Floor Statements

Mr. President, I wish to announce that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions will meet in open session on Thursday, March 29, 2012 at 10 a.m. in SD 430 Dirksen Senate Office Building to conduct a hearing entitled ``FDA User Fee Agreements: Strengthening FDA and the Medical Products Industry for the Benefit of Patients.''

For further information regarding this meeting, please contact the committee on (202) 224 7675.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on March 21, 2012, at 10 a.m.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on March 21, 2012, at 10 a.m. to conduct a hearing entitled ``Retooling Government for the 21st Century: The President's Reorganization Plan and Reducing Duplication.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on March 21, 2012, at 2:30 p.m. to conduct a hearing entitled ``The Homeland Security Department's Budget Submission for Fiscal Year 2013.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on March 21, 2012, at 10 a.m., in room SD 226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Justice for All: Convicting the Guilty and Exonerating the Innocent.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Veterans' Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on March 21, 2012, in room G 50 of the Senate Dirksen Office Building, beginning at 10 a.m.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights, be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate, on March 21, 2012, at 2 p.m., in room SD 226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``The Verizon/ Cable Deals: Harmless Collaboration or a Threat to Competition and Consumers?''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Readiness and Management Support of the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on March 21, 2012, at 10 a.m.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Strategic Forces of the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on March 21, 2012, at 2:30 p.m.

Reserving the right to object, was there a consent entered into on speaking order earlier?

I was told to come at 11:00. I think it is fair to go back and forth. I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from Iowa be recognized to speak after the Senator from South Carolina.

Mr. President, I come to the floor to express my strong disappointment with the so-called small business legislation passed by the House of Representatives which is now coming before the Senate this afternoon for a cloture vote and to express my support for the substitute amendment offered by Senators Reed of

Rhode Island, Levin, Landrieu, and others, of which I am a cosponsor.

Quite simply, there is a right way and a wrong way to address some of the legitimate concerns about the ability of small businesses to access capital. Unfortunately, the House bill is completely the wrong approach. In the name of helping small business, the bill takes a meat ax to the very investor protection laws that have allowed our capital markets to flourish.

On Sunday, March 11, the New York Times published an editorial about the House bill titled ``They Have Very Short Memories.'' This title could not be any more appropriate because in the wake of the dot-com bubble, the Enron corporate accounting scandal, and the 2008 financial crisis, advocates of this bill must have very short memories indeed.

The idea that this is the right time to further weaken regulations on Wall Street is simply unconscionable. As we are continuing to dig out of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, which has brought so much pain to hard-working middle-class families, the idea that the solution to what ails our economy is to further deregulate the financial sector and to open the door for fraud and abuse simply makes no sense.

According to a recent report from the Center on Retirement Security at Boston College, financial scams against seniors enabled by the Internet are already on the rise. For this reason, AARP wrote that their ``primary concern is that these bills . . . inadequately protect against the potential harmful impact on investor protections and market integrity.''

Even more, the North American Securities Administrators Association-- this is the organization of State securities regulators--said of the House-passed bill:

By placing unnecessary limits on the ability of State

security regulators to protect retail investors from the

risks associated with smaller, speculative investments,

Congress is poised to enact policies intended to strengthen

the economy that will likely have precisely the opposite

effect.

``Precisely the opposite effect''--that is from the North American Securities Administrators Association. Who are we listening to around here anyway?

Supporting that view, the AFL CIO wrote to Congress that ``while the proponents of the 'capital formation' bills claimed they would promote jobs . . . they would actually have the perverse effect of raising the cost of capital for all companies by increasing the risk of fraud.''

Passing the House bill would be a terrible mistake. I remember well the last time we rushed to deregulate the financial sector in the name of creating jobs. I was here in the Senate then. It was in the late 1990s when we passed a bill to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act that was enacted during the Great Depression.

What happened was Glass-Steagall said: If you are an investment bank, you can be an investment bank. If you are a commercial bank, you are a commercial bank. If you are an insurance company, you are an insurance company. But if you are an investment bank, you can't sell insurance. If you are an insurance company, you can't be an investment bank and you can't be in commercial banking.

That worked well for over half a century in our country. During the boom years of the 1950s, the 1960s, the 1970s, into the 1980s, this worked well for our country. All of a sudden, Wall Street got together and said: Wouldn't it be great if we could break down these walls and put this all together? And they came to Congress in the 1990s and put together a bill to get rid of this Glass-Steagall protection.

Then what happened? These huge financial companies, such as Citigroup and AIG, sort of sprung up because now they have insurance--AIG--AIG now becomes a commercial bank and it becomes an investment bank. They get larger and larger, and they get reckless. They take irresponsible risks because while they might have known about insurance, they didn't really know about investment banking. Investment banking may have known about investment banking, but they didn't know a heck of lot about insurance or commercial banking. So we got into this huge irresponsible financial structure, and it plunged the global economy into the worst financial crisis in generations.

I am proud of the fact that I was one of only eight Senators to vote against the deregulation of Glass-Steagall. I tell you, this bill reminds me so much of that. It was ``follow the crowd.'' Everybody was for it. President Clinton was for it. Secretary Rubin was for deregulating Glass-Steagall. Larry Summers--I don't know whether he was with the national Council of Economic Advisers at that time--was for it. Republicans were for it. And it just went through here like greased lightning. Wall Street was for it. Glass-Steagall was old, don't you see. That was old stuff back from the Depression. We needed something new, a new regime out there. As I said, I was one of eight who voted against it, and I spoke against it here on the floor at the time. I said: We are going to regret this. And, boy, did we ever learn to regret what we did in deregulating Glass-Steagall.

