Thomas Carper

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. I thank my colleagues for yielding. Mr. President, earlier this week we all commemorated the fifth anniversary of 9/11. Much of that day was spent here and around the country discussing whether after 5 years we are safer and whether we are safe enough. While we have made real progress with respect to the security of our nuclear powerplants, with respect to airport security, far too little has been done to secure our Nation's seaports, railways, transit systems and, I might add, hundreds of chemical plants around this country. After 9/11 we also recognized the need to protect our seaports. In 2002 we passed the Maritime Transportation Security Act, which was the start of developing a national and regional maritime security plan or plans. This legislation also required the Department of Homeland Security to help ports develop individual security plans and directed Customs and Border Protection to design a system for receiving information on ships' cargoes before they docked at a U.S. port. Now, 4 years later, we are finally taking the next step. Still, port security has never received the same level of attention as airport security, and part of this is because 9/11 tragically exposed the vulnerabilities of our ports and it has been burned into our memories. I think it is also because most Americans do not have any direct interaction with a seaport on a daily basis, a weekly basis, a monthly basis or, in some cases, ever. However, a growing number of Americans have begun to recognize what an appealing target our seaports can be for terrorists. First of all, many ports, including the ones we have in my State and the States of New Hampshire, Maine, and Washington, are located in or near densely populated urban areas. Also, ports are vital to the economy of our country. They are used by farmers to try to get their products to market and also industry to export products, but also we import everything from chemicals to oil and gas. As a result, many of us have concluded we must place a higher priority on addressing any vulnerability at our ports before any terrorist attack takes advantage of them. I applaud the work of Senator Collins and the great work Senator Lieberman has done with her helping to craft this, and also the staffs and Senator Murray and her staff. The American Association of Port Authorities believes that to do so will require roughly $400 million a year for physical enhancements for ports in this country. The bill before us would authorize Congress to do just that. Now, $400 million is a lot of money, but it is significantly cheaper, I think we will agree, than responding to a devastating attack after the fact. My port, the Port of Wilmington, has received about $2 million since 9/11. The State has provided a fair amount of money, as has our port authority. These funds have been used, in part, to help build a gated entrance with cameras, with security checks, and to fence and light the port's perimeter. While we are grateful to receive Federal support for these important security measures, our port, like many others, will require additional assistance. Some of that we should provide ourselves within our State. For some of that we look to the Federal Government for help. Obviously there is not enough funding for everyone to get everything they need. However, ports in Oklahoma, ports in Kansas, ports in Tennessee and Kentucky have all received port security grants over the years, as have ports along the eastern and western gulf coast. At the same time, the Port of Wilmington--I am told it is the busiest port on the Delaware River and the port of entry for much of our Nation's food supply, especially for the east coast--has been forced to make do with less. Therefore, I am pleased this bill requires the Department of Homeland Security to conduct a risk analysis of our Nation's seaports and establish a priority for security funding. The Port of Wilmington also participated in something called a Transportation Security Administration pilot program, a program designed to screen port workers and block individuals with a terrorist connection from accessing sensitive areas at our ports. This pilot program was supposed to be the first step toward establishing a national program, with identification cards and equipment that could read biometric information, such as fingerprints and retinal patterns. But the Department of Homeland Security ended this pilot program before the national screening and identification system was ready. The national system was supposed to be implemented by last summer, but it has yet to occur. The implementation date, I am sorry to say, continues to slip. Now we are being told the ports will receive official identification cards by the end of this year, but the essential card readers will not be ready until sometime next year. That doesn't make a lot of sense. This program is moving forward far too slowly, and that is why I offered an amendment, when the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee debated port security, to require the Department of Homeland Security to issue its regulations on the worker screening program not next year but by the end of this year. The bill before us today takes a slightly different approach but still addresses the need to get this important program up and running as soon as possible. Under the Port Security Improvement Act, this bill, the Department of Homeland Security would be required to fully implement the worker credentialing program at 10 ports by next summer and at all ports by January 1, 2009. Let me conclude by saying that this week we have also passed rail and transit security amendments, something that is long overdue. I strongly support them. After the train bombing in Madrid 2 years ago and the London Underground attacks last summer, many of us hoped we would take steps to prevent a similar kind of attack here. But to date, the Federal Government has done far too little to address transit and rail security needs in this country. In fact, rail and transit security received less than 3 percent of the funding that has been dedicated thus far to airport security. I want to be honest with you. Protecting our rail and transit lines will not be an easy task. Almost 10 billion transit trips were taken in 2004, and transit accommodates more than 16 times the number of daily travelers than do our Nation's airlines--16 times. There are more and more people using rail transit every day so they can avoid traffic and high gasoline prices. Also, it is much more difficult to protect an open system such as the ones at bus stops and train stations than it is to guard the closed systems we have at airports. You cannot physically check every bag that is brought onto a commuter train or ID every person who boards a bus, nor do I believe we ought to. The rail transit systems can only work if they are fluid. I believe long lines of people taking off their shoes to get on a train or bus would render them largely unworkable. As much as anything, though, what we need to do in order to reduce the likelihood of a debilitating attack on our transit and rail systems is to improve surveillance, more security officers, use of canines, and heavy reliance on the use of new technologies. This requires strong leadership, vision, and enthusiasm for attacking the unique challenges of securing rail and transit. It also requires effective partnerships. The Federal Government needs to be one of those principal partners. So far, the Department of Homeland Security has only shown a strong appetite for preventing the sort of attack that led to its creation. The White House proposes lumping together all nonaviation security into one competitive grant program, with less than 15 percent of the funding proposed for aircraft security. That is less than 15 percent for all of them--transit, ports, rail, and so forth. Further, the tiny sums that have been appropriated for rail security have been very slow to move. Last year, the Department of Homeland Security took 9 months just to start sending appropriated funds to State and local transit authorities. I realize they can't turn the spigot on overnight, but 9 months? We can do better than that, and we need to. Rail and transit security should not be controversial issues. We know we need to upgrade the emergency exits and surveillance equipment at train stations. Further, we need to hire more police officers, we need to train and deploy more bomb-sniffing dogs, and we have to develop more sophisticated equipment that would allow us to detect threats without unduly slowing commute times. It will require smart people, a strong focus, and good leadership. That is why we must pass rail security legislation that lays out a national approach and framework. While I am very happy we adopted the rail and transit security amendment to this bill, I simply cannot understand why this legislation has been so difficult to get passed and signed into law. What is controversial about hiring bomb-sniffing dogs or improving surveillance? Nothing. The threat has simply not been taken seriously. How much more time do I have, Mr. President?

