John Breaux

Mr. BREAUX

Mr. BREAUX. I respond to the Senator from Maryland who has been active in this issue, in addition to the overriding fairness, it saves $3.9 billion over 5 years. I suggest that when you add the fairness test plus $3.9 billion to a system that is nearly broke and insolvent, that is a good deal.

Mr. BREAUX. It is not necessarily just the financial situation we are looking at. We are looking at something that is called fairness. When we, as Democrats, look at trying to tax people that are making $25,000 and a blue-collar job, driving a truck in my State of Louisiana, and telling that couple that they should be subsidizing someone who makes $100,000 a year who is retired, that is not good policy. So this is a policy change as much as it is anything else. It is a question of fairness. We have a system that is going broke and we are going to make changes. The changes should be fair. I suggest this is a fair and equitable change to ask for those who can most afford it to pay a little bit more so those who can least afford it will not have to continue to subsidize those who are very well-off in retirement. That is a fair test. It is a good proposal. I suggest that we support it.

Mr. BREAUX. That means only 1.6 percent of the people filing returns would be affected by this. How many millions of people do we have back in our States that are making $25,000 and continuing to subsidize those who are in retirement income? The average income in my State for working people is about $22,000 or $23,000. We have very few people that are retired that make over $75,000 a couple--almost none. I am happy to yield.

Mr. BREAUX. I thank the chairman for yielding. These arguments on the floor sometimes become very confusing. Everybody wants to fix Medicare. But what I hear from so many of our colleagues when we can all agree on fixing it, no one can agree how to fix it. We ask the question, when are we going to fix it? And some say, well, not now. And we ask the question, well, who is going to fix it? And we say, not us. And then they ask the question, well, how are we going to fix it? And the response is, well, not this way, but fix it. I think that the politics of the issue at hand before the Senate is really very confusing to me. I cannot imagine going to my State of Louisiana and talking to a truck driver who is making, say, $25,000 a year, and supporting a wife and two children, and explain to him how it is correct and good policy to say that he and his two children and his wife are going to subsidize a retired couple that is making over $75,000 a year in retirement income. As a Democrat, how do I handle that? I suggest as a Republican, how do I explain that? It is not explainable. It is not good politics. Even more important, it is not good Government. Medicare is going to be insolvent in the year 2001. We have an obligation to try and fix it. I think it is good policy to say to that person who works every day and maybe makes $25,000 that we no longer are going to ask you to subsidize somebody's doctor's insurance that may be sitting home, in retirement, collecting over $100,000 a year, clipping coupons. Now, you would think that good policy for both parties would be to say we want to help the guy who is struggling to raise his two children, support his wife, who makes $25,000 a year, by asking someone who is retired that makes over $75,000 a year in retirement to pay a little bit more of what he is getting from the Government. We asked the Congressional Research Service--and certainly they are bipartisan, nonpartisan--how many people are affected by this change? They said that approximately 1.6 million people in the Nation age 65 or older, one-half of 1 percent of the noninstitutionalized people, not in hospitals or homes, have adjusted gross income at or above the threshold that this bill provides for--$50,000 for a single person or $75,000 for a couple filing their return.

Mr. BREAUX. I thank the distinguished chairman and the distinguished ranking member. There is no easy answer to this problem. Everybody wants us to fix Medicare, but nobody wants us to do anything in order to fix it. When you say, ``Do you want to increase premiums,'' everybody says no. When you say, ``Do you want to reduce benefits,'' everybody says no. When you say, ``Do you want to reduce payments of doctors and hospitals,'' they say no because they may not serve us any more. When we say, let's gradually, by the year 2027, forewarn people that that will be the eligible age of Medicare, we are now saying do not do that, either. The fact is that in the year 2001 Medicare becomes insolvent. What are we going to tell the people then? Are we going to say we did not have the political courage to do anything, so there is no more Medicare available for anybody, regardless of age? That is what is facing us now. This is probably one of the easiest steps toward ensuring that Medicare will be solvent. There are no easy answers, and I suggest that this is one of the easier ones. If we do not have the political courage to do this, how are we going to handle the question about what happens when there is no more Medicare available for anyone? I think this ought to be adopted.