I bring this up because Simon Johnson, the former Chief Economist at the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, recently wrote:

With the so-called jobs bill, Congress is about to make the

same kind of mistake again as in the repeal of the Glass-

Steagall Act.

I urge my colleagues to take these words seriously. Unless we do this in the right way, future Members of the Senate will be standing right here lamenting the fact of what we did in a hurry to follow the crowd.

Fortunately, there is an alternative way to make the reforms that are necessary to allow small businesses to grow without jeopardizing our financial markets and hurting consumers.

SEC Chairwoman Mary Schapiro wrote in a March 13 letter to Senators Johnson and Shelby:

I believe there are provisions that should be added or

modified to improve investor protections that are worthy of

the Senate's consideration.

The substitute amendment offered by Senators Reed, Levin, and Landrieu includes these important reform provisions. Let me list a few of the things the substitute amendment would do.

First, the House bill would allow companies to advertise risky, less regulated, unregistered private offerings to the general public using billboards along the highway, cold calls to senior living centers, or other mass-marketing methods.

Do you know what this means? Let's say an elderly person is living in a senior living center or maybe going there for recreation. All of a sudden they are in a room and a lecture is given to them about how they can take their 401(k) money--maybe they have $100,000--you can take some of your 401(k) and put it into this small startup, and, guess what, it is going to be like the beginning of Apple Computers or it is going to be the beginning of Microsoft. This is a small company. If you just invested a few hundred dollars, why, you can quadruple your money, probably, in 4 or 5 years.

That is what they can do under the House bill. They can come in with cold calls--anything. The Reed-Landrieu-Levin amendment would allow firms to advertise only to investors with appropriate resources and sophistication to bear the risks.

The House bill would tear down protections put in place after the late-1990s Internet stock bubble burst that prevented conflicts of interest from tainting the quality of the research about companies. We know researchers were involved with the investment bankers doing the initial public offering. They were given all this stuff about how great this was and how much money it was going to make in a short period of time.

What we need is a firewall to keep the investment bankers separate from the researchers. That is what Reed-Landrieu-Levin would do, so there is no conflict of interest there.

The House bill would allow very large companies with up to $1 billion in revenues to offer stock to the public, yet avoid financial transparency and auditing requirements designed to ensure they are not cooking the books.

The Reed-Landrieu-Levin amendment would ensure that essential investor protections apply to large companies by lowering the exemptions to companies with less than $350 million in revenues. That number actually came from the SEC, as sort of a reasonable amount--not $1 billion. That would allow huge companies to not

have to have the auditing requirements, for example, that the SEC requires, or the financial transparency. Think about preying on the public with that. We are a big company. We have up to $1 billion in revenues. You don't have to worry about this. You can invest your money here, and don't worry about auditing and stuff like that, we take care of it ourselves. If we were doing bad things, we would not be so big, right? How many times have we heard that before?

The House bill will allow unregulated Web sites to peddle stocks to ordinary investors without any meaningful oversight or liability, which could give rise to fraud, money laundering, and other risks. That is what is called crowdfunding.

We keep hearing this word ``crowdfunding.'' Whenever I hear that word, I get a little nervous. Whenever the crowd is moving in one direction, you want to ask questions: What is moving the crowd? Why is the crowd moving in that direction? Crowdfunding? The Reed-Landrieu- Levin amendment would protect the integrity of these markets by ensuring that the Web site intermediaries are subject to appropriate levels of oversight. Think about this: Unregulated Web sites can peddle stocks to ordinary investors without any oversight or liability. The House bill would allow extremely large companies with tens of thousands of shareholders to evade the Securities and Exchange Commission oversight. Let me repeat that. The House bill would allow extremely large companies with tens of thousands of shareholders to evade SEC oversight. The Reed-Landrieu-Levin amendment would ensure that banks and other large companies with lots of shareholders are subject to the basic transparency, integrity, and accountability protections.

Right now, under SEC law, if you have over 500 shareholders, you have to go public. And when you go public, you have to be subject to accounting principles, oversight, and transparency by the SEC. The bill raises that to 2,000 shareholders. Yet they can go out there and--I don't know what Facebook has right now, but I don't think they have 2,000 shareholders; maybe, but I don't know. Let's say they have 1,000 or 1,200 shareholders. They can get by without having any real SEC oversight as long as they have less than 2,000 shareholders. Should that be allowed in this economy with all that we know, with what has gone on in the recent past?

In sum, the substitute amendment is vastly better than the House- passed legislation. It protects investors, it protects consumers, it protects our capital markets that allow small businesses to grow. So let's heed the lesson of the last decade; let's take a step back; let's pause before rushing to deregulate our economy and Wall Street even further. Previous acts of Congress to deregulate our markets in the hope of spurring economic growth may have helped Wall Street, and a lot of people in the last 10 years made a lot of money on Wall Street. You know what. They still have their money. They have taken that money and they bought other things, and now they are sitting pretty. Yet homeowners and average ordinary Americans have lost their shirts in this economy in the last 10 years. But the people who engineered these new devices, these new kinds of derivatives, who worked to do away with Glass-Steagall, made a lot of money on Wall Street.

I can tell you that if the bill passes without the Reed-Landrieu- Levin amendment, you are going to see a new flourish of activity on Wall Street. A lot of Wall Street bankers and a lot of people will make a lot more money. And you know what. A few years from now we are going to hear all kinds of stories about elderly people or people about to retire who have 401(k)s who got sucked into investing someplace without any real knowledge of what the business was, not to mention other people who maybe went on their Web site and were lured into investing a few dollars--$100, $200, $500. You say, well, they lost it. They didn't lose much. But if you add that up, it is thousands and thousands of Americans. It may be a small loss to each individual person, but the money gained by this so-called startup company--that may go under in a year or less--the people who started the company walk away with the money. We are going to be hearing stories about that in the next 5 to 10 years if this bill passes.

