Max Baucus

Mr. BAUCUS

Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, I rise to make a few remarks regarding efforts to amend the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act as it relates to remediation waste. The Majority Leader and the Chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee recently concluded that there is not enough time to complete legislation in this area this Congress, due to the press of other business and the limited time remaining. I would like to commend both the process and the progress that has been made this year in discussions concerning remediation waste legislation. I also would like to commend Senators Lott, Chafee, Smith, Lautenberg and Breaux for their roles in this process. I believe that the RCRA hazardous waste cleanup program could be improved through responsible reforms that tailor certain provisions of RCRA to hazardous waste that is generated during cleanup. Targeted amendments in this area could promote cleanup, ensure meaningful opportunities for community involvement, and reduce cleanup costs, without sacrificing protection of human health and the environment. Republican and Democratic staff of the Environment and Public Works Committee, together with representatives of the Administration, have for several months been engaged in productive, bi-partisan negotiations to reach agreement on targeted RCRA amendments in this important area. Despite these efforts, there are still a number of issues yet to be resolved, which I had hoped we would resolve in the time remaining this Congress. The Administration contributed significantly to the progress made this year. We also received valuable input from representatives of various interests that would be affected by the legislation, including industry, the environmental community, state and local governments and communities in the vicinity of hazardous waste cleanup sites. We need to continue close coordination with a range of interested persons. I hope that next year we can resume this bi-partisan process. This year's work creates a foundation for efforts next year to achieve responsible reform.

Mr. BAUCUS

Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, I rise today to join Senators Chafee, Graham, Lieberman, and Specter in introducing the Promoting Responsible Managed Care Act of 1998. This bill will provide needed protections for all patients, while omitting the most polarizing aspects of the two major managed care bills designed by Republican and Democratic leaders. This bill seeks to establish a middle ground so that patients can be guaranteed quality health care this year. Mr. President, this legislation provides improved quality health care for all 161 million Americans enrolled in private health insurance plans, including managed care plans. The measure will protect the doctor-patient relationship, make information readily available, create quality standards, insure a timely appeals process, and provide patients with better access to care. By offering report cards on health plans, patients will be given the opportunity to make informed choices when selecting a health plan. This bill will also guarantee patients access to their specialists, and ensure that people have needed emergency treatment available wherever they are. Patients will not just receive stabilization in the emergency room, but will be guaranteed care afterwards as well. The bipartisan bill gives women direct access to obstetrician- gynecologists, and children direct access to pediatricians. Prescription drugs which doctors deem necessary to patient care, whether on provider formulary lists or not, will now be made available. Routine costs associated with plan-approved clinical trials will also be guaranteed. Gag clauses, which undermine the patient-doctor relationship by penalizing doctors for referring patients to specialists or discussing costly medical procedures, will be prohibited. Mr. President, under the bipartisan bill, independent parties would be given the authority to rule on managed care denials through an appeals process, guaranteeing that each patient has a chance to appeal HMO decisions. Enforcement laws will help guarantee these provisions. This legislation will allow the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Labor to levy civil monetary penalties to managed care plans which do not abide by the bill's provisions. Also, self and fully-insured patients will be granted access to federal courts to claim compensatory damages. Mr. President, in health care, quality patient care should be the bottom line. I believe that the bottom line is achieved by Democratic plan. But with a Democratic plan that is unlikely to pass in this Republican-controlled Senate, and a Republican measure which would likely be vetoed by the president, this proposal stands as a fresh start to significant managed care reform. This bipartisan and balanced measure will ensure that quality care prevails over political differences, and I urge the Senate to pass it.

Mr. BAUCUS

Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, objection. I object.

Mr. BAUCUS

Mr. BAUCUS. If I get your agreement, I will reduce mine to 2 minutes.

Mr. BAUCUS. I say to the leader, I am willing to reduce mine down to 2 minutes if the Senator will agree to my amendment. (Laughter.)

Mr. BAUCUS. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. BAUCUS. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, I have an amendment at the desk.

