I will do it in the context of something called the doughnut hole. Folks who are Medicare eligible have probably heard this term before because under the Medicare prescription drug program, when people's out-of-pocket costs reach about--when their cost for medicines, their prescription medicines, reach about $2,500, the first $2,500, Medicare pays 75 percent of the cost and the individual pays 25 percent of the cost. But once a person's prescription costs reach $2,500 up to about $5,500, for most people Medicare doesn't pay anything and the individual pays it all. That $2,500 to $5,500 gap is called the doughnut hole. It has nothing to do with doughnuts, but that is the name we have given to it.

In the legislation that is before us--again, I give a lot of credit to our chairman and others who have negotiated this--we are going to fill the doughnut hole. We are going to basically cover people who are in that gap of the $2,500 to $5,500 so that people will be able to continue to take the medicine they need to take. They won't stop. They will have the availability to medicine.

They will also have access to something called primary care. I am at the tender age of 62, and I think my Presiding Officer, also from Delaware, is just about the same age as I. When people in this country end up being old enough for Medicare, they get a one-time-only Medicare physical. That is it--one time. If they live to be 105, they never get another one, at least not paid for by Medicare.

In terms of borrowing good ideas from the nonprofits, the Cleveland Clinics and the Mayo Clinics, we are going to say you get more than just one physical. You get it when you are 65 and 66 and 67 and 68, and if you live to be 105, God bless you, you will get it every year up until then; finding out what is right with people, what is wrong with people, and what they need to do more of or less of. That is a smart idea, and it is part of the reforms in the legislation.

In terms of going back to medicine, we want to make sure people have good access to primary care, annual physicals if they are on Medicare, so their doctor can find out what is wrong with them, if they need to exercise, stop smoking, control their weight, whatever that might be, but also to learn if there are some medicines they ought to be taking, and second, to make sure they can afford them. Third, our legislation actually improves their lives in terms of if medicines are prescribed, they will actually be taken and used the way they are prescribed.

There is a little piece in this legislation that Senator Ron Wyden deserves a lot of credit for called personalized medicine. The idea is that if there are certain people who, because of their genetic makeup, the way God made them, they have a particular condition and the medicine is not going to help them--if the same group of people have the same problem--or if a different group of people have a different genetic makeup and the medicine will help one group and not the other, we want to make sure we spend the money on the folks who will be helped and not waste money on the folks who will never be helped because of their genetic makeup--literally, the way the Good Lord made them. That is called personalized medicine, and it is in this legislation. I think in the future it will be a very important addition.

Lastly, I want to build on a proposal offered again by Senator Baucus with Senator Enzi, and the issue is defensive medicine.

Thank you.

The issue is defensive medicine. The issue is medical malpractice. There have been a couple of amendments offered by friends across the aisle for us to try to deal with the incidence of medical malpractice lawsuits, the defensive medicine that sort of flows from there where doctors prescribe really too many tests and too many procedures and maybe too many of the wrong kinds of medicine just in an effort to reduce the likelihood they are going to be sued. What we have done here is to take an idea from the States.

The States have done some very interesting stuff with respect to trying to make sure we reduce the incidence of medical malpractice lawsuits, that we reduce the incidence of defensive medicine, and we actually improve health care outcomes. We are going to take those ideas, one called Sorry Works that they were using up in Michigan where people have an opportunity--doctors have an opportunity to apologize and offer a financial settlement to people and patients who have been harmed by that doctor; an idea called panels of certification like we have in Delaware where before I can sue my doctor I have to go before a panel to find out if my suit has any basis in fact. We are going to take ideas like safe harbor. If a doctor does all the things by the book, everything by the book, should that doctor receive some kind of expectation that maybe they are safe from lawsuits or reduced exposures to lawsuits? We think there should be some of that. There is the idea of health courts, where there are folks on the court, like the bankruptcy courts, folks who are the experts, and before a suit can actually go into a court, that health court would actually sit in determination of whether a doctor or a hospital or a nurse has really messed up. Those are all ideas that are being talked about, experimented with.

We are going to make sure they are robustly tested. States are going to apply for grants to test those ideas and maybe others to accomplish three things: one, reducing medical malpractice lawsuits; two, reducing the incidence of defensive medicine; and three, and most importantly, improving health care outcomes.

Those ideas build on what works. They are not Democratic ideas. They are not Republican ideas. I think they are just smart ideas for the most part. They are ideas that, as time goes by, people will find out if they really do the trick in helping to rein in health care costs so the coverage we extend can be sustained.

I will just close with this, if I could. For the folks in this country who are

totally confused by all this, for the people who are scared that we are doing something really foolish and it is going to be a disaster for our country, let me just say that when all the negative ads sort of stop being funded, when folks have actually had a chance to understand some of the things I have talked about here today and a lot of the aspects of the bill that really will improve outcomes, that really will rein in the growth of cost, that really will extend coverage, I think they really will be pleasantly surprised.

In closing, I am the guy who came here always believing that Democrats and Republicans should work together. I know our chairman tried mightily in the Finance Committee to do that, and I commend him and others for their effort. When we come back, we can't have another 12 months of this or 12 years of this. Our country is in trouble if this is the way we are going to be doing business in the future. Our country is in trouble.

My hope is that we will get this done, we will get it behind us, we will improve the bill in conference, and the President will provide a signature for us, and we will go back to work on implementing this. Just like Medicare. Just like Medicare. The key isn't just to stop; the key is to make it better and to build on this as a foundation. I am committed to doing that. I know my colleagues on this side of the aisle are committed to doing that. My hope and prayer is that our friends on the other side will want to join us in that effort.

Again, I commend our chairman of the Finance Committee, our leadership, Senator Reid, and others. I commend my friend Olympia Snowe, who showed a lot of courage during the course of this debate in committee and here on the floor. She was under enormous pressure, as were some of our Republican colleagues on the Finance Committee whom I am convinced would like to have been with us, and I believe we would have had an even better bill if the pressure from within their own party had allowed them to be more fully participative. But that wasn't the case this time. It has to be the next.