Mr. BREAUX. It is increased 2 years over 24--2 months. The whole thing takes 24 years to get to the age 67; 24 years before 67. It takes 24 years to reach the age of 67, however that calculates out.

Mr. BREAUX. Two months per year.

Mr. BREAUX. I would be happy to yield for a question.

Mr. BREAUX. How much time?

Mr. BREAUX

Mr. BREAUX. Mr. President, I rise for a moment or two to speak to a bill which Senator Mack and I are introducing today on the entire question of Medicare. So many people around the country have heard Congress and elected officials for a long period of time talk about how we need to reform the Medicare Program. The Medicare Program has been a wonderful program since 1965. It has assured our senior citizens they will have adequate health care in a period in their lives when health care is vitally important. We have all seen the studies and the reports which clearly point out that unless Congress fundamentally reforms this program, it is not going to be around for much longer. We clearly see a program that will be bankrupt, which is running out of money, and that has to be a tremendous concern not only to our Nation's seniors but also to their children and their grandchildren and to society at large. Unfortunately, every time Congress moves toward trying to reform Medicare, we do not do it. We have taken the same approach year in and year out with the thought of fixing Medicare with a Band-Aid type of approach instead of addressing the fundamental defects in the program. We have every year said we are going to fix it this year by reducing the reimbursement fees that doctors and hospitals get for treating Medicare patients. I said the other day, and others have made this comment, that before too long doctors and hospitals will refuse to take Medicare patients because their reimbursement rate from the Government will be less than it costs them to do business, that they will simply refuse to take Medicare patients any longer. That is already happening in my own family. My mother-in-law just a week ago informed us that after being diagnosed with an ailment of diabetes, in trying to go to a local physician in our State of Louisiana, they promptly informed her they do not take Medicare patients. I think that is something we all need to be very concerned about. We cannot continue to try to fix Medicare with a proposal that truly does not fix it. What we introduce today is a proposal to make an option available to Medicare recipients which is patterned on the Federal Employees Health Benefit Plan that every Member of the Senate and every Member of the House and all 9 million Federal employees have. It is a program which is fundamentally different than Medicare because, unlike Medicare, it is based on competition in the marketplace as opposed to arbitrary price fixing of Medicare services, which is the current system under Medicare based here in Washington. There was an interesting story in the Washington Post this morning which talked about how House and Senate committees are looking at bringing about reform to Medicare and Medicaid and basing that reform on the Federal health plan available to Members of Congress and other Federal employees. Unfortunately, while the Medicare proposals which are now pending in the House and the Senate will increase the range of options available to seniors, they lack the most important feature of the Federal Employees Health Benefit Plan. That is competition. Medicare is the only program that fails to deliver health care based on competition but does it based on arbitrary price fixing, which is no longer working. The proposals currently in both the House and the Senate plan would continue to base what we pay managed care programs on what we spend on the so-called fee-for-service, currently available under Medicare. And that is the problem. There is not fundamental reform. I think most committees are to be commended. Our Finance Committee draft does recognize that there is a problem. But in trying to reduce the costs of Medicare by $115 billion, almost all of those savings come out of reducing payments to doctors and hospitals. I have said what the problem is there. Doctors and hospitals will begin to refuse to take Medicare patients. That, certainly, is not going to help anyone. So what we are recommending, Senator Mack and I, by our approach, is to introduce a test program over a 5-year period to try to fundamentally reform Medicare; to set up demonstration projects around the country to allow competitive bidding and negotiations to take part in the delivery of Medicare services to seniors in this country. We had an interesting report the other day in our Aging Committee that pointed out we are overpaying managed care programs under Medicare by almost $2 billion a year more than it is costing them to treat the patients. That is because it is not based on competition, but rather on an arbitrary, bureaucratic program that is run out of a department here in Washington. I don't fault the program managers and the bureaucrats. That is how Congress set it up. But while it may have been a good idea in 1965, in 1997 it is no longer working. It is totally out of step with the way health care services need to be delivered in this country. So what the Breaux-Mack proposal says is that we are going to take a look at how the Federal employee plan works; we are going to do some demonstration projects around the country; we are going to take those results, and Congress will act on those results. We will not just let the study sit on a shelf somewhere in a library and not have anything happen with it, but rather we will have the Congress actually take those recommendations and act on those recommendations. We are convinced that with this new approach, Medicare beneficiaries will get more services. We start off with a basic standardized plan that in addition to what is now available to Medicare patients, also includes prescription drugs, which is incredibly important. We also guarantee this basic package will be available to all of the people we are proposing. But the fundamental difference is they will have more information about the plans, so the plans will be able to be compared for people to see which plan is the best. So we will create a situation where Medicare beneficiaries will have more services offered to them, more choices of which plan they would like to consider, more benefits under those plans, and we think we can clearly do it for less money than is being spent on the program right now. One of the features of our program is that it sets up an office of competition, much like the private plans that are available now to Federal employees. We think that an office of competition will be able to call for people to actually come in and submit proposals. Then, after they look at these proposals and make sure they meet the standardized package of benefits, they will begin to negotiate with these people who are offering these plans to our seniors in the United States. Competition is a wonderful thing. For the right to treat 38 million Medicare recipients, people will compete. They will say, ``Our plan is better than their plan. Our plan offers more than their plan. Our plan can do it at a better price.'' There will be a competitive world set up that is not now available to Medicare recipients. That is the fundamental problem, I think, that the House and Senate bills, and respective Finance and Ways and Means Committee bills, do not address. It still says we are going to continue to fix prices out of Washington for Medicare recipients. I think that every think tank we have talked to--and Senator Mack and I have met with liberal think tanks and conservative think tanks, and people who have spent a lifetime studying this problem. Generally, they all have come to the same conclusion--that greater competition in the marketplace will allow health providers to offer more services to senior citizens and do it at a better price. So we are going to introduce today legislation that does establish a Medicare reform package or proposals which we think represent fundamental reform in the system. We are not saying that all seniors have to move into this program immediately. No, we are saying we ought to have a demonstration project in 10 cities around the country and in rural areas around America, to see how it would work, do this test marketing for about a 5-year period, until we can get a great deal of information about what is happening out there when you try to reform this system, then take that information and bring it back to the Congress and have Congress act on that recommendation. We think that is something that makes a great deal of sense. I think it is a balanced way to proceed. We are not rushing into it. We are not telling seniors they have to do something overnight, but merely giving them the choice during this period of time. I think that is what seniors really want. They want the choice. They want more information. They want a better benefit package. And all of us want, bottom line, to see that this program is going to be around for when we move into it, when our children move into it, when the baby-boomer generation we hear so much talk about is ready to participate in the program. We clearly cannot continue down the same path that we have continued on for so many years, since 1965. We think the Breaux-Mack proposal is a realistic alternative. It merits bipartisan support, and we hope both committees ultimately will bring to the floor a type of program based on what myself and Senator Mack will be introducing in the Congress today.

