Floor Statements

Mr. President, I want to spend a few minutes talking about this issue of health care and children's health care, the issue about all the politics that are involved, and the issue about the next election and how you can make somebody look bad because they do not agree that we ought to transfer a large segment of our health care to the Government.

I think it is most important that the American people ought to be asking some questions. Why is it we have a health care program that we are putting out that the President rightly vetoed that pays $4,000 to buy $2,300 worth of care? It is a simple question. We are going to pay $1,700 more than we should to run it through the Government--to buy $2,300 worth of care. That makes no sense. But whoever said Washington makes sense?

As a matter of fact, this bill is more nonsensical than any bill we have passed this year. It assumes that 22 million Americans now have to start smoking to pay the taxes that will pay for this bill. Twenty-two million? Right now we have a problem with the cost of tobacco use in this country and long-term care.

The other situation which has not been characterized is, if you look at the CBO scoring, for any one new child who goes on SCHIP under this bill, one comes off of private insurance. It is one for one. That is what the CBO says. So what we are doing is, we are asking the American taxpayers--but, actually, we are not. We are asking the very children whom we are supposedly going to give care to, to allow us to borrow money now to pay for their care so they can pay a higher tax rate 25 years from now.

This bill lacks integrity in terms of the way it pays for itself. Everybody knows that. It is another little wink and nod from Washington: Yes, we have a pay-go rule. Yes, we are going to pay for it. But, oh, by the way, it costs $121 billion, but we are only going to tell you it costs $35 billion. And, by the way, we don't have the tax revenues to pay for it, so we are going to lie about the tax revenues on it.

It is important that Washington start getting what America has already got; that is, how about some plain words that have to do with our health care situation? If we want to move to national health care, let's have a debate about national health care. Let's talk about the fact that in England the average length of time waiting for treatment for a cancer after it is diagnosed--they are trying to move from 10 months to 3 months. In this country it is 4 weeks. It is 4 weeks. The cure rates for cancers in this country are 50 percent to 100 percent better than anywhere else that has a nationalized health care system. Why is that? Why is it that 80 percent of all the innovation in health care in terms of new medical products, new techniques, new devices, new diagnostics come out of this country's private sector?

Let's have a real debate about national health care. But let's quit lying to the American people that in the name of children we are going to spend their future money to create a segue to national health care.

In the State of New Jersey, well over half the money for children's health care is spent on adults. In the State of Florida, 750,000 kids under 200 percent of the poverty level are not on SCHIP right now. In the State of Texas, 700,000 are not. Yet we are going to create a system to raise--it is important the American people know what 200 percent of the poverty level is. It is $42,000 a year.

What we are saying under the present SCHIP bill--the one that has been extended with the CR--is if you as a family make less than that, we are going to help you out with your kids. But if you make more than that, you ought to be contributing.

This body does not care about kids because it voted against a premium support amendment to allow kids in these higher income families a way to buy health insurance. What we have said is no, we cannot do that. But we can certainly be dishonest about what our intentions are in the rest of the bill.

So as the American public hears all the criticism of those who say: We don't want more Government; we want less; we want the Government we have to be more efficient, more transparent, and more accountable--as they criticize us for those positions, they are going to say we don't care about children.

Do you care about children if you are going to steal their future by undermining their ability to have a future by not paying for and growing the Government and borrowing more and more money? It cannot happen. We cannot give our children a future if we continue to be dishonest with ourselves and dishonest with the American public.

I think President Bush is right on this issue. No. I don't think so. I know he is. One of the reasons we are having difficulty at this time in our country with health care is because 52 percent of the health care now is run by the Government. Why is it a large percentage of people who are now coming on to Medicare--and in 3 years the baby boomers start coming on to Medicare--why is it the vast majority of them cannot find a Medicare physician? Why is that? Could it be that we have promised something we are not going to pay for, so we are going to reimburse at a lower level?

The next thing to come out of this body will be: If you are a physician in this country, you have to take Medicare, just as in Massachusetts you have to take Medicaid. Our health care system ought to be about freedom and choice and personal responsibility, and, yes, it ought to be about helping those who need our help. But, quite frankly, if you are making $80,000 a year in this country, we ought to be about paying off debt rather than paying for your child's health insurance. That is what this bill does. That is what this bill allows.

So we are going to have a debate. We are going to see the political games played out. This bill will not be overridden in the House, and then we are going to have to come back and address it. My hope is when we address it, we will add premium support for those who are on the edge so we can help those who are in private insurance stay in private insurance, we will be honest on how we pay for it. The most disappointing thing about this bill is the lack of integrity and honesty and character in terms of the way it is paid for. It shows the depths of which we fool ourselves and play the game of politics rather than play the game of statesmanship. It is a disappointing aspect, and I would say our approval rating is well earned just on the basis of this bill.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I thank the Senators for the cooperative way in which they have worked with us. I also wish to comment on Senator Landrieu's amendment that was accepted, which eliminated a copay for a matching portion for the COPS Program in areas that don't have the money to match. It is a smart thing that we are doing. It is right. It will come to an end at some time, but until they get back on their feet, we ought to do it.

I wished to spend a few minutes talking about the bill overall. I think even though the chairwoman and ranking member have done a great job with the bill in terms of priorities, I am concerned at the overall spending level, and I think the administration probably will be too. Inflation, last year, was less than 3 percent. In title I, the Commerce portion of the bill, it grows by 13.88 percent, which is 4\1/2\ times the rate of inflation. In title II, the Justice portion, it grows 6.1 percent, which is over two times the rate of inflation. In title III of the bill, in the Science portion, it grows by 8.1 percent over last year's actual appropriation, which is almost three times what the rate of inflation was.

That probably would not be a problem if we didn't borrow $454 billion from our kids last year. It would not be a problem if everybody else had an 18-percent or 13-percent or a 10-percent increase. But the fact that this bill has grown this much says we are going to go down the road again of borrowing additional money.

This is a rationalization, and I admit it. What we are doing is funding this increase this year on the backs of our grandchildren, because if it goes through this way and coming out of conference, and if the President signs it, the increase in spending for the Commerce, Justice, and State Departments will come on the back of future payments of debt for our kids.

The contrast I wish to show is that the average family's income rose less than 4 percent last year. Their taxes aren't going to rise much more than 4 percent, but the taxes on their grandkids are going to rise disproportionately more than that, probably 12 or 13 percent, because we cannot get hold of this Government. That is no reflection on the leaders of this committee. They are given a number, and they have requests out the kazoo from individual members. They have programs that need to be funded, which is very different than the administration. I didn't compare it to the administration's request. I compared it to what we approved last year.

I think it behooves us to look at the overall growth in this bill, and if you applied it to the rest of Government, we grew the Government by about $700 billion this year. We cannot do that. We cannot do it. So I have asked for a recorded vote on the bill because I want to be recorded as voting against this appropriations bill--not because it is not important to fund these items but because we cannot continue to have these kinds of increases in funding when we have grown the Government by 62 percent over the last 7\1/2\ years. That does not count Medicare and Medicaid spending. So I wanted to make that point.

I have a couple of amendments, again, which are directed at directed spending--what we call earmarks. The programs are not bad programs--the very things I am going to outline that I think we ought to transfer money from to something else. But I think people will have a tough time justifying spending on these programs, these directed earmarks, when we should not be spending as much as we are and could be spending it on something that would give us better value for the dollars we spend.

I ask unanimous consent to bring up amendment No. 3243 and make it pending.

I am absolutely fine with that. I will take no more than probably 25 minutes on both of these amendments. I ask unanimous consent that I be given 25 minutes to cover both of the amendments, reserving the remainder of the time if I don't use it, and allowing any opposition the same amount of time, and I will probably not consume that amount of time.

Yes. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, I now ask unanimous consent to call up amendment number 3243.

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

Mr. President, this amendment is straightforward. There is a bill in the Senate that I am presently blocking from a unanimous consent request, which means I am not necessarily opposed to it; but I don't think the bill ought to come to the floor without being voted on or amended. It is the Emmett Till civil rights bill. This bill is designed to increase the emphasis on unsolved civil rights cases.

A year and a half ago, the Department of Justice initiated a new program for that exact purpose. They put staff on it, funded it, and have since gotten 100 referrals from 42 different offices on unsolved civil rights cases that are 50 years old and older. It is something we should be doing and the Justice Department is doing. I don't think we need another piece of legislation and another law to make us do that. The Justice Department has actually shown they didn't need a law. They were actually doing it.

What this amendment does is transfers from six directed spending items--earmarks--to the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division $1.680 million to augment that process. What it will do is allow them to hire additional people to further define and further investigate these older civil rights cases.

This bill has 600 earmarks in it. This relates to only six earmarks. The total for the earmarks is $458 million. Many of the earmarks in this bill don't do anything to advance the priorities or the mission statements of the three agencies we are funding. What are they? A maritime museum in Mobile, AL; Eye on the Sky Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium in St. Johnsbury, VT; Adler Planetarium in Chicago, IL; U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, AL. I have been there; it is a tremendous place. Lastly, the installation of buoys marking the John Smith National Water Trail on the Chesapeake; undersea vehicle for the Mystic Aquarium & Institute for Exploration in Connecticut.

Let's start with the first one. There is $500,000 in this to construct a maritime museum in Mobile, AL. It is probably a great idea, although there are two other maritime museums right now in Mobile. Should we spend $500,000 now, when we are borrowing the kind of money that we are borrowing from our grandchildren, when we are fighting a war we are not paying for and charging to our grandchildren? Should we spend that money now or should we spend the money upholding the law and going after people who violated other people's civil rights? Which is a better value? Which is a better purpose? Which is a better core principle?