On that happy note, I say to my colleagues, we will gather again after the holidays and get this job done and look forward to working on a host of other issues. None will be more important than this one. None will be more important than this one.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak on time under the control of the Senator from New Jersey.

Mr. President, let me follow up on some of the comments of my colleague from Illinois.

I am always struck, when I am back home--and I addressed the homebuilders in our State yesterday--by the extent of the misinformation and confusion. When I actually talk to people about the underlying legislation before us, as our deputy leader has done here again today, there is a lot to like about the legislation--a lot to like about the legislation.

One of the pieces that hasn't been focused on a whole lot and that I want to mention deals with how do we better ensure that people who are sick get well and people who are not sick don't become sick as it applies to the use of pharmaceutical medicines.

Our legislation calls for doing a number of things.

First, if people could actually be healthy, stay healthy, or get well by taking certain pharmaceuticals, we would all save money in the end. But under the current system, unfortunately, too many people in this country who would be helped by pharmaceuticals don't actually get to see a primary care doctor. We don't do a very good job in primary care in this country.

One of the things that will flow from our legislation is better access to primary care for everybody. Let me give one example of that. Currently, if you are Medicare eligible, you have one lifetime physical from Medicare. That is it, and that occurs when you sign up for Medicare. You don't get a physical every 5 years or 10 years or 20 years; you get one physical in your life that is paid for by Medicare. That will change in the legislation we will be voting on in the days ahead. We will provide annual physicals as a benefit under Medicare.

When we have more regular doctor visits from the primary care doctor, one of the things that will come about is a better understanding of the health conditions of people in this country and the notion that some of us might actually be healthier, if we have a high blood pressure reading, if we take medicine for it or if we have high cholesterol, if we take medicine for that. So the idea is to identify problems that can be treated with medicine. Not everyone can be helped but some can.

So the first key is, let's make sure folks who will benefit from having access to a primary care doctor have that access.

Secondly, if there are medicines a person can be taking that will help them, let's hope the primary care doctor will do his job, refer the patient to a specialist, if needed, in order to identify the medicines needed.

The third point would be to make sure that when those medicines are identified, they are actually prescribed and made available to the person.

As we all know, we have the Medicare prescription drug program, the Part D Program, which is a pretty good program, and about 85 percent of the people who use it actually like it. The program has been underbudget now for each of the 4 years it has been in existence. That is pretty good. But when the drug costs of a senior citizen who participates in the Medicare drug program exceed I think about $2,200 a year, instead of Medicare paying for 75 percent of the medicine and the individual paying 25 percent--which is the case from zero to about $2,200 over the course of the year--Medicare basically says: We are out of this, and so from $2,200 to $5,200, it is all on the individual unless they happen to be very low income.

So the challenge is to make sure more folks who need access to primary care get that; if they need medicines, make sure they are available, which can be determined by the doctor or doctors as to what people should be taking; No. 3, make certain people get the medicines they are prescribed, that they can afford them, and that they actually take them; No. 4, make sure that once we have the access to primary care, we have made a determination as to what medicines can be helpful to a person and that those medicines are prescribed; and then we want to make certain the person for whom they are prescribed can actually afford them. Part of that is making sure, as we are trying to do in our legislation, we take that hole, if you will, that exists from the roughly $2,200 to $5,200 and begin to fill it in so that Medicare covers more and more of the cost.

There has been an agreement with the pharmaceutical industry to cover a portion of that hole, which will take care of about half of it, and I understand from our leadership in the House and in the Senate and the President that there is a firm commitment to close it entirely. So the range from $2,200 to $5,200 per year would actually be treated just as the first $2,200 is: Medicare would cover 75 percent of the cost, and for most people, unless they are very poor, will be responsible for paying the other 25 percent. That will help a lot of people, and that will make sure folks who were doing OK taking their medicines until they hit that $2,200 gap and stopped will keep taking their medicines and they will stay out of emergency rooms and hospitals and they will be healthier as a result.

The last piece involves something new. It is called personalized medicine. I had not heard the term before, although I have been interested in the issue for a while. As it turns out, there are some medicines for certain conditions that will help one group of people-- because of the way God made them, because of their genetic makeup--and there is another group of people with a different genetic makeup that will not be helped by the same medicine even though they have the same condition.

Part of what flows from our legislation will be an ever-improving ability to determine who will be helped by a particular medicine given a certain condition and who will not be, with the same condition, simply because of their genetic makeup. So the idea of making medicines available to people who will be helped, we want to do that, and we are gaining the knowledge to be able to say this group will be helped but this group will not, and we can then spend the money where it is going to make a difference but stop spending the money where it will not make a difference. We are close to being able to do that, and we need to do that.

All this flows from this legislation, and when you put it together, I think it is actually a very attractive and very smart policy.

So overall, how do we provide better health care, better outcomes for less money? There is real potential for doing it in the ways I have just described.

I want to stay on the issue of pharmaceuticals, if I can, but I want to pivot and take a somewhat different tack now.

I wrote a letter to the administration a week or so ago, maybe 2 weeks ago, and I asked the administration for some clarification on the issue of reimportation. That is the issue before us today. We have been debating it for some time, and we will be voting later today on a proposal by the Senator from North Dakota, Mr. Dorgan, and then we will be voting on an alternative to that offered by the Senator from New Jersey, Mr. Lautenberg, which I support. If that amendment were actually incorporated into the Dorgan amendment, I would support the underlying Dorgan amendment.

Anyway, I wrote to the administration, and I got a letter back dated December 8. I don't think I have ever stood on the floor and read a letter, but this is one I am going to read. I want my colleagues and their staff and anyone else who is listening to actually hear what I am about to say and what the administration had to say on this subject of reimportation. It is a little--well, ``awkward'' may be the wrong word, but it has to be a little awkward for the administration because the President, when he was then-Senator Obama, was a cosponsor of the Dorgan amendment. When he campaigned for Presidency, on the campaign trail he spoke favorably of the reimportation legislation offered by Senator Dorgan. Now that he is President and he leads an administration, he is asked: What is the position of your administration on that legislation you cosponsored as a Senator and spoke in favor of as a candidate? Now that you are running the country and you are the Chief Executive of the country and you have a whole Department--the Department of Health and Human Services--whose job it is to look out for our safety and health, how do you feel about it?