Mr. BREAUX

Mr. BREAUX. Mr. President, I also extend my deepest sympathy and that of my family to our distinguished Democratic leader, Senator Daschle, and his family in their loss, and we wish them best wishes during this very difficult time they are undergoing. To the extent he can face the difficult obligations he has ongoing right now, we extend him the greatest sympathy from all of us on the Democratic side and the Republican side as well. (The remarks of Mr. Breaux pertaining to the introduction of S. 904 are located in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')

Mr. BREAUX. Mr. President, I know others will be coming to speak and I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BREAUX

Mr. BREAUX. Mr. President, I will not take a great deal of time. I want to talk about the Medicare legislation that is pending in the Senate Finance Committee and the bill which my colleague, Senator Connie Mack of Florida, and I will be introducing today.

Mr. BREAUX

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

Mr. BREAUX

Mr. BREAUX. Mr. President, I rise for a moment or two to speak to a bill which Senator Mack and I are introducing today on the entire question of Medicare. So many people around the country have heard Congress and elected officials for a long period of time talk about how we need to reform the Medicare Program. The Medicare Program has been a wonderful program since 1965. It has assured our senior citizens they will have adequate health care in a period in their lives when health care is vitally important. We have all seen the studies and the reports which clearly point out that unless Congress fundamentally reforms this program, it is not going to be around for much longer. We clearly see a program that will be bankrupt, which is running out of money, and that has to be a tremendous concern not only to our Nation's seniors but also to their children and their grandchildren and to society at large. Unfortunately, every time Congress moves toward trying to reform Medicare, we do not do it. We have taken the same approach year in and year out with the thought of fixing Medicare with a Band-Aid type of approach instead of addressing the fundamental defects in the program. We have every year said we are going to fix it this year by reducing the reimbursement fees that doctors and hospitals get for treating Medicare patients. I said the other day, and others have made this comment, that before too long doctors and hospitals will refuse to take Medicare patients because their reimbursement rate from the Government will be less than it costs them to do business, that they will simply refuse to take Medicare patients any longer. That is already happening in my own family. My mother-in-law just a week ago informed us that after being diagnosed with an ailment of diabetes, in trying to go to a local physician in our State of Louisiana, they promptly informed her they do not take Medicare patients. I think that is something we all need to be very concerned about. We cannot continue to try to fix Medicare with a proposal that truly does not fix it. What we introduce today is a proposal to make an option available to Medicare recipients which is patterned on the Federal Employees Health Benefit Plan that every Member of the Senate and every Member of the House and all 9 million Federal employees have. It is a program which is fundamentally different than Medicare because, unlike Medicare, it is based on competition in the marketplace as opposed to arbitrary price fixing of Medicare services, which is the current system under Medicare based here in Washington. There was an interesting story in the Washington Post this morning which talked about how House and Senate committees are looking at bringing about reform to Medicare and Medicaid and basing that reform on the Federal health plan available to Members of Congress and other Federal employees. Unfortunately, while the Medicare proposals which are now pending in the House and the Senate will increase the range of options available to seniors, they lack the most important feature of the Federal Employees Health Benefit Plan. That is competition. Medicare is the only program that fails to deliver health care based on competition but does it based on arbitrary price fixing, which is no longer working. The proposals currently in both the House and the Senate plan would continue to base what we pay managed care programs on what we spend on the so-called fee-for-service, currently available under Medicare. And that is the problem. There is not fundamental reform. I think most committees are to be commended. Our Finance Committee draft does recognize that there is a problem. But in trying to reduce the costs of Medicare by $115 billion, almost all of those savings come out of reducing payments to doctors and hospitals. I have said what the problem is there. Doctors and hospitals will begin to refuse to take Medicare patients. That, certainly, is not going to help anyone. So what we are recommending, Senator Mack and I, by our approach, is to introduce a test program over a 5-year period to try to fundamentally reform Medicare; to