I will not go into the details, although I am prepared to do it in rebuttal. There are now 35 maritime museums in the gulf coast region, including two in Mobile. There are funds for this earmark through the competitive grant system. So it is not that this may not even get funded, because it might have to compete with the rest of the museums in the country. Instead, we have directed it.

Earmark offset 2 is for the Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium in Vermont for the Eye on the Sky Program. It is a $300,000 earmark. It is probably a great idea. But is it a priority when we are borrowing money from our grandchildren? Again, this is another program. There is grant money out there for museums. You would have to compete based on the priorities. There is oversight on the grants. On these earmarks, there is no oversight. It can still be funded, on a competitive basis, without an earmark.

The Adler Planetarium in Chicago has net assets right now in excess of $34 million, and we are going to send them $300,000. They have revenues every year in excess of $11 million. There is no reason for us to send that money there now if we are borrowing it from our grandkids. I will limit my debate on that.

One of the things I will tell you--and I will put up a chart. Here is what the Administrator of NASA said about directed spending for earmarks:

The growth of these Congressional directives is eroding

NASA's ability to carry out its mission of space exploration

and peer-reviewed scientific discovery.

We are taking away the core mission of one of our premier scientific inquiries in this country when we send money. The redirections as a result of congressional earmarks included half of NASA's education budget, one-twentieth of the exploration budget, and one-twenty-fourth of their science budget. So it is not a small amount with which we are impacting NASA.

The fourth earmark: Spies and Rocket Center in Huntsville, AL. We should know that the State of Alabama is going to have in excess of a $2 billion surplus this year. Let me say that again. The State of Alabama is going to have in excess of a $2 billion surplus this year. They had a $1.7 billion surplus last year. I would think that maybe they ought to fund this instead of our grandchildren.

This is a $500,000 earmark for the Space and Rocket Museum. I have been there. It is a great thing. You ought to go see it. It is well worth your time. But it is something I believe should not be in the priority when we are borrowing the money.

There is $500,000 for an interpretive buoy system. It is a great idea with great historical significance but probably not right now. Should we be spending this money if we are borrowing it against our grandkids? Should we be spending this money when we are growing the budget, this appropriations bill by 11 percent? I don't think so.

Finally, $450,000 for an undersea vehicle in Mystic, CT. This is part of the Mystic Aquarium in Mystic, CT. They could apply for a competitive grant with all the rest of the States and probably get it. It is not a bad idea. It is probably a good idea. It probably promotes tourism, probably enhances the experience at that museum. But, again, is it a priority when we are not funding the war and we are not paying for our excesses and, in fact, probably the greatest moral issue of our day is stealing the future from our grandkids? It is not any of the other social issues. They wane in comparison to taking opportunities from our next generation.

I also advise that the State of Connecticut, according to Connecticut's Comptroller, Nancy Wyman, has a $350 million surplus. So they are not running a deficit; they have a surplus. They could easily grant $500,000 for this museum.

The point of this amendment is let's put dollars where they ought to go and let's stop spending money on lower priorities. It is about priorities. It is not about what is a good program and what is a bad program. It is about what is the greatest priority.

The greatest priority is to ensure people of their civil rights. It has to be greater than these. There cannot be a greater priority than securing the future for the next generations, except we are not going to do that with this bill.

I reserve the remainder of the time I have under the agreement.

Mr. President, first of all, I would concede the value of what Dr. Ballard has done. But the question isn't whether this should get funded; the question is, Who should fund it?

National Geographic made $15 million last year. They are a nonprofit organization. They had revenues of over $1 billion. The State of Connecticut is going to have over a $300 million surplus. I don't doubt that this is a very worthy cause. The question is and what the American people are asking this body to do is to start making priorities out of priorities.

I think this is a very valid project. He is one of 11 resident scholars for National Geographic. I have studied the issue. It is not about whether it is a priority for them. The question is, Who ought to be paying for it? In a time when we don't have any money, when the dollar is sinking, when we are spending more and we are already funding a war and charging the war to our kids, what we are setting up is we are going to continue to do things that don't have to be done by us when somebody else could do it. Consequently, we are going to borrow the money.

There is half a billion dollars worth of earmarks in here, I would say to my friend from Connecticut, and all of them have some merit. The question is, Who should be paying for some of these? There are competitive grants on museums that are run well by this Government. They are very competitive. They can get the $450,000 through a competitive grant. They can apply for that. There is oversight on that. There is a competition among priorities when we do that and run it. When we put it in directly, we, No. 1, consign our kids to paying for it, and No. 2, we don't put the responsibility on anybody else.

Now, if this is really necessary, National Geographic will stand up and put the $450,000 into it, or if it is important to the education and instruction in the State of Connecticut, with a $300 million surplus, they can put in the $450,000. But our choice here today is, we are just going to charge it to our grandkids.

We don't have this money. This bill has grown by almost 10 percent over what we funded last year. If you took all the directed earmarks out of it, we would be growing by about 4\1/2\ percent. So it is important for the American public to see the impact when we direct spending.

The purpose of this exercise--and I will continue to do this as long as I am in the Senate--is to try to force us into making the hard choices we really don't want to have to make. I believe this committee did a good job of setting the parameters and trying, but there is a new standard, and the standard has to be, would you put in your own money? That is the standard we ought to go by because what we are really doing is transferring the cost of all these things to two generations, and it goes completely opposite of the heritage of this country.

D-day starts January 1, 2008. You know what D-day is? It is the first year of the baby boomers. It is the first year we start going down the tubes on Medicare and Social Security. And we can't even bring a bill to the floor that constrains spending to 4 percent or 5 percent--1\1/2\ times inflation. The American public doesn't have that option with their budgets because they do not have an unlimited credit card. We just increased the debt limit on this country by $950 billion. Five times since 1997 have we done that. When a child is born today, not counting that debt, which is $30,000 per man, woman, and child, there is $400,000 worth of unfunded liabilities lying on each of those children.

My point is, and I will quit talking about it--and I am not going to offer the second amendment--we need to wake up and see that we can't do everything we would like to do. We ought to be doing what is absolutely necessary and we ought to be paying for this war. We ought to be making the hard choices and paying for the war.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I will be on the next airplane with you.

Mr. President, I objected to a unanimous consent request to pass S. 535/H.R. 923, the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act. I objected, not because I disagree with the well intended motives of the legislation, but because the authors of the bill refused to work with me to make some commonsense changes.

Let me be clear, I absolutely support the goals of this legislation and believe that those who committed civil rights crimes must be brought to justice, but I believe that we can and must do so in a fiscally responsible manner.

Just last week, the Senate voted to increase the Federal Government's debt limit to $9.815 trillion. It is beyond irresponsible to pass any bill that will add to this debt that will be inherited by our children and grandchildren. Even our best intentions need to be paid for with offsets from lower priorities or wasteful spending.

On February 5, 2007, I sent a letter to my colleagues outlining my intent to object to any legislation authorizing new spending that is not offset by reductions in real spending elsewhere. I strongly believe that Congress should stop borrowing and spending beyond our means. Instead, Congress, like all families, ought to prioritize spending and reduce less important spending when greater priorities arise.

S. 535/H.R. 923 violates two of the principles that I outlined in my February letter. These are: If a bill authorizes new spending, it must be offset by reductions in real spending elsewhere; and if a bill creates or authorizes a new Federal program or activity, it must not duplicate an existing program or activity.

This bill authorizes unpaid for new spending and creates a new government program that duplicates existing government efforts. Both of these concerns could be easily addressed if the sponsors of the bill were interested in securing its passage.

In June of this year, my office contacted the bill's sponsors to suggest possible offsets so that I could give my consent--but there was no desire, at the time, to amend the bill. This was unfortunate because last Congress, when Senator Jim Talent was the lead sponsor, he agreed to include offsets in exchange for my consent, but the compromise language was opposed by an unidentified Senator.

It is also unfortunate because there is no shortage of potential offsets for this bill within the Department of Justice, which would administer the proposed program. The bill authorizes $12 million each year for 10 years. The Department has $1.6 billion in unobligated balances, which are funds that have been appropriated but which there are no plans to spend. In fiscal year 2006, the Department spent $45.9 million on conferences, a 34-percent increase since fiscal year 2000. The inspector general examined just 10 conferences and found that the Department spent an estimated $1.5 million on food and beverages. This included paying $4 per meatball at one lavish dinner and spreading an average of $25 worth of snacks around to each participant at a movie- themed party. It is estimated that the current fiscal year 2008 Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations bill contains congressional earmarks totaling $587 million and the bill exceeds the President's request by more than $2 billion. Clearly, there is wasteful spending that can be reduced to pay for this program.

Just like American taxpayers, Congress needs to learn to pay for what it spends. This is a reasonable expectation but one that has been ignored by Washington politicians who tend to put off difficult decisions and, as a result, have charged up a $9 trillion debt.

This bill also creates a new Federal program that duplicates an existing Federal Government initiative that seeks to address unsolved civil rights crimes. The Department of Justice and the Civil Rights Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation are currently working with States and nonprofit groups to pursue unsolved civil rights era crimes that resulted in death.

In February 2006, the FBI began an initiative to identify hate crimes that occurred prior to December 1969, and resulted in death. Since then, the Bureau's 56 field offices began to reexamine their unsolved civil rights cases

and determine which ones might still be viable for prosecution. To date, they have identified nearly 100 case referrals. Furthermore, the U.S. Attorney General and the FBI Director announced a partnership with the NAACP, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the National Urban League to investigate unsolved crimes from the civil rights era.