So I wrote a letter basically asking the question, and here is what I received in response, dated December 8. This is from the head of the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration:

Dear Senator Carper: Thank you for your letter requesting

our views on the amendment filed by Senator Dorgan to allow

for the importation of prescription drugs. The administration

supports a program to allow Americans to buy safe and

effective drugs from other countries and included $5 million

in its 2010 budget request for the Food and Drug

Administration to begin working with various stakeholders to

develop policy options relating to drug importation.

The letter goes on to say:

Importing non-FDA approved prescription drugs presents four

potential risks to patients that must be addressed:

(1) the drug may not be safe and effective because it was

not subject to a rigorous regulatory review prior to

approval;

(2) the drug may not be a consistently made, high quality

product because it was not manufactured in a facility that

complies with appropriate good manufacturing practices;

(3) the drug may not be substitutable with the FDA-approved

product because of differences in composition or

manufacturing; and

(4) the drug may not be what it purports to be, because it

has been contaminated or is a counterfeit due to inadequate

safeguards in the supply chain.

In establishing an infrastructure for the importation of

prescription drugs, there are two critical challenges in

addressing these risks. First, FDA does not have clear

authority over foreign supply chains. One reason the U.S.

drug supply is one of the safest in the world is because it

is a closed system under which all the participants are

subject to FDA oversight and to strong penalties for failure

to comply with U.S. law.

Second, FDA review of both the drugs and the facilities

would be very costly. FDA would have to review data to

determine whether or not the non-FDA approved drug is safe,

effective, and substitutable with the FDA-approved version.

In addition, the FDA would need to review drug facilities to

determine whether or not they manufacture high quality

products consistently.

The Dorgan importation amendment seeks to address these

risks. It would establish an infrastructure governing the

importation of qualifying drugs that are different from U.S.

label drugs, by registered importers and by individuals for

their personal use. The amendment also sets out registration

conditions for importers and exporters as well as inspection

requirements and other regulatory compliance activities,

among other provisions.

We commend [``We'' being the FDA on behalf of the

administration] the sponsors for their efforts to include

numerous protective measures in the bill that address the

inherent risks of importing foreign products and other safety

concerns relating to the distribution system for drugs within

the U.S. However, as currently written, the resulting

structure would be logistically challenging to implement and

resource intensive. In addition, there are significant safety

concerns related to allowing the importation of non-

bioequivalent products, and safety issues related to

confusion in distribution and labeling of foreign products

and the domestic product that remain to be fully addressed in

the amendment.

The letter concludes by saying:

We appreciate your strong leadership on this important

issue and would look forward to working with you as we

continue to explore policy options to develop an avenue for

the importation of safe and effective prescription drugs from

other countries:

It is signed ``Sincerely, Margaret Hamburg.'' She is the Commissioner of Food and Drug.

I suspect this was not an easy letter for Ms. Hamburg to write or an easy letter for the administration to sign off on. Given the position of the President in the past on this issue and now being confronted with the actual possibility that this legislation would become law, it has to be a struggle. I commend Senator Dorgan and others who have worked with him--I think Senator Snowe and, I believe, Senator McCain-- over the years to try to address the earlier criticisms of the legislation.

What the FDA says in this letter to me, and really to us, is that progress has been made. Some of the concerns have been addressed. Unfortunately, some have not been.

What I hope we do when we vote later today is accept the offer of the administration. They have been willing to put their money where their mouth is, to actually put money in their budget request to say before we go down this road as proposed in the Dorgan amendment, let's see if we can't work this out in a way that addresses some of the remaining safety and soundness concerns. I am not sure, if I were the author of the amendment, if I would have accepted that offer from maybe an earlier administration whose motives were not maybe as pure--frankly, whose Chief Executive was not committed to addressing this issue.

Our President is committed to addressing this issue. The Department of Health and Human Services and the FDA are committed to addressing this issue. They are anxious, I believe, to work it out. Not only that, they are anxious and willing to provide some of the funding needed to come to an acceptable resolution and compromise. I hope by our votes later today we will accept that offer from the administration, and I hope in the weeks and months ahead we will actually take the steps, not necessarily proposed exactly by Senator Dorgan, that will allow us to move in that direction and do so in a way that does not unduly harm or put at risk the citizens of this country.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today with my colleagues to introduce an important and bipartisan piece of legislation that will help protect our Nation's history for future generations.

Our bill reauthorizes the National Historical Publications and Record Commission, or NHPRC for short, which was first established by Congress in 1934. The Commission is the grant-making body of the National Archives and Records Administration and is comprised of representatives from the President of the United States, the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, the Federal judiciary, the Departments of State and Defense, the Library of Congress, and six national, professional associations of archivists. Since 1964, the Commission has funded projects that locate, preserve, and provide public access to some our nation's most precious historical resources that otherwise would be lost and destroyed.

For example, some of the history that has been preserved by the NHPRC over the years has helped award-winning historian David McCullough write his biography of John Adams and Pulitzer Prize-winner Ron Chernow write his biography of Alexander Hamilton. Further, the NHPRC has helped establish or modernize public records programs in cities all across America such as the cities of Seattle, Boston, and San Diego. The NHPRC also has been the key federal body to help preserve the oral histories of many Native American tribes such as the Seneca, Blackfoot, Sioux, Navajo, Apaches, and dozens more.

Further, I am proud to say that the NHPRC recently sped up and digitized over 5,000 documents left behind by our Nation's founding fathers that were previously unpublished. Congress passed legislation last year that I was honored to co-author with our former colleague, Senator John Warner from Virginia, requiring the NHPRC to work with the groups publishing the volumes so that the documents could be made available online at no charge to any student of history. Before, they were walled-up behind the doors of large libraries and expensive to access. To put that into context, the NHPRC has saved anyone who needs to view the letters of John Adams thousands of dollars, which would have been the traditional cost of a complete set of published letters.