set up demonstration projects around the country to allow competitive bidding and negotiations to take part in the delivery of Medicare services to seniors in this country. We had an interesting report the other day in our Aging Committee that pointed out we are overpaying managed care programs under Medicare by almost $2 billion a year more than it is costing them to treat the patients. That is because it is not based on competition, but rather on an arbitrary, bureaucratic program that is run out of a department here in Washington. I don't fault the program managers and the bureaucrats. That is how Congress set it up. But while it may have been a good idea in 1965, in 1997 it is no longer working. It is totally out of step with the way health care services need to be delivered in this country. So what the Breaux-Mack proposal says is that we are going to take a look at how the Federal employee plan works; we are going to do some demonstration projects around the country; we are going to take those results, and Congress will act on those results. We will not just let the study sit on a shelf somewhere in a library and not have anything happen with it, but rather we will have the Congress actually take those recommendations and act on those recommendations. We are convinced that with this new approach, Medicare beneficiaries will get more services. We start off with a basic standardized plan that in addition to what is now available to Medicare patients, also includes prescription drugs, which is incredibly important. We also guarantee this basic package will be available to all of the people we are proposing. But the fundamental difference is they will have more information about the plans, so the plans will be able to be compared for people to see which plan is the best. So we will create a situation where Medicare beneficiaries will have more services offered to them, more choices of which plan they would like to consider, more benefits under those plans, and we think we can clearly do it for less money than is being spent on the program right now. One of the features of our program is that it sets up an office of competition, much like the private plans that are available now to Federal employees. We think that an office of competition will be able to call for people to actually come in and submit proposals. Then, after they look at these proposals and make sure they meet the standardized package of benefits, they will begin to negotiate with these people who are offering these plans to our seniors in the United States. Competition is a wonderful thing. For the right to treat 38 million Medicare recipients, people will compete. They will say, ``Our plan is better than their plan. Our plan offers more than their plan. Our plan can do it at a better price.'' There will be a competitive world set up that is not now available to Medicare recipients. That is the fundamental problem, I think, that the House and Senate bills, and respective Finance and Ways and Means Committee bills, do not address. It still says we are going to continue to fix prices out of Washington for Medicare recipients. I think that every think tank we have talked to--and Senator Mack and I have met with liberal think tanks and conservative think tanks, and people who have spent a lifetime studying this problem. Generally, they all have come to the same conclusion--that greater competition in the marketplace will allow health providers to offer more services to senior citizens and do it at a better price. So we are going to introduce today legislation that does establish a Medicare reform package or proposals which we think represent fundamental reform in the system. We are not saying that all seniors have to move into this program immediately. No, we are saying we ought to have a demonstration project in 10 cities around the country and in rural areas around America, to see how it would work, do this test marketing for about a 5-year period, until we can get a great deal of information about what is happening out there when you try to reform this system, then take that information and bring it back to the Congress and have Congress act on that recommendation. We think that is something that makes a great deal of sense. I think it is a balanced way to proceed. We are not rushing into it. We are not telling seniors they have to do something overnight, but merely giving them the choice during this period of time. I think that is what seniors really want. They want the choice. They want more information. They want a better benefit package. And all of us want, bottom line, to see that this program is going to be around for when we move into it, when our children move into it, when the baby-boomer generation we hear so much talk about is ready to participate in the program. We clearly cannot continue down the same path that we have continued on for so many years, since 1965. We think the Breaux-Mack proposal is a realistic alternative. It merits bipartisan support, and we hope both committees ultimately will bring to the floor a type of program based on what myself and Senator Mack will be introducing in the Congress today.