Again, Wall Street made out like bandits in the last 10 years, but for the rest of America it was the worst economic crisis in generations.

I close by saying the Senate should not follow the crowd. The House rushed this through without any real due diligence, but isn't the purpose of the Senate to cool and slow it down? Let's take a close look at it.

I urge my colleagues to oppose the House measure and support the substitute amendment when it comes to the floor later today for a vote. Let's not repeat the mistakes of the past.

I yield the floor.

I thank my colleague from Louisiana for her leadership on this issue. We are all busy around here. We have our issues that we look at. I have other issues in my committee that I am so focused on now that I had not really paid attention to this until the Senator from Louisiana brought it up last week, and then I began to ask myself: What is this all about? The more I looked into it, the more devastating I found this piece of legislation that came from the House.

I thank the Senator from Louisiana for having the foresight, courage, and determination to make sure we are all aware of what this legislation does. And, quite frankly, I commend the Senator from Louisiana for slowing this down. Since last week, I have talked to other Senators who had not really focused on it either. We have other responsibilities and duties, but the Chair of the Small Business Committee focused on this, and I thank the Chair for her great leadership on this issue. I hope we can adopt the substitute amendment to this bill later today.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Jenna Nizamoff and Madeline Shepherd be granted the privilege of the floor during the duration of today's session.

Mr. President, I wish to announce that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions will meet in open session on Thursday, March 22, 2012 at 10 a.m. in SD 430 Dirksen Senate Office Building to conduct a hearing entitled ``Stay-at-Work and Back-to-Work Strategies: Lessons from the Private Sector.''

For further information regarding this meeting, please contact the committee at (202) 228 3453.

Will the Senator yield for a minute?

I am also told this would exempt States from having to meet their obligation under the Americans With Disabilities Act to provide equal access to people with disabilities.

Mr. President, I wish to announce that the Subcommittee on Primary Health and Aging of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions will meet in open session on Wednesday, February 29, 2012, at 10 a.m. in SD 430 Dirksen Senate Office Building to conduct a hearing entitled Dental Crisis in America: The Need to Expand Access.

For further information regarding this meeting, please contact the subcommittee on (202) 224 5480.

Mr. President, I wish to announce that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions will meet in open session on Thursday, March 1, 2012, at 10 a.m. in SD 430 Dirksen Senate Office Building to conduct a hearing entitled The Key to America's Global Competitiveness: A Quality Education.

For further information regarding this meeting, please contact the committee on (202) 224 5501.

Mr. President, I wish to announce that the Senate HELP Committee hearing previously scheduled for March 1, 2012, entitled ``The Key to America's Global Competitiveness: A Quality Education'' has been postponed until Thursday, March 8, 2012 at 10 a.m. in room 430 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

For further information regarding this meeting, please contact the committee on (202) 224 5501.

Committee on Energy and Natural Resources

Mr. President, I come to the floor to state my vehement opposition to the agreement to extend the payroll tax cut and to slash the Public Health and Prevention Fund to help pay for the continuation of unemployment benefits.

Let me preface my remarks by stressing that the No. 1 priority in Washington today must be creating jobs, growing the economy, and restoring the middle class. In recent months, we have seen modestly good news on the jobs front, including the manufacturing sector, and we must do everything possible to keep our economy moving in the right direction.

To this end, nothing is more effective than continuing unemployment insurance benefits for those hardest hit by the great recession. Details on the unemployment insurance portion of this agreement are not available. But what I am hearing sounds less and less like a good or fair deal for workers.

Federal unemployment benefits will be dramatically scaled back over the year, especially in Iowa, my own State, and some other States in the Midwest. I do not understand that. It seems to me, if you are unemployed, you are unemployed. If you are out of work and your family needs help, I do not care whether you live in Iowa or Minnesota or New York or New Jersey or anywhere else.

The payroll tax provisions are also seriously flawed. This Congress will be making a grave mistake--a grave mistake--and reinforcing a dangerous precedent by extending the payroll tax cuts and adding another negative, without paying for it. I am dismayed that Democrats, including a Democratic President and a Democratic Vice President, have proposed this and are willing to sign off on a deal that could begin the unraveling of Social Security.

Two of the critical strengths of Social Security are that it is universal and it is self-funded. Not one dollar in benefits ever came from any source other than the payroll tax on future Social Security beneficiaries. Moreover, the program has never contributed even one dime to the deficit or the national debt. How often have we, those who support Social Security in its entirety--how many times have we come to this floor and argued against those who would invade Social Security and say, well, we have to reduce the deficit, so we will cut Social Security. What do we say, with all honesty, with all the evidence backing us up? Social Security has never contributed one dime to the deficit.

So cutting Social Security will never reduce the deficit. With this bill, we can no longer say that. We can no longer say Social Security does not contribute to the deficit. This argument, this fact, that Social Security has never contributed a dime to the deficit has given Social Security a unique, even an almost sacrosanct, status in our society.

It was one of the strongest arguments, I repeat, for those of us defending Social Security from misguided attempts to cut it in the name of deficit reduction. Some might say, well, people are out of work; with the fragile economy, we need to put some spending in the pockets of our middle-class Americans.

I could not agree more. The biggest job creator in America is not someone who is rich and has billions of dollars. The biggest job creator in America is a working American with money in his or her pocket to spend. That is the biggest job creator.

So, yes, we have to get money in the pockets of working Americans, and we have done that in the past in a good way. In the 2009 Recovery Act, working Americans received a 6.2-percent credit of their taxes, refundable up to $400, to increase their spending power and boost the economy. This in no way impacted the Social Security trust fund. I supported that, wholeheartedly supported that.

