Floor Statements

Mr. President, I would like to take a moment to discuss with my friends, the Senators from Utah and Wisconsin, an important proposal that will enhance Delaware's economy by promoting agri-tourism and our agricultural heritage.

As we all know, Senator Bennett, the chairman, and Senator Kohl, the ranking member, of the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee have the difficult job of managing funding priorities for the Nation's agriculture spending and do a superb job in that role.

I bring to my colleagues' attention an important proposal that merits serious consideration--the Delaware Agricultural Museum and Village, which interprets and preserves the story of Delaware's past and promotes an understanding of the vital role agriculture plays in our daily lives.

This is a vital cultural resource center that presents the history and function of American agriculture. It is very important that the American people, and especially our youth, understand the source of their food supply. This is especially so in view of such critical issues as childhood obesity, food safety, and the continuing loss of farmland to development.

Each year the Delaware Agricultural Village hosts thousands of school children and tens of thousands of tourists. These visitors experience 19th century farming life and witness the evolution of American agriculture. The school children of Delmarva benefit from the summer camps, field trips, and educational programs provided by this facility. These activities help our children understand and appreciate the joys and struggles of farming life in the past as well as today. This institution is a great demonstration of the valuable role that farming ingenuity and technological innovation play in dairy, poultry farming, and rural life in Delaware and across the country.

Every year 25,000 people visit this center, and between 6,000 and 9,000 school children participate annually in field trips, summer camps, and other activities. The village serves all of the Delmarva Peninsula and receives visitors from across the Nation. Last week, the center hosted a school from as far away as Texas.

Specifically, the funds requested will be combined with additional funds from private individuals, businesses, and other government sources to ensure the Delaware Agricultural Museum and Village will be able to better serve their agri-tourism and educational guests. Every year it seems the facility is asked to do more and more. These additional funds will help provide additional space and more accommodating facilities while avoiding construction of an entirely new building.

I and the rest of the Delaware congressional delegation are very supportive of this program and seek the support of the bill managers in asking the Department of Agriculture to consider and assist this project with resources available in the Rural Development mission area. We also request that the managers help support this item in the conference committee on the Agriculture appropriations bill.

So, with this background, I ask my friends from Utah and Wisconsin whether it is correct that the Delaware Agricultural Museum and Village will be considered in the conference between the House and Senate on this bill?

I thank my friends for taking a moment to discuss this matter with me. I urge my colleagues who will be negotiating these provisions with the House to carefully consider the benefits of this proposal. I thank them in advance for any assistance they may render.

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

Mr. President, the Senator from Minnesota, Mr. Coleman, and I would ask unanimous consent for each of us to sort of pool our 10 minutes apiece and take maybe the next 20 minutes to share--and some of our colleagues who are going to come by and talk as well--about the role our faith plays in the work we do here. If that might be acceptable, I would ask unanimous consent.

Mr. President, the elections are behind us now and we are looking forward to the next Congress which will be seated on January 4--the 110th Congress. We have in town a number of newly elected Senators and their spouses. A number of us--Senator Alexander, Senator Voinovich, Senator Pryor, and myself--have been involved, along with the Secretary of the Senate, in holding orientation for new Senators and their spouses. On Tuesday night we were over at the National Archives and we had the opportunity to have a reception there and a dinner. The reception turned out to be a tour of the National Archives and the opportunity to see firsthand original copies of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, handwritten letters from George Washington to all kinds of people, and from Abraham Lincoln to all kinds of people. We actually looked at the original Bill of Rights where we found that there were actually 12 amendments proposed to the Constitution, not 10. Two were not actually adopted. It was interesting to see and to go back over 200 years to the history and formation of our country, to focus on it and to think about it and reflect on it.

When the Constitutional Convention was held, just up the Delaware River from where I live in Wilmington, DE, and up in Philadelphia, whenever the Founding Fathers were getting into a tough time trying to come to consensus or agreement on one issue or the other that they were grappling with, a lot of times they would take a break and pray about it. When the inauguration of President Washington occurred in New York City, when they finished the inauguration, they didn't go off and hold big parties and balls, but they actually went to a church and prayed together and had a worship service. In fact, I am told over in the House of Representatives, when our country was young, President Jefferson was participating in worship services held there. Even now, 207 years later, we still begin each day's session here in the Senate, as they do in the House, with a prayer. We have Bible study groups that meet on Thursday with the Senate Chaplain, Barry Black. We have done that for a number of years. Senator Coleman, who has been one of our leaders in a Wednesday morning prayer breakfast, and Mark Pryor from Arkansas have led that for a number of years.

So faith, from the beginning of our foundation as a country, has been important to us, to guide us as a nation, and to guide us today in our own personal lives.

When the Constitution was written and the Bill of Rights was written, the idea was not to establish an organized religion; the idea was to make sure people were free to practice whatever faith they wanted, and to be respectful of people of different faiths and the fact that people can worship as they see fit or choose not to worship at all. One of the strengths of our Nation is our faith, but another of the strengths of our Nation is the respect we have for people of different faiths. We have people in this body who are Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish. We worship the same God, just a bit differently.