Mr. CARPER. I hope this casual approach to a dangerous threat ends with the adoption of the rail and security amendments this week. I strongly support their passage and urge our leadership to fight to maintain them in the bill with the amendments we send to the President. In conclusion, it has been 5 years since 9/11; 5 years of hearing that we need to take threats seriously and realize we live in a dangerous world. It is time we act on those words and protect the millions of Americans who rely on rail and transit every day, and on our ports, just as this legislation would better protect our ports and the communities around them in the years ahead. Mr. President, I yield my time.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I add a couple of comments to the words of our colleague, Senator Biden, in welcoming Father Christo to the Senate Chamber today. We are proud of our Constitution. Delaware was the first State to ratify the Constitution of our country. The Constitution calls for separation of church and state. Some people may find, given that as our heritage, it is unusual we begin each of our sessions in the Senate with an opening prayer. Today, we are honored for all in Delaware, for everybody in the Greek community in our State, and everyone in the country, to be able to welcome one of our own to open the Senate in prayer. I am struck by the number of times I talk to people in my State and around the country who say: We pray for you--not just me as an individual but for us as a collective body, as we meet. I always say: We welcome your prayers; keep praying. We certainly need those prayers. I asked my staff to give me a little bit of background on Father, to say a few words. I have 10 pages of accomplishments. What a remarkable tale of accomplishment--and still a young pup. I am honored you are here. Thank you for coming and starting our day on the right foot. I would say to those people from other States, in talking to the Presiding Officer before the session began, he was asking where the Greek Church is in our State. If you come through Delaware on I-95, and a lot of people do, in the early part of June, you get off on Pennsylvania Avenue and head north a couple of blocks, make a left turn on Broom Street, you will find the Greek Church. They hold a great festival there. It is not only a church where people go for their souls, but three nights in the early part of June you can go there and enjoy great Greek food, dance, and drink. It is a wonderful time of fellowship with people who are Greek their whole lives and people who are Greek for a night or two. We are honored by your presence, Father, and thank you for embracing us and thank you for your warm and wonderful prayer.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I rise today to announce the introduction of a piece of legislation that Senator Voinovich of Ohio and I have worked on for a while. It is called the Federal Employees Electronic Personal Health Records Act of 2006. This bill makes available--or would make available--electronic personal health records for every enrollee of a Federal health benefits plan who wishes to have one. That is, potentially, as many as 8 million people. That includes those of us who work in Federal agencies, large and small, across the country and, actually, around the world. It includes their families and includes Federal retirees and their families as well. Our health care sector is the most innovative in the world, but it has not kept up with the information age. Our excessive reliance on paper record keeping makes our health care system less efficient, more costly, and more prone to mistakes. Expanding the use of health information technology shows promise as a way to improve both the cost and the quality of health care in our country. In 2004, the United States spent some $1.9 trillion on health care costs. That is more than any other industrialized country on this planet. In 2005, health care premiums continued their upward trend, increasing by an average, I am told, of some 9 percent. We are literally spending trillions of dollars on health care, but I am sorry to say we are not getting the gold standard of treatment or results. A 2005 survey conducted by the Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation that focuses on improving health care, found that medical error reports rates in the United States far exceed those of western countries. In that survey, one in three Americans reported getting the wrong dosage of medication, incorrect test results, mistakes in treatment, or late notification of test results. That is nearly 15 percent higher than similar results in Britain and Germany. I believe some of the problems--though certainly not all of them--can be blamed on the fact that health care providers don't have full and real-time access to patients' medical records. Doctors in this country wait days sometimes for couriers to deliver lab tests or x rays. They diagnose patients without knowing their full medical history, what they are allergic to, what kinds of surgeries they have had, or whether they have complained about similar symptoms before. Time constraints, or medical necessity, often force doctors to perform a quick diagnosis. Sometimes that diagnosis wrong. Sometimes those errors prove to be costly. The widespread use of health information technology, the ability to immediately access one's full medical history from a computer, can help doctors and nurses provide better care less expensively. It has the potential to dramatically transform the way we provide health care in America--saving lives, saving costs. If we are looking for success stories on how health care professionals have integrated the use of electronic health care records into their daily routines, we don't have to look any further than our own Department of Defense and our Department of Veterans Affairs. Times have changed since I retired from the Navy some 15 years ago. I remember that as an ensign I used to carry my medical health records in a brown manila folder from duty station to duty station--from the time I left Ohio State, on to Pensacola, Corpus Christi Naval Air Station, out to California, across the seas and back again, and, finally, getting off of active duty and coming to Delaware to enroll in graduate school, on the GI bill, at the University of Delaware in the business school. I went up the road to the VA hospital. I still had my folder with the records. I turned them in and asked: What kind of benefits am I eligible for? Over a decade ago, the Department of Defense and VA decided there was a better way, and the results have been nothing short of phenomenal. Today, when a patient enrolls in the Department of Defense's military health system, they no longer need the kind of brown manila folder I carried all those years. Instead, we have electronic health care records to keep track of the medical histories of those who serve our country in the military. This health record is managed electronically, and you don't have to remember to pack it up on your next tour of duty, whether it is in Southeast Asia, or Iraq, or Afghanistan. Instead, one's electronic health care record follows them wherever they go--both during the time they are in the military and when they leave and join our veterans community as a veteran. The result is that the Department of Defense and VA have been impressive, especially when you consider that they have only used these electronic health records for about a decade or so. The VA health system has transformed itself from a troubled, sometimes bloated and inefficient operation to one of the best health care operations in the country. Researchers and doctors now laud the VA for having the foresight to use electronic