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

Mr. BAUCUS. In the spirit of cooperation, although I have been allotted 20 minutes, I will be very brief, hoping I can pick up a vote or two. It is a good amendment, anyway. Very simply, the matter is this: In my State, and I know various other Senators in various other States, ran into a problem with the Postal Service. Namely, when the Postal Service wants to properly close, relocate or build a new post office, it has been, frankly, not the most sensitive operation in the world. That is, just close a post office, announce a closure, and that is it--giving the public and communities no say and no opportunity to comment on the closing, no opportunity to work out some accommodation with the Postal Service. There are many examples of this. Let me give one in Livingston, MT. The Postal Service decided they were going to close the post office in downtown Livingston, just announced that they will build a new building on the edge of town. The community was up in arms because they had no notice of this, they had no opportunity to try to work something out with the Postal Service. This is a very, very, very, popular part of town. It is the center of a small town. People go to the post office, linger, talk to their friends. It is basically kind of a commons. To have this willy-nilly moved out of town is quite disruptive to the community. So one day when I was in Livingston, I decided to walk over to the post office to see what was going on there. The Postal Service might have a good argument, but the folks also had a pretty good argument. So I walked over to the post office. They said I couldn't come in. They said, ``Sorry, Senator, you can't come in. We have to check in with headquarters to see if you can come in or not: So I say, ``OK.'' I cooled my heels for 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes; 45 minutes later they got OK and approval from the headquarters someplace--maybe the Denver office, I don't know--that I could come to the post office, walk around and see why they needed to move the post office. I wasn't being arrogant. I wasn't being unreasonable at all. I was just being a person. This is one example of the arrogance that we run up against. As it turns out, as a consequence of this, they are very embarrassed and sat down and worked out a solution with the community. My amendment is very simple. Basically, it says whenever the Postal Service wants to close a post office, and I am sure there are needs to close post offices, and there are needs to relocate. Whenever they close or decide to relocate, they have to do several things. No. 1, give notice. Give notice to the public, 60 days' notice to the communities being served. No. 2, have a hearing. No. 3, that they abide by the local zoning requirements of the community. It is quite simple. I know the Postal Service will object, saying, gee, Congress shouldn't get into managing the Postal Service, and we are not getting into the managing of the Postal Service. We are saying give the communities an opportunity to be heard. If the Postal Service and the Commission reject the community's demand, that is it. There is no right of appeal or judicial jurisdiction over any decision made by the Postal Commission after the public has an opportunity to comment. It is my experience that sometimes when a Government agency sits down with a community, in advance, and talks it over with the community and asks their opinions about things before making a decision of what they will do, that usually things work out pretty well. On the other hand, if an agency doesn't in advance go talk to the community, but just announces a decision arbitrarily, the community feels like it has not been consulted and it hasn't been consulted. The committee feels like they are taken for granted. The fact is that we are talking about the public. They are the employers. The employees are the Postal Service. I just ask Senators to support this amendment because it does give communities a little bit of a say in where the facilities are located. It is as simple as that.

Mr. BAUCUS. I yield to my good friend from Vermont.

Mr. BAUCUS. How much time remains on both sides?

Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, I yield a minute and a half to my good friend from Vermont.

Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, I appreciate my amendment being on the list. I would like 20 minutes equally divided.

Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote and I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. BAUCUS. I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. BAUCUS. Simply, Mr. President, this is already in the law. A person may already appeal a decision to close a post office. The Commission then decides whether that is reviewable. We are not changing that. That is in the law today. Any person can appeal the decision made by the Postal Service to close a post office. That is in the law today. We are saying, at least give the community notice that they are going to close. If that is done, then fewer people are going to appeal. That is all this is. I just urge Senators to vote for something which is just common sense and reasonable. It is not going to be an excessive burden on the Postal Service. It is just asking for people up front to have an opportunity to be in on the process.

Mr. BAUCUS

Mr. BAUCUS. I move to lay it on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. BAUCUS

Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, the second problem with this amendment I would like to mention is that it begs the question of what our current Tax Code is going to be replaced with. I must say there is something to the old adage that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. It is part of human nature to think that something else is always necessarily better than what we have. That somehow a sales tax, or a value-added tax, or a flat tax is necessarily going to be better than the current code. We all know, if we stop to reflect a little bit, that sometimes you get what you ask for and you don't like it because it didn't turn out the way you expected it to be. So all of us who, in my judgment--and I must say this sounds a little harsh--are being pandered to with this amendment and are listening and are somewhat tempted to believe in this amendment, should ask ourselves, realistically, how does life really work? When people promise something great on down the road, is it usually nearly as great as it is promised to be? Or to make the same point a little differently, if we are going to accomplish something that is good, generally it is through hard work and through rolling up sleeves and dealing with the difficult details. Not demagoging, pandering, or playing to the grandstand or to the crowd. That is basically how we get something done that makes sense. If this amendment is adopted, it is going to cause deep uncertainty in America. We are proud in our country of the economic growth of the last 4 or 5 years--low inflation, low interest rates, generally low unemployment rates, high economic growth rates, and the stock market has generally done well, although not so well in the last week or so. But if this amendment passes, just think of all the people and all the institutions that are not going to be able to plan very well for the future and all of the uncertainty this is going to create. The list goes on forever. You can begin with business. Business has all kinds of tax provisions. We can argue over the merits of these provisions, but they are part of current law and businesses include them in their planning. Let's take the business expense deduction that business now has. Are we going to keep the deduction for ordinary, necessary business expenses, or not? If you are a business person, you want to be able to deduct your costs. Businesses aren't going to know if they are going to be able to deduct those costs anymore. They don't know what the next law is going to be. What about the farm provisions? They won't know what the deductions are going to be for depreciation. They will have no idea. So what is a business to do? Let's take an individual with a home mortgage interest deduction, which has been mentioned many times. What does this amendment do to the real estate market, to home builders, carpenters, and electricians? What does it do to people who depend on homes or are building or buying new homes? They don't know if the mortgage deduction is going to be there in a new tax system. You say it might be. That is what the sponsors say, but they don't know that. Nobody could say with any certainty whether any single tax provision will exist in a new system. Then let's think a little bit about retirement. We have 401(k)s. What about this new Roth IRA we passed last year? A lot of Americans are worried about their retirement security. They are worried enough about Social Security. They want to be able to invest in IRAs and 401(k)s to save some money so they can have a comfortable retirement. This amendment says, no, we might not have those tax deferred savings plans anymore; they might be gone. So what is a person today to do? Should he or she invest in a Roth IRA or something else, independent of the code? Maybe real estate. But we have already pointed out that real estate might be in jeopardy because of what we might be doing here. Maybe they can invest in gold. But we also don't know what the commodity markets are going to be as a consequence of this amendment. This amendment causes such uncertainty. Let's take the President's budget--whoever the President is after the year 2000. He or she doesn't know what kind of a budget to propose to Congress, doesn't know how much revenue is going to be raised. Not only do we not know the provisions and how we will raise revenue, we have no idea how much total revenue we are going to raise--none, zero, nullity, no idea. How is a President to propose a budget to Congress under those circumstances? How is Congress to pass a budget resolution under those circumstances? How is the Appropriations Committee going to know how much money to spend? They won't know. This is a kind of Russian roulette; it is a gun at your head. OK, imagine this amendment is law and we are getting close to the deadline in 2002. Yet we still don't have agreement on what to replace the current code with. The proponents say this amendment will force the Congress to act. But there is an old saying that ``haste makes waste.'' All too often we in Congress pass something very quickly that we haven't thought about very much when we are under the gun, and we don't fully understand the consequences of what we have passed. I see the Senator from Maine sitting over there. I ask the Senator from Maine, what is she going to be thinking when the years have gone by, and here it is 2002 and, despite our best efforts, we haven't enacted a replacement code yet? We have a choice--are we going to pass an amendment to extend the deadline another year, another 2 years, another 3 years? Doesn't that cause even more uncertainty? Or say we are not going to extend the deadline, instead we are going to push something through at the last moment. It ends up a hodge-podge of proposals. Something like a value-added tax, with a little bit of sales tax mixed in maybe. What will its impact be on the American people? Nobody knows. I guarantee that the Senator from Maine is not going to know and the Senator from Montana is not going to know. That is probably what would happen. There is something else we haven't talked about--Y2K, the computer bug problem. We are very nervous in this country, and around the world, about what is going to happen on January 1, 2000. Are the computers going to work or not? I think it is a little foolhardy right now to start to contemplate tax sunsetting in the year 2002 when we don't know what is going to happen in the year 2000. I must say, Mr. President, this is a sound-bite amendment. This is a feel-good amendment. I have bent over backwards to try to see the merits of this amendment; believe me, I have. I tell you that I am disappointed, frankly, that an amendment like this is on the floor of the Senate and apparently is being taken seriously--because if this were to pass, it would cause just tremendous uncertainty in this country. Americans' incomes would fall. America would be laughed at by countries overseas. That might be a little strong, but they will certainly wonder what the United States of America is doing; no country would do something like this. Mr. President, I very strongly urge that this amendment be defeated. Let's talk about kids for a minute and HOPE scholarships. What is going to happen to them? I don't say this as a scare tactic at all. I am saying to the Senator from Arkansas that these are real concerns of real people that I have mentioned. Say the Senator from Arkansas is a student, and there is no income in his family, and he really depends upon a HOPE scholarship to go to college. He wonders, gee, is it going to be there or not? To take a more definite provision, say he is going to buy a home, but he doesn't know whether to buy a home or not. That is a real question, Senator. It is not a scare tactic; it is a real question--if he or she doesn't know if there is going to be a home mortgage interest deduction or not, it is hard to tell whether he can afford to buy a home at all. Say you are a homebuilder. Are you going to build homes? How many, and at what price ranges? Those are real concerns of real people. Let's talk for a moment about what this does to American companies. Let's just look at fringe benefits, as one example. Employers generally are allowed a deduction for fringe benefits, whether it is health benefits or retirement benefits. What is going to be in the labor contract when a labor union wants to negotiate a labor contract? Negotiators won't know because they won't know what the Tax Code is going to be. They won't know what to negotiate. The better solution, obviously, is to address these real issues more calmly. I think that is what we need here--something that is rational, that is collective, that is out in the public spotlight, out of the hothouse of Washington, DC, politics. And that is what is driving this right now--Washington, DC, politics. I am really mystified as to why this amendment came before us, and why it is being taken seriously. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Ms. COLLINS addressed the Chair.

Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, I appreciate the issue that is up before the Senate, and I have the deepest respect for the author of this amendment, Senator Hutchinson. I must say, however, that this is a very bad amendment. It is a profoundly bad amendment. It is a sound bite amendment. It is a feel good amendment, and if it were passed, I guarantee it would have profound adverse consequences upon our Nation. Why do I say that? I say it because there is a reason why the Tax Code is the way it is. We have to raise revenue somehow, obviously, to pay our bills. But the reason the tax code has gotten so complicated is because the American people over the years have come to Congress--to Members of the House and the Senate--and have said ``here are some tax provisions we would like.'' Members of Congress, by and large, don't lead. That may be news to some of us, but by and large, Members of the Senate don't lead. We tend to follow the American people. I'm not saying this is bad. We should follow our employers, the people we work for--the people who elect us. And it is the American people who, by and large, ask us to do the various things we have in our Tax Code. The home mortgage deduction has been mentioned many times because it is such a good example of what I mean. While it makes the code more complicated, there were very good reasons it was enacted and has continued over the years. There are a whole host of other reasons why the code has the reputation it has. We are an extremely large, extremely complicated country. More so than I think any one of us here realizes. There are so many different people in our country pursuing so many different economic opportunities, so many different business combinations. Our nation is even more complex as our economy becomes more global, and we develop more opportunities overseas. And various people in our country or its businesses have come to Congress and said these are some of the things that we would like because we think they will help the economy. That is why our code is the way it is. There is no doubt about the fact that the code is complicated. It is excessively complicated. We know that. We hear from our constituents all the time that it is much too complicated. But I think it is important to remind ourselves that there is a reason why, to date, we don't have a flat tax, why we don't have a value-added tax, why we don't have a national sales tax. It is because the American people have not decided which, if any, of the alternatives they want.

Mr. BAUCUS. I would love to yield to my good friend from South Dakota.