Lastly, the bill I am introducing today removes an artificial profit cap that Congress put in place a few years

ago that prevents the National Archives and Records Administration from operating its regional facilities more like a business. For example, there are times at the end of the year when the revolving fund that pays for the operation and maintenance of the regional archival facilities earns a profit. Instead of incentivizing the National Archives to save the excess profit for long-term capital investments, the cap incentivizes regional facilities to spend the money on short term projects that they may not be needed. This simply does not make sense for the National Archives or for the taxpayer.

I look forward to working with my colleagues to get this important and necessary bill enacted before it's too late. I think everyone can agree that one of the things our democracy relies on is educated citizenry. The NHPRC is the principle body that helps make that happen.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, today I offer my congratulations to Chief Jack Cannon and President Allen Parsons and the entire company as the Bridgeville Volunteer Fire Department celebrates 100 years of service. The success of the fire company is a tribute to the many dedicated men and women who not only have served in the Bridgeville Fire Company, but have served the entire Bridgeville community in any number of ways, as well.

Since 1909, the members of the Bridgeville Volunteer Fire Company have protected the property and residents of this historic community. The fire company has reached many milestones throughout the years, including equipment upgrades, the formation of the Ladies Auxiliary, and moves to larger stations to accommodate growth and expansion. As it currently stands at 60 volunteer members and 2 professional emergency medical technicians, the Bridgeville Volunteer Fire Company represents a standard of excellence, answering over 300 fire calls and 800 ambulance calls annually, night and day in all kinds of weather.

Delaware's firefighters are dedicated and caring professionals who willingly put themselves at risk to protect the lives and property of their neighbors. We are all sincerely grateful for their continuing service. The hard work and dedication of these devoted volunteers is an inspiration to all. Moreover, the Bridgeville Volunteer Fire Company has crafted a tradition of superior and selfless service.

I again congratulate the members on this momentous anniversary and look forward to hearing of their continued success for another hundred years and beyond.

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

Mr. President, do I need to ask for unanimous consent to speak as in morning business?

I so request.

Mr. President, I go home almost every night. It is a lot easier to go home to Delaware than it is to Oregon every night, as the Presiding Officer knows. I love it because I get to really live among the people I represent. I get up in the morning, go to the Y, work out, jump on the 7:18 train, and come on down here and go to work with all of my colleagues and the staff. Almost everybody at home wants to talk about, among other things, health care, and they want to find out what we are doing and what we are not doing.

During the August recess, I did something I had never done before in terms of meeting with constituents. We did a couple of telephone townhall meetings. I don't know if the Presiding Officer has done those, but I had never done them before. I have done a lot of traditional townhall meetings, but I went ahead and did one. Senator Corker from Tennessee told me he did a telephone townhall meeting in Tennessee, and he said it went well and he thought I might want to consider it as well.

I said: How many people were on the call?

He said: Fourteen hundred.

That is a lot of people.

Sure enough, we scheduled not one but two of them, one in August and the other in early September before Labor Day.

When we had the first telephone town meeting, it was over after an hour or an hour and a half. I asked my staff: Any idea how many people were on the call? They had 1,400 in Tennessee, a big State. In little Delaware, I thought maybe we might have 200, I don't know. They told me I had 4,000 people. Four thousand people. It really shocked me a lot.

About a week later, we had our second telephone townhall meeting, and this was done in conjunction with AARP. It was not for the whole State, just AARP members in Delaware. So I knew we wouldn't have as many people, but I thought we could have quite a few. When the second telephone townhall meeting was over, done in conjunction with AARP, I said: How many people were on the call? They said 6,000--6,000 people. Little Delaware, to have 4,000 one time and a week later have 6,000 people in a telephone townhall meeting--I was blown away.

People were very polite, they asked good questions, and I tried to give them good responses. We had hundreds of people who stayed on the line at the end of the conference call, if you will, to ask more questions. We will do some more of those in the future, and we will do traditional townhall meetings as well. But what I drew from that is there are a whole lot of people who just had questions they wanted to have answered. They were just confused and in some cases misinformed, and they wanted to have some straight talk--what we used to call it in the Navy--just the straight skinny, the straight truth, just tell us the story. We have tried to do that in the time since then.

About two or three weekends ago, I was getting gas for my minivan not far from my house in Delaware, and I was standing there pumping the gas into my Chrysler Town and Country minivan--listen to this: 236,000 miles, and they say they don't build cars like they used to. We make them better now.

Anyway, this lady pulled up on the other side and said: Senator Carper--just the person I have been looking for.

Sometimes when people say that, you think, maybe I should get back in the minivan and drive away while I can still escape.

I said: What would you like to talk about?

She said: Let's talk about health care.

Pretty much it was: Why can't I have the kind of health care that you have, the same health insurance for my family through my small business that I run.

She said: We are paying about $24,000, $25,000 a year. What are you paying?

She wasn't belligerent or rude or anything.

I said: Well, as it turns out, we are paying about half that.

In my family, it is standard BlueCross BlueShield, and we have--the secret to what we do, as the Presiding Officer knows, is we created here, long before we came along, a very large purchasing pool that includes all Federal employees, all Federal retirees and dependents. In all, it makes a huge purchasing pool of 8 million people in all. We have the Federal Office of Personnel Management that gets a whole bunch of private health insurance companies to come in and offer their products to us, and we can choose from among those private plans. Because there are so many of us, a lot of interest comes from wanting to offer the product to us. It helps drive down the cost because of the competition. With 8 million people in a purchasing pool, you can actually get pretty low administrative costs. It turns out our administrative costs are 3 percent of premiums, which is very low.

My guess is, the lady I was talking to that day at the service station--I know she wasn't getting insurance through her small business. She was a realtor. I know she wasn't getting it for 3 cents' administrative costs on the dollar per premiums--probably not 23 cents, maybe 33 cents.