I am very supportive of this effort and I am also encouraged that these cases are currently being pursued.

On August 2, 2007, I sent a letter to the Attorney General requesting more information about these efforts to ensure that any legislation passed by Congress would assist the Department to meet its goals. I am awaiting a response.

I do believe that solving these crimes is imperative to remedying past injustices and ensuring future justice. These types of crimes should never have been and never again tolerated or ignored.

I also believe that because of the nature of the crime, the time elapsed, and the fact that many witnesses and potential murderers have moved to different States, this is an area of the law that rightly requires Federal assistance.

Consequently, it is my hope that the bill's sponsors will support my efforts to find funding for this worthy program. It is unfortunate that such a well intentioned effort is being held up because Washington politicians refuse to live under the same budget rules that every family in America adheres to. In the meantime, the American people can rest assured knowing that the Department of Justice and the FBI are already conducting the investigations that this bill seeks to address.

I object.

Mr. President, I thank the leaders of this bill for the time to speak.

I am kind of flabbergasted at the last talk. I am one of the physicians in this country who has cared for kids on Medicaid. I have actually delivered over 2,000 babies on Medicaid. I have actually done well-child exams.

We have the Senate lecturing the President, and we should be lecturing ourselves. The debate on this bill is not about children. There is not anybody in the Senate who does not want to cover and continue the present SCHIP.

What this debate is about is how do we move toward national health care. That is what this debate is. So immoral? Is it immoral to spend $3,000 to buy $1,500 worth of care, like we are going to do in this bill? Is it immoral for the Senate to say it only costs $35 billion and then totally take a program that is costing $12 billion a year 5 years from now and cut it down to $700 million and say we met the budget rules, when in fact we did not? That is immoral. What about the children who are going to pay for the deficit associated with this bill?

I have actually cared for these kids. My practice has been a Medicaid-based practice and a SCHIP-based practice. The holier-than- thou attitude that if you oppose this bill, you do not care about children is completely disrespectful to those of us who happen to disagree, who maybe think a better way to cover children would be the Burr-Corker bill, which gives a tax credit to every kid in this country that covers enough to give them insurance and takes that Medicaid stamp off their head, since only 40 percent of the doctors in this country will cover SCHIP kids and Medicaid kids.

So the debate is not about the President being immoral. It is not about tax cuts. The real immoral fact of this bill is we are winking and nodding again to the American people that we are going to spend $121 billion over the next 10 years--not $60 billion over the next 5 years--$121 billion, and we have no way to pay for that. We had a $444 billion deficit last year. We could have paid for the war and decreased the deficit if this body would have had the courage to eliminate duplicative and fraudulent programs. There is no holier-than-thou attitude to go after those programs because they have an interest. As politicians, we do not want to upset anybody.

So it is easy--the greatest pleasure in the world is to spend somebody else's money and to claim it is in the name of children. I have been on the ground with children. I have taken care of the poorest of the poor. We have a pregnancy component in this bill. Title 19 now is at 300 percent of the poverty level in this country. We have people dropping their insurance to qualify for title 19. We do not need pregnancy covered in the SCHIP bill. It is already covered. But we claim that to rationalize to make the bill better.

I have no disrespect for people in this body who claim they want national health care, government-run national health care. Well, American public--guess what--if you think health care is expensive now, wait till it is free. Wait till it is free. That is exactly what we are doing with this bill.

We can reauthorize SCHIP, and we can make it higher than a $5 billion increase to truly cover those kids who need it. This body rejected an insurance contribution component amendment I offered that would actually expand further the number of kids.

The other point that is not being made is, for every kid you cover who does not have health insurance today, you are going to drop another kid from health insurance that is being paid for by their parents, and they are getting no benefit in terms of a reduction of their health insurance. So what we are doing is shifting taxes to those same parents to pay for a program, twice as much money for the benefit we will get for the kids.

I am not against well-child exams. I am not against immunizations. I give them out of my pocket of my own practice now for free. They cost me an average of $146 a kid.

The claim of superiority that somehow if you do not want to have this bill you do not care for children is gobbledygook. What about the kids in the future who are going to pay for the mistakes we are making? What about the kids who are born today who owe $400,000 on our unfunded liabilities? We have done that. If we care so much about kids, why aren't we fixing that problem? They are never going to get a college education or own a home, and they are never going to have health coverage because we will have bankrupt this country by the way we do not control how we spend money.

So to be lectured and lecturing the President because, finally, he is exhibiting some fiscal responsibility into the future, and us to play games on the true cost of this program, that is what is immoral. It is not the President being immoral. The fact is it is not our money, it is the money of the people of this country, and we are going to decide we are going to spend money and not tell them what it is really going to cost because that is what this bill does in the outyears, the 6th through the 11th year of this bill if we cut this program to $700 million a year.

Now, nobody in their right mind will honestly say we are going to let that happen. So if we are not going to let that happen, how about being honest with the American people about the true cost of what we are doing? It is $121 billion. It is not $60 billion. Even the staff admits that. Both the Democratic and Republican staff admit that.

For us to sit up here and claim it is only a $35 billion increase-- well, only a $35 billion increase is a 120-percent increase in the program, just a 120-percent increase in the program.

We ought to have a debate about national health care and how we solve the problems of health care in this country. There is a way to solve it. It is to make sure everybody in this country has access and give them the freedom and the power to choose what is best for them rather than us tell them what they have to have. That is the debate we ought to have.

This is a farce. This debate is a farce. It is a farce about saying we want to

cover more children, when we are really taking children who are already covered and putting them under a government program and then charging those children's kids for the cost of the program. That is what we are doing. It is not about caring for kids. It is about lying to the American public about what this program does.

So I do not have any hard feelings about the fact that people want to have national health care and a government-run program, but let's have the debate about what it really is and not have a debate demeaning the President when he finally stands up and says we have an obligation, for the next few generations, to start doing it right, and finally he is starting to do it right. And now we are saying he is immoral. Of the 10 million kids, 5 million already have coverage. We are going to ask the American taxpayer--in spite of what we are doing, in spite of the fact we borrowed $434 billion--we are going to load that on them.

They already have coverage. They already have immunization. They already have well-child care, and we are going to add that cost to the American taxpayer. Do you know who that taxpayer is? That is that child's child because we are not going to pay for it. We are going to refuse to be responsible. We played the game of pay-go on this, the great pay-go rule, where we now bastardize our own ethics to say we paid for something, knowing we did not. Because nobody in this body believes this is going to go to $700 million 5 years from now. Nobody believes that. Everybody knows that. So everybody knows we are telling an untruth to the American people about the true cost of this program.

I care a ton about my patients. But I also care enough about this country to be able to speak the truth about what we are doing. And what we are doing is absolutely untruthful in how we characterize the spending on this program. You can debate that. I will debate that all day with anybody up here. This body knows I know our numbers, and the numbers on this bill are untruthful.

So what we ought to say is, we think we ought to expand the SCHIP program, and it costs $121 billion. Let's have a debate about what it really costs. That is why the President says we should not do it. And we should not go to 300 percent, and we should not have adults on a program where in many States it consumes 75 percent of the dollars.

I will readily grant you, we have a big problem with health care in this country. One of the major reasons we have a big problem with health care in this country is government-run health care programs that drive the cost and the overutilization in many areas where we cannot function properly.

What is happening today in our country with quality of care is because we have so much government run. We have physicians trying to see too many patients. The one thing we are taught in medical school is, if you will listen to your patients, they will tell you what is wrong. Right now, 8 percent of the cost of health care in this country is associated with tests we order that no patient needs. It is because this body will not look at the malpractice situation we have in this country and the liability situation and fix it to where it truly represents a system where people who are injured are taken care of. What we have is a system that games it. So consequently we are all paying 8 percent more for health care because providers have to order tests to cover their backside.

The other thing we know is another 3 percent of the cost of health care is associated with tests that doctors are ordering because they are not listening well--$50 billion worth of tests that people do not need because we will not take the time to listen to them.

I will summarize and finish my point with this: Washington has an 11- percent approval rating for a very good reason. Because we do not deserve to be trusted, because we do exactly what we are doing on this bill. We are lying to the American people about what it costs, who it will cover, and how it will be delivered.

Now, some other details of the bill are debatable, but those facts are not debatable, and the American people, hopefully soon, are going to wake up to the dishonesty and the farce that we perpetrate on them as we debate those issues.

Let's have a debate about national health care. Let's really debate it. Let's look at the options. Our bill, in several other places--the Burr-Corker bill, the Universal Health Care Choice and Access Act-- gives everybody in this country an equal tax credit. Everybody gets treated the same. You want to punish the millionaires? Take away some of their tremendous excess tax benefits from health care. But we would not do that. We do not have one person who will come forward and say: Let's equalize the Tax Code on the other side. Let's equalize the Tax Code so everybody has the same shot. Let's let a market help us access that. Let's make sure it is 100 percent access. If you do not have access, you cannot have care.

This bill is not going to provide that much access. Fifty percent of what it does has to do with people who already have access. Those are not my numbers. Those are Congressional Budget Office numbers.

So let's be honest about what we are doing. Let's talk about health care. If we want to go to national health care, if we have the votes to do it, then let's do it. But let's do not, under the guise of helping children, expand national health care. This Senator will vote to reauthorize a higher level of funding for SCHIP to cover kids who are truly poor--those who don't have access. I will help anytime, any way to do that. That has been my practice. That has been my heritage. That has been my history in caring for poor folks in Oklahoma. But I am not about to go along with a lie, that what we are doing is something different than what we say we are doing.