One of the things we try to do during the course of the week is to use our faith. Whether we happen to be Presbyterian, Mormon, or Jewish, how do we use that faith to help guide us in the policies we adopt for our country and for the people we represent? I feel fortunate to live in a country where we are free to worship God as we see fit. I think there is a real opportunity here for us in the Senate as we try to put our country back together and begin to work together after a rough-and- tumble election to find ways that we can use our faith to figure out our path, and to better ensure the people in this country have health care, that folks have decent jobs, that folks get a good education, and that we can bind the wounds we have opened over the last several months and to move forward as a nation.

I say how pleased I am to have a chance to work with Senator Coleman from Minnesota and how much I appreciate the great leadership he has shown in bringing a bunch of us together on Wednesday mornings. I usually can't get here on Wednesday morning. I go back and forth on the train to Delaware almost every night, so I can't be there for many Wednesday mornings for that type of fellowship. But I oftentimes join my colleagues, including Senator Lincoln of Arkansas and others, on Thursday right down the hall here for a Bible study group that is a little bit like an adult Sunday school class with the Senate Chaplain, affording us the opportunity to read scripture together, reflect together, to pray for one another, and to be nourished spiritually.

I am delighted to be here with Senator Coleman today, and I thank him for his leadership.

Mr. President, how much time do we have on our 20 minutes?

Of course.

How much time do we have?

Let me close by saying a special thanks to my friend from Arkansas, Blanche Lincoln, and to our colleague, Norm Coleman from Minnesota, for talking with us for a few minutes today about their faith. One of my favorite verses of Scripture comes out of the little Book of James, near the end of the New Testament, where we read: Show me your faith by your words and I will show you my faith by my deeds.

The most important thing is not how high we jump up in church but what we do when our feet hit the ground, and our feet hit the ground here every day of the week at about 9:30.

As we go forward, none of us is perfect. All of us make mistakes--God knows I do. But I would just remind us all it is important not just to talk about our faith but that we try to show our faith by our deeds.

Having said that, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I thank my friend for yielding to me.

While Senator Collins is still on the floor, I want to take a moment to say, Mr. President, if you go back 5 years ago and consider the tragedies that befell our Nation on September 11, it opened our eyes to the kind of threats we face with respect to the security of our air travel. It served to open our eyes, subsequently, with respect to the security of our ports, with the security of our chemical plants and the communities that are located around them. I think we have had our eyes opened to security threats that maybe face people who travel on our trains and our commuter rail systems.

We have seen all too well how inadequately--ineptly, really--FEMA responded to the Katrina and the gulf coast part of our country. I think most of us agree today we are better equiped now to fend off threats to the security of our air travel. And I think with respect to the security of our ports, with this legislation Senator Collins and Senator Murray have shepherded, which the Presiding Officer has contributed greatly to, we have made real progress; some would say maybe not enough, but I think everybody would say measurable, palpable progress.

I know there are folks who have been critical of the fact that we have not included the rail and transit provisions in this final conference report, which were included in our Senate-passed version. I wish they were there. We have a lot of people who travel on the rail and transit systems, with, I think, about 9 billion trips this year, and there is a threat to many of them--not all of them but to many of them.

But there is good work that has been done with respect to chemical security. FEMA has been overhauled, and I think maybe not transformed but I think significantly improved.

One of the constant threads within all of that has been Senator Collins, as the chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. I just want to stand here tonight and say that this is yet another conference she has helped to direct and steer, as it comes to a conclusion. I commend her, and certainly Senator Murray, who has worked closely with her. I commend them and the Presiding Officer and others for the good work they have done.

I acknowledge we have some more work to do with rail and transit security. My hope is we will do that when we return next January.

Thank you very much. And I again thank my friend for yielding.

Mr. President, I thank you. I ask unanimous consent to speak for 5 minutes in morning business.

Mr. President, I want to take a moment to bring to the attention of our colleagues a full-page article which ran in the business section of the Washington Post recently headlined ``American Core Values, Equal Opportunity.'' I had some discussion in my caucus this week focusing on diversity and focusing on diversity of our own staff here on Capitol Hill and how well we are doing. This is an issue that is on my mind.

Some of my colleagues may be familiar with something called the 80-20 Educational Foundation which seeks to promote equal opportunity for Asian Americans. The president of the foundation, as it turns out, is a colleague and friend of mine, a constituent. He is former Lieutenant Governor, recently retired physics professor at the University of Delaware, Dr. S.B. Woo.

Here are some of the findings of 88-20's research as spelled out in the article in the paper.

No. 1. When compared to Whites, African-Americans, Hispanics, and women, Asian-Americans have the lowest odds of rising to management level positions in private industry, universities, and even in the Federal Government.

No. 2. This is interesting because 80-20's research also indicates that Asian-Americans are much more likely to obtain a college degree or higher than Whites, African-Americans, Hispanics, or women.

The data indicates that Asian-Americans have half the chance of Whites of rising to management-level positions.

If this is right, then this is wrong.

From the charts, we can also see that African-Americans, Hispanics, and women are still lagging behind as well. They are also less likely to rise to management level positions. And, perhaps more troubling for the future, they are also much less likely to obtain advanced degrees.