However, in late 2010, Congress voted to replace that tax credit with a 2-percent reduction in payroll taxes which are dedicated to the Social Security trust fund. This was done on a temporary basis to provide added income for working families, and it was not offset. It was not paid for. So for the first time--for the first time--general revenues were transferred to the Social Security trust fund to replace lost revenue.

While this ensured that no financial harm was done to the trust fund itself, what it did is it created a dangerous precedent by calling into question Social Security's dedicated funding. I voted against that bill. So in late 2010, we transferred general revenues to replace lost revenue.

In December of 2011, just a couple months ago, we were persuaded to support the 2-month extension of the payroll tax cut. Some may look at the record and say: Harkin, you voted for that. I did with misgivings. But a critical factor was that it was at least fully paid for and would not negatively impact the Social Security trust fund.

However, we are being offered an agreement that extends the payroll tax cut through the end of this calendar year. Bad enough, doubly negative, it does not pay for it. This is terrible public policy, with grave consequences for Social Security. With this new agreement, we will be taking $100 billion from the general fund, which is in deficit, by the way. So we are going to add $100 billion to the deficit, to substitute for the $100 billion in revenues lost due to the payroll tax cut. As I said and I repeat, we will be adding $100 billion to the deficit and the debt.

This compounds the mistake Congress made in late 2010 by passing the original payroll tax cut without paying for it. No longer--no longer-- can we say Social Security is a program that pays for itself without adding to the deficit. Mixing general revenues into the system will make it easier for those who have long wished to dismantle Social Security to do so in the future.

Worse--worse--since this tax cut is not being paid for, there is a much greater likelihood it will be extended yet again in the future because, you see, there is another precedent here: Tax cuts do not have to be paid for. Only spending has to be paid for, not tax cuts.

Does this not open the door to even further extending payroll tax cuts because we do not have to pay for it? I choose my words carefully. Make no mistake about it, American people, make no mistake about it. This is the beginning of the end of the sanctity of Social Security. The very real risk is that Social Security will become just another program to be paid for with deficit spending and then in the future perhaps raided to help reduce the deficit.

I never thought I would live to see the day when a Democratic President and a Democratic Vice President would agree to put Social Security in this kind of jeopardy. Never did I ever imagine a Democratic President beginning the unraveling of Social Security. I warn my colleagues to consider the long-term ramifications of these actions.

While we need to maintain temporary supports for middle-class families in these tough economic times, this assistance should not come at the expense of American's retirement security. As traditional pensions have fallen by the wayside, as the value of peoples' retirements in 401(k)s has plummeted, Social Security remains the one essential program preventing millions of seniors from plunging into poverty in their retirement years, a program started by a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress, further enhanced by future Democratic Presidents, others, Truman, Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, of course, the Great Society.

This, I believe, has been the hallmark and the underpinning of the party I have been proud to belong to. Now this party--this party--the Democratic Party, with a Democratic President, is now beginning the unraveling of Social Security. That is what is happening, the unraveling of Social Security. Never again can any one of us come to the floor and say: No. No, we cannot cut Social Security to reduce the deficit because it does not add to the deficit.

With this agreement, Social Security will add to the deficit by $100 billion. Think about it. I urge my colleagues to look at excellent alternative ways of providing temporary support to our middle class. One proven approach would be to enlarge the Making Work Pay tax credit I talked about that was in the Recovery Act. Again, this tax credit, as I said, put an additional $800 in both 2009 and 2010. It could be enlarged to provide the similar level of benefits to median-income working families as compared to the payroll tax cut.

So instead of cutting the payroll tax, let's do the tax credit that we had in 2009 and 2010, just bump it up a little bit. How do we pay for it? The same way we are paying for the cut in the Social Security taxes. Put it on the deficit. Put it on the deficit. But at least we are not invading the Social Security trust fund. Cutting the payroll tax is a bad idea, a terrible idea. I am embarrassed it is being proposed by a Democratic President and a Democratic Vice President.

We could fully pay for a tax credit, a refundable tax credit, do it over a 10-year period of time so it does not negatively impact the fragile economic recovery. It would support middle-class families, give them the support they need and deserve, but it would not harm Social Security.

I said there were a couple reasons I am opposed to this. That is one. That

is a big one, what we are doing to the Social Security trust fund. But I must also state my strenuous opposition to the cuts in this agreement to the Public Health and Prevention Fund that is in the Affordable Care Act.

My Republican friends and colleagues have been trying to get at the health care reform bill ever since we passed it: Cut it here, nick it there. We have fought that off. The health care act is now making a big impact in Americans' lives. Need I mention the fact that kids are covered now, even though they may have a preexisting condition. Young people can stay on their parents' policy until they are age 26. But we put into that affordable care act a Prevention and Public Health Fund, with the aim of transforming America's sick care system into a true health care system, emphasizing wellness and prevention and public health, keeping people out of the hospital in the first place.

So this last October things started kicking into effect. Beginning last October, for example, women over age 40 could get a mammogram every year with no copays, no deductibles, no cost. It has to be absorbed in the insurance program. Seniors on Medicare get a free screening of their health and a health assessment every year so they know what to do in the future to keep themselves healthy. No copays, no deductibles. Colonoscopies over age 50, no copays, no deductibles. We also started investing in proven programs to promote health and wellness, decreasing obesity, for example, across the country, through this fund.

Earlier this month, the Trust for America's Health released a remarkable study showing that a 5-percent reduction in the obesity rate could yield more than $600 billion in savings on health care in the next 20 years. This study is the latest confirmation of what common sense tells us: Prevention is the best medicine both for our bodies and for our budgets.