With that, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, this evening we have a choice to make that is a true reflection of whether this body has been listening to the American public. We are about to increase the amount of money we can borrow against our children's future by $850 billion. That is almost $1 trillion. What does that say about us? That we can't do what we ask every other American family to do, which is live within our means. It is not about parties. Both parties are guilty. But it is about priorities, and it is about choices.

Many of us know that our approval rating is at an alltime low--11 percent. We have a chance tonight to change that. We have a chance tonight to raise that. We have a chance tonight to prove to the American people that we are listening.

A new Gallup Poll put it this way:

Americans now express less trust in the Federal Government

than at any time in the past decade and trust in many Federal

Government institutions is now lower than it was during the

Watergate era, generally recognized as the low point in

American history for trust in the Federal Government.

Think about that. How is it that we got ourselves to that position? How did we slip to a level below the Watergate era?

I would like to finish my statement, and then I am be happy to yield to the Senator from Vermont.

One reason is Americans believe we are totally out of touch with the realities they live with every day in terms of budgeting and spending. What I often hear in this body, both by statement and by action, is that we really do not have to choose between two priorities because we can do both. The American people can't do both, but we can do both. How can we do both? What we do is we ignore the choices we have and lay our responsibility on generations to come. That is how we do both. We do not do what is required of us in terms of oversight, eliminating fraud, eliminating duplicative programs, eliminating programs that do not work, that have no metrics. That, by the way, comes to $200 billion worth of fraud, waste, and abuse which has been documented, every year, that we spend, that we are not working on, we are not trying to eliminate. But what we are about to do, because we failed to do that, we are about to increase the amount which our children and grandchildren are going to have to repay.

The problem is there is nobody outside this body who thinks that way--only inside. In the real world, people have budgets they have to live within. Their choices have consequences, and we choose to make the consequences happen to our children and grandchildren rather than accept the consequences. What has made this country great has been the heritage of sacrifice we have seen by multiple generations that have come before us. We are now denying that heritage, as we in this body refuse to accept the responsibility placed on us to make hard choices.

Tonight, we are going to have a vote and we are going to raise the debt limit and we are going to really say: Children, we don't have the courage to do what we need to do, whether it is raise taxes or cut spending or both. We don't have the courage to do that. But we are cowardly enough to shift it off onto you.

That is what it really is. We don't want to go against interest groups that are invested in something that isn't working. We don't want to eliminate the $53 billion a year that is estimated to be fraud in Medicare and Medicaid. We don't want to do anything with the excess 41,000 properties the Federal Government owns that cost us $18 billion a year but we won't do anything with them. We will not do what is necessary and sacrifice so that we can secure the future.

We are going to raise the debt limit because both parties, mine and the leadership party, have refused to restrain spending.

This will be the sixth time since 1997 that the debt limit has been raised. At the same time, earmark spending has skyrocketed. It is over half a trillion dollars in the last 10 years. There are no competitive bids on earmarks, no accountability, no followup, just gifts. Some are great priorities, but there is no system of economic controls.

My own party did a lot to create this mess. In 2005, 82 of my colleagues said building a bridge in Alaska was more important than repairing the bridges in Louisiana.

We said that. This body said that. Last week I asked my colleagues to make a number of choices. I offered an amendment that said until we fix our at-risk bridges and our high-risk highways that will account for 13,000 deaths a year, we ought to delay earmarks until we make that a priority. We lost that vote 82 to 14.

I offered an amendment to prohibit funding on bike paths and horse trails until we have done the same thing. We lost that amendment 80 to 18. I also attempted to strike funding for a peace garden, construction of a new baseball stadium, and a visitor's center, bipartisan amendments. We chose to say, no, we can do that rather than build and restore our highways and bridges.

What is as bad as the choices we make are the choices we ignore. And that is the very real need to do extremely heavyhanded oversight on the waste, fraud, and abuse that occurs every day within the Government that we supposedly have our hands on.

I know we could cut discretionary spending by at least 10 percent. Okay? That is $100 billion a year if we got together and said we are going to work on these programs together. But we are not going to do that. What we are going to do is keep pointing fingers at one another rather than at ourselves and raise the debt limit.

We are not going to do that hard work. I believe the American people are sick of it. Families across America do not have the luxury of loaning themselves new money when they have maxed out their credit. But that is what we are going to do. There is no credit limit for us. One is coming. It is coming as we have seen the price of the dollar fall recently. We will certainly see it fall further in the future. There is going to be a cost.

What this vote means is, instead of using this year's appropriations cycle to trim waste, to decrease spending, reduce the national debt, all we have done is made the problem worse.

First, we have not passed any bills through Congress. The bills that are in conference, with the exception of one, are at 5 to 6 to 7 percent above last year's spending level. So we have admitted we cannot do it. Only weeks after passing a brandnew ethics law, the Senate has now decided it is okay to add new earmarks in authorizing bills. We have also decided that instead of making sure we know the identity of earmarks, how much money it is, what is it going for, and who is going to get it, we only say: I am offering it, and I do not have any pecuniary interest in it. What we told the American people was a sham. We are not doing what we said we were going to do.

Instead of spending our time trying to figure out how to continue to raid the Federal Treasury without getting caught, I believe we ought to be doing our job. Congress should pass individual appropriations bills at a level less than last year, with the waste, the fraud, abuse, and duplication out of them. But we are not going to do that.

The vote on the debt limit gives Congress another opportunity to demonstrate to the American public that we do have the courage and the ability to fix what is wrong with this ship. By voting for this debt limit, what you are telling the American people is, you do not have the courage to fix what is wrong here. We do not have the courage to do the oversight that is necessary.

Whether it is the $40 billion worth of waste, at least, a year in the Pentagon, or the $43 billion a year wasted on Medicare and Medicaid through fraud, or the $18 billion we are spending on buildings that we do not want, we do not have the courage to do that.

What we should be doing is tearing up the credit card and, through not passing an expansion or extension of the debt limit, start acting like every other American family has to do and start making the hard choices even if it offends some of our constituents, because the constituents who matter the most, as we continue the heritage of this country of creating opportunity, are our children and grandchildren.

My real hope is this debt limit expansion does not pass tonight, that we all get to reflect on that; we come together, Democrat and Republican, and say: We have not done a good job. Let's

make a pact that we are going to do the oversight, that we are going to cut the programs, that we are going to lower spending. It does not matter what President Bush wanted. We have the power of the purse. We can decrease spending.

Will we do that? Unfortunately, my belief is we will not because, quite frankly, we are interested in the next election more than we are interested in the next generation, and to that, shame on us.

I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sanders.) The Senator from North Dakota.

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, this is a very simple amendment. We voted to increase the debt limit. We have a project that the Department of Justice, the DEA, and all the other drug enforcement agencies say is ineffective.

I am going to give you some quotes from the people who worked there and what they had said. Former official of the Drug Czar's office put it bluntly: ``We see nothing from this.''

The former, most recently resigned, Director: ``I recognize that many of the reports were god-awful, poorly written, poorly researched, and in many cases just plain wrong.''

Jim Milford, former NDIC Deputy, admitted: ``I have never come to terms with the justification for the NDIC, and the bottom line is we actually have to search for a mission.''

These are good people who work there. It is not about them. It is about whether we are going to be prudent with the money we spend. They have one program that is effective. It is called DOCX. The problem with it being where it is, is it cannot be applied there, it has to be applied at other drug intelligence centers and the other DEA centers throughout the country.

The administration, the Department of Justice, the DEA and all the other drug centers, especially the one in El Paso, is where this information ought to be processed.

We have spent half a billion dollars and gotten very little return. It is a recommendation that we have a chance to do something. We have a chance to eliminate a program that is not effective by any metric that the Government has applied or the former Directors have applied or the Deputy Directors have applied who have worked there, saying it is not effective.

My hope is this body will approve this amendment and start us down the road of eliminating programs that are ineffective.

I reserve the remainder of my time.

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

What you did not hear is what is the mission of the NDIC. It has no mission. That is the problem. The agency running this center says it should be closed--for very good reasons. It does not have an international mandate. They have had people fired because they are doing things that are outside of what restricted mission they have.

The one program that works is DOSX, and those people who are functioning with DOSX have to go to wherever the information is, which they are extracting in the investigation. None of that is done in Johnstown. So if they travel, it doesn't matter where they start.

The point is, the people who work there, who have run it, the people who are managing it, and the rest of the Drug Enforcement Agency and the rest of our drug intelligence says it has no mission. It has accomplished very little. I rest my case and would appreciate a vote.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending motion and amendments be set aside, and that amendment No. 2196 be called up.

It is.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be given 30 minutes to speak on this subject. I have every intention of speaking less than that, but this is to allow me the flexibility to do so.

I also plan on reserving that time until such time as we come back from our policy luncheon.

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

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

Mr. President, I have an amendment pending. This is a straightforward amendment. Over the last 10 years, we have spent a half-billion dollars of Defense Department money on a program run by the Justice Department that has achieved probably the least of any program in the entire budget of the Department. This is the National Drug Intelligence Center. It came into being initially through directed spending on a Defense appropriations bill. The reason for adding this amendment to the authorization bill is to preclude any further money on spending on this intelligence center and only allowing money to shut it down and have it consolidated with other intelligence centers.

If we think about what $500 million could be doing for us now in the Defense Department in the true defense of our Nation and then look at the history of this center, this isn't about trying to direct things against any group of people or any Congressman or Senator. It is about the commonsense view that we ought to be spending money in a prioritized way that gets us results.

