Sherrod Brown

Mr. BROWN

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

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to vitiate the order for the remaining debate time.

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

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, the goal of trade policy is to lift up workers at home and abroad. Americans support trade, plenty of it, but trade that allows small businesses and manufacturers to thrive. Wrong- headed trade pacts following the failed NAFTA model have too often betrayed middle-class families from Lima to Zaynesville, from New York to California, and destroyed communities in rural and urban areas. In my State, more than 200,000 manufacturing jobs have disappeared since 2001. Many of them, most of them, have gone overseas. Across the country, more than 3 million manufacturing jobs since President Bush took the oath of office have been eliminated. Trade policy hurts communities such as Ashtebula and Middletown, Toledo and Findlay, and Mansfield and Tiffin. That is why voters in Ohio have sent a message loudly and clearly demanding a new direction, a very different direction for our Nation's trade policy. Over the last 8 years, we have had, at best, a fractured approach to trade. In the last 2 years, since voters elected candidates who support smart, fair trade--not this orthodox free trade which clearly has not worked--Congress has reasserted itself in trade policymaking with some--I underscore ``some''--improvements to proposed deals with Peru, Panama, Colombia, and South Korea. We have also chosen on behalf of workers not to grant President Bush a renewal of fast track, of trade promotion authority so the President can continue his failed trade policy. The American public said no in 2006. This Congress--the Senate and across the building in the House--said no to this continued failed trade policy. Yet these improvements we have made have not rebuilt a consensus on good trade policy. We have opposed bad trade policy. We need to build a consensus on a different direction. Now more than ever Americans reject the current model. It is time to learn from our mistakes, to make plans to fix them in future agreements. The Trade Reform, Accountability, Development, and Employment Act--the TRADE Act--which Senator Dorgan, Senator Feingold, Senator Casey, Senator Whitehouse, and I introduced this month--is a step toward that change. This legislation serves as a template for how to craft a trade agreement that works for workers, for business owners, for our neighborhoods, for our communities, and for our country. This legislation mandates a Government Accountability Office review of existing trade agreements and will require the President to submit renegotiation plans for those agreements before negotiating any new agreements--basically a timeout before we pass more of these NAFTA- style, NAFTA-modeled trade agreements. The TRADE Act will create a committee comprised of House and Senate leaders who will review the President's plan for renegotiation. The bill spells out standards for future trade agreements and will protect developing nations from exploitation by drug companies, energy companies, and financial institutions. The TRADE Act also sets out criteria for a new negotiating process-- one that would do away with the fundamentally flawed fast-track trade promotion process and return power to Congress, which is what our Constitution says, when considering our Nation's trade pacts. No more charging the President, if you will, with negotiating these trade agreements behind closed doors, with lobbyists for financial interests and banks and insurance companies and oil companies and pharmaceutical companies standing outside the door, passing notes to these trade negotiators. We take for granted our clean air, safe food, and safe drinking water. But these blessings are not by chance. They result from rules and laws about wages, about health, about the environment. Flawed trade policy, as we now know, accelerates the importation of toxic toys, contaminated toothpaste, and poisonous pet food--ingredients that kill people in drugs such as heparin. It does not have to be this way. We have a choice. We can continue a race to the bottom in wages, worker safety, and environmental and health standards. We know what that race to the bottom means. It means lost manufacturing jobs. It means the stagnation of wages. It means importing toxic toys from China. It means importing the ingredients that come to us in heparin and other drugs that have literally killed Americans. Or we can use trade agreements to lift up standards abroad and in this country--not threaten workers and consumers. We can continue down the path of the failed NAFTA model or we can negotiate trade agreements that result in the creation of manufacturing jobs, increased wages, and a reduction of the trade deficit by providing fair and transparent market access. We can use our trade laws as a chit in negotiations or we can preserve the ability of the United States to enforce domestic trade laws to address the negative impacts of currency manipulation, financial instability, and high debt burdens on U.S. trade relationships. We can continue to use trade deals to lock in--to lock in-- protections for Wall Street, the drug companies, and the oil companies or we can create a predictable structure for international trade without providing corporations with overreaching privileges and rights of private enforcement that undermine our laws. Middle-class families, American manufacturers, farmers, and community leaders across this country know we need a very different direction in trade. The TRADE Act is supported by more than a dozen labor unions, both the AFL-CIO and Change to Win. It is supported by the Sierra Club, the National Farmers Union, and the National Family Farm Coalition. We know a different direction in trade policy in this country is supported by a coalition of religious leaders, human rights activists, advocates for children and families, environmental groups, family farm groups, and labor groups. I am going to ask my leadership and my caucus to work with me on this legislation. I look forward to working with my allies on the other side of the aisle to work with me in restoring our trade policy--fair trade, smart trade, a very different direction for our country.