Mr. BREAUX

Mr. BREAUX. Mr. President, I rise to pay tribute to two men who have become an institution in my hometown of Crowley, LA. For 40 years now, Bill Williams and Shel Kanter have hosted the very popular ``Bill and Shel Show'' on radio station KSIG-AM. Each weekday morning, Bill and Shel have entertained and informed thousands of listeners throughout Acadia Parish and the surrounding area. For most listeners of the ``Bill and Shel Show,'' it's hard to imagine starting the day without them and their reports of the latest local news, community events, and the all-important school updates, including the school lunch menus. As anyone who has tried to raise funds for a charitable cause in Crowley knows, a kind or encouraging word from Bill and Shel can sometimes make the difference between success or failure. Bill and Shel, of course, have always been most generous with kind words for the various worthy causes in and around Crowley. It wasn't too long ago that the ``Bill and Shel Show'' was threatened with extinction. When KSIG Radio changed ownership, the new owners briefly considered canceling the show. Of course, as one might imagine, the enormous outcry of protest from the community quickly persuaded the station's new management that its initial decision had been perhaps hasty and unwise. Today, I am happy to report that Bill and Shel continue to entertain and inform their many listeners and, presumably, will continue to dominate the local airwaves for many years to come. In this day and time when all of us decry the decline in the spirit of community and cohesiveness that once was the hallmark of small towns all across our land, the ``Bill and Shel Show'' serves as a reminder of a time when small towns like Crowley--where neighborliness, community spirit, and civic pride still thrive--were the norm, not the exception. It is people like Bill Williams and Shel Kanter who help make Crowley a place where people are truly connected by a common purpose and a sincere concern for the well-being of the entire community. I congratulate the owners and management of KSIG Radio for their decision to keep Bill and Shel on the air. And I congratulate Bill and Shel for 40 years of broadcasting excellence.