By any measure--anyone's measure--including the Justice Department, all the other national drug intelligence centers--all of the others-- the former directors of this intelligence center, and the directors of others, this intelligence center has been looking for a mission and has accomplished very little.

Of the two things they have accomplished, one is highly expensive and not accurate. The other is the investigation of intelligence information captures on drugs and could be well done at any other facility we have.

The Department of Justice believes the drug center's operations are duplicative and reassigning their responsibilities would improve the management of counterdrug intelligence activities and would allow for funds to be spent on the additional hiring of more drug enforcement officers. So we are going to have anywhere from $30 million to $40 million a year continued to be spent on this center. What this simply is, in the authorization, is a prohibition that we will not do this.

When the Department of Justice, which is charged with running this center, says it does not work, it is not effective, it is not accomplished, and should be consolidated, we have to ask the question: Why does it continue? It continues through the force of directed spending in the Defense appropriations bill.

Now, how is it we have drug enforcement funded through the Defense Department to give the money to the Department of Justice to run a program they say is ineffectual? The whole purpose for this amendment is to not castigate anyone but to say: Shouldn't we be spending the money more wisely? Shouldn't we be accomplishing, with that $500 million we already spent, something of value to the American taxpayer rather than something not of value?

This amendment would protect Defense dollars from being misspent and improve the management of our counterdrug intelligence efforts by eliminating the wasteful spending. It would also direct the necessary funds to close the NDIC. It also would say any activities that might be performed by the center that are deemed necessary, which are minimal-- let me emphasize that again: minimal in terms of all the experts we have throughout the rest of the Government--that they would, in fact, be transferred to the appropriate agencies.

In 2002, this intelligence center received $42 million--$39 million, $44 million, $39 million, $38 million, $39 million--for a total of $509 million since its inception. It is duplicative, it is unnecessary, and it is unworkable.

Even the former director said: Most of the time the work was shoddy, of poor quality, and quite often wrong. This is the same director who is no longer there--a Mr. Horn--who was admonished by the Department of Justice for his excessive spending while he was there, on travel, on international things that had nothing to do with the NDIC's goals or direction.

Mr. President, there have been numerous articles written, two of which I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record, one being a complete dossier on this agency from US News & World Report.

I quote from the Centre Daily News of this last June:

. . . the NDIC has persisted, despite lingering questions

about its effectiveness in coordinating the efforts of

federal authorities to collect and analyze intelligence on

the domestic trafficking of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine,

and other drugs.

What is at stake here? Running this center means we will not have enough DEA agents--and we do not. Running this center continues to spend $30 to $40 million a year that could do great things for our military. Why would we not want to redirect or at least prohibit the continued funding through this Defense authorization bill?

Now, there are going to be some claims: Why are you doing this here? Why aren't you doing it on an appropriations bill when it comes through? We cannot have it both ways. We heard in the debate on WRDA that authorizations matter, and it is important for us to have priorities. So the claim is you should not be doing this here on the Defense authorization but, rather, on the appropriations bill. The authorization is the place to do this, to limit the expenditure of funds on something that does not pass muster by anybody's standard.

So it is my hope that consideration will be given to this amendment, and that we will truly have the courage to make a vote to spend money wisely. To continue to spend money on this center means we are going to continue to throw $40 million away, according to the Department of Justice, which runs this center, in something that will not give them any benefit.

I cannot think of a greater thing we could do than to start doing this and look at every program such as this that is not accomplishing any goals. There are no metrics to measure it, other than what the Department of Justice says.

There will be claims saying it has programs that work. They have some programs, but they are highly expensive. They are not as efficient, and they are always late. So over the 12 or 13 years this center has existed, only two of those programs have been successful, and they are not as successful as the other programs within the Department of Justice in this very area. So it is hard to justify the basis for this center.

Amendment No. 2999

Finally, Mr. President, I want to spend a minute talking about the Webb amendment. One of the things we know is that we do not do a good job on contracting. I know some of the Members on my side of the aisle perceive the potential for this commission to be used in a political framework. I am not worried about that. I do not think it is intended to be used in a political framework. I think it is intended to hold the agencies accountable for how they spend the money and whether we are going to get a handle on our contracting procedures, both through the State Department and the Defense Department so we can see we actually get value for the money we spend.

I am highly supportive of the amendment because I think it is going to give us transparency, it is going to give us recommendations, and it is going to make clear where we have confusion now in how we contract and whether we get value for our money.

With that, I reserve the remainder of my time and yield the floor.

Mr. President, would the Senator from Pennsylvania mind answering a couple of questions before he leaves?

No. 1, I would note, just on the hate crimes legislation, that the perpetrators of the heinous crimes against Matthew Shepard had full justice carried out against them. That is true, is it not?

Were they prosecuted, I guess, and did they receive significant punishment?

The second question--and I want to make sure you understand as the author of this that it doesn't say anything about Johnstown, PA, which has great folks. This amendment isn't about the people of Johnstown, PA, and what they can offer. They offer great things to our country, and it is not meant to degrade or delineate anything other than the utmost respect for them.

What this amendment is about is, are we getting the value for what we are spending? And all you have to do is look at what the Department of Justice says, which is running this program, and what the DEA says, and what every other intelligence-run enforcement center is saying: that, in fact, there is not added value for the dollars that are spent there, and anything that is a positive contribution could be more effectively utilized at some other center.

So it is not about the people of Pennsylvania and it is not about who did it or whether we all shouldn't try to get a Federal facility to help areas that are economically depressed across the country. That is not a bad idea. There is nothing wrong with that. The purpose of this amendment is to delineate that there is not good value for the half a billion dollars we have already spent and that taxpayers could get more value out of less money if, in fact, we did what the professionals and everyone else has said, including former directors of that center.

I thank the Senator for answering my question. I guess my debatable point is the offering of the value, in the judgment of the professionals who are running all of the Department, including the Department of Justice and the DEA, which says it doesn't measure up. That is my point. That is why I brought the amendment. It doesn't denigrate the work of the people there.

The fact is, if we are really going to continue to send $30 million to $40 million a year, let's find them something that will give us better value. If we choose not to support this amendment, let's give them direction so that the $30 million or $40 million we do invest actually brings us something that is worth $30 million or $40 million.

And it is not the employees there who are at fault. In fact, the direction and the mission has been one that hasn't been accomplished because it wasn't needed in the first place.

I thank the Senator for his words and his courtesy in answering my questions.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Will the Senator yield so I can respond to the Senator from Pennsylvania and then we can get this off the floor?

A couple of points. You should be down here defending this. This is something in your State and it is appropriate that you do. The point I raise is the HashKeeper system is ineffective and doesn't work near to the way every other component works. We know it doesn't work, and it costs about 18 times what the NARL system does, plus the NARL system is admissible in court and the HashKeeper system is not, which is developed by the NDIC.

So there is no question that some of the work they do is valuable. But every example you cited was the DOCX program, which requires anybody there to travel somewhere else. So the location doesn't matter where.

The other point I would make--and the significance of that is we are not, overall, getting as good a value as we could. The idea is not to relocate this to Washington, what the Justice Department is recommending this DOCX portion of it be where it needs to be--which is all across the country--and the rest of the areas that are deemed vital, which is about 10 percent of what the NIDC does, be relocated to El Paso where the drugs come in, where our border is, and where they need it.

This is not a criticism of the people who work there or everything they do. What it is, the amendment as made is intended to give us a perspective about value that we are not getting. I have great respect and consider a friend the Senator from Pennsylvania. I understand his defense of this program. I do not believe it meets the scrutiny of any commonsense objective when you look at it, and what the Department of Justice, which runs it and manages it, and also the fact that in a time of war we can spend a whole lot less money and have that money available to defend this country.

I thank the Senator for listening to me.

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

Mr. President, I want to spend a few minutes talking about something that will come up in the next week or 10 days. That is an extension and expansion of the debt limit. An attempt will be made to do this by unanimous consent. That is wrong. Every Member of the Senate ought to be on record on whether we ought to expand again the amount of borrowing we are going to place on the backs of our children and grandchildren. The current statutory debt limit is $8.965 trillion. It was last raised March 20, 2006. This Senator voted against that. We have been on notice since that time that we needed to make the effort to rein in wasteful Washington spending so that we do not have to, in fact, borrow more money against our children's future. Only 10 years ago it was $5.95 billion. We have increased the debt in the last 10 years by 50 percent.

What does that mean? Individually, that means $30,000 for every man, woman, and child. But the important aspect is not just what we owe now but what the unfunded liabilities are for the future which are in excess of $70 trillion. What does that mean if you are born today? That means if you are born today, you will be inheriting at the moment of your birth liabilities of

over $400,000. How in the world can our children have an education, a great job, own a home, and give their children the things we have benefited from by being born owing $400,000?

It is time for things to come to a stop or to markedly change. This last week the Senate once again failed to make tough decisions about priorities. We chose to fund pork projects instead of repairing bridges. We said peace gardens, bike paths, and baseball stadiums are more important than critical infrastructure. Yesterday a new poll was released. Rightly so, it reflected less than 11 percent of Americans have confidence in this body. It is no wonder. Our priorities are wrong.

Congress for years has raided the Social Security and Medicare trust funds to hide the true size of the annual budget deficit. This practice has undermined the solvency of the programs and threatens both the retirement security of today's workers and the economic opportunities and future of our children and grandchildren. It is irresponsible to simply raise the debt limit while at the same time creating or expanding Federal programs that will result in additional borrowing from Social Security trust funds and not accepting the responsibility to make hard choices about what are our priorities. Congress has repeatedly demonstrated that it is unwilling to prioritize spending. This year multiple times the Senate has rejected amendments to cut spending while authorizing billions and billions of dollars in new spending. The Senate this year twice has rejected amendments stating that Congress has a moral obligation to offset the cost of new Government spending by getting rid of the waste, fraud, abuse, and duplication in current Federal programs.