Now think about it. We currently spend more than $2 trillion on health care each year. An estimated 75 percent of that is accounted for by preventable chronic diseases and conditions. Chronic disease is a prime culprit in the relentless rise in health insurance premiums, and it contributes to the overall poor health that places our Nation's economic security and competitiveness in jeopardy.

This is shameful and, frankly, exasperating because we know how to prevent many of these diseases and conditions from developing in the first place. We know a lot about the power of prevention through the kinds of evidence-based clinical and community prevention programs and things that are funded by the Prevention and Public Health Fund. For example, for every $1 we spend on the full course of childhood vaccines, we can save $16.60 in future health care costs. Not a bad return on a dollar, not to mention the quality of the lives of kids who don't get measles, mumps, rubella, polio, and a whole bunch of other diseases.

Given the relentless rise in health care costs, it is a classic case of penny wise and pound foolish to take money from the Prevention and Public Health Fund. Americans get it. Americans get it when it comes to disease prevention. They understand that prevention saves lives, saves money, and is the commonsense thing to do. In this bill--again, for the first time--$5 billion is taken out of the Prevention and Public Health Fund--$5 billion. This is outrageous and unacceptable.

As I said, Americans get it. Here is a letter from the American College of Preventive Medicine urging us to oppose taking any money, to diverting any money from the Prevention and Public Health Fund. Here is the Coalition for Health Funding, opposed to taking money from the prevention fund. The American Heart Association is opposed taking money from the prevention fund; the Campaign to End Obesity Action Fund, opposed to taking money from that fund; the Center for Science in the Public Interest, opposed to taking money from the prevention fund; the Heartland Alliance, opposed to taking money from the prevention fund; the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, opposed to taking money from this fund; the Prevention Institute, opposed to taking money from the Prevention and Public Health Fund; the American Heart Association, the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors, the American Public City Health Officials, the American Lung Association, the National Viral Hepatitis Roundtable, the Association of Maternal & Child Health Programs, the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy--722 groups across this country--opposed to taking money from the Prevention and Public Health Fund.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record at the end of my remarks some letters in opposition to this taking. There are over 700 organizations in opposition to this.

So who do we listen to, Mr. President? Do we listen to public health officials--the American Heart Association, the American Lung Association, people all across America saying don't do this?

This is what is going to save us in the future. Yet they are taking $5 billion out of it. It is totally unacceptable and it is outrageous-- outrageous--outrageous. And again, this wasn't in either the House or the Senate bill. If I'm not mistaken, maybe a point of order lies against things in a conference report that were not considered either in the House or the Senate.

This agreement is being presented as a done deal, nothing we can do about it. Well, I urge Senators to think about the dangerous consequences and precedence of passing this bill in its current form. This bill ends Social Security's historic status as a program that pays for itself. Think about it. The bill validates the absurd idea that tax cuts have a special status--they do not need to be offset, but spending does. Think about it. And this bill foolishly slashes funding for the Prevention and Public Health Fund, cuts that will significantly add to the deficit in future years.

I repeat: We need to continue to bolster the economy and boost the income of ordinary Americans. This bill is not the way to do it. It is a devil's deal. It is a bad deal. There are better ways to accomplish these goals. I urge my colleagues to vote against this terribly misguided bill in its current form.

Exhibit 1

American College of

Preventive Medicine,

February 9, 2012.

On behalf of the American College of Preventive Medicine

(ACPM), I urge you to oppose any effort to divert funds from

the Prevention and Public Health Fund to finance an extended

``doc fix'' in the Medicare physician fee schedule as part of

the negotiations on H.R. 3630, the Temporary Payroll Tax Cut

Continuation Act of 2011. ACPM is the national professional

society for over 2,500 physicians who dedicate their careers

to prevention and health promotion at the individual and

population levels. As such, ACPM has a primary interest in

expanding our nation's investment in prevention to improve

the health of communities across the country while adding

greater value to our health care system.

While ACPM has been a staunch supporter of efforts to fix

the broken sustainable growth rate formula used to calculate

Medicare physician reimbursement levels, the College will not

support any proposal that diverts funds away from disease

prevention programs in order to increase payments for disease

treatment. The Prevention and Public Health Fund, established

through the Affordable Care Act, represents a critical

investment in public health and a historic commitment towards

efforts that will help shift the focus of our health care

system from disease treatment to disease prevention and

health promotion.

Already, states are using Prevention Fund dollars to

bolster our public health infrastructure and to build a

stronger foundation for prevention in communities and

neighborhoods that are most in need. To drain the fund of its

important resources just when communities are now putting

prevention to work represents a shortsighted approach to fund

increased reimbursements for Medicare providers.

There has long been strong bipartisan support for efforts

that improve health, reduce costs, and enhance the value of

our health care system. Now is not the time to abandon these

goals. ACPM will continue to strongly oppose any efforts to

decrease the federal commitment to prevention and public

health and we ask that you join us in these efforts.

Sincerely,

Miriam A. Alexander,

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I watched many of the statements made by so many of our women Senators who came to the floor in the past hour to talk about this issue of women's preventive health services. I was unable to get to the floor at the time. I want to be here now because, unfortunately, there is a lot of confusion about what the Affordable Care Act does and does not do with respect to women's preventive health services.

As chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee and as someone who is very much involved in crafting this legislation, especially the preventive services part of that legislation, I hope to explain the facts and debunk the myths and the misinformation that has recently arisen on this issue.

First, women--nurses, teachers, professors, homemakers, attorneys-- everyone from all walks of life, all women in America now have the right to preventive health care services. Beginning this August, the Affordable Care Act guarantees that insured women will have access to expert recommended preventive health care services. These basic services include well-women visits, mammograms, prenatal care, cervical cancer screenings, and contraception.