health records to improve patient care. What is the cost? That is a good question. It is about $78 per patient. That is roughly the cost of not repeating one blood test. In other words, it is money well spent. The VA now regularly outperforms Medicare and other private health plans when it comes to providing patient care for diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart attack victims. In January, the National Quality Research Center concluded that for the sixth consecutive year, the VA health care system outranks the private sector for customer satisfaction. I have witnessed that new-found satisfaction in my own backyard, at the Veterans Medical Center in Elsmere, DE. That is the place I went in 1973 fresh out of the Navy. Veterans from neighboring States are now coming to our hospital in Elsmere to seek care instead of going to regular civilian hospitals near them. In 2004, the Elsmere facility, as well as popular satellite clinics in Millsboro and Seaford, DE, served more than 22,000 veterans and had more than 150,000 outpatient visits. Both totals are about 20 percent higher than just 4 years ago. Normally, you would think the busier a hospital is, the less satisfied customers are because of longer waits and other hassles. But it turned out that the opposite is true. As the workload has climbed, so has patient satisfaction. I might add, so has the satisfaction of those providing the care to the patients. More than 85 percent of Delaware's VA outpatients said they were ``highly satisfied'' with the care they received. Planning is now underway to open a third outpatient clinic for veterans in Kent County next spring--probably in Dover where we have another 15,000 veterans. What is keeping the rest of our Nation's health care system from following the lead of the Department of Defense and the VA? The answer is the high cost of implementing the latest information technologies, as well as the lack of uniformity among various technology products. A physician can spend up to $30,000 implementing an electronic health records system. A hospital can spend up to five times that amount. If that weren't enough of a reason to say no thanks, there is one more reason; that is, we don't have a set of national standards in place to make sure that once health care providers have made the switch, their new system can communicate with the hospital or doctor on the other side of town. The result: Only 15 percent of doctors and about 30 percent of hospitals have fully functional electronic health care systems today. A new study by a number of health care scholars estimates there will be another 20 years before the majority of physicians are using an electronic health care system. Let me say this. Our Presiding Officer is from Louisiana where they went through a terrible situation a year ago with Katrina. The folks who happened to be civilians and were in hospitals or nursing homes, for the most part, they had paper health records and they were destroyed. The veterans who were on the gulf coast when Katrina struck--either in nursing homes, VA nursing homes, or VA hospitals-- were evacuated from the area as civilians were; but when the veterans got to another VA facility inland, or a nursing home, or a VA hospital, their electronic health records were available immediately, and whoever provided care for them had access to the records and were able to provide excellent care. I am sorry to say that the same wasn't true for the civilians whose paper records were largely destroyed at the time of the evacuation. As a nation, we cannot afford to rely solely on health care providers to bring the health care industry into the 21st century. We must think outside of the box and build on the health information technology issues already underway in other areas of our health care industry. The Federal Employee Electronic Personal Health Records Act of 2006-- the legislation Senator Voinovich and I introduce today--does just that. How? By requiring all carriers that contract with the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program to make available an electronic personal health record for those of us who are enrolled in that program. As I said earlier, it is some 8 million people. Electronic personal health records will provide enrollees with a tool to better access and control their health information. Via the Internet, an enrollee will be able to log on to their electronic personal health record to keep track of such things as their medications, cholesterol, glucose levels, allergies, and immunization records. An enrollee will also be able to review a comprehensive, easily understood listing of their health care claims. Health care providers, payers, and enrollees will be able to add this information onto the electronic personal health record. Enrollees will benefit, I believe, significantly from such a tool. An enrollee can easily share sections of the electronic personal health record with their health care provider, ensuring that their provider has the most up-to-date and accurate health information when making clinical decisions. In the case of an emergency, an enrollee can also grant others the ability to access their electronic personal health record. Again, it is the decision of the patient, the enrollee in the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program, to decide what kind of access to grant to a provider or a member of the family or another person in the wake of an emergency. Having health information readily available will increase the efficiency and safety of health care for enrollees by eliminating unwarranted tests, procedures, and prescriptions. Most important, the legislation ensures that the electronic personal health records provided for through this act are kept private and secure. The electronic personal health records are required to include a number of security features. They include, among other things, user authentication and audit trails. The legislation also requires that carriers comply with all privacy and security regulations outlined in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which we call HIPAA. Mr. President, what Senator Voinovich and I are introducing today will help demonstrate the importance and utility of health information technology--not just the importance of the technology but the importance of harnessing the technology--in the delivery of health care in this country today. In this case, the potential is as many as 8 million additional Americans. This bill is designed to jumpstart this new technology by requiring some of the largest health insurance companies to offer these electronic personal health records, which many are beginning to do today. As more insurance companies, health care providers, and consumers use this new technology, I am convinced that more people will recognize its advantages, and we can more quickly move America's health care industry into the 21st century. We view this initiative as the next necessary step for the Nation's largest employer-sponsored health insurance program that prides itself on being a model for best practices in health care. I invite my colleagues to join Senator Voinovich and me as we introduce this legislation. We look forward to talking with our colleagues about it. With luck, maybe we will have a hearing. Senator Voinovich may hold one in his subcommittee this month.