She said: Why can't we have the kind of health insurance you have?

Actually, I like that. I would be happy to open it up and allow you and others in our State--small businesspeople, families, or individuals who don't have coverage or who do--to buy your health insurance as part of a large purchasing pool. We will make it even bigger, and as a result, maybe we will get better prices.

As it turned out, some of my colleagues on the left here in the Senate and some of my colleagues on the right aren't crazy about that idea. Folks on the left here say: If we do that, it will sort of take the place of the public option; that will be the public option. Folks on the right say: Well, that is too much like the public option. So both sides are kind of against doing that. I still think it is a good idea.

What we are going to do is we are going to take the idea of a large purchasing pool and we are going to allow every State to create its own purchasing pool. We call them an exchange. We exchange. Each State can have its own exchange.

Every State can enter into interstate compacts with other States and create compacts with other States. For example, I don't know if Delaware would create an interstate compact with the State of the Presiding Officer because it is on the other side of America. We may want to do it with New Jersey or Pennsylvania or Maryland. We might want to do it with Idaho or other States out West. What is interesting about the interstate compacts is that States can create, under what has been reported out of the Finance Committee on which I serve, interstate compacts between two or more States, and insurance can be sold in another State, which would introduce competition, and that doesn't exist in a bunch of States.

In some States, just one or two insurance companies rule the roost and pretty much offer all the insurance. It is not very good for competition or affordability.

So what I want to do is make sure States have options to introduce competition. They can create interstate compacts across State lines, create regional exchanges and a larger purchasing pool, which would drive down costs. Some of my colleagues want States to start health care cooperatives, such as in Washington State, where there is an outfit called Group Health. The Presiding Officer is probably familiar with that. Some States might want to do that. They seem to like that idea in Washington. Maybe that will work.

Some States have their own public plans. I think Minnesota is one. States could set up their own public plan. That would be listed on the exchange as an option. States might want to open the State employees health benefit plan for State employees and pensioners and their dependents. That can be an option on the exchange.

The Senate will probably be prepared to offer a tax credit to lower income folks. They can start with a low income and phase it out as the income goes higher. That is an effort to help folks who need help in affording health insurance. They can let States choose from that menu when there are problems with lack of competition.

What do we do then? Are we going to have a national public plan in which everybody has to participate? Are we going to have a level playing field? Senator Schumer has put a fair amount of time and interest into exploring that. Are we going to have a national public plan with a level playing field, where the national plan doesn't have an advantage over those in the private sector? Should the States be able to opt out of this national plan? That is the proposal I think Senator Reid submitted to CBO to try to score and see what it would cost.

Should States have a right to opt into the national plan? There are a variety of ideas. I think a number of centrists I have talked to are interested, at the end of the day--if we have States where there is an affordability standard, and it is clear that affordability standard in 1, 10, 20, or 30 States is not being met, there is lack of affordability and competition--should there be some other option? I think parties are open to that.

There is probably a fair amount of concern over a couple of aspects of a public plan. One, who is going to run it? The government or the Secretary of Health and Human Services or the Department of Health and Human Services? Should it be funded by the Federal Government beyond the startup? I think if we will work around the idea that States need to meet some affordability standard, and for those that don't, there might be the opportunity to create another option for those States, maybe an option involving a national nonprofit board, and without government funding--at least not beyond the beginning of the startup, I think there is a center of gravity there that might provide a path forward for some of my colleagues, particularly the moderates.

In terms of government-run, government-funded, I think that can be addressed by having a national nonprofit board appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. They would have to retain funding after the startup and create their own reserve fund so that if the plan runs afoul or gets into financial difficulty, they would have a reserve fund to be able to meet that. I just wanted to lay that out. That is a place where we might find common ground.

There has been discussion in the last hour about cutting Medicare. I am not interested in that. I don't know any Democrat or Republican who is interested in doing that. The legislation I am most familiar with, reported out of the Finance Committee, doesn't cut Medicare benefits. In fact, we add some benefits. One is, under Medicare, people only get one lifetime only physical--just one--when they sign up for Medicare. If they don't take advantage of it then, they don't get it. Most people try to get an annual physical.

One of the changes that we make in our legislation that I hope will be in whatever we finally pass is that every year, a Medicare patient would be eligible for a physical. That is good preventive medicine. You can catch problems early rather than wait until it is too late.

Some people are familiar with the Medicare prescription drug program. They know when people exceed $2,500, up to about $5,500, for the most part, if their drug costs are in that range, almost all of the costs are borne by the senior citizens unless they are very low income. Then Medicare picks it up.

One of the principles in our legislation that I hope will be available is that the pharmaceutical industry said they are going to put up about $80 billion, a lot of which will be used for filling the doughnut hole to cut in half people's out-of-pocket expenses, when they would otherwise be called upon to pay for prescription drugs. We want to make sure people, No. 1--if there are pharmaceutical companies out there that will help--can find out about it, use it, and they can afford it. In the legislation reported out of our committee, I think we dramatically increase the likelihood that people will be helped by the pharmaceutical industry.

In terms of reducing spending out of Medicare, we can go out and identify--not just identify waste, fraud, and abuse, but identify it and quantify it, and we can go out and get the money back. We call that postaudit cost recovery. Last year, about $700 million was recovered in 1 year in these postaudit cost recoveries in just three States. What we need to do this year, and what we are going to do, is go to all 50 States and do postaudit cost recovery for Medicare. The money will go back to the trust fund. If we can gather $700 million in just three States, we can do a lot more than that in all 50 States. Those are the kinds of things we are going to do.

If folks were going to simply cut Medicare services and benefits, I am not aware of that in the legislation. I don't think that is the case.

I have one or two other points, and I will close. I had the opportunity to visit a place called the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, OH, a month or two ago. I went to find out how are they able to provide better health care and better outcomes for less money and to see if there is a lesson we can take from

them and from the Mayo Clinic and from Geisinger up in Pennsylvania-- what lessons can we take from those places--all nonprofits--where all the doctors are on salary, where they focus on primary care and prevention and wellness, and where they focus on coordinating care among physicians and other providers within their units, and where the medical malpractice coverage is paid for by the Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic, not the individual physicians, and where all the patients have electronic health records.