These critical services will be offered without any out-of-pocket costs such as copays or deductibles. It is the latter, the ability of women to have a health insurance plan that covers contraceptives that has led to this recent controversy, this outpouring, this outburst of political accusations.

Here let me emphasize people of strong faith and good conscious have very different views when it comes to these matters. I understand that. I have great admiration for the many contributions that religious institutions make to our country. Catholic charities provide vital assistance to low-income Americans. Religious universities teach and prepare thousands of young people to be outstanding citizens and productive members of our society. In fact, I attended law school at Catholic University right up the street. I also attended Catholic elementary schools and Catholic high school.

Catholic hospitals are instrumental in providing first-class health care to so many of our fellow citizens. I have spoken many times about the care that Mercy Hospital in Des Moines, a Catholic hospital, gave to my father when he was elderly and in bad health because of black lung disease and he had no money. They provided care for him at no cost. So I have very deep feelings about the generosity and the care that these religious hospitals provide.

It is for this reason I would oppose any measure that threatens the fundamental religious liberties of these institutions. I believe, however, that the President properly balanced the essential health care needs of women with the rights of religious institutions. Let me clarify what this rule does, and most importantly does not do since folks, such as Governor Romney, are misleading the American people-- perhaps intentionally distorting the facts--using the issue for demagoguery.

First, churches and other houses of worship are specifically exempt from the requirement that they carry insurance plans that provide contraception.

Second, no individual health care provider, neither religious nor secular, will be forced to prescribe contraception. The President and his administration have previously and continue to express strong support for existing conscience protections. Moreover, other religiously affiliated organizations that employ people of different faiths--such as Catholic colleges and hospitals--can qualify for a 1- year transition period as they prepare to comply with the new law.

Let me point out, no individual will be forced to buy or use contraception. No individual will be forced to buy or use contraception. Under this policy, women who want contraception will have access to it through their insurance without having to pay a copay or deductible, but no one will be forced to buy or to use contraception. Let's make that clear.

Drugs that cause abortion, such as RU486, the morning-after pill, are not covered by this policy. Let me repeat that. Drugs that cause abortion, such as RU486, the morning-after pill, are not covered by this policy and nothing about this policy changes the President's firm commitment to maintain strict limitations on Federal funding for abortions. No Federal tax dollars are used for elective abortions.

Let me quote what Governor Romney said in Colorado just yesterday:

Just this last week, this same administration said that in

churches and the institutions they run, such as schools, and

let's say adoption agencies, hospitals, that they have to

provide for their employees, free of charge, contraceptives,

morning-after pills--in other words abortive pills and the

like at no cost.

Mr. Romney said.

Think what that does to people in faiths without sharing

those views. This is a violation of conscience.

Mr. Romney, this does not cover morning-after pills. And the adoption agencies and the hospitals do not have to provide free of charge contraceptives. All they have to do is to make available, through the broad insurance coverage they have, for women who choose to use contraceptive services, that they can get those without any copays or deductibles. But this does not cover the morning-after pill. Yet I keep hearing it.

I was working out this morning while watching CNN, and somebody else came on talking about how the Catholic Church is opposed to abortions; they should not be forced to fund abortions. This has nothing to do with that. All it says is, if you have a broad-based insurance policy and you are not a religious institution or a church and you are, let's say a hospital, and you have insurance that covers a broad array of people, we have said that insurance must cover a broad variety of preventive services: mammograms, cervical cancer screening, well-women visits--all of that--and contraception--and contraception, a preventive service.

Mr. Romney is going around saying these things, but it is not true. It is simply not true. He is either misinformed or he is purposely trying to mislead the American people--neither of which is acceptable. As I said, churches and other houses of worship are specifically exempt from the requirement that they carry insurance plans that provide contraception.

Second, no individual health care provider, neither religious nor secular, will be forced to prescribe contraception. No individual will be forced to buy or use contraception against her own conscience. All the rules the President announced ensure that all women, no matter who their employer, have the opportunity to enjoy the same insurance and the same vital preventive services--every woman. In fact, there is nothing radical about such a policy. Fifty percent of Americans currently live in 28 States that require insurance companies to cover contraception. Imagine that.

Several of these States--such as Arizona, New York, Oregon, and California--have had this law in effect for years, saying if you have insurance

coverage, you have to provide contraceptive services under that broad coverage of insurance, and these four States have identical religious employer exemptions as the rule the President announced.

Let me repeat, Arizona, New York, Oregon and California have identical religious employer exemptions, the same as the rule the President announced. I did not hear Mr. Romney going after the Governors of Arizona or of New York or Oregon or California. This has now become a political issue, and it should not be. It should not be.

Religious institutions continue to serve the public by providing exemplary health, education, and antipoverty services in these States, and I am hopeful that nothing will change in the rest of the country. Twenty-eight States, half the people who already live in those States that cover the same thing.

The health of women in this Nation is far too important to become a sound bite on the evening news, a headline in the morning paper, or political rhetoric--again, to divide us. The President's policy and what we have done does not divide us. In fact, if anything it unifies the country. I do not think anyone thinks we should pass a law banning contraceptives. We did in the old days, you know. There was a Supreme Court case about that. As a matter of fact, I read it in law school when I was at Catholic University Law School: Griswold v. Connecticut, if I am not mistaken.

The Supreme Court said, no; the State has no interest, no vital interest in telling women they cannot use contraceptive services and devices. That is an old case. If someone is conscience-bound and they say they don't want to--that is fine. No one is being forced to do anything against their consciences. No one is being forced to do anything we have not already done in this country in 28 States. But now it has become political rhetoric. How else do we explain Mr. Romney's total misinformation? To try to divide us as a country again.