Mr. BREAUX

Mr. BREAUX. I agree with the majority leader. This legislation represents a strong reaffirmation to the world of the United States steadfast support for the Jones Act. Furthermore, the House of Representatives amended H.R. 2754 to clearly preserve the authority of the Secretary of Defense to define, for the purposes of exclusion from coverage under the agreement, the terms ``military vessel'', ``military reserve vessel'', and ``essential security interest''. While the administration and the Office of the USTR attempted to define ``military reserve vessel'' by including a description of current military reserve vessel programs, some have expressed concerns that this approach might in the future limit the flexibility of the Secretary of Defense to implement additional programs, such as the National Defense Features Program. I am working with Senator Lott to redraft this provision in a way that will not limit United States national security options.

Mr. BREAUX. I thank the majority leader for his efforts to address the concerns of all U.S. shipbuilders while achieving proper ratification and implementation of this important international agreement.

Mr. BREAUX. I would also like to note that S. 629 includes another important provision not found in H.R. 2754, as amended by the House of Representatives. S. 629 provides for U.S. shipyards to continue to receive 25-year title XI financing when competing in bids against subsidized non-signatory shipyards. I want to once again thank the majority leader for his efforts to resolve the differences within the U.S. shipbuilding industry over the agreement and to find an appropriate solution that benefits the entire U.S. maritime industry.

Mr. BREAUX. H.R. 2754, as amended by the House of Representatives, would have required that third country anti-dumping cases taken by the Office of the USTR to the third country be adjudicated in a manner similar to that provided by the agreement. Some were concerned that S. 629 would require that the injurious pricing action be taken in accordance with the laws of that third country, without regard to whether those laws are consistent with the agreement. I intend to work with Senator Lott to ensure that such third country proceedings are consistent with the injurious pricing actions of the agreement.

Mr. BREAUX

Mr. BREAUX. I thank you, Madam President. I am not for Joe Camel, but I am for this budget agreement. I think that the question before the Senate today is, are we willing to run the risk of unraveling an agreement that has been entered into by Republican Members working in good faith with Democratic Members working in good faith with this administration to try to do something that we have not been able to do for many years? We shut the Government down in the last Congress because we could not agree on a budget. You talk about affecting children. When you shut down all the services of the Government, you affect young people, you affect children, you affect senior citizens, and you affect every aspect of our society. We did that in the last Congress because we could not come together and agree on a budget that was balanced in terms not only of spending but of how we spend the money that we are allocated to spend. We have a historical agreement in front of us that breaks that pattern of not being able to work together, by coming together and saying, yes, there are Democratic priorities and, yes, there are Republican priorities, and both sides have to give. It is really interesting that the people who have said that they cannot support this agreement--I respect their positions; they are good citizens, they are good Congress men and women, they are good Members of the Senate. But if you look at where the opposition is coming from, it is not from the center, it is not from the mainstream, it is from more liberal Members and more conservative Members. Again, I respect their positions. But what we have been able to put together is a budget agreement that can work. There will be all kinds of efforts to try to change that agreement. I am concerned those efforts will do damage to the overall agreement. Generally, when things sound so simple, they generally do not work, and this sounds so simple: Let's insure more children, and do it by raising the tax on a product that many people do not like. If it sounds so simple it is too good to be true, generally it is. I think what we are neglecting to focus in on is what this agreement already has in it. This fragile agreement already has about $16.8 billion in it right now without this amendment to insure more children who are currently uninsured. That is a major achievement. Should we insure every child? Of course. But we cannot do it all at once. This agreement insures 5 million more currently uninsured children in this country. $16.8 billion is already in this budget package for that purpose. I know that you know certainly the folks who support increasing it right now--I mean, their intentions are good intentions. I agree with their intentions. The question is not should we do it? The question is how we do it, how we do it in the context of the other priorities we have as a nation and as a society. Just this week, I think yesterday, in the other body, our friends on the other side of the Capitol, some said, ``Well, we ought to spend more money for highways.'' There is no question about that. We need more transportation, better transportation, we need mass transportation, we need highways, we need to fix the bridges that are crumbling down that when they fall they kill people, highways that kill people every year, 40,000 deaths on highways, much of it as a result of inadequate highway systems in this country. Should we improve highways? Of course. Should we spend more money on highways? Yes. The question is how we go about getting there. This budget provides a blueprint, a map, a way to get from here to there that has been agreed to by Republican leaders, by Democratic leaders, and by the administration. I just say that we have a plan of action. I suggest that we support that plan of action, and, in doing so, we are going to have to be called upon to say no to some ideas and concepts that I have no disagreement with. Of course we want to do this. Of course I want to move in that direction. Again, the question today is not whether we should do it, but how we go about doing it. I suggest that the fragile package that is before us is the proper approach to solving the problem of uninsured children in this country. Five million more insured under this budget package is a major, major achievement. We should be proud of it. Should we discontinue our efforts? Of course not. We should continue to work and to expand. There will be ways offered in the respective committees in order to achieve those goals. But I suggest that this is not the right approach at this time. I think that one of the concerns I have is that if the whole entire budget agreement begins to unravel and fall apart we run the risk of doing a great deal more damage, not just to one segment of our population, but to the entire country. We did that in the last Congress. It was not a proud moment for this body nor the other body. I think we have come a long way since then. Let us not go back to those days. I suggest that we should stick with the budget package. That is the right thing to do.