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. I so appreciate the Senator from North Dakota and his comments about the just-say-no philosophy around here. I have been in this institution only 15 months. I have seen his leadership on a whole host of issues, and I have also seen the disappointment that it is one filibuster after another--74, 75 filibusters, more than anytime in Senate history--on such commonsense legislation as the Energy bill yesterday and the Medicare bill today. I am happy to see that Senator Baucus and Senator Reid have brought the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act to the Senate floor today. It is crucial not just immediately for physicians and hospitals, not just immediately for patients, most importantly, but it is also crucial to the future of Medicare. The bill not only prevents a 10.6-percent cut to payments for physicians and other health care professionals, it gives these providers a small payment increase. The cost of providing health care has increased; payments to health care professionals should increase too. Our history with Medicaid should teach us about the importance of preserving Medicare by keeping payment rates viable for providers. Inadequate Medicaid payment rates have compromised access to dentists and other health professionals. I visited with the dental unit at Children's Hospital in Columbus and talked to dentists all over the State, talked to hygienists and others. It is pretty clear that we do not have enough dental care, we do not have adequate dental care, especially for low-income young patients. The reason is we do not have adequate reimbursement for dentists to provide Medicaid dental care, particularly for those children. We need to fix that Medicaid problem, not recreate that same problem in Medicare. This bill is about so much more than provider payment, as Senator Dorgan said. It contains important measures to improve Medicare for beneficiaries. It increases subsidies for low-income patients. It invests in preventative health care. It reduces out-of-pocket costs for mental health treatment. Senator Durbin spoke of Senator Wellstone's work and Senator Domenici's work on mental health treatment; to treat it like a disease not a stigma, and how important that is. This makes some downpayment on that solution. This bill eliminates late enrollment penalties for Part D and modernizes Medigap policies. It bolsters rural health care, something I have discussed in my roundtables around Ohio. I have done some 90-plus roundtables in 65 counties and seen how inadequate rural health care is in rural areas of my State, as it is in the Presiding officer's State of Montana. The bill authorizes a special diabetes program. This morning in my every-Thursday-morning coffee, which I have for Ohio residents in Washington, I met with Ohioans from Cincinnati, Columbus, Toledo, and Cleveland. Ohio's children are suffering from type 1 diabetes. They told devastating stories. One man told about his teenage daughter going blind. Another told me that by the time a young child with diabetes turns 18, she will have endured more than 30,000 shots. Diabetes is one of the most prevalent and pressing health threats we face as a nation. The cost to the health care system is more than any other single disease. Reauthorizing the cost-effective Medicare diabetes program serves patients and taxpayers. The bill has other crucial provisions. It exempts the value of life insurance from counting against seniors attempting to qualify for the low-income subsidy in Part D. Constituents have written to me telling me they are afraid of saving for the future, of all things, because they might lose their eligibility for subsidized drugs. What kind of system is that? This bill will help fix that. One of the most common stories I have heard in my 90-plus roundtables, where I convene meetings of 15, 20, 25 people and ask them questions for an hour and a half, 2 hours, and we talk about their hopes, dreams, and problems, and where we, as a Senate, might be able to work with them and make their lives better, one of the most common stories I hear from Defiance and Gallipolis, from Middletown and Ashtabula, whether I am meeting with providers or patients, is about Medicare. My office receives thousands of constituent letters about Medicare. I recently heard from an infectious disease doctor in Lima, who explained how he is squeezed by current Medicare rates. He said: As health care costs have escalated and reimbursement has fallen, we have had to make some hard decisions. He told me he has had to let go of employees, cut office hours, and that the financial stress is at the breaking point. He said: Last year, a doctor would call me [about a patient] with an infected abscess. Commonly, I had the patient sent to my office, lance the boil, pack the wound, and give IV antibiotics daily in my office until transitioned to pills. The patient was never admitted to the hospital. Since his office is less and less able to provide outpatient services--remember, I said he had laid people off--similar patients are now admitted to the hospital. What happens? ``The admission day alone,'' he says, ``costs more than the entire course of therapy in my office.'' It is obvious how inefficient and expensive this is. We need to fix the current payment system, and we will. But we should not grossly underpay those professionals while we work on a better system. Until that day, we should pass this bill. Medicare is one of the great accomplishments of our Government and of our country. Senators Dorgan and Durbin both talked about in 1965, half of America's seniors didn't have any health insurance. Today that number is less than 1 percent. Because Medicare is one of the great accomplishments of our Government and our country, we have to preserve it. This bill takes major strides to do so. In addition to voting yes at 3 o'clock on cloture, there has been another piece of related legislation I want to speak on for a moment. It is the alternative bill offered by Senator Grassley, who I think is one of the single best legislators in this body. The bill he wrote as an alternative to our bill, to the Baucus legislation, perpetuates a shameful politically motivated subsidy program that overpays private insurance health maintenance organizations to the tune of $10 billion a year. What this does is it overpays private insurance companies, undercutting fee-for-service traditional Medicare, causing taxpayers-- requiring taxpayers--to give huge, frankly, unearned dollars to these insurance companies as they try to privatize Medicare. The Baucus bill redirects these taxpayer-funded windfall payments from HMOs to concrete improvements in the Medicare Program. In the beginning of my speech, the first 6 or 7 minutes, I talked about improvements we are making in the Medicare Program. We are able to do so by taking money away from the private for-profit Medicare HMOs that have reaped a windfall in the last 10 years as this Congress, particularly the Republican House and Senate for most of the last decade, shoveled more and more public dollars into these private insurance programs, these private HMOs, and private HMO executives have had grossly inflated salaries and benefits and retirements, all of that. Ending those gratuitous overpayments to HMOs should not be an option for this Congress; it should be an imperative that we finally do that. Taxpayers can't afford to coddle private, for-profit health maintenance organizations, and we can't continue to do it. I encourage my colleagues to vote for the very crucial Baucus Medicare legislation. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWN

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

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, this morning we had two more opportunities to address rising gas prices and do something immediately as the price of gas per gallon goes over $4 in Steubenville and almost $4 in Dayton and even higher in some places in my State and in the Presiding Officer's State of New Jersey. We had two more opportunities to address rising gas prices immediately and longer term. We need to start immediately to invest in renewable energy rather than the other choice of continuing to line the pockets of big oil. We could have helped to begin to create tens of thousands of good-paying, green-collar jobs right here at home. Once again, the Bush administration opposed our efforts and Republican Senators joined the Bush administration and refused to put middle-class families first. The Consumer-First Energy Act is a good first step in providing immediate relief to drivers in Ohio and across the land who are faced with soaring gasoline and diesel prices. The other night I had a conference call with 20 truckers. Think about what this has done to them. Many of them have had to sell their trucks. They are simply not able to afford the $4.50 and up per gallon price of diesel. Oil prices are setting record highs, it seems, every week, and yesterday closed at over $136 a barrel. This legislation will help in the short term and allow us to get through and offer some assistance to motorists to get through the summer driving season. The policies that created this gas price crisis didn't happen overnight. Before we attack the long-term problems, Ohioans need help now to get through the summer to keep trucks running, to keep the economy moving, to keep food prices in check as the cost of energy ripples through the whole economy and causes prices to go up generally. Cities throughout Ohio are struggling to pay gas bills for the police cars, for EMS, for fire department vehicles, school buses, garbage trucks, and mass transit services. We need to roll back the massive tax breaks for oil companies which would generate more than $17 billion to be used for green energy, for renewable energy, and for energy efficiency. We will impose a 25- percent windfall profits tax on companies that fail to invest in increased capacity and renewable energy sources. We will ensure purchases for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve do not resume, especially when we are paying $120, $130, $140, $150 a barrel to put oil in the reserve. We will provide protection for consumers from price gouging. We call on the Justice Department again to be active and take on the oil companies as they seem to price gouge. We will work to stop market speculation, prevent traders of U.S. crude oil from routing transmissions through offshore markets to evade speculative limits. Ohioans play by the rules. Americans play by the rules. So should the oil industry. So should the speculator. So should Wall Street. There is so much we need to do. I call on my friends on that side of the aisle to join with majority Democrats: no more filibusters and let's get to work. Let's do the right thing short term to help American motorists deal with these outrageously high prices, long term to, in fact, after 30 years become energy independent and create the kinds of green jobs a good energy policy can create. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 10, 2008, at 2:30 p.m. to hold a closed hearing. THE PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, June 10, 2008, at 10 a.m., in room 215 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. THE PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. select committee on intelligence

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, June 10, 2008, at 2:30 p.m., in room 253 of the Russell Senate Office Building. THE PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. committee on finance

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate, on Tuesday, June 10, 2008, at 2:30 p.m.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 757, H.R. 634.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the committee amendment be agreed to, the bill, as amended, be read the third time and passed, the motions to reconsider be laid on the table, with no intervening action or debate, and that any statements related to the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to executive session to consider Calendar No. 629, the nomination of Michael E. Leiter to be Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Office of the Director of National Intelligence; that the nomination be confirmed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no other motions in order; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action; that any statements relating to the nomination be printed in the Record, and that the Senate then return to legislative session, without further intervening action or debate.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 9:30 a.m. tomorrow, Wednesday, June 11; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and the Senate proceed to a period for the transaction of morning business for up to 1 hour, with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each, with the time equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees, with the majority controlling the first half and the Republicans controlling the final half. I further ask unanimous consent that following morning business, the Senate resume consideration of the motion to proceed to S. 3044, the Consumer-First Energy Act, and that the first 4 hours be equally divided between the two leaders or their designees and controlled in 30-minute blocks in an alternating fashion, with the majority controlling the first 30 minutes and the Republicans controlling the next 30 minutes; and that following the controlled block of time, Senators be permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read the third time, and passed, the motion to reconsider laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and that any statements related to the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 768, H.R. 3179.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 590, submitted earlier today.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and that any statements related to the resolution be printed in the Record.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 589, which was submitted earlier today by Senator Stabenow of Michigan.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it stand adjourned under the previous order.