American families don't have the luxury Congress has. They can't get a new loan or new credit cards after they have maxed out their capability to borrow. Yet instead, every day in this body we do essentially that.

The moral question is, why should we be proud of stealing from our children? There isn't a greater moral question before this country today than whether we are going to steal opportunity and freedom from the next generation.

I am putting the Senate on notice that I will not agree to a UC on the debt limit extension without a debate and full vote by each Member of this body on that debt limit and a recommitment to do what is right for the future.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, today the full Senate will probably agree to legislation--H.R. 3580, the Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act of 2007--that constitutes a massive overhaul and expansion of the Food and Drug Administration's authorities. Up until a couple days ago, determining the scope and details of the bill was an open and bipartisan process. Unfortunately, all of that changed at the eleventh hour and we were locked out of discussions to determine what a final product would look like. Now we are forced to either accept what we do not fully agree with or cause thousands of FDA employees to lose their jobs. This is not the way to ensure that we ``get it right'' with drug safety.

While this bill achieves the important and necessary objectives of reauthorizing the Pediatric Research Equity Act, the Best Pharmaceuticals for Children Act, the Pediatric Medical Device Safety and Improvement Act, the Prescription Drug User Fee Amendments, the Medical Device User Fee Amendments, and establishing a scientifically- based surveillance system for drug safety risks. There was still important work to be done to complete a bipartisan product. Because of unfair Democratic Majority tactics I and my colleagues have no opportunity to further amend and perfect this legislation.

Furthermore, I am frustrated that certain important provisions were removed from the final language of the bill at the last minute. We lost a provision to provide incentives for developing new antibiotics--a disastrous decision at a time when we are seeing a huge rise of antibiotic resistance in this country. Last minute negotiators also refused to recognize that patients desiring marijuana for medical purposes deserve to know critical information about whether or not marijuana can be safely used. Finally, the final bill did not contain an important Senate-passed resolution to protect American pharmaceutical companies' intellectual property rights around the globe.

This legislation is a very delicate balancing act. No drug is completely safe--otherwise a doctor's prescription wouldn't be needed-- but we do have to ensure that lifesaving medicines are able to get to patients. New authorities in the area of Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies, REMS, labeling, and postmarket commitments should not be taken lightly. These new authorities we are giving the FDA need to be used based on a measured assessment of risk vs. benefit in the intended patient population. For instance, labeling changes should only be undertaken when reliable data clearly shows safety problems that are not already reflected in the drug's label. If that data happens to come from a third party unknown to the application holder they should have the opportunity to review it along with the Agency so that appropriate labeling changes can be made based on sound science.

Another new authority granted to the FDA in a REMS is possible restrictions on distribution and use. If used, this restriction has the potential to impede patient access to important therapies and therefore should not be imposed where less burdensome approaches are available. This concept of a ``less burdensome approach'' is an important one and it is essential that product manufacturers have the opportunity to present alternative proposals to the Agency that would accomplish the goal of safety without imposing unduly restrictive actions to products and ultimately to patients. This legislation establishes that the FDA will not limit or restrict distribution or use unless a drug has been shown to actually cause an adverse event. We absolutely need FDA to have all the tools necessary to ensure the safety and efficacy of drugs, but doctors need tools as well, and one of those important tools is new drugs on the market. I appreciate the significant changes that were made in this language of the bill between Senate HELP Committee markup and full Senate consideration. These improvements remain in the final bill and are critical to ensure that physicians--not the FDA--can make risk/benefit decisions with their patients.

This bill ensures that the FDA has broad and exhaustive authorities to make sure that drug companies are doing the right and scientifically-justified thing when it comes to drug safety and the labeling of their drugs. This authority is placed rightly in the hands of highly-trained scientists at the FDA. It is clear that Congress relies on the scientists at the FDA to assess safety risks and drug labeling and this should be squarely and solely the FDA's role-- that is why we have spent months and months trying to get this issue of drug safety right. The newly expanded role of the FDA does and should preempt State law when it comes to drug safety and labeling. In order to ensure scientific drug safety the last thing that we need is the regulatory nightmare of every State court being a mini-FDA.

Let me be clear, the FDA is the expert Federal agency charged by Congress with ensuring that drugs are safe and effective and that product labeling is truthful and not misleading. Appropriate preemption of State jurisdiction includes not only claims against manufacturers, but also against health care practitioners for claims related to dissemination of risk information to patients beyond what is included in the labeling.

Product liability lawsuits have directly threatened the FDA's ability to regulate manufacturer dissemination of risk information for prescription drugs. I note a recent case in California, Dowhal v. SmithKline Beecham, where trial lawyers tried to assert that a drug company had failed to warn consumers that nicotine-replacement products allegedly cause birth defects--even though there wasn't scientific evidence to back that up. In this case, the FDA had previously told

SmithKline Beecham that they should not include such an unscientific warning in its label because it would clutter up the label's warnings that actually were scientifically justified. A California court asserted that more warnings were always better. Subsequently, that assertion was overruled unanimously by the California Supreme Court as the FDA again asserted that its scientific judgment should prevail. The case was not properly before the court by operation of the doctrine of primary jurisdiction. Unless State law is preempted in this area, State law actions can conflict with the FDA's interpretations and frustrate the FDA's implementation of its statutory and scientific mandate.

Should the FDA's scientific judgment on drug safety and labeling be set aside, we would risk eroding and disrupting the truthful representation of benefits and risks that medical professionals need to make decisions about drug use. As a physician, I know that exaggeration of risk can discourage the important and right use of a clinically therapeutic drug. Superfluous liability concerns can create pressure on manufacturers to expand labeling warnings to include merely speculative risks and limit physician appreciation of potentially far more significant contraindications and side effects.

I note that the FDA has previously stated that ``labeling that includes theoretical hazards that are not well grounded in scientific evidence can cause meaningful risk information to `lose its significance.' Overwarning, just like underwarning, can similarly have a negative effect on patient safety and public health.'' In this bill, we have created a clear labeling pathway between the FDA and a drug sponsor in this bill to ensure that consumers get scientifically accurate and appropriate warning of drug safety risks.

Furthermore, if not preempted in drug safety information and labeling, State law could conflict with achieving the full objectives of Federal law if it precludes a firm from including certain labeling information. If a manufacturer then complies with State law, the firm would be omitting a statement required under Sec. 201.100(c)(1) as a condition on the exemption from the requirement of adequate directions for use, and the omission would misbrand the drug under 21 U.S.C. 352(f)(1). The drug might also be misbranded on the ground that the omission is material within the meaning of 21 U.S.C. 321(n) and makes the labeling or advertising misleading under 21 U.S.C. 352(a) or (n).

While it is true that a manufacturer may, under FDA regulations, strengthen a labeling warning on its own, it is important to understand that in practice manufacturers typically consult with FDA before doing so. Otherwise they could risk enforcement action if the FDA ends up disagreeing.

Some misunderstand the FDA's labeling requirements to be a minimum safety standard and have used State law to force manufacturers to supplement safety regulation beyond that required by FDA. I want to be clear that the FDA's labeling requirements establish both a ``floor'' and a ``ceiling.'' Therefore, risk information beyond what is required by the FDA could be considered unsubstantiated or otherwise false or misleading. Given the comprehensiveness of FDA regulation of drug safety, effectiveness, and labeling additional requirements for the disclosure of risk information are not necessarily more protective of patients.

Finally, I want to specifically comment on language in H.R. 3580 that includes a new mechanism to further encourage the timely and accurate communication of new safety information on prescription drug labels. That mechanism reiterates the FDA's primacy in determining the content of prescription drug labeling, including through the new power to command a safety labeling change. New section 505(o)(4)(I) also makes clear that this enhanced safety labeling mechanism does not affect the obligation of a company to maintain a drug product's labeling in accordance with FDA's regulations, including 21 C.F.R. Sec. 314.70. This provision is meant to confirm the basic obligation of a drug's sponsor to propose--or, in some cases, make--changes to the approved labeling to reflect changes in the conditions established in the approved application and/or new information. Nothing in this rule of construction changes that obligation or FDA's ultimate authority over drug labeling; nor is it intended to change the legal landscape in this area. That is because there is an overriding Federal interest in ensuring that the FDA, as the public health body charged with making these complex and difficult scientific judgments, be the ultimate arbiter of how safety information is conveyed. In this manner, there can be confidence that uniform drug labeling conveys clear, consistent, and scientifically justified safety and medical information.

In fact, the courts have repeatedly upheld FDA's supremacy over prescription drug labeling in cases brought under State law. Nearly 20 years ago, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit emphasized that ``. . . manufacturers cannot change the language in the product insert without FDA approval,'' and accordingly ``[i]t would be patently inconsistent for a state then to hold the manufacturer liable for including that precise warning when the manufacturer would otherwise be liable for not including it.'' Hurley v. Lederle Labs. Div. of Am. Cyanamid Co., 863 F.2d 1173, 1179 (5th Cir. 1989). As a more recent Court expressed this bedrock principle, allowing a State to decide what warnings are appropriate, and thus potentially subject companies to liability for otherwise FDA-approved labeling, would upset the careful benefit-risk balance that FDA has struck in approving a product for market, and doing so would ``undermine FDA's authority to protect the public health through enforcement of the prohibition against false and misleading labeling of drug products in the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act.'' Sykes v. Glaxo-SmithKine, 484 F. Supp. 2d. 289, 312 (E.D. Pa. 2007) (internal quotation omitted) .

citizens' petitions

Mr. President, my reason for offering amendments is not in opposition to this bill's goal. I think the Senator from Ohio and the Senator from Hawaii know that. But there are two really blatant things wrong with this bill.