This country was founded on the premise that all men and all women are created equal and that we must always strive for equality and justice for all of us.

We have made great strides over the years. We have taken steps to get closer to that goal of equality and justice

for all. As I have often said, we can obviously make it better.

But an important part of that fight--which I think is illustrated in the Washington Post--is keeping vigilant. We must continue to stay vigilant to promote equal opportunity for all Americans, not just Asian-Americans. Each of the groups in these charts faces different barriers, different challenges. And although we have made great progress in the opportunities for all Americans, we cannot become complacent and assume that there is no work left to be done.

The fight for equal opportunity is a fight we must not allow to lag.

I hope my colleagues will consider the important information that is presented here today and maybe take the opportunity to look at it.

I ask unanimous consent to have the Washington Post item printed in the Record.

I thank the Chair.

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

I thank my colleagues for yielding.

Mr. President, earlier this week we all commemorated the fifth anniversary of 9/11. Much of that day was spent here and around the country discussing whether after 5 years we are safer and whether we are safe enough. While we have made real progress with respect to the security of our nuclear powerplants, with respect to airport security, far too little has been done to secure our Nation's seaports, railways, transit systems and, I might add, hundreds of chemical plants around this country.

After 9/11 we also recognized the need to protect our seaports. In 2002 we passed the Maritime Transportation Security Act, which was the start of developing a national and regional maritime security plan or plans. This legislation also required the Department of Homeland Security to help ports develop individual security plans and directed Customs and Border Protection to design a system for receiving information on ships' cargoes before they docked at a U.S. port.

Now, 4 years later, we are finally taking the next step. Still, port security has never received the same level of attention as airport security, and part of this is because 9/11 tragically exposed the vulnerabilities of our ports and it has been burned into our memories. I think it is also because most Americans do not have any direct interaction with a seaport on a daily basis, a weekly basis, a monthly basis or, in some cases, ever. However, a growing number of Americans have begun to recognize what an appealing target our seaports can be for terrorists.

First of all, many ports, including the ones we have in my State and the States of New Hampshire, Maine, and Washington, are located in or near densely populated urban areas. Also, ports are vital to the economy of our country. They are used by farmers to try to get their products to market and also industry to export products, but also we import everything from chemicals to oil and gas. As a result, many of us have concluded we must place a higher priority on addressing any vulnerability at our ports before any terrorist attack takes advantage of them. I applaud the work of Senator Collins and the great work Senator Lieberman has done with her helping to craft this, and also the staffs and Senator Murray and her staff.

The American Association of Port Authorities believes that to do so will require roughly $400 million a year for physical enhancements for ports in this country. The bill before us would authorize Congress to do just that.

Now, $400 million is a lot of money, but it is significantly cheaper, I think we will agree, than responding to a devastating attack after the fact. My port, the Port of Wilmington, has received about $2 million since 9/11. The State has provided a fair amount of money, as has our port authority. These funds have been used, in part, to

help build a gated entrance with cameras, with security checks, and to fence and light the port's perimeter.

While we are grateful to receive Federal support for these important security measures, our port, like many others, will require additional assistance. Some of that we should provide ourselves within our State. For some of that we look to the Federal Government for help. Obviously there is not enough funding for everyone to get everything they need. However, ports in Oklahoma, ports in Kansas, ports in Tennessee and Kentucky have all received port security grants over the years, as have ports along the eastern and western gulf coast. At the same time, the Port of Wilmington--I am told it is the busiest port on the Delaware River and the port of entry for much of our Nation's food supply, especially for the east coast--has been forced to make do with less. Therefore, I am pleased this bill requires the Department of Homeland Security to conduct a risk analysis of our Nation's seaports and establish a priority for security funding.

The Port of Wilmington also participated in something called a Transportation Security Administration pilot program, a program designed to screen port workers and block individuals with a terrorist connection from accessing sensitive areas at our ports. This pilot program was supposed to be the first step toward establishing a national program, with identification cards and equipment that could read biometric information, such as fingerprints and retinal patterns. But the Department of Homeland Security ended this pilot program before the national screening and identification system was ready. The national system was supposed to be implemented by last summer, but it has yet to occur. The implementation date, I am sorry to say, continues to slip. Now we are being told the ports will receive official identification cards by the end of this year, but the essential card readers will not be ready until sometime next year. That doesn't make a lot of sense.

This program is moving forward far too slowly, and that is why I offered an amendment, when the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee debated port security, to require the Department of Homeland Security to issue its regulations on the worker screening program not next year but by the end of this year. The bill before us today takes a slightly different approach but still addresses the need to get this important program up and running as soon as possible. Under the Port Security Improvement Act, this bill, the Department of Homeland Security would be required to fully implement the worker credentialing program at 10 ports by next summer and at all ports by January 1, 2009.

Let me conclude by saying that this week we have also passed rail and transit security amendments, something that is long overdue. I strongly support them. After the train bombing in Madrid 2 years ago and the London Underground attacks last summer, many of us hoped we would take steps to prevent a similar kind of attack here. But to date, the Federal Government has done far too little to address transit and rail security needs in this country. In fact, rail and transit security received less than 3 percent of the funding that has been dedicated thus far to airport security.