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I rise today to announce the introduction of a piece of legislation that Senator Voinovich of Ohio and I have worked on for a while. It is called the Federal Employees Electronic Personal Health Records Act of 2006. This bill makes available--or would make available--electronic personal health records for every enrollee of a Federal health benefits plan who wishes to have one. That is, potentially, as many as 8 million people. That includes those of us who work in Federal agencies, large and small, across the country and, actually, around the world. It includes their families and includes Federal retirees and their families as well. Our health care sector is the most innovative in the world, but it has not kept up with the information age. Our excessive reliance on paper record keeping makes our health care system less efficient, more costly, and more prone to mistakes. Expanding the use of health information technology shows promise as a way to improve both the cost and the quality of health care in our country. In 2004, the United States spent some $1.9 trillion on health care costs. That is more than any other industrialized country on this planet. In 2005, health care premiums continued their upward trend, increasing by an average, I am told, of some 9 percent. We are literally spending trillions of dollars on health care, but I am sorry to say we are not getting the gold standard of treatment or results. A 2005 survey conducted by the Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation that focuses on improving health care, found that medical error reports rates in the United States far exceed those of western countries. In that survey, one in three Americans reported getting the wrong dosage of medication, incorrect test results, mistakes in treatment, or late notification of test results. That is nearly 15 percent higher than similar results in Britain and Germany. I believe some of the problems--though certainly not all of them--can be blamed on the fact that health care providers don't have full and real-time access to patients' medical records. Doctors in this country wait days sometimes for couriers to deliver lab tests or x rays. They diagnose patients without knowing their full medical history, what they are allergic to, what kinds of surgeries they have had, or whether they have complained about similar symptoms before. Time constraints, or medical necessity, often force doctors to perform a quick diagnosis. Sometimes that diagnosis wrong. Sometimes those errors prove to be costly. The widespread use of health information technology, the ability to immediately access one's full medical history from a computer, can help doctors and nurses provide better care less expensively. It has the potential to dramatically transform the way we provide health care in America--saving lives, saving costs. If we are looking for success stories on how health care professionals have integrated the use of electronic health care records into their daily routines, we don't have to look any further than our own Department of Defense and our Department of Veterans Affairs. Times have changed since I retired from the Navy some 15 years ago. I remember that as an ensign I used to carry my medical health records in a brown manila folder from duty station to duty station--from the time I left Ohio State, on to Pensacola, Corpus Christi Naval Air Station, out to California, across the seas and back again, and, finally, getting off of active duty and coming to Delaware to enroll in graduate school, on the GI bill, at the University of Delaware in the business school. I went up the road to the VA hospital. I still had my folder with the records. I turned them in and asked: What kind of benefits am I eligible for? Over a decade ago, the Department of Defense and VA decided there was a better way, and the results have been nothing short of phenomenal. Today, when a patient enrolls in the Department of Defense's military health system, they no longer need the kind of brown manila folder I carried all those years. Instead, we have electronic health care records to keep track of the medical histories of those who serve our country in the military. This health record is managed electronically, and you don't have to remember to pack it up on your next tour of duty, whether it is in Southeast Asia, or Iraq, or Afghanistan. Instead, one's electronic health care record follows them wherever they go--both during the time they are in the military and when they leave and join our veterans community as a veteran. The result is that the Department of Defense and VA have been impressive, especially when you consider that they have only used these electronic health records for about a decade or so. The VA health system has transformed itself from a troubled, sometimes bloated and inefficient operation to one of the best health care operations in the country. Researchers and doctors now laud the VA for having the foresight to use electronic health records to improve patient care. What is the cost? That is a good question. It is about $78 per patient. That is roughly the cost of not repeating one blood test. In other words, it is money well spent. The VA now regularly outperforms Medicare and other private health plans when it comes to providing patient care for diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart attack victims. In January, the National Quality Research Center concluded that for the sixth consecutive year, the VA health care system outranks the private sector for customer satisfaction. I have witnessed that new-found satisfaction in my own backyard, at the Veterans Medical Center in Elsmere, DE. That is the place I went in 1973 fresh out of the Navy. Veterans from neighboring States are now coming to our hospital in Elsmere to seek care instead of going to regular civilian hospitals near them. In 2004, the Elsmere facility, as well as popular satellite clinics in Millsboro and Seaford, DE, served more than 22,000 veterans and had more than 150,000 outpatient visits. Both totals are about 20 percent higher than just 4 years ago. Normally, you would think the busier a hospital is, the less satisfied customers are because of longer waits and other hassles. But it turned out that the opposite is true. As the workload has climbed, so has patient satisfaction. I might add, so has the satisfaction of those providing the care to the patients. More than 85 percent of Delaware's VA outpatients said they were ``highly satisfied'' with the care they received. Planning is now underway to open a third outpatient clinic for veterans in Kent County next spring--probably in Dover where we have another 15,000 veterans. What is keeping the rest of our Nation's health care system from following the lead of the Department of Defense and the VA? The answer is the high cost of implementing the latest information technologies, as well as the lack of uniformity among various technology products. A physician can spend up to $30,000 implementing an electronic health records system. A hospital can spend up to five times that amount. If that weren't enough of a reason to say no thanks, there is one more reason; that is, we don't have a set of national standards in place to make sure that once health care providers have made the switch, their new system can communicate with the hospital or doctor on the other side of town. The result: Only 15 percent of doctors and about 30 percent of hospitals have fully functional electronic health care systems today. A new study by a number of health care scholars estimates there will be another 20 years before the majority of physicians are using an electronic health care system. Let me say this. Our Presiding Officer is from Louisiana where they went through a terrible situation a year ago with Katrina. The folks who happened to be civilians and were in hospitals or nursing homes, for the most part, they had paper health records and they were destroyed. The veterans who were on the gulf coast when Katrina struck--either in nursing homes, VA nursing homes, or VA hospitals-- were