If you look at all those nonprofits I have mentioned, including the Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, Geisinger, and Kaiser in California, they are all pretty much the same. I think one of the things we sought to do in our legislation is infuse that delivery system, change that and infuse that into our system for health care and, frankly, learn from what works--look to see what works and act on that.

Lastly, we will have the opportunity, after the legislation is merged together and the products from several committees, including the HELP Committee--but after the products of the two principal committees in the Senate have been merged and that has been submitted by our majority leader to the CBO, they will come back and say whether the legislation increases the budget deficit and whether the legislation can be expected to rein in the growth of health care costs. We will find out the answers to the questions, hopefully, in a week or two.

The President said, and I have heard others say:

I am not going to sign legislation that increase the

deficit by a dime, now or later.

I have said that I am not going to vote for legislation that increases the budget deficit now or later. The version of the health bill that we reported out of the Finance Committee over the next 10 years will reduce the deficit by $80 billion and the second 10 years by $400 billion to $800 billion. That is what we need to do.

At the end of the day, I think it is paramount for us to extend coverage to people who don't have it--40 million plus. About 14,000 people who woke up today with health insurance will not wake up tomorrow and have it. We pay way more for health insurance than anybody else, without better results. Some are going out of business. GM and Chrysler, who had a presence in my State, are bankrupt, and a lot of their trouble was because of enormous growth in health care costs.

One of the most important things we can do in health care reform this year is rein in the growth in health care costs. The idea that health care costs continue to go up two or three times the rate of inflation is not acceptable. The idea that we pay 1\1/2\ times more for health coverage than any other nation in the world is not sustainable. The idea that we don't get better results--actually, we get worse results-- is unacceptable also.

Lastly, a lot of times we say: What responsibility do people have for their own health? Is there some way we can get people to take better care of themselves? As a population, we are overweight and, in many cases, obese. We have high blood pressure, and we have high levels of cholesterol. People suffer from hypertension. We smoke too much, and we eat the wrong foods, and too much of the wrong foods. We don't exercise. There are a couple of companies around the country where they have employee-provided health insurance to sort of self-insure. Some are encouraging us to allow them to do more in terms of reducing the premiums of people who basically do the right things. We have all heard about the company called Safeway, a grocery store chain headquartered in California. There are other companies, such as Pitney-Bowes and Delta, that have figured that out, and they have started to invite their employees to voluntarily enter into programs to stop smoking. If they do that, they can earn premium reductions. If they lose weight, they can reduce their premiums.

One of our colleagues, Senator Ensign, and I offered legislation, adopted in the HELP and Finance Committees, that says that individuals can reduce premiums by as much as 30 percent if they are doing things that will help reduce their exposure and costs to their company through the health plan. For example, at Safeway, if people stop smoking, they reduce their premiums by $400. If people lose 10 percent of their body mass, if they are overweight, there will be roughly another $400 reduction in their premium.

The idea is not just for people to say: I know I am overweight, and I need to exercise. So they get a gym membership, but then they stop going. Or they will walk every other day and maybe on weekends, or they will go on a diet and stay on it for a while, or they will stop smoking and then they start smoking again. That is kind of human nature, with all these temptations. Unfortunately, a lot of them lead to worse health outcomes for individuals. We want people to take better care of themselves. That should be in this legislation.

Lastly, at the Cleveland Clinic, they talked to us about defensive medicine, the fee-for-service delivery system where we incentivize doctors to do more of everything--more visits, procedures, tests, more of this and that because when they do those they--they--No. 1, may provide a better health outcome; No. 2, they make more money; and, No. 3, they reduce the likelihood that they will be successfully sued.

We don't have jurisdiction in the Finance Committee over medical malpractice. That is under the jurisdiction of the States. What we do want to do when we come to the Senate floor, my colleagues, both Democrats and Republicans, is to robustly test what is being done in States to, No. 1, reduce the incidence of illness with defensive medicine, reduce the incidence of medical malpractice lawsuits, and do so in a way that will encourage better outcomes; to take good ideas like what works in a company in Michigan or the idea of health courts, the idea of safe harbors where doctors who provide medicine basically under best medical practices and best practiced guidelines, maybe give them a safe harbor from lawsuits.

We can test a couple of these caps--a $250,000 cap or maybe a sliding scale cap on noneconomic. Ohio goes from $250,000 to $1 million. We can test those and see do they work? The certification programs, such as in Delaware, if my doctor performs a procedure on me, and I am not happy with the outcome, I have to go through a panel of knowledgeable people. If they say I don't have a case, basically I don't do it.

Those are the kinds of things we want to have the opportunity to explore, find out what is working in the States and other States to learn from it. Those are the kinds of things we will have a chance to debate on this floor in the next couple of weeks and in the end hopefully provide better insurance, a better outcome for less money, and use the savings to extend coverage to people who do not have it. That is what we are trying to do.

I thank my colleague from Arizona for his patience and for allowing me to finish my statement.

I thank the Chair.

(The remarks of Mr. Carper and Mr. Kaufman pertaining to the introduction of S. 1801 are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')

I thank the Chair, and with that, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I am delighted to be joined this afternoon by my colleague, Senator Kaufman, from Delaware. Today, he and I are going to do something I don't think has ever been done in the Senate in the 200 years since this institution has been together. We will be introducing legislation which will establish the First State National Historic Park within the State of Delaware.

There are, as we all know, 50 States, and 49 States have national parks. In all, there are 58 national parks. There are something like more than 300 units of national parks. The first State to ratify the Constitution--that would be Delaware--was the entire United States of America for 1 week beginning December 7, 1787, and it still has no national park--not that we don't have historical and cultural heritage that is noteworthy in Delaware.