I want to be honest with you. Protecting our rail and transit lines will not be an easy task. Almost 10 billion transit trips were taken in 2004, and transit accommodates more than 16 times the number of daily travelers than do our Nation's airlines--16 times. There are more and more people using rail transit every day so they can avoid traffic and high gasoline prices. Also, it is much more difficult to protect an open system such as the ones at bus stops and train stations than it is to guard the closed systems we have at airports. You cannot physically check every bag that is brought onto a commuter train or ID every person who boards a bus, nor do I believe we ought to. The rail transit systems can only work if they are fluid. I believe long lines of people taking off their shoes to get on a train or bus would render them largely unworkable.

As much as anything, though, what we need to do in order to reduce the likelihood of a debilitating attack on our transit and rail systems is to improve surveillance, more security officers, use of canines, and heavy reliance on the use of new technologies. This requires strong leadership, vision, and enthusiasm for attacking the unique challenges of securing rail and transit.

It also requires effective partnerships. The Federal Government needs to be one of those principal partners. So far, the Department of Homeland Security has only shown a strong appetite for preventing the sort of attack that led to its creation. The White House proposes lumping together all nonaviation security into one competitive grant program, with less than 15 percent of the funding proposed for aircraft security. That is less than 15 percent for all of them--transit, ports, rail, and so forth.

Further, the tiny sums that have been appropriated for rail security have been very slow to move. Last year, the Department of Homeland Security took 9 months just to start sending appropriated funds to State and local transit authorities. I realize they can't turn the spigot on overnight, but 9 months? We can do better than that, and we need to. Rail and transit security should not be controversial issues. We know we need to upgrade the emergency exits and surveillance equipment at train stations. Further, we need to hire more police officers, we need to train and deploy more bomb-sniffing dogs, and we have to develop more sophisticated equipment that would allow us to detect threats without unduly slowing commute times. It will require smart people, a strong focus, and good leadership. That is why we must pass rail security legislation that lays out a national approach and framework.

While I am very happy we adopted the rail and transit security amendment to this bill, I simply cannot understand why this legislation has been so difficult to get passed and signed into law. What is controversial about hiring bomb-sniffing dogs or improving surveillance? Nothing. The threat has simply not been taken seriously.

How much more time do I have, Mr. President?

I hope this casual approach to a dangerous threat ends with the adoption of the rail and security amendments this week. I strongly support their passage and urge our leadership to fight to maintain them in the bill with the amendments we send to the President.

In conclusion, it has been 5 years since 9/11; 5 years of hearing that we need to take threats seriously and realize we live in a dangerous world. It is time we act on those words and protect the millions of Americans who rely on rail and transit every day, and on our ports, just as this legislation would better protect our ports and the communities around them in the years ahead.

Mr. President, I yield my time.

Mr. President, I add a couple of comments to the words of our colleague, Senator Biden, in welcoming Father Christo to the Senate Chamber today.

We are proud of our Constitution. Delaware was the first State to ratify the Constitution of our country. The Constitution calls for separation of church and state. Some people may find, given that as our heritage, it is unusual we begin each of our sessions in the Senate with an opening prayer.

Today, we are honored for all in Delaware, for everybody in the Greek community in our State, and everyone in the country, to be able to welcome one of our own to open the Senate in prayer.

I am struck by the number of times I talk to people in my State and around the country who say: We pray for you--not just me as an individual but for us as a collective body, as we meet. I always say: We welcome your prayers; keep praying. We certainly need those prayers.

I asked my staff to give me a little bit of background on Father, to say a few words. I have 10 pages of accomplishments. What a remarkable tale of accomplishment--and still a young pup.

I am honored you are here. Thank you for coming and starting our day on the right foot.

I would say to those people from other States, in talking to the Presiding Officer before the session began, he was asking where the Greek Church is in our State. If you come through Delaware on I-95, and a lot of people do, in the early part of June, you get off on Pennsylvania Avenue and head north a couple of blocks, make a left turn on Broom Street, you will find the Greek Church. They hold a great festival there. It is not only a church where people go for their souls, but three nights in the early part of June you can go there and enjoy great Greek food, dance, and drink. It is a wonderful time of fellowship with people who are Greek their whole lives and people who are Greek for a night or two.

We are honored by your presence, Father, and thank you for embracing us and thank you for your warm and wonderful prayer.

Mr. President, good morning.

(The remarks of Mr. Carper pertaining to the introduction of S. 3846 are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')

I have listened to my friend from Alabama assert that the Democrats are really interested in precipitous withdrawal from Iraq. For the most part, the debate I have heard from our side and in our own caucus is really more reflective of the words of some of our top military leaders in Iraq with whom I met who said, as recently as last December, it is time for America to move toward the door; not to go out the door, not to close the door behind us but, again, move toward the door.

That is a pretty good way to describe the way most feel. It is time to redeploy our forces, not to leave overnight, not to leave precipitously, but to move toward the door.