evacuated from the area as civilians were; but when the veterans got to another VA facility inland, or a nursing home, or a VA hospital, their electronic health records were available immediately, and whoever provided care for them had access to the records and were able to provide excellent care. I am sorry to say that the same wasn't true for the civilians whose paper records were largely destroyed at the time of the evacuation. As a nation, we cannot afford to rely solely on health care providers to bring the health care industry into the 21st century. We must think outside of the box and build on the health information technology issues already underway in other areas of our health care industry. The Federal Employee Electronic Personal Health Records Act of 2006-- the legislation Senator Voinovich and I introduce today--does just that. How? By requiring all carriers that contract with the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program to make available an electronic personal health record for those of us who are enrolled in that program. As I said earlier, it is some 8 million people. Electronic personal health records will provide enrollees with a tool to better access and control their health information. Via the Internet, an enrollee will be able to log on to their electronic personal health record to keep track of such things as their medications, cholesterol, glucose levels, allergies, and immunization records. An enrollee will also be able to review a comprehensive, easily understood listing of their health care claims. Health care providers, payers, and enrollees will be able to add this information onto the electronic personal health record. Enrollees will benefit, I believe, significantly from such a tool. An enrollee can easily share sections of the electronic personal health record with their health care provider, ensuring that their provider has the most up-to-date and accurate health information when making clinical decisions. In the case of an emergency, an enrollee can also grant others the ability to access their electronic personal health record. Again, it is the decision of the patient, the enrollee in the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program, to decide what kind of access to grant to a provider or a member of the family or another person in the wake of an emergency. Having health information readily available will increase the efficiency and safety of health care for enrollees by eliminating unwarranted tests, procedures, and prescriptions. Most important, the legislation ensures that the electronic personal health records provided for through this act are kept private and secure. The electronic personal health records are required to include a number of security features. They include, among other things, user authentication and audit trails. The legislation also requires that carriers comply with all privacy and security regulations outlined in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which we call HIPAA. Mr. President, what Senator Voinovich and I are introducing today will help demonstrate the importance and utility of health information technology--not just the importance of the technology but the importance of harnessing the technology--in the delivery of health care in this country today. In this case, the potential is as many as 8 million additional Americans. This bill is designed to jumpstart this new technology by requiring some of the largest health insurance companies to offer these electronic personal health records, which many are beginning to do today. As more insurance companies, health care providers, and consumers use this new technology, I am convinced that more people will recognize its advantages, and we can more quickly move America's health care industry into the 21st century. We view this initiative as the next necessary step for the Nation's largest employer-sponsored health insurance program that prides itself on being a model for best practices in health care. I invite my colleagues to join Senator Voinovich and me as we introduce this legislation. We look forward to talking with our colleagues about it. With luck, maybe we will have a hearing. Senator Voinovich may hold one in his subcommittee this month.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. What I was saying, responding and reflecting on Senator McCain's question, would we be having this debate if it were not September of an election year, in 1991, we voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq. Eighteen months after a number of us voted to authorize the use of force to force the Iraqis out of Kuwait and to follow them into Iraq, 18 months later, in September of 1992, a Presidential election year, we were having debates. One of the things we were not debating was the wisdom of going out, getting the Iraqis out of Kuwait and forcing them far into Iraq, into Baghdad. The reason we are having this debate today is not because it is an election year, not because it is September of an election year, but because of how badly too much of our effort in that part of the world has been managed. It is not a reflection of our troops. They have served us valiantly. They continue to do so. I say to my friend on the other side, be honest with yourself. If the shoe were on the other foot, if we had a Democratic administration, Democratic President, a Secretary of Defense appointed by that Democratic President; if we were in a war that the Secretary of Defense had alleged would cost $50 billion to $60 billion, and in reality was costing 10 to 20 times that amount; if we were in a war that was expected to last maybe 6 months, and we are in it 3 years later, with no end in sight; if we were in a war where basically a Democratic administration had said to the Iraqi Army, go home, we don't need you; if we were in a situation where instead of fostering a situation where we had fewer insurgents, we had at least a fourfold increase in the number of insurgents holding forth in Iraq; if we had a Democratic administration in Afghanistan that was starting to slip away from us, and we were seeing a massive increase in drug production, growing enough poppies in Afghanistan today to meet the demands of the whole rest of the world, not just the U.S. heroin addiction but the rest of the world, I say to my friends on the other side, if the effort were mismanaged as badly by a Democratic administration, I bet we would be having this debate in September of 2006. This is a reasonable debate. I say that as one who has voted for most of this administration's nominees who had to be confirmed, who tried to help a bunch of my old colleagues, including Secretaries Thompson, Ridge, Leavitt, Whitman, and others to put together their teams to help govern this country. Every now and then the time comes to change course. We know what we are doing is not working. One of the keys to changing course, frankly, is to change leadership. Secretary Rumsfeld, to his credit, in response to early criticism, I am told, actually came to the President and offered to resign. And the President, to his credit, being loyal to his team, declined that offer by his Secretary. I believe that to be true. I would say, Mr. President, if Secretary Rumsfeld feels compelled to submit his resignation to you again, accept it. It is time to turn the page. It is not the time to turn our backs on Iraq. It is not the time to turn our backs certainly on the men and women who are serving there for us on behalf of the Iraqi people today, but it is time to change course. It is time to change the leadership. That begins with the civilian leadership of the Department of Defense. I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. CARPER. I am happy to yield.