Think back roughly 400 years ago when the first settlements in this country from Europe were that of the Dutch in what is now Lewes, DE. And 372 years ago, the Swedes and Finns sailed across the Atlantic Ocean up the Delaware Bay and the Delaware River, took a left turn on the river they decided to name after the child queen of Sweden, Christina, and established the colony of New Sweden and what is now known as Wilmington, DE.

To the south in Dover, DE, at the Golden Fleece Tavern for roughly 3 days in December 1787, 25 or so men holed up in the Golden Fleece Tavern drinking what I describe as hot chocolate in order to decide whether the State of Delaware was going to be the first State to ratify the Constitution.

A few miles south of there is the childhood home of John Dickinson,

who worked with folks in Connecticut at the Constitutional Convention to come up with a grand compromise which says every State will have two U.S. Senators and we will apportion the seats in the House of Representatives in accordance with the population of the States.

From one end of the State of Delaware to the other, there are any number of things that are important to our Nation's heritage and I think certainly to the people of Delaware. Yet we have no national park commemorating any of that at all. Roughly 8 years ago, shortly after I came to the Senate, we went to work to see whether we could change that situation. A lot of good people in my State submitted ideas, from one end of the State to the other, what they thought might be reasonable, acceptable, appropriate items or places to designate as our national park. We created a wonderful citizens group about 3 or 4 years ago. They went the length and breadth of the State, led by professor emeritus Jim Solis of the University of Delaware. They came back with a wonderful group of ideas they collected from people from all over the State.

They said: This is what we think the national park should be--a unique concept. If you can imagine four bicycle wheels, each has a hub, and from the hubs emanate the spokes. The vision of our working group was to have four hubs--one in northern Delaware, Wilmington; one maybe in Delaware City; another in Kent County, the central part of our State; and another in Lewes, DE, the southern part of our State. From each of those hubs--think of the spokes emanating--is a variety of attractions to which people could come. Each hub would be a hub established with some presence by the National Park Service.

These were the ideas we submitted to the National Park Service roughly 3 years ago. The National Park Service went to work on it. To their credit, they came to our State. They covered our State and met with all kinds of people from one end of Delaware to the other and came up with another idea. They said: We like what you came up with, but here is what the National Park Service would like you to do. It is this: Create a national park that focuses on Delaware from the early settlement of the Dutch, the Swedes and the Finns and the English--a national park theme to run from that period of time until first statehood, December 7, 1787, roughly 130, 140 years.

The idea is to place in old New Castle, colonial New Castle, about 10 miles south of Wilmington, DE, on the Delaware River, a national park site that would be colocated and located in an existing structure that is suitable for that purpose. That spot will be populated by park rangers, who will be there to serve as interpreters and help welcome people to the site and help inform them, share with them other ideas and places to visit.

We are excited about what the National Park Service has decided. Is it everything we had hoped for? No, it is not. Is it a whole lot better than being the only State in the country without a national park? It sure is a lot better than that.

I express great thanks to all the men and women in my State who for almost 8 years worked on this concept, created and gathered good ideas and suggested those to the Park Service. I thank the Delaware Division of Parks and Recreation, the Delaware Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs, the National Park Service, former Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne; and certainly our current Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, for their steadfast support for this initiative.

About half a dozen or so years ago, my family and I--my boys are now 19 and 21, but when they were younger, we liked to travel in the summers and visit national parks. We visited national parks from Pennsylvania, the second State in the Union, to Illinois, the Lincoln sites. We went to Alaska, to Denali, the great one, a huge national park that is two to three times the size of Delaware. We loved to visit national parks. This summer, our boys took a cross-country tour to the west coast for a summer job for one of our boys. They drove all the way across the northern part of our country and got to spend time in the Badlands, Mount Rushmore and Yellowstone and other sites along the way.

National parks were described as--I think it was Wallace Stegner who said our national parks are America's best ideas. Ken Burns, the documentary filmmaker whose series on national parks was on National Public Television--beautifully done, beautifully videographed, and the story told of our national parks and how the first national park began about 140 years ago. Here we are 140 years later. They are a national treasure. People come from all over the world.

When we went on the national park Web site 6 years ago to look for a place to go as a family, do you know what we ended up with? Nothing. There was a lot of stuff to visit from Alabama to Wyoming, A to W, but when we got to Delaware, nothing.

We have a lot in our State of which we are proud. We have a lot in our State of which our country can be proud. We want not only people in Delaware to know but people throughout the country and the world. When they are looking for a good place to visit for some culture and history and, frankly, for a good time, we want them to know that Delaware-- little Delaware--is on the map. We are ready. The doors are open. The ``welcome'' mat is out. We are ready to receive them.

I want to say a big thanks to everyone who got us to this point. We are delighted to introduce the legislation that will designate and establish the first national park in the State of Delaware. Fortunately, I am not introducing the bill by myself. I am joined by my colleague, Senator Kaufman, and in the House by Congressman Mike Castle. This will be a bipartisan, bicameral initiative.

I yield to Senator Kaufman.

Mr. President, in conclusion, I say a special thanks to Senator Kaufman. I thank members of our staff who worked on this bill-- not just us--literally for years in Delaware and here as well.

I want to thank my colleagues who earlier voted with us to authorize a study, and to the National Park Service to fund that study, which came back to us with the recommendations of the National Park Service literally earlier this year.

I also want to say that in this proposal we give a nod to the fact that these are trying fiscal times in which we live, and we don't have the ability to spend boatloads of money for a national park anywhere, including the First State. The proposal that we have before us is one that recognizes that and is, I think, responsible, and fiscally responsible, too.

So with all that having been said, we are delighted to say that while this is not the end, this may be the beginning of the end, we hope, of the journey that will lead us to a national park, and we are delighted to stand here together to get us on the last part of that journey.

Mr. President, I am delighted to be joined this afternoon by my colleague, Senator Kaufman, from Delaware. Today, he and I are going to do something I don't think has ever been done in the Senate in the 200 years since this institution has been together. We will be introducing legislation which will establish the First State National Historic Park within the State of Delaware.