Mr. BREAUX. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. BREAUX. I congratulate the Senator for making this point, that every budget we have had in the past and been signed into law is necessarily a compromise. There are a lot of things that a lot of people would like in this legislation that are not there. I know the Senator from California has talked about additional children being covered. I support that effort. I mentioned the highway bill. We need money for transportation. We have talked about needing more money for schools, to try to fix schools that are falling down around the country. The point is, and I think the Senator from California is making it, that we have to deal with an agreement that has the chance of passing, if the $16 billion for more child care that is in this budget now ever has a chance to become law. I would say, as one member of the Senate Finance Committee, we are going to look at exactly what the essence of this amendment does in the Senate Finance Committee. There is no problem with us considering this approach and voting on it and adding it to later legislation coming down the pike. So this does not mean this is over. We can continue to look at this suggested means in future legislation. I thank the Senator.

Mr. BREAUX

Mr. BREAUX. Mr. President, I introduce the Private Wireless Spectrum Availability Act of 1997. This legislation will help the more than 300,000 U.S. companies, both large and small, that have invested $25 billion in internally owned and operated wireless communications systems. It will provide these companies with critically needed spectrum and will do so through an equitable lease fee system. The private wireless communications community includes industrial, land transportation, business, educational, and philanthropic organizations that own and operate communications systems for their internal use. The top 10 U.S. industrial companies have more than 6,000 private wireless licenses. Private wireless systems also serve America's small businesses in the utility, contracting, taxi, and livery industries. These internal-use communications facilities greatly enhance public safety and the quality of American life. They also support global competitiveness for American firms. For example, private wireless systems support: the efficient production of goods and services; the safe transportation of passengers and products by land and air; the exploration, production, and distribution of energy; agricultural enhancement and production; the maintenance and development of America's infrastructure; and compliance with various local, State, and Federal operational government statutes. Current regulatory policy inadequately recognizes the public interest benefits that private wireless licensees provide to the American public. Consequently, allocations of spectrum to these private wireless users has been deficient. Private wireless entities received spectrum in 1974 and 1986 when the FCC allocated channels in the 800 megahertz and 900 megahertz bands. Over time, however, the FCC has significantly reduced the number of channels available to industrial and business entities in those allocations. Private wireless entities now have access to only 299 channels, or 32 percent of the channels of the original allocation. Spectrum auctions have done a great job of speeding up the licensing of interpersonal communications services and have generated significant revenues for the U.S. Treasury. They have also unfortunately skewed the spectrum allocation process toward subscriber-based services and away from critical radio services such as private wireless which are exempted from auctions. Nearly 200 megahertz of spectrum has been allocated for the provision of commercial telecommunications services, virtually all of which has been assigned by the FCC through competitive bidding. Competitive bidding is not the proper assignment methodology for private wireless telecommunications users. Private wireless operations are site-specific systems which vary in size based on that user's particular needs, and are seldom mutually exclusive from other private wireless applicants. Auctions, which depend on mutually exclusive applications and use market areas based on population, simply cannot be designed for private wireless systems. This legislation mandates that the FCC allocate no less than 12 megahertz of new spectrum for private wireless use as a measure to maintain our industrial and business competitiveness in the global arena, as well as to protect the welfare of the employees in the American workplace. Research indicates that private wireless companies are willing to pay a reasonable fee in return for use of spectrum. They recognize that their access to spectrum increases with their willingness to pay fair value for the use of this national asset. My bill grants the FCC legislative authority to charge efficiency- based spectrum lease fees in this new spectrum allocation. These lease fees should encourage the efficient use of spectrum by the private wireless industry, generate recurring annual revenues as compensation for the use of spectrum, and retain spectrum ownership by the public. Furthermore, the fees should be easy for private frequency advisory committees to calculate and collect. Mr. President, I am mindful that some peripheral concerns expressed by small businesses that service private wireless users are not addressed in this bill. I assure these companies that I will work with them through the legislative process to address these issues. I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this bill and ask unanimous consent that the full text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. BREAUX