Mr. CARPER. I have listened to my friend from Alabama assert that the Democrats are really interested in precipitous withdrawal from Iraq. For the most part, the debate I have heard from our side and in our own caucus is really more reflective of the words of some of our top military leaders in Iraq with whom I met who said, as recently as last December, it is time for America to move toward the door; not to go out the door, not to close the door behind us but, again, move toward the door. That is a pretty good way to describe the way most feel. It is time to redeploy our forces, not to leave overnight, not to leave precipitously, but to move toward the door. Senator McCain asked: Would we be having this debate if it were not September of an election year? I remember voting in 1991 to authorize the use of force to invade Iraq and to force and compel the Iraqis out of Kuwait back into Iraq. Eighteen months or so after that, September 1992, we were not having a debate. There was an election year.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, good morning. (The remarks of Mr. Carper pertaining to the introduction of S. 3846 are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be dispensed with.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, it is good to see you, and it is good to be back in the Senate with you and our colleagues. With tongue in cheek, people ask me what I like about the Senate. I draw an analogy about when I was in elementary school. What I liked most about elementary school was recess. Now that I serve in the Senate, I am still quite fond of recesses. It is a great time to go back home-- whether it is Texas, Delaware, or anywhere--and reconnect with the folks we serve and with our families. I just had an opportunity to talk to the Presiding Officer about what he did. It is good to be back and to recharge the batteries and to focus. Now that we are back, I look forward to doing that with you, Mr. President. Twelve years ago this summer, six Democratic centrist Senators pulled together to provide support for the founding and launching of something called Third Way. Third Way is a think tank which seeks to find a third way to deal with some of the issues and some of the challenges that face us today--not necessarily a Democratic or Republican approach but a different approach. Thinking outside of the box, every month or so Third Way presents smart people who come to work there with their ideas and their thoughts on what we might do or should be doing differently to move our country forward. Just a few months ago, in one of the rooms outside of the Senate floor, a number of our colleagues, joined by General Wesley Clark, Congressman Steny Hoyer, the Democratic whip from the House, and a woman named Sharon Burke from Third Way, joined together to talk about the path and the course our country is on and whether it is time for us to continue the course or stay the course or whether it is the right time, in some ways at least, to change course. Third Way has done great work, working particularly with the situation in Afghanistan and Iraq, and offered some of their thoughts to us which are actually found in this document. It is not all that long. It is a very well documented and very sobering assessment. Given the source of their comments, I think it bears special attention. The world changed on September 11. I know that, and I think we all know that. In addition, the world has changed a whole lot since September 11. This report from Third Way shows in ways which I think are sobering and compelling that some of those changes have not been for the better. I think if you ask most people in the Senate, both Republicans and Democrats, what they think about me, among other things they might say, I think a number of them would say they have found me to be someone who goes out of his way to try to bring people together, to try to find common ground, to try to come up with a better solution to the challenges that we face day in and day out in this country and in the Senate. I wish I could honestly say the same thing today about our President, but I am sorry to say that I cannot. I wish that instead of trying to politicize the war on terror and the situation in Iraq, or to insinuate that Democrats don't have the strength to stand up to our enemy, that he would sit down with us and talk about how we might move forward in Iraq and around the world. I am reminded of the 8 years when I was Governor of Delaware. Every week that the Delaware Legislature was in session I would host, as my predecessor, Governor Mike Castle, and my successor, Governor Ruth Ann Minner have hosted every Tuesday, a bipartisan lunch for the leaders of the house and senate. We would meet in the Governor's house, which was close to the capitol, where we may have lunch together and talk for an hour or so, and then we would go to work for the legislative day. Sometimes we would talk about our families, sports, or the weather. A lot of times we talked about the issues that were before us. One of the questions I would often ask of Democratic and Republican leaders in the house and senate who were gathered there in the Governor's house that particular day was whether they had criticism of a policy or an issue that we would propose. I would ask them: What do you think we should do? What do you like about what we are proposing and where do you think we could improve on our policies? And with respect to some of the policies of this administration--the President's policies--in too many instances they haven't worked. At least with respect to what is going on in Iraq today, they have not made us any safer. As one who served 23 years on active duty with the Reserve as a Naval flight officer, I served in a hot war in Vietnam and a Cold War for many years after that. I love our troops. I love the folks in the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines, people in the Guard and Reserve who serve with great distinction and honor. Anything I said or, frankly, we said as a group a few minutes ago when we released this report should be viewed as expressing our support and our thanks and gratitude for those serving us in harm's way together. Back in 2003, it was estimated there were roughly over 5,000 insurgents in Iraq. That was 3 years ago. Now we believe there are more than 20,000 insurgents in Iraq. In Afghanistan, the number of Taliban attacks has skyrocketed in the past 3 years. We learned this week that opium production is up almost 60 percent from last year. Listen to this: Afghanistan is now producing a third more opium than the world's heroin addicts are crying out for. They are producing more heroin in Afghanistan than this country and the rest of the world can consume. Who is profiting from this drug trade? The Taliban and the Afghan insurgency who are trying to destabilize the government we put in place. Meanwhile, Iran and North Korea, emboldened by our distractions in Iraq and the lack of effective diplomacy by the United States, are now defying the international community in their pursuit of nuclear weapons. It is clear, at least to me and I believe to a lot of the people I talked to back in Delaware over the course of the last several weeks, that we need a new direction from this President, from this administration. At least so far we have not seen or planned to correct some of the mistakes we have made to put us back on the right track. None of us have all