There is a limited amount of money. Everybody will agree we have allocated--it is going to be about $38 million this year that is going to go for this program. That is what the spend-out is going to be. Right now, 20 families who make over $1 million a year are taking an opportunity from 20 families who are below the poverty level. Twenty families right now with household income greater than $1 million a year are taking this program. Why would we have a program that says to the richest in this country that we are going to pay for their college education and we are going to do it on the backs of the poorest in this country? These 20 people who are in college today whose families make more than $1 million a year are stealing an opportunity from 20 kids. Nineteen percent of the District lives under the poverty level. So we are taking from them because we do not have an earnings test on this program.

I put in an amendment, which I am going to call up in a minute, because it is ridiculous to think that somebody earning $1 million a year cannot afford to pay for their kid's college. But the amendment should have been at $300,000 or $400,000 a year, because when you extrapolate that number, you get 400 or 500 kids who are now taking the opportunity from kids who have no income or are living below the poverty level.

So the idea of helping people in the District and enticing people to come to the District to get an education is a great idea. There is not a thing wrong with this program. But it is very shortsighted to say we don't want to put an earnings test on something because it might change the program. The fact is the program is being changed by the wealthy taking advantage of it to the disadvantage of the kids who can't get this grant.

I read in the paper this morning that the House is going to object to a million-dollar-per-year earnings test on this program. Just do a little finger commonsense poll and talk to the American people. Do they think their taxpayer dollars ought to be spent on sending somebody to college whose parents make $1 million a year? The answer to that is a resounding ``no.'' So why would we have any resistance at all in the House or this body to putting an earnings limit at $1 million? It makes no sense.

The second problem with this bill is we have discriminated against historically Black, private, nonprofit universities because they are private: Morehouse State, Spelman College, Stillman College, Tuskegee. Yes, we will let you go if you are from Washington, DC, if you want to go to those, but we are only going to give you $2,500. We are not going to give you $10,000 because it is a private nonprofit. We are going to limit your ability to embrace your culture at one of the historically Black colleges because it happens to be a private, nonprofit university. We are going to say you can only have $2,500. And by the way, if you have a good reason that you might want to pursue a field of study that is not offered at one of the universities, the State publicly supported universities, but is offered at a private college, we are going to discriminate against you again. We are going to say we will give you $2,500.

What we are doing is we are putting a carrot out there and saying, you can't quite get to the carrot. You can't quite get to that carrot. Why would we

discriminate against private and nonprivate, if a child wants to seek a certain level of education that is not available anywhere except that? If we want opportunity for these kids, we ought to give them opportunity and we ought to let the choice be theirs. Let them choose where to go.

If they want to go into bioneurologic sciences, where can they get that? A private university. They can't get it at a public university. If they want to go into some other area that is not available to them in a public fashion, through a public university, we are going to say, yes, you can, but you get 75 percent less benefit than everybody else gets because you choose to go into a field of endeavor that may be highly sought after but it is not offered at a public university.

So the idea behind the bill is good. The goal of increasing what the chairman and ranking member wanted to do in terms of DC is right, it is right-headed, but if we were thinking about how do we help the most kids, we wouldn't let the first dollar go to parents making $500,000 a year or $300,000 a year. We would let it go to the kids, this 20 percent of the population who lives under the poverty level. That is where we would send the money.

What we are saying here is, in the namesake of not wanting to change and not allow the flexibility for more impoverished children to get that college education, we don't want to change. We don't want to allow a young African-American male to go to Morehouse College, because we are going to give him $7,500 less a year to go there than if he chose some other university. Why would we not want to enhance that culture for him?

Amendment No. 2888

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that any pending amendment be set aside, and I call up amendment No. 2888 and ask for its immediate consideration.

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

Mr. President, this is the amendment that says, let's don't discriminate against the private schools. Let us let the kids go where they want. Let us give them an equal shot at Morehouse, at Tuskegee, at Spelman, and Stillman. Let us let them have an equal shot to go there as well as everywhere else. We have decided you can't. We are going to make you more disadvantaged to go to someplace that is culturally better for you.

So I would ask reconsideration on the part of the chairman and the ranking member for this amendment. It makes sense, it is equal, and it treats every sought-after degree the same. We don't discriminate between private and public. It doesn't change where the restrictions are already. It doesn't say every private university in America can have it. What it says is, if we are going to hold this apple out in front of you and say here is your education, we are going to give you a fair shot whether you want to go to a private school or a public school that is on the list. We are going to treat you the same, and we are going to hope that no matter which one you attend that you finish that education and come back and become a productive citizen contributing to

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

Mr. President, this amendment says if you make $1 million a year, we shouldn't be paying for your kids to go to college. The rest of the American taxpayers shouldn't.

I am disappointed to hear from the House that when they get this, when we get to conference, they are not going to accept it. It is amazing to me that anybody in this country would think that the Federal Government--all of us collectively--ought to pay for their children's education. If we are going to do that, then let us pay for everybody's education across the country.

But that is not what this bill is about. This bill is about trying to direct funds to those kids who won't have an opportunity for college without these funds. And by giving those funds to the well-to-do families who do not need or require our help to send their children to college, we are stealing opportunity from those kids. There is a limited amount of money. Everybody knows that. There is a limited pie here. And for those 20 times 50,000, that $1 million is not going to be spent on somebody living below the poverty level wanting to get out and wanting to move up.

I understand it is the chairman and ranking member's opinion that they will accept this amendment, so I graciously thank them for that, and my hope is you would hold this as we discuss this with the House. It is ludicrous to take this away from people who don't have means.

Mr. President, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?

Will the Senator yield for a question?

Do the people of upper income in Ohio pay higher taxes in the State of Ohio?

So the people of Ohio, who send their children to Ohio State, even though they pay in-State tuition, actually pay more for that college because they pay a much higher percentage of the State budget and the State of Ohio, similar to the State of Oklahoma, has decided that with that increased income, we will grant everybody. But it doesn't cost the same. So the argument is, in terms of the difference in incomes: Those people who make exceptional incomes in Ohio and Oklahoma actually pay more for their kids to go to college in their States because they pay a much higher percentage of the total income taxes in the State.

The second point is I think the Senator is right. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. This is one of the rare programs that ought to be expanded, but we have terrible priorities in this Senate and in this Government. So we will not take another $10 million to make sure more kids go and get rid of some duplicitous earmark somewhere that is a favor for some politician somewhere so we can, in fact, enhance it.

This is a very straightforward amendment. It says why would you discriminate against somebody who wants to go to a private college over a public college? That is what we are doing. The answer is because we don't have enough money. That is the answer. The answer is we do not have enough money, so therefore, if we give the same amount of scholarship to private schools as we give to public, we would not have enough money for 886 people who are getting a full boat now.

The answer to that is here is a program that is working, here is where we ought to have priorities, here is where we ought to be putting more money rather than less. But the answer, our closed-minded answer in Washington is: That is all the money we have. Even though this is working and a lot of other programs are not working, we are not going to defund those programs that are not working. We are not going to measure with a metric whether they are effective. We are going to let them go. Here is a good program that is making a difference in people's lives, and we are not going to go fight for more money.

To me, that says it all about where we are in Washington today.

I will finish up with this. I thank the Senators for their debate and points of view.

The reason the average is $6,500 is because you only give $2,500 to the private. If you took all the private schools out, the average would be $10,000. That is what you get. So to play the game with numbers is not accurate because when you filter in the $2,500, you get that average of $6,500.

I would make the point again, you, in fact, are discriminating against a young DC minority child who says I want to go to Morehouse State, and I want to major in X at Morehouse State. I know heroes of mine who went to Morehouse State.

Under this bill, you say you can't do that. They may be bright, but $2,500 compared to that education, versus $10,000 in public, doesn't begin to accomplish the level of financing and scholarships--it will be next to impossible. I ask you to reconsider. The intent of what you are trying to do--we can, in fact, appropriate more money for this. If I and George Voinovich and Danny Akaka go for a spending increase on an appropriations bill, that will make history in the Senate. That would make history. We could do that. We could find the money to do that.

The point is, why should we take away opportunity? Why should we be the parlayers of somebody's lost opportunity? We ought to give it to all, it ought to be equally based and ought to be based on their aspirations, their hopes for what they want to do. We should not artificially say because you want to go here, this is all the opportunity you get. But if you want to go somewhere that doesn't excite you, doesn't stimulate you, isn't going to give you as good an education, we will give you more money.

I think that is inherently wrong and disadvantageous to the very people we are trying to help. Not only should we want them to get the education, we should want them to get the best education, so they can be the best that they can be.

I will yield the floor.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, this is a block of three amendments. It is not a great deal of money, but it certainly will send a message to the American people about our priorities. We can build a new visitors center in Louisiana, where 7,000 people are still displaced from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. We can add on to a baseball stadium which has already run over, and the money is to compensate for the overrun--a priority versus building bridges--or we can markedly expand and remodel a peace garden on our northern border. I would put forward to the body that these are not priorities right now. They are not priorities, when our true deficit this year is going to be about $400 billion. We are going to charge to it our kids. We have the largest deficit and out-of- compliance bridges in our history. Yet we are going to make a choice to spend money on these rather than higher priorities. The American people don't have that luxury with their own budgets. We should not be taking that luxury with their money either.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank the Senators for their hard work on this bill. As the tragedy in Minnesota showed, priorities are important.