It is time to put this aside. It is time to put aside these differences, these divisions, and focus on giving people access to the affordable health care they deserve. That is what the Affordable Care Act does, and we should not let political rhetoric, political gamesmanship, a political campaign again try to tear us apart, try to misinform people to inflame passions that somehow we have gone off on a different path; that we are doing something totally different than what we have done before. We are not. We are not. To include in this the inflammatory rhetoric of abortion and all that it entails is doing a disservice to the women of this country.

I hope the truth will get out, that this misinformation will fall by the wayside, and people will see this for the political rhetoric it is, and that we will move forward with a health care system that does provide broad preventive services to every woman in America. That is what this is about.

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

Mr. President, I wish to announce that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions will meet in open session on Tuesday, February 14, 2012, at 2:30 p.m. in room SD-430 to conduct a hearing entitled ``Pain in America: Exploring Challenges to Relief.''

For further information regarding this meeting, please contact the committee on (202) 224-7675.

Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions

Mr. President, I wish to announce that the Subcommittee on Employment and Workplace Safety of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions will meet in open session on Thursday, February 16, 2012, at 10:00 a.m. in room SD-430 to conduct a hearing entitled ``Addressing Workforce Needs at the Regional Level: Innovative Public and Private Partnerships.''

For further information regarding this meeting, please contact the subcommittee on (202) 228-1455.

Committee on Indian Affairs

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

Mr. President, I rise today to express my concern about provisions of this bill that amend an unrelated labor law statute--the Railway Labor Act. As the chairman of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, which has jurisdiction over this law and the agency that enforces it, the National Mediation Board, I am troubled by the inclusion of this language and the implication that it creates; namely, that this independent Federal agency and the hard- working Americans it protects are being punished for recent regulatory changes that protect workers' rights.

The National Mediation Board--or NMB as it is known--established in 1934, is an independent agency that administers labor relations in the air and rail industries. In 2009 this small, 51-person agency went through a careful process to change the voting rules governing the elections that it administers. Under the old antiquated election system, all nonvoters were automatically and arbitrarily treated as a ``no'' vote, or a vote against the union, regardless of whether they actually opposed forming a union. These rules were contrary to the election rules used in National Labor Relations Board-supervised elections and different from the rules governing elections held throughout the entire United States, from school boards to U.S. Senators. Think about it--if you don't vote, you are counted as a ``no'' vote. What kind of sense does that make? It made no sense. Just as it would be unfair to arbitrarily assign an individual American a position, let's say, in the Presidential race because he or she chose not to vote, it was unjust to capriciously impose a position on rail and aviation workers who, for one reason or another, didn't vote in a representation election. That is why the National Mediation Board adopted the commonsense rule, the same rule that applies to industries all over America that are governed by the National Labor Relations Board. The rule was that in the future elections, a voter's decision not to vote would have no impact on the election's outcome. Only those voters who actually participate will determine the outcome of the election. A majority of those who vote determines who wins.

This basic system, as I said, of conducting elections works for school boards and for Congress. It works for all the businesses in America that are governed by the National Labor Relations Act, and it will work and has worked for rail and aviation workers. The only entity this new system apparently doesn't work for is the management of a few powerful airlines. These powerful companies don't want workers to have representation. They don't want to engage in collective bargaining with their workers. I guess they are deeply concerned about the remote

chance that at some point in the future they just might have to put a few additional dollars into middle-class workers' pockets, so they waged an unprecedented attack campaign to kill this rule, the rule that says: If you don't vote, your vote is not counted as yes or no. The only votes that count are those that vote yes and those that vote no. In the past, if you didn't vote, it was counted automatically as a ``no'' vote. Finally, people said: This doesn't make sense. No other business in America has any kind of rule like that governed by the National Labor Relations Board.

These few powerful airlines waged an unprecedented attack campaign to kill the rule. First they found some friends in Congress and tried challenging the rule under the Congressional Review Act, a law that allows Congress to overturn a rule through a resolution of disapproval. They lost that fight on the Senate floor. Next, they went to court to challenge the legality of the rulemaking. They lost that fight in the district court, and then they appealed to the court of appeals and they lost there too. So then they waged a last-ditch effort to kill the rule on this FAA reauthorization bill, which has nothing to do with it. Again, it was not in the Senate bill. The House put it on a totally unrelated provision dealing with the National Mediation Board that isn't even a part of the FAA and which isn't in the jurisdiction of the Senate Commerce committee.

The FAA reauthorization has historically been a bipartisan bill that is essential to the operation of our aviation system. As a pilot myself--I have been all my life--I can see why this bill was needed, believe me. The current bill not only extends a wide variety of provisions impacting aviation, it helps to create tens of thousands of jobs and to bring our aviation system into the 21st century. This important legislation has absolutely nothing to do with the National Mediation Board, whose sole job is to oversee labor relations. But last year House Republicans tried to turn this FAA reauthorization bill into a vehicle to attack workers' rights.

They added a provision to their bill repealing the National Mediation Board's election rule--the rule which said if a person does not vote, it is not counted. It is not counted as a ``no'' vote or ``yes'' vote; it is just not counted--a commonsense rule. Then, when the House and Senate bills were in conference last year, they refused to pass a clean extension of the FAA laws as had been done on more than 20 occasions prior. Since they didn't do that, they stopped the conference negotiations. Instead, the House forced a partial shutdown of the FAA.

That shutdown last summer left 4,000 FAA workers furloughed. It put many thousands more people out of work in airport construction. It cut off FAA reimbursement payments to small businesses across the country. It cost the government about $25 million in tax revenues every single day just because the House was attacking workers' rights and they wanted to add this onerous provision to the FAA bill.