the answers. I don't; I don't believe any of us do. But I do know one thing: Our President needs to get over his ideological aversion to diplomacy if we are going to solve the other problems facing us in Iraq and around the world. As one of our American Ambassadors said to me not long ago when I was overseas: Just because we ignore someone doesn't mean they are going away. With all due respect, I believe our President needs to reach out to the international community, to moderate Arab governments, to broker an agreement between sectarian governments in Iraq to head off civil war. When I was abroad this last December, I met with officials from Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq. I heard from a number of folks from a number of the countries, and the leaders of those countries that we visited, that they have tribal relations--tribes in Saudi Arabia, for example; Jordan has tribal relations with the tribes in the country of Iraq. Saudis, Egyptians, and others are majority Sunni, and they have relations there as well. Some of those countries have a lot of money. A good deal of it is our money because we buy their oil products. They have a number of incentives not to want to see that part of the world devolve into terrorism, to see Iraq become a hotbed of terrorism and to be destabilized. It is not in the interests of any of the countries I have mentioned and some I have not mentioned. We have to be smart enough as a country and with our administration to call on the other countries to bring to bear not just their money to help the situation in Iraq but the relationships that their people have with the tribes in Iraq and, frankly, with the Sunnis and with other elements of those of the population in Iraq. We need to work with our allies to establish a real and credible roadmap to peace in the Middle East. I remember having lunch about 15 months ago, in Washington on the other side of the Capitol, with Palestinian President Abbas, along with some of our colleagues. He had been in office for 5 months. He was elected in January of last year. Over lunch, I asked: President Abbas, when do you think it would be an appropriate time for us, for this country, to put in the Middle East a high-level, full-time envoy, to work every day to implement the roadmap to peace? When would be a good time to do that? This was June of last year. He had been elected January 6 last year. I will never forget what he said to me. He said: Five months ago. I was convinced that day, convinced when I have gone to the Middle East, I am convinced today that we have let a great opportunity slip through our fingers. One of the reasons the Taliban, al-Qaida or the other terrorist groups were able to recruit people to blow themselves up, to terrorize those countries and to try to kill the rest of us is because of their ability to point to the Middle East and say: Look at the Americans, they are only for the Israelis. They have no interest in the Palestinians having a homeland of their own. To the extent we could have brokered over the last couple of years and put the kind of energy, time, and investment into getting a negotiated settlement in the Middle East, as we have put other kinds of investments in Iraq and in Afghanistan, both we and those countries and, I think, our people and other people would be better off, but we have missed that opportunity. My fear is we are missing it again today. The roadmap for peace has become in the Middle East, at least for now, a roadmap to war. Let me close by saying what is needed in this capital, in this country, is leadership that fosters a cooperative spirit. That may be a tribal man's hope over peace, triumph over reality as we approach an election 2 months out, but I believe that is what is needed--the kind of leadership that fosters a cooperative spirit. If we cannot get that leadership now before the election, my God, I hope we can find it when this election is over. I hope our President can give us that kind of leadership and work with those who are anxious and willing to truly make this country and the world a safer place during his 2 remaining years in office. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, today I commemorate the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War on the occasion of its 125th National Encampment being held August 10 through the 14 in Harrisburg, PA. The event honors the brave men who fought to preserve our Nation during the Civil War. In 1866, Union Veterans of the Civil War organized into the Grand Army of the Republic, GAR, and became a social and political force that would control the destiny of the Nation for more than six decades. Membership in the veterans' organization was restricted to individuals who had served in the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, or Revenue Cutter Service during the Civil War. In 1881, the GAR formed the Sons of Veterans of the United States of America to carry on its traditions and memory. On August 20, 1954, the U.S. Congress, under the leadership of GEN Douglas MacArthur and GEN Ulyssess S. Grant, III, formally chartered the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War. Today, more than 6,500 members represent the Union Veterans of the Civil War throughout the United States. Their members devote a great deal of time, energy, and resources to preserve the history of the civil war in schools throughout the United States. They study the American Civil War from all perspectives in order to facilitate a deeper understanding of one of the most important events in our Nation's history. In closing, I would like to again praise the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War on the occasion of its anniversary for its work to perpetuate and honor the brave men who fought for us to preserve our Nation. As a veteran myself, I understand the importance of honoring our veterans and preserving our history, especially that of the Civil War. I hope my colleagues in the Senate join me in honoring the work of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Landrieu of Louisiana be added as a cosponsor of amendment No. 2724.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I grew up in Danville, VA. The town of Danville, a town of about 30,000 people right on the North Carolina border, was famous for three things when I was growing up there. It was the home of the Dan River cotton mills, it was famous for being the world's biggest tobacco market, and it was famous for being the last capital of the Confederacy. I remember as a child riding back and forth to Danville, VA from our home outside of town and riding in the front of the bus, knowing that other people of color would ride in the back of the bus. I remember visiting downtown and going to restaurants, knowing if you were white you could eat there, and if you were not white, you could not. I remember seeing the water fountains, whites only, colored only. I remember going to the Rialto theater with my sister, watching three movies on a Saturday afternoon for 25 cents. If you were white, you got to sit on the first floor. If you were not, you sat up in the balcony. I remember going to catch the bus across the street from my house and going about 10 miles on a bus to high school and knowing that the kids of color, about 100 yards further away from us, would get on their bus and head out to go to their school, driving by mine and going another 10 miles to their own school.