I notice Senator Bond referred earlier to the IG's report I had requested on the Department of Transportation.

I must thank both the inspector general and Secretary Peters for their forthrightness and plain-spokenness in this report. The report is pretty significant. I wish to spend a few minutes talking about it.

First, I want to show the American people the significance of where we stand on the National Highway System. This doesn't have anything to do with States; this is national highways--designated national highways or interstate highways--in terms of the structurally deficient bridges in this country. This is from the U.S. Department of Transportation. These are not my numbers. As you can see on this chart, throughout the country--and it is emphasized in the most populous States, with the exception of Florida--we have significant problems when it comes to bridges. I contend that it is not necessarily too low of a gas tax that has created this; it has been a lack of priority.

I have several amendments I plan to offer to this bill. However, I will probably limit those if my overall first amendment passes.

There were several key points that the IG made and the Secretary of Commerce commented on when it comes to earmarks. Probably the most important of those is that earmarks, when they are made, don't fully account for the cost of those earmarks. As a matter of fact, the IG found substantial reduction in all of the other programs throughout the Department of Transportation because of the underallocation of the moneys necessary to complete an earmark.

What does that mean? It means that when we put an earmark in-- authorized or unauthorized--and we say it costs $100, what the Department of Transportation is finding is that often it doesn't cost $100; because it is mandated by law, we spend $150. That $50 goes out of the rest of the programs at the Department of Transportation; therefore, it cuts. They talked about this as overearmarking, not in terms of the numbers but earmarking a result without putting in the dollars to do it. I think there is a comment on one of these charts out of the IG's report which states just that.

Here is another chart. It says:

99 percent of the earmarks reviewed by the inspector

general bypassed merit review.

What does that mean? That means had they not been earmarked, they would not have been a priority in a State transportation project and would not have met a priority of the standards the DOT has on highways and bridges--there are five. Only 1 percent of the earmarks placed in the appropriations bill actually pass or meet merit review. The very thing our States do is sit up and say: This is how we want to prioritize spending in our States for safety and infrastructure in terms of transportation. These are not my words; these are the IG's words from the Department of transportation:

7,724 out of 7,760 transportation earmarks in 2006 were not

subject to the agency's priority ranking, review, or

selection process, or bypassed the States' normal planning

and program processes.

So it comes back to the point, why don't we have all these bridges inspected, and why did we see a tragedy in Minnesota? It is because we failed; the bridge didn't fail. We failed to put in the proper amount of money, and we failed to put priorities on what is most important for our transportation sector.

Here is the next chart. Here is another point the IG made:

Recent Department of Transportation reauthorizations have

included a significant number of specific projects with

associated funding directed to specific State and local

agencies or locations. For example, the current Department of

Transportation authorization for surface transportation

accounted for 6,474 of the Department of Transportation's

8,056 earmarked projects for FY2006.

We are taking money away from the priorities the States and Department of Transportation have that are out there and are transparent, and we are moving them away. That means there is less money for the tremendous number of bridges that are structurally deficient right now in our highway system.

How do we solve that? How do we meet the needs? The State of North Carolina has somebody up here full time to make sure that when an earmark is requested, it meets the State's guidelines. The State Department of Transportation of North Carolina has to lobby its own members to make sure the requests are within the guidelines of the priorities of the State of North Carolina.

How did we get to the point that we disconnect priorities to the fact that we want to help a certain group that is outside the priorities of our State but inside the priorities of our political purposes? I think we need to reexamine what we are doing. I think we need to reprioritize.

The fact is that a lot has been said about the tragedy that happened in Minnesota. I honestly believe President Reagan was right in 1982 when he vetoed a Transportation bill that had 11 earmarks. His point was that these take away from the priorities. Those 11 earmarks have grown to over 8,000 now. So each year, we have lessened the priorities of safety and efficient transportation to help us politically.

Better planning and prioritization of existing transportation funds could improve road safety and bridge safety. Realize that 13,000 people a year in this country die because of inadequate or poor-quality roads--Federal roads, not State roads. What are some of the things we do with transportation dollars? We build transportation museums, we build bike paths, we build parking garages. We have multitudes of earmarks that are anything except a priority for safety for transportation in this country.

Amendment No. 2810

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to call up amendment No. 2810.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment and call up amendment No. 2810.

This amendment is an earmark moratorium until all bridges are repaired.

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

Mr. President, what does this amendment do? This amendment does not get rid of earmarks. What this amendment does is it delays earmarks. What it says is that for all the earmarks we have had, both authorized and through the appropriations process, unless they are going to build and fix structurally deficient bridges in this country, or they are going to improve a highway that brings it up to standards, that makes it safe, we ought to delay the implementation of those earmarks until we have solved this problem.

How many more bridges have to collapse until we get the message? How many more people have to die until we get the message? The Minnesota bridge that collapsed was noticed in 1990 as being structurally deficient. In 1999, the State department of transportation in Minnesota said there needs to be a priority on this bridge, and yet we did not respond.

The earmark that should have been made was for the repairs for that bridge, and yet they were not made.

This amendment is very simple. I know it goes against the grain of a lot of the processes we use, but it makes common sense that if we are going to forego another Minnesota tragedy, we have to change our priorities.

All this amendment says is the priorities ought to be the safety of the American people and quality so that 13,000 people do not die this next year on roads that are not within the quality classified as ``good'' or ``acceptable.'' All we do is say let's put our priority where it needs to be right now. Let's set the priority for making sure there is not another Minnesota.

My State leads the Nation in the percentage of bridges that are classified as deficient. Oklahoma, as a State, has never received back what it has paid in to the transportation fund. As a matter of fact, there is over $1.8 million that we have paid in that we never received back. But we have disproportionately shared that in other areas. My State does not begrudge this point. The fact is, our State is small compared to the Northeast and the west coast in terms of structurally deficient bridges.

The point ought to be: How do we change the priority, how do we respond to the concerns of the American people over what, in fact, has to be the right priorities for transportation?

A couple of actions can be taken on this amendment. We can vote it down, and we can say safety and bridges and safe roads are not a priority, but museums and bike trails and theaters and parking garages are because they help us politically. Or we can adopt this amendment and send a message to the American people that: We hear you, we understand what you are saying, and we agree that your safety ought to outperform and be above our political necessities and our directed spending.

This does not limit any directed spending for any of these bridges or any of the Federal highways that will move them to good or acceptable. So in terms of transportation, it will not eliminate anything that is important to our safety, important to repairing the infrastructure in this country.

The third action that can be taken on this amendment is that we can pass this amendment, and because it is not liked, it will get trashed in conference. So we can all look good by voting for this amendment, but if we do not insist on this amendment when we get to conference, we will have winked and nodded to the American people again. We would have brought our numbers down by not paying attention to what their concerns are. And, most importantly, we will keep American drivers and pedestrians and passengers at risk.

I hope the chair and ranking member will agree to this amendment, will accept it, and fight for it in conference. I believe we should vote on this amendment. This is an amendment we ought to have a vote on in the Senate. I believe it is about time we start getting our priorities right.

I yield the floor for the present time and wish to speak on this amendment later.

Madam President, I appreciate the words of Senator Bond, although I was misquoted. I don't like any earmark.

I accept that authorized earmarks have, in fact, been reviewed by an authorizing committee, but I would make a couple of points. This year, the appropriators will spend $188 billion appropriating money for something that has not been authorized. So you can use that as a debate tool, but the fact is, the authorizers have limited influence over the Appropriations Committee because they will spend 20 percent of our discretionary budget on items that are not authorized by the authorizing committees.

The other point I would make is that the Senator will get a chance to vote against bike paths because I have another amendment that eliminates funding for bike paths until we have restored the bridges. This amendment cares for the roads that Senator Bond just made a point of. The fact is, this amendment allows the money to bring roads up to quality and safety standards. So it would not eliminate where the 13,000 people die in this country from unsafe and poor quality national highways; it will, in fact, allow those to happen.

What it would not allow is $600,000 to be spent on horse-riding facilities in Virginia; a snow mobile trail in Vermont of $5.9 million; parking for New York's Harlem Hospital of $8 million; $532,000 for a bicycle and pedestrian trail in Tennessee; a daycare center and park and ride facility in Illinois; dust control mitigation for rural Arkansas of $3 million; the National Packard Museum in Ohio, $2.75 million; a historical pilot project in Washington for $200,000. I think we are going to have trouble convincing the American people those things are a higher priority than bridge safety in this country. And that is just a small example of the congressionally directed spending in this bill.

So I don't deny that those may be priorities, but what I would state is they are lower priorities than safety on our roads and rebuilding our bridges and making sure our highways are safe. And I would wager that the vast proportion of Americans, by far, would agree with that statement. We have lost our way if, in fact, we are going to fund these things at the expense of not funding bridge repair in this country.

I think the projects that are funded, many of them, a great many of them, fit into the priorities of restoring bridges and highways, but many don't. And the question around this amendment is, Will we do that which is the highest priority for us?

It is kind of like the war. We are spending about $8.5 billion a month. But whose money are we spending on the war? We are spending our children and grandchildren's money because every bit of it has been outside the budget guidelines, so it goes straight to debt. The point is, we don't have the money right now to do some of the things we would like to do because we should be doing the things that we need to do. And the things we need to do should be the highest priority for the American people. That certainly isn't horse-riding facilities in Virginia or a snow mobile trail in Vermont.

Madam President, I yield back and hope to speak again on this amendment.