Senator McCain asked: Would we be having this debate if it were not September of an election year? I remember voting in 1991 to authorize the use of force to invade Iraq and to force and compel the Iraqis out of Kuwait back into Iraq. Eighteen months or so after that, September 1992, we were not having a debate. There was an election year.

I am happy to yield.

What I was saying, responding and reflecting on Senator McCain's question, would we be having this debate if it were not September of an election year, in 1991, we voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq. Eighteen months after a number of us voted to authorize the use of force to force the Iraqis out of Kuwait and to follow them into Iraq, 18 months later, in September of 1992, a Presidential election year, we were having debates. One of the things we were not debating was the wisdom of going out, getting the Iraqis out of Kuwait and forcing them far into Iraq, into Baghdad.

The reason we are having this debate today is not because it is an election year, not because it is September of an election year, but because of how badly too much of our effort in that part of the world has been managed. It is not a reflection of our troops. They have served us valiantly. They continue to do so.

I say to my friend on the other side, be honest with yourself. If the shoe were on the other foot, if we had a Democratic administration, Democratic President, a Secretary of Defense appointed by that Democratic President; if we were in a war that the Secretary of Defense had alleged would cost $50 billion to $60 billion, and in reality was costing 10 to 20 times that amount; if we were in a war that was expected to last maybe 6 months, and we are in it 3 years later, with no end in sight; if we were in a war where basically a Democratic administration had said to the Iraqi Army, go home, we don't need you; if we were in a situation where instead of fostering a situation where we had fewer insurgents, we had at least a fourfold increase in the number of insurgents holding forth in Iraq; if we had a Democratic administration in Afghanistan that was starting to slip away from us, and we were seeing a massive increase in drug production, growing enough poppies in Afghanistan today to meet the demands of the whole rest of the world, not just the U.S. heroin addiction but the rest of the world, I say to my friends on the other side, if the effort were mismanaged as badly by a Democratic administration, I bet we would be having this debate in September of 2006.

This is a reasonable debate. I say that as one who has voted for most of this administration's nominees who had to be confirmed, who tried to help a bunch of my old colleagues, including Secretaries Thompson, Ridge, Leavitt, Whitman, and others to put together their teams to help govern this country.

Every now and then the time comes to change course. We know what we are doing is not working. One of the keys to changing course, frankly, is to change leadership.

Secretary Rumsfeld, to his credit, in response to early criticism, I am told, actually came to the President and offered to resign. And the President, to his credit, being loyal to his team, declined that offer by his Secretary. I believe that to be true.

I would say, Mr. President, if Secretary Rumsfeld feels compelled to submit his resignation to you again, accept it. It is time to turn the page. It is not the time to turn our backs on Iraq. It is not the time to turn our backs certainly on the men and women who are serving there for us on behalf of the Iraqi people today, but it is time to change course. It is time to change the leadership. That begins with the civilian leadership of the Department of Defense.

I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, I rise today to announce the introduction of a piece of legislation that Senator Voinovich of Ohio and I have worked on for a while. It is called the Federal Employees Electronic Personal Health Records Act of 2006. This bill makes available--or would make available--electronic personal health records for every enrollee of a Federal health benefits plan who wishes to have one. That is, potentially, as many as 8 million people. That includes those of us who work in Federal agencies, large and small, across the country and, actually, around the world. It includes their families and includes Federal retirees and their families as well.

Our health care sector is the most innovative in the world, but it has not kept up with the information age. Our excessive reliance on paper record keeping makes our health care system less efficient, more costly, and more prone to mistakes. Expanding the use of health information technology shows promise as a way to improve both the cost and the quality of health care in our country.

In 2004, the United States spent some $1.9 trillion on health care costs.

That is more than any other industrialized country on this planet. In 2005, health care premiums continued their upward trend, increasing by an average, I am told, of some 9 percent. We are literally spending trillions of dollars on health care, but I am sorry to say we are not getting the gold standard of treatment or results.

A 2005 survey conducted by the Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation that focuses on improving health care, found that medical error reports rates in the United States far exceed those of western countries. In that survey, one in three Americans reported getting the wrong dosage of medication, incorrect test results, mistakes in treatment, or late notification of test results. That is nearly 15 percent higher than similar results in Britain and Germany.

I believe some of the problems--though certainly not all of them--can be blamed on the fact that health care providers don't have full and real-time access to patients' medical records. Doctors in this country wait days sometimes for couriers to deliver lab tests or x rays. They diagnose patients without knowing their full medical history, what they are allergic to, what kinds of surgeries they have had, or whether they have complained about similar symptoms before.

Time constraints, or medical necessity, often force doctors to perform a quick diagnosis. Sometimes that diagnosis wrong. Sometimes those errors prove to be costly. The widespread use of health information technology, the ability to immediately access one's full medical history from a computer, can help doctors and nurses provide better care less expensively. It has the potential to dramatically transform the way we provide health care in America--saving lives, saving costs.

If we are looking for success stories on how health care professionals have integrated the use of electronic health care records into their daily routines, we don't have to look any further than our own Department of Defense and our Department of Veterans Affairs.