There are, as we all know, 50 States, and 49 States have national parks. In all, there are 58 national parks. There are something like more than 300 units of national parks. The first State to ratify the Constitution--that would be Delaware--was the entire United States of America for 1 week beginning December 7, 1787, and it still has no national park--not that we don't have historical and cultural heritage that is noteworthy in Delaware.

Think back roughly 400 years ago when the first settlements in this country from Europe were that of the Dutch in what is now Lewes, DE. And 372 years ago, the Swedes and Finns sailed across the Atlantic Ocean up the Delaware Bay and the Delaware River, took a left turn on the river they decided to name after the child queen of Sweden, Christina, and established the colony of New Sweden and what is now known as Wilmington, DE.

To the south in Dover, DE, at the Golden Fleece Tavern for roughly 3 days in December 1787, 25 or so men holed up in the Golden Fleece Tavern drinking what I describe as hot chocolate in order to decide whether the State of Delaware was going to be the first State to ratify the Constitution.

A few miles south of there is the childhood home of John Dickinson,

who worked with folks in Connecticut at the Constitutional Convention to come up with a grand compromise which says every State will have two U.S. Senators and we will apportion the seats in the House of Representatives in accordance with the population of the States.

From one end of the State of Delaware to the other, there are any number of things that are important to our Nation's heritage and I think certainly to the people of Delaware. Yet we have no national park commemorating any of that at all. Roughly 8 years ago, shortly after I came to the Senate, we went to work to see whether we could change that situation. A lot of good people in my State submitted ideas, from one end of the State to the other, what they thought might be reasonable, acceptable, appropriate items or places to designate as our national park. We created a wonderful citizens group about 3 or 4 years ago. They went the length and breadth of the State, led by professor emeritus Jim Solis of the University of Delaware. They came back with a wonderful group of ideas they collected from people from all over the State.

They said: This is what we think the national park should be--a unique concept. If you can imagine four bicycle wheels, each has a hub, and from the hubs emanate the spokes. The vision of our working group was to have four hubs--one in northern Delaware, Wilmington; one maybe in Delaware City; another in Kent County, the central part of our State; and another in Lewes, DE, the southern part of our State. From each of those hubs--think of the spokes emanating--is a variety of attractions to which people could come. Each hub would be a hub established with some presence by the National Park Service.

These were the ideas we submitted to the National Park Service roughly 3 years ago. The National Park Service went to work on it. To their credit, they came to our State. They covered our State and met with all kinds of people from one end of Delaware to the other and came up with another idea. They said: We like what you came up with, but here is what the National Park Service would like you to do. It is this: Create a national park that focuses on Delaware from the early settlement of the Dutch, the Swedes and the Finns and the English--a national park theme to run from that period of time until first statehood, December 7, 1787, roughly 130, 140 years.

The idea is to place in old New Castle, colonial New Castle, about 10 miles south of Wilmington, DE, on the Delaware River, a national park site that would be colocated and located in an existing structure that is suitable for that purpose. That spot will be populated by park rangers, who will be there to serve as interpreters and help welcome people to the site and help inform them, share with them other ideas and places to visit.

We are excited about what the National Park Service has decided. Is it everything we had hoped for? No, it is not. Is it a whole lot better than being the only State in the country without a national park? It sure is a lot better than that.

I express great thanks to all the men and women in my State who for almost 8 years worked on this concept, created and gathered good ideas and suggested those to the Park Service. I thank the Delaware Division of Parks and Recreation, the Delaware Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs, the National Park Service, former Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne; and certainly our current Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, for their steadfast support for this initiative.

About half a dozen or so years ago, my family and I--my boys are now 19 and 21, but when they were younger, we liked to travel in the summers and visit national parks. We visited national parks from Pennsylvania, the second State in the Union, to Illinois, the Lincoln sites. We went to Alaska, to Denali, the great one, a huge national park that is two to three times the size of Delaware. We loved to visit national parks. This summer, our boys took a cross-country tour to the west coast for a summer job for one of our boys. They drove all the way across the northern part of our country and got to spend time in the Badlands, Mount Rushmore and Yellowstone and other sites along the way.

National parks were described as--I think it was Wallace Stegner who said our national parks are America's best ideas. Ken Burns, the documentary filmmaker whose series on national parks was on National Public Television--beautifully done, beautifully videographed, and the story told of our national parks and how the first national park began about 140 years ago. Here we are 140 years later. They are a national treasure. People come from all over the world.

When we went on the national park Web site 6 years ago to look for a place to go as a family, do you know what we ended up with? Nothing. There was a lot of stuff to visit from Alabama to Wyoming, A to W, but when we got to Delaware, nothing.

We have a lot in our State of which we are proud. We have a lot in our State of which our country can be proud. We want not only people in Delaware to know but people throughout the country and the world. When they are looking for a good place to visit for some culture and history and, frankly, for a good time, we want them to know that Delaware-- little Delaware--is on the map. We are ready. The doors are open. The ``welcome'' mat is out. We are ready to receive them.

I want to say a big thanks to everyone who got us to this point. We are delighted to introduce the legislation that will designate and establish the first national park in the State of Delaware. Fortunately, I am not introducing the bill by myself. I am joined by my colleague, Senator Kaufman, and in the House by Congressman Mike Castle. This will be a bipartisan, bicameral initiative.

I yield to Senator Kaufman.

Mr. President, in conclusion, I say a special thanks to Senator Kaufman. I thank members of our staff who worked on this bill-- not just us--literally for years in Delaware and here as well.

I want to thank my colleagues who earlier voted with us to authorize a study, and to the National Park Service to fund that study, which came back to us with the recommendations of the National Park Service literally earlier this year.

I also want to say that in this proposal we give a nod to the fact that these are trying fiscal times in which we live, and we don't have the ability to spend boatloads of money for a national park anywhere, including the First State. The proposal that we have before us is one that recognizes that and is, I think, responsible, and fiscally responsible, too.

So with all that having been said, we are delighted to say that while this is not the end, this may be the beginning of the end, we hope, of the journey that will lead us to a national park, and we are delighted to stand here together to get us on the last part of that journey.