Mr. BAUCUS

Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, last week's deadly violence in the Halls of the United States Capitol touched the conscience of a nation. From coast to coast, Americans gathered to talk about the shootings. The coverage has dominated television, has dominated our newspapers, as well it should. There has been much discussion about who the assailant was, where he was born, where he lived, what might have caused him to do this dreadful deed. I must say, Mr. President, with deep regret, that this assailant spent a part of his life in my home State of Montana. We in Montana are even more grieved, even more touched, and find this tragedy even more tragic than others in the Nation--if that is possible. This man was not from Montana. We pride ourselves that those of us from our State have a great sense of honor, pride, duty, sense of family, sense of community. This person, unfortunately, spent some time in our State before he perpetrated this dreadful, violent, evil act. We are deeply grieved. We are very deeply sorry. I am speaking for the people of my State of Montana. Mr. President, there has been some conversation, too, about why things like this happen. Did somehow the system allow a person like this with some mental illness to fall between the cracks? The system we have for treating mental illness, was it somehow not adequate? Frankly, I believe that the system is inadequate. That is, there are many people who are homeless. We are not properly treating people who are mentally disturbed, some of whom are paranoid schizophrenic. They are not receiving medication. They are not being properly treated, because our system is not paying enough attention to people who have this illness. I think if we do not remedy the situation, we will have continued troubles on our hands. I hope we do remedy it very quickly. Remember more than anything else the real heroes here. The real heroes are the officers who were shot performing their duty. Talking about the assailant and talking about how we correct the system is meaningless--because the real lesson here is the lesson of Jacob Chestnut and John Gibson. All of us here personally know many of the Capitol Police. We live with them. We see them daily. We talk with them. They talk with us. We know many by their first names. We know something about them personally. Tony, for example. Tony D'Ambrosio was a plainclothes detective, first a uniformed policeman, on Capitol Hill for many years. It wasn't too many years ago I received several death threats--regrettably, in my home State of Montana. Tony came out to Montana with me and we ran a marathon together. I got to know Tony quite well and have the highest regard for him. There is Steven out there. Many know Steven. Steven stands by the door to the entrance of the Senate. We talk with him, we joke with him. He is part of our family. Then there is Henry. Henry Turner. Henry Turner is a policeman originally from Alabama, who is also stationed out here at the front door. I often talk to Henry about legislation on the floor. ``This is a good bill to vote for,'' or ``This is not a good amendment to vote for.'' Henry would know more about the legislation before the Senate than a lot of Senators, on occasion. A great man to talk to. Very wise. A very wise, very thoughtful man from Alabama. The same is obviously true for John and for Jacob. I did not personally know them nearly as well as I know other Capitol Police, but they are men, they are fathers, they are parents. They have family just like all of us do, all of us in the Senate, all of us in the country. We are all bound together by the community of brotherhood, the community of sisterhood, the community of family. We are all together. Many people have said it in many, many ways, and I want to share my deepest sympathy for them, John and Jacob, for their families, and I want them to know that we all are with them. We are now and we will always be.

Mr. BAUCUS

Mr. BAUCUS. Mr President, I rise today to celebrate a true Montanan and a great friend on his 70th birthday. Anyone who has come to know George Ostrom through his radio broadcasts, his photographs, his writing, or who has been fortunate enough as I have to spend time personally with him has come away with a better understanding of the American West and Montana in particular. I've known George for too many years to count. Among other things, he and I share a passion for hiking in general and for hiking in Glacier National Park in particular. You see George has spent most of his 70 years in and around the Park. To this day, he hikes with a group that he affectionately calls the ``Over the Hill Gang.'' They hike once a week when the weather permits, usually between 30 and 40 times a year. For years, George has invited me to join his friends for a hike. But you know how it is. Our schedules are busy and somehow I just never got around to it. Until last August. During our summer recess last year I joined up with George and his Over the Hill Gang. And what a day we had. We told stories (all of them were true, of course), shared water bottles and talked about our families, our hopes and our dreams. Mr. President, it was a day I will not soon forget. Over the years, I had heard all about George's many awards including the honor bestowed on his weekly column ``The Trailwatcher'', which in 1996 was selected as the best weekly humor column in the United States by the National Newspaper Association. And I had seen many of his photographs of the Park in local and national magazines including Sports Afield, Field and Stream and Sports Illustrated. But on that hike I came to know George Ostrom the man. A funny and engaging gentleman who will not quit until he gets where he is going. That spirit is Montana's spirit. An ideal that defines all of us. A common bond that all Montanans share. Sadly, just a few days later, one of our group, Roger Dokken, fell to his death while hiking a different trail. Because of our time together, he was my friend--automatically. No politics, no agenda. Just two people doing together what they enjoy. Through the triumphs and tragedies of life, George and his Over the Hill gang continue to hike on. They continue to embody what is good, what is right about Montana. So Mr. President, as George and his family celebrate his 70th birthday, I send my congratulations confident that George Ostrum is still well shy of being over the hill.