Times have changed since I retired from the Navy some 15 years ago. I remember that as an ensign I used to carry my medical health records in a brown manila folder from duty station to duty station--from the time I left Ohio State, on to Pensacola, Corpus Christi Naval Air Station, out to California, across the seas and back again, and, finally, getting off of active duty and coming to Delaware to enroll in graduate school, on the GI bill, at the University of Delaware in the business school. I went up the road to the VA hospital. I still had my folder with the records. I turned them in and asked: What kind of benefits am I eligible for?

Over a decade ago, the Department of Defense and VA decided there was a better way, and the results have been nothing short of phenomenal. Today, when a patient enrolls in the Department of Defense's military health system, they no longer need the kind of brown manila folder I carried all those years. Instead, we have electronic health care records to keep track of the medical histories of those who serve our country in the military. This health record is managed electronically, and you don't have to remember to pack it up on your next tour of duty, whether it is in Southeast Asia, or Iraq, or Afghanistan.

Instead, one's electronic health care record follows them wherever they go--both during the time they are in the military and when they leave and join our veterans community as a veteran.

The result is that the Department of Defense and VA have been impressive, especially when you consider that they have only used these electronic health records for about a decade or so.

The VA health system has transformed itself from a troubled, sometimes bloated and inefficient operation to one of the best health care operations in the country.

Researchers and doctors now laud the VA for having the foresight to use electronic health records to improve patient care.

What is the cost? That is a good question. It is about $78 per patient. That is roughly the cost of not repeating one blood test. In other words, it is money well spent.

The VA now regularly outperforms Medicare and other private health plans when it comes to providing patient care for diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart attack victims.

In January, the National Quality Research Center concluded that for the sixth consecutive year, the VA health care system outranks the private sector for customer satisfaction.

I have witnessed that new-found satisfaction in my own backyard, at the Veterans Medical Center in Elsmere, DE. That is the place I went in 1973 fresh out of the Navy. Veterans from neighboring States are now coming to our hospital in Elsmere to seek care instead of going to regular civilian hospitals near them.

In 2004, the Elsmere facility, as well as popular satellite clinics in Millsboro and Seaford, DE, served more than 22,000 veterans and had more than 150,000 outpatient visits. Both totals are about 20 percent higher than just 4 years ago.

Normally, you would think the busier a hospital is, the less satisfied customers are because of longer waits and other hassles. But it turned out that the opposite is true. As the workload has climbed, so has patient satisfaction. I might add, so has the satisfaction of those providing the care to the patients.

More than 85 percent of Delaware's VA outpatients said they were ``highly satisfied'' with the care they received. Planning is now underway to open a third outpatient clinic for veterans in Kent County next spring--probably in Dover where we have another 15,000 veterans.

What is keeping the rest of our Nation's health care system from following the lead of the Department of Defense and the VA? The answer is the high cost of implementing the latest information technologies, as well as the lack of uniformity among various technology products.

A physician can spend up to $30,000 implementing an electronic health records system. A hospital can spend up to five times that amount. If that weren't enough of a reason to say no thanks, there is one more reason; that is, we don't have a set of national standards in place to make sure that once health care providers have made the switch, their new system can communicate with the hospital or doctor on the other side of town. The result: Only 15 percent of doctors and about 30 percent of hospitals have fully functional electronic health care systems today.

A new study by a number of health care scholars estimates there will be another 20 years before the majority of physicians are using an electronic health care system.

Let me say this. Our Presiding Officer is from Louisiana where they went through a terrible situation a year ago with Katrina. The folks who happened to be civilians and were in hospitals or nursing homes, for the most part, they had paper health records and they were destroyed. The veterans who were on the gulf coast when Katrina struck--either in nursing homes, VA nursing homes, or VA hospitals-- were evacuated from the area as civilians were; but when the veterans got to another VA facility inland, or a nursing home, or a VA hospital, their electronic health records were available immediately, and whoever provided care for them had access to the records and were able to provide excellent care.

I am sorry to say that the same wasn't true for the civilians whose paper records were largely destroyed at the time of the evacuation.

As a nation, we cannot afford to rely solely on health care providers to bring the health care industry into the 21st century. We must think outside of the box and build on the health information technology issues already underway in other areas of our health care industry.

The Federal Employee Electronic Personal Health Records Act of 2006-- the legislation Senator Voinovich and I introduce today--does just that. How? By requiring all carriers that contract with the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program to make available an electronic personal health record for those of us who are enrolled in that program. As I said earlier, it is some 8 million people.

Electronic personal health records will provide enrollees with a tool to better access and control their health information. Via the Internet, an enrollee will be able to log on to their

electronic personal health record to keep track of such things as their medications, cholesterol, glucose levels, allergies, and immunization records.

An enrollee will also be able to review a comprehensive, easily understood listing of their health care claims. Health care providers, payers, and enrollees will be able to add this information onto the electronic personal health record. Enrollees will benefit, I believe, significantly from such a tool.

An enrollee can easily share sections of the electronic personal health record with their health care provider, ensuring that their provider has the most up-to-date and accurate health information when making clinical decisions.