Mr. BREAUX. Mr. President, I introduce the Private Wireless Spectrum Availability Act of 1997. This legislation will help the more than 300,000 U.S. companies, both large and small, that have invested $25 billion in internally owned and operated wireless communications systems. It will provide these companies with critically needed spectrum and will do so through an equitable lease fee system. The private wireless communications community includes industrial, land transportation, business, educational, and philanthropic organizations that own and operate communications systems for their internal use. The top 10 U.S. industrial companies have more than 6,000 private wireless licenses. Private wireless systems also serve America's small businesses in the utility, contracting, taxi, and livery industries. These internal-use communications facilities greatly enhance public safety and the quality of American life. They also support global competitiveness for American firms. For example, private wireless systems support: the efficient production of goods and services; the safe transportation of passengers and products by land and air; the exploration, production, and distribution of energy; agricultural enhancement and production; the maintenance and development of America's infrastructure; and compliance with various local, State, and Federal operational government statutes. Current regulatory policy inadequately recognizes the public interest benefits that private wireless licensees provide to the American public. Consequently, allocations of spectrum to these private wireless users has been deficient. Private wireless entities received spectrum in 1974 and 1986 when the FCC allocated channels in the 800 megahertz and 900 megahertz bands. Over time, however, the FCC has significantly reduced the number of channels available to industrial and business entities in those allocations. Private wireless entities now have access to only 299 channels, or 32 percent of the channels of the original allocation. Spectrum auctions have done a great job of speeding up the licensing of interpersonal communications services and have generated significant revenues for the U.S. Treasury. They have also unfortunately skewed the spectrum allocation process toward subscriber-based services and away from critical radio services such as private wireless which are exempted from auctions. Nearly 200 megahertz of spectrum has been allocated for the provision of commercial telecommunications services, virtually all of which has been assigned by the FCC through competitive bidding. Competitive bidding is not the proper assignment methodology for private wireless telecommunications users. Private wireless operations are site-specific systems which vary in size based on that user's particular needs, and are seldom mutually exclusive from other private wireless applicants. Auctions, which depend on mutually exclusive applications and use market areas based on population, simply cannot be designed for private wireless systems. This legislation mandates that the FCC allocate no less than 12 megahertz of new spectrum for private wireless use as a measure to maintain our industrial and business competitiveness in the global arena, as well as to protect the welfare of the employees in the American workplace. Research indicates that private wireless companies are willing to pay a reasonable fee in return for use of spectrum. They recognize that their access to spectrum increases with their willingness to pay fair value for the use of this national asset. My bill grants the FCC legislative authority to charge efficiency- based spectrum lease fees in this new spectrum allocation. These lease fees should encourage the efficient use of spectrum by the private wireless industry, generate recurring annual revenues as compensation for the use of spectrum, and retain spectrum ownership by the public. Furthermore, the fees should be easy for private frequency advisory committees to calculate and collect. Mr. President, I am mindful that some peripheral concerns expressed by small businesses that service private wireless users are not addressed in this bill. I assure these companies that I will work with them through the legislative process to address these issues. I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this bill and ask unanimous consent that the full text of the bill be printed in the Record.