Mr. BAUCUS

Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, most people my age have known the heartache of having to watch their parents grow old. It is a sad day in a person's life when they see their father get his first gray hair. Or the day you notice lines in your mother's face where previously, there were none. This aging process is made worse by the scary and very real possibility that too many people who will become senior citizens in the next several years are not at all prepared for the transition from work to retirement. To be honest, it isn't our parents who we need to worry about so much. They survived the Depression. They know what it takes to get by during the lean years--it takes planning and saving. Putting money aside, when it might be easier to spend it in the moment. Those are the values that our parents live by. They are the values we would do well to heed. And even better to teach those who will follow us. We as a nation have lost our imperative to save. Personal savings rates have dropped to 3.8 percent of our Gross Domestic Product, the lowest in 58 years. Fifty-one million Americans in our nation's workforce have no pension coverage. But statistics like those don't tell the whole story. They don't do justice to the hardscrabble struggles that real people go through every day. Struggles that involve agonizing questions like: ``Should I eat today or take my medication?'' or ``Will I be able to heat my house this winter?'' Make no mistake, our nation's lack of saving for retirement is a tragedy in the making. That is why I am so proud to join my colleagues in introducing this legislation. A bill that will make it easier for Americans to put money aside, and a bill that will help move pension issues to the forefront of Americans' minds. A bill that will: Expand coverage for small businesses because they have a harder time affording health care and retirement plans; Enhance pension fairness for women because they fall into categories that have a harder time saving; Increase the portability of pension plans so that when you change jobs you don't have to worry about where your savings will go; Strengthen pension security and enforcement so you can rest easy at night, knowing your money is safe; Reduce red tape so it's easier for employers to give their workers retirement options; And encourage retirement education so that husbands and wives, parents and children, talk to each other--make plans for their future. And know what to expect tomorrow and down the road. One aspect of the bill I am particularly proud of are the small business provisions. Thirty-eight million of the people in this country who do not have a pension plan work at small businesses. Eighty percent of all small business employees have no pension coverage. In my state of Montana, more than 95 percent of our businesses are small businesses. And almost 9 out of 10 offer no pension plans. We cannot let these hard-working Americans down. Currently, most small businesses can't afford pension plans. They would like to, but they just can't make ends meet. Our bill makes it a smart business decision for small business owners to offer retirement plans. I have made it my priority to work with members of the small business community, both back in Montana and nationally, to identify legislative solutions that will most readily enable small businesses to offer pension plans to their employees. While this bill does not include every recommendation we received, it does represent a collection of high-priority proposals which we believe could be supported by a bi- partisan majority of Congress. The major provisions in this bill which would help small businesses start and maintain pension plans include the following: To help make pension plans more affordable we have included two new tax credits: one to help defray start-up costs and the other to defray the cost of employer contributions to pension plans; In addition, we provide for the elimination of some fees. To address the problems the small business community has identified as a major impediment to establishing pension plans, we make significant changes in the top-heavy rules that limit employer contributions to plans. To address concerns of our smallest businesses, who want to provide pensions but can only afford `start-up' plans at first, we provide increases in income limits that apply to SIMPLE pension plans, along with a new, salary-reduction SIMPLE plan; And for those employers that want to provide the security of a defined benefit plan for their employees but cannot because of the increased regulatory burden, we create a simplified defined benefit plan for small business. These provisions are designed to address the problems of cost and complexity that are a barrier to so many small businesses. They will help small employers establish a pattern of saving for themselves and their employees. Mr. President, I hope the Pension Coverage and Portability Act will spearhead a national debate on how to improve employer-provide pensions in this country. This debate is essential if we are to achieve our goal of making America in the next century, not only strong as a nation, but strong as a community of individuals confident in the security of their financial futures. This is a good, bi-partisan bill. It takes the positive steps we as a nation need to put our future in safe hands. I am eager for the coming debate on this bill. I hope it sparks a debate in the coffee shops and kitchen tables all across the country. Working together, and with this bill, we can turn a nation of spenders, into a nation of savers.

Mr. BAUCUS

Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.