In the case of an emergency, an enrollee can also grant others the ability to access their electronic personal health record. Again, it is the decision of the patient, the enrollee in the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program, to decide what kind of access to grant to a provider or a member of the family or another person in the wake of an emergency.

Having health information readily available will increase the efficiency and safety of health care for enrollees by eliminating unwarranted tests, procedures, and prescriptions.

Most important, the legislation ensures that the electronic personal health records provided for through this act are kept private and secure.

The electronic personal health records are required to include a number of security features. They include, among other things, user authentication and audit trails.

The legislation also requires that carriers comply with all privacy and security regulations outlined in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which we call HIPAA.

Mr. President, what Senator Voinovich and I are introducing today will help demonstrate the importance and utility of health information technology--not just the importance of the technology but the importance of harnessing the technology--in the delivery of health care in this country today. In this case, the potential is as many as 8 million additional Americans.

This bill is designed to jumpstart this new technology by requiring some of the largest health insurance companies to offer these electronic personal health records, which many are beginning to do today. As more insurance companies, health care providers, and consumers use this new technology, I am convinced that more people will recognize its advantages, and we can more quickly move America's health care industry into the 21st century.

We view this initiative as the next necessary step for the Nation's largest employer-sponsored health insurance program that prides itself on being a model for best practices in health care.

I invite my colleagues to join Senator Voinovich and me as we introduce this legislation. We look forward to talking with our colleagues about it. With luck, maybe we will have a hearing. Senator Voinovich may hold one in his subcommittee this month.

Mr. President, I rise today to announce the introduction of a piece of legislation that Senator Voinovich of Ohio and I have worked on for a while. It is called the Federal Employees Electronic Personal Health Records Act of 2006. This bill makes available--or would make available--electronic personal health records for every enrollee of a Federal health benefits plan who wishes to have one. That is, potentially, as many as 8 million people. That includes those of us who work in Federal agencies, large and small, across the country and, actually, around the world. It includes their families and includes Federal retirees and their families as well.

Our health care sector is the most innovative in the world, but it has not kept up with the information age. Our excessive reliance on paper record keeping makes our health care system less efficient, more costly, and more prone to mistakes. Expanding the use of health information technology shows promise as a way to improve both the cost and the quality of health care in our country.

In 2004, the United States spent some $1.9 trillion on health care costs.

That is more than any other industrialized country on this planet. In 2005, health care premiums continued their upward trend, increasing by an average, I am told, of some 9 percent. We are literally spending trillions of dollars on health care, but I am sorry to say we are not getting the gold standard of treatment or results.

A 2005 survey conducted by the Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation that focuses on improving health care, found that medical error reports rates in the United States far exceed those of western countries. In that survey, one in three Americans reported getting the wrong dosage of medication, incorrect test results, mistakes in treatment, or late notification of test results. That is nearly 15 percent higher than similar results in Britain and Germany.

I believe some of the problems--though certainly not all of them--can be blamed on the fact that health care providers don't have full and real-time access to patients' medical records. Doctors in this country wait days sometimes for couriers to deliver lab tests or x rays. They diagnose patients without knowing their full medical history, what they are allergic to, what kinds of surgeries they have had, or whether they have complained about similar symptoms before.

Time constraints, or medical necessity, often force doctors to perform a quick diagnosis. Sometimes that diagnosis wrong. Sometimes those errors prove to be costly. The widespread use of health information technology, the ability to immediately access one's full medical history from a computer, can help doctors and nurses provide better care less expensively. It has the potential to dramatically transform the way we provide health care in America--saving lives, saving costs.

If we are looking for success stories on how health care professionals have integrated the use of electronic health care records into their daily routines, we don't have to look any further than our own Department of Defense and our Department of Veterans Affairs.

Times have changed since I retired from the Navy some 15 years ago. I remember that as an ensign I used to carry my medical health records in a brown manila folder from duty station to duty station--from the time I left Ohio State, on to Pensacola, Corpus Christi Naval Air Station, out to California, across the seas and back again, and, finally, getting off of active duty and coming to Delaware to enroll in graduate school, on the GI bill, at the University of Delaware in the business school. I went up the road to the VA hospital. I still had my folder with the records. I turned them in and asked: What kind of benefits am I eligible for?

Over a decade ago, the Department of Defense and VA decided there was a better way, and the results have been nothing short of phenomenal. Today, when a patient enrolls in the Department of Defense's military health system, they no longer need the kind of brown manila folder I carried all those years. Instead, we have electronic health care records to keep track of the medical histories of those who serve our country in the military. This health record is managed electronically, and you don't have to remember to pack it up on your next tour of duty, whether it is in Southeast Asia, or Iraq, or Afghanistan.

Instead, one's electronic health care record follows them wherever they go--both during the time they are in the military and when they leave and join our veterans community as a veteran.

The result is that the Department of Defense and VA have been impressive, especially when you consider that they have only used these electronic health records for about a decade or so.

The VA health system has transformed itself from a troubled, sometimes bloated and inefficient operation to one of the best health care operations in the country.

Researchers and doctors now laud the VA for having the foresight to use electronic health records to improve patient care.

What is the cost? That is a good question. It is about $78 per patient. That is roughly the cost of not repeating one blood test. In other words, it is money well spent.