While frustrating, it has long been the norm here to keep agencies operating with short-term extensions while bills whose terms have not been worked out are negotiated. The House action was a rare break from that norm, and it caused real damage to thousands of real people.

Fortunately, there was a substantial public backlash against the House Republicans, and they had to back down. They let a short-term FAA extension pass, then they backed off on their demand to kill the rule. But the powerful corporations behind this effort still couldn't let the issue go. Despite the fact that the new rule had been in place for more than a year and has had absolutely no negative impact on any carrier-- the union success rate in elections has remained roughly the same before and after the rule's implementation--these corporations were still bound and determined to attack the National Mediation Board and to attack America's rail and airline workers to punish them for having the audacity to stand up for what is fair and to have the audacity to stand up and say a vote that is not taken shouldn't be counted as a ``no'' vote or a ``yes'' vote; it shouldn't be counted at all, which I think most Americans would think makes sense.

So these corporations got their friends in the House Republican leadership to demand the addition of burdensome new changes to the Railway Labor Act in this unrelated FAA bill. The dramatic changes they initially demanded to this statute were absurd and would have been irresponsible to slip into a nonamendable conference report without any consideration by the committee of jurisdiction which happens to be the jurisdiction of the committee I chair in the Senate.

Fortunately, Senator Rockefeller, the chairman of the Commerce Committee, and Senator Reid, through months of negotiations, were able to stave off the worst of the House Republican proposals and ultimately settle on a package of less detrimental changes. Under this new language, the agency retains discretion to determine when a union should be properly certified as a bargaining representative, and we have no intention of changing that process. I also think we have left a lot of room for the agency to make rules that govern special situations such as mergers.

But to be clear, I don't think any of us on this side of the aisle wanted to make these changes at all. We were forced to do this by a few powerful people who were willing to hold many thousands of American jobs hostage and hold hostage improvements to our airway system just to get this.

Some people might call this process a compromise, but I call it an abuse of our legislative process, and we shouldn't let it happen. To be clear, as I have indicated, there is progress in this bill for the people of my State and the people of this great Nation. It will create jobs. It will move our country's aviation system into the 21st century. It shifts our air traffic control system to a GPS system where planes can fly far more efficiently, saving fuel and time. It provides a compromise that continues the Essential Air Service Program.

So, again, I thank Chairman Rockefeller for his diligence and his hard work for over 4 years trying to lead the House and others into moving our air transportation system, both for general aviation and for air transport and for the airlines, to be more efficient and to use less fuel so it is more benign to our environment. Believe me, there is a lot in here that is going to help general aviation also. So I thank Senator Rockefeller for his diligence and his hard work.

So my ``no'' vote today on this bill is not to suggest that there aren't many good things in this bill. Instead, my vote is to stand up against the notion that a Federal agency and the American workers it is charged to protect should be punished for doing what is right and what is fair, what is in their jurisdiction, and to stand up against a process that allows the few and the powerful to hijack this body and change the rules of the game in their favor. The American people deserve better than that.

Railway Labor Act

Mr. President, I would like to ask a few questions of my friend the majority Leader and my friend Senator Rockefeller, Chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science, Transportation about the changes to the Railway Labor Act in the this bill. Because my committee has jurisdiction over this important act, I want to make sure that I fully understand the scope and impact of these changes.

My understanding is that there has been longstanding deference to the National Mediation Board regarding the findings it makes in the representation context. As the Supreme Court stated in Switchmen's Union v. NMB, after a NMB's decision on whether a showing of interest has been made ``the dispute [is] to reach its last terminal point when the administrative finding [i]s made. There [i]s to be no dragging out the controversy into other tribunals of law.'' Would these changes alter that longstanding deference in any way?

I would ask my friend, Senator Rockefeller, if this was his understanding as well?

I thank my colleagues and am reassured by their response. I can think of a number of dangers that would arise if the sufficiency of a showing of interest were litigated in court. The sad reality is that employees are regularly retaliated against for supporting unionization--in ways that are legal and illegal. It would be very dangerous if employers could gain access to union authorization cards through litigation discovery. It is reassuring to hear that the sponsor of this bill does not intend that result by codifying the showing of interest.

I thank the majority leader for that helpful clarification. I would like to raise two additional questions if I may, both related to whether usual rules of statutory interpretation are intended to apply here. First, am I correct that the showing of interest requirement set forth in this legislation should only apply prospectively and should not apply to any application for representation pending at the time of the effective date of the legislation?

I thank the Senator. And second, in the amendments, Congress directed the Government Accountability Office to review certain NMB activities periodically, and in conducting these reviews, to consider whether the agency's actions are consistent with Congressional intent. I would presume that the relevant question for the GAO to consider is whether the agency's actions are consistent with the intent of the Congress that passed the provisions of the Act in question, the joint labor-management agreements which led to its adoption, and the subsequent judicial interpretation thereof?

Mr. ROCKEFELLER: That is correct, yes.

I thank my colleagues for joining me in this conversation.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Nora Goebelbecker, a member of my staff, be granted floor privileges for the duration of today's session.

Mr. President, I wish to announce that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions will meet in open session on Tuesday, February 7, 2012, at 2:30 p.m. in SDG-50 to conduct a hearing entitled ``The Promise of Accessible Technology: Challenges and Opportunities.''

For further information regarding this meeting, please contact the committee on (202) 228-3453.

Committee on Energy and Natural Resources

Mr. President, I wish to announce that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions will meet in open session on Thursday, February 2, 2012 at 10 a.m. in SD-430 to conduct a hearing entitled ``Innovations in College Affordability.''

For further information regarding this meeting, please contact the committee on (202) 224-5501.