The VA now regularly outperforms Medicare and other private health plans when it comes to providing patient care for diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart attack victims.

In January, the National Quality Research Center concluded that for the sixth consecutive year, the VA health care system outranks the private sector for customer satisfaction.

I have witnessed that new-found satisfaction in my own backyard, at the Veterans Medical Center in Elsmere, DE. That is the place I went in 1973 fresh out of the Navy. Veterans from neighboring States are now coming to our hospital in Elsmere to seek care instead of going to regular civilian hospitals near them.

In 2004, the Elsmere facility, as well as popular satellite clinics in Millsboro and Seaford, DE, served more than 22,000 veterans and had more than 150,000 outpatient visits. Both totals are about 20 percent higher than just 4 years ago.

Normally, you would think the busier a hospital is, the less satisfied customers are because of longer waits and other hassles. But it turned out that the opposite is true. As the workload has climbed, so has patient satisfaction. I might add, so has the satisfaction of those providing the care to the patients.

More than 85 percent of Delaware's VA outpatients said they were ``highly satisfied'' with the care they received. Planning is now underway to open a third outpatient clinic for veterans in Kent County next spring--probably in Dover where we have another 15,000 veterans.

What is keeping the rest of our Nation's health care system from following the lead of the Department of Defense and the VA? The answer is the high cost of implementing the latest information technologies, as well as the lack of uniformity among various technology products.

A physician can spend up to $30,000 implementing an electronic health records system. A hospital can spend up to five times that amount. If that weren't enough of a reason to say no thanks, there is one more reason; that is, we don't have a set of national standards in place to make sure that once health care providers have made the switch, their new system can communicate with the hospital or doctor on the other side of town. The result: Only 15 percent of doctors and about 30 percent of hospitals have fully functional electronic health care systems today.

A new study by a number of health care scholars estimates there will be another 20 years before the majority of physicians are using an electronic health care system.

Let me say this. Our Presiding Officer is from Louisiana where they went through a terrible situation a year ago with Katrina. The folks who happened to be civilians and were in hospitals or nursing homes, for the most part, they had paper health records and they were destroyed. The veterans who were on the gulf coast when Katrina struck--either in nursing homes, VA nursing homes, or VA hospitals-- were evacuated from the area as civilians were; but when the veterans got to another VA facility inland, or a nursing home, or a VA hospital, their electronic health records were available immediately, and whoever provided care for them had access to the records and were able to provide excellent care.

I am sorry to say that the same wasn't true for the civilians whose paper records were largely destroyed at the time of the evacuation.

As a nation, we cannot afford to rely solely on health care providers to bring the health care industry into the 21st century. We must think outside of the box and build on the health information technology issues already underway in other areas of our health care industry.

The Federal Employee Electronic Personal Health Records Act of 2006-- the legislation Senator Voinovich and I introduce today--does just that. How? By requiring all carriers that contract with the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program to make available an electronic personal health record for those of us who are enrolled in that program. As I said earlier, it is some 8 million people.

Electronic personal health records will provide enrollees with a tool to better access and control their health information. Via the Internet, an enrollee will be able to log on to their

electronic personal health record to keep track of such things as their medications, cholesterol, glucose levels, allergies, and immunization records.

An enrollee will also be able to review a comprehensive, easily understood listing of their health care claims. Health care providers, payers, and enrollees will be able to add this information onto the electronic personal health record. Enrollees will benefit, I believe, significantly from such a tool.

An enrollee can easily share sections of the electronic personal health record with their health care provider, ensuring that their provider has the most up-to-date and accurate health information when making clinical decisions.

In the case of an emergency, an enrollee can also grant others the ability to access their electronic personal health record. Again, it is the decision of the patient, the enrollee in the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program, to decide what kind of access to grant to a provider or a member of the family or another person in the wake of an emergency.

Having health information readily available will increase the efficiency and safety of health care for enrollees by eliminating unwarranted tests, procedures, and prescriptions.

Most important, the legislation ensures that the electronic personal health records provided for through this act are kept private and secure.

The electronic personal health records are required to include a number of security features. They include, among other things, user authentication and audit trails.

The legislation also requires that carriers comply with all privacy and security regulations outlined in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which we call HIPAA.

Mr. President, what Senator Voinovich and I are introducing today will help demonstrate the importance and utility of health information technology--not just the importance of the technology but the importance of harnessing the technology--in the delivery of health care in this country today. In this case, the potential is as many as 8 million additional Americans.

This bill is designed to jumpstart this new technology by requiring some of the largest health insurance companies to offer these electronic personal health records, which many are beginning to do today. As more insurance companies, health care providers, and consumers use this new technology, I am convinced that more people will recognize its advantages, and we can more quickly move America's health care industry into the 21st century.

We view this initiative as the next necessary step for the Nation's largest employer-sponsored health insurance program that prides itself on being a model for best practices in health care.

I invite my colleagues to join Senator Voinovich and me as we introduce this legislation. We look forward to talking with our colleagues about it. With luck, maybe we will have a hearing. Senator Voinovich may hold one in his subcommittee this month.

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