Mr. CARPER. In addition to not being able to drink water at fountains with us, eat in the same restaurants, go to movies, ride on the bus or go to school with the rest of us, the other thing that folks of color couldn't do in my hometown was vote. They couldn't vote because they didn't pay a poll tax. They couldn't vote because they weren't smart enough allegedly to pass the test they had to take in order to become voters. I came here in 1965, barely out of high school, 18 years old. I went to the Rayburn Building and happened to walk into a hearing in 1965 by the House Judiciary Committee on this legislation, the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The enactment of that legislation did more to change things in my town of Danville, VA, and a lot of towns in this country, especially in the South, than any one thing I can think of. Yesterday, as several of us in the Senate rolled out something we called the Restoring the American Dream Initiative, we started off by trying to make sure that everybody who wanted to go to college had the ability to get to college. If we are going to be successful as a nation in the 21st century, we need a world class workforce. We can't have that unless we have well-educated, college-educated people. In order to have those kinds of opportunities, before we ever get to college we have to make sure kids have a decent chance to go to good elementary, middle, and high schools. And in order for anybody to have the American dream, it is important to have a chance to get a decent job, have a chance to be a home owner, raise a family, work hard, and live in a community and practice your faith. The one best way to ensure that people of all walks of life have those opportunities is to make sure that they have the opportunity every November, or whenever, to go into the voting booth, be registered to vote, and exercise their constitutional right. By the passage of this legislation today, we reaffirm our commitment to that sacred right. As one who came here 41 years ago, when my very first experience in the Capitol as an 18-year-old teenager was the debate on this legislation, to be back here today as a Member of the Senate, something I never thought possible, is an uplifting experience for me. I hope it serves as an inspiration to young men and women of whatever race or background they might be. I thank the leader. I yield back my time.

Mr. CARPER. If I could have 3 minutes.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Madam President, to my colleague and friend, Senator Feingold, I thank him very much for yielding, and I thank him even more for his leadership and that of Senator McCain in offering this amendment. Before I talk about the amendment, I want to also thank Senator Inhofe and our ranking member, Senator Jeffords, as well as Senators Bond and Baucus, for bringing this bill to the floor today. It has taken 6 long years and a huge amount of work on the part of them and their staffs and our staffs as we have prepared for this debate today. We are finally able to move this important legislation because of their dogged determination, really a collective determination and willingness to work with all of us to address our States' respective needs, and an openness to debating possible reforms for the way we plan and prioritize water resource projects. This bill includes several provisions that are very important to my State of Delaware. I want to quickly highlight maybe two of those and talk about the importance of modernizing the Corps of Engineers. First, this bill preserves something called the St. Georges Bridge over the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, the 14-mile canal that really connects the Delaware Bay to the Chesapeake Bay. It serves to divide Delaware in half. It takes up valuable space within my little State, disrupts our commerce and the movement of people and goods, and provides a shortcut for ships trying to get from the Delaware Bay to the Chesapeake Bay, and it helps to divert traffic away from my port, the Port of Wilmington. To say that I am not a great admirer of all that the C&D Canal does for my State would be an understatement. I have proposed, tongue-in-cheek, that we appropriate shovels to the people of Delaware so we can line up on either side of the C&D Canal and fill it in, and that we bring in plants and trees from other parts of the country to use up enormous quantities of water, and that we might plant them in the bed of the canal to soak up the water and then we can go across, like the children of Israel, on dry land. Well, none of that has happened, so we have to figure out how to get across the C&D Canal that disrupts commerce in my State. In return for the imposition of this canal, the Corps of Engineers has been obligated for three quarters of a century to provide sufficient access across that canal. Yet, in recent years, in spite of population growth that has stretched the capacity of the current bridges, the Corps has sought to reduce the number of bridges across the C&D Canal. Thanks to the support of the chairman and ranking member, that will not happen. The second important provision in this bill to our State is a late entry. A little over a year ago, some of you may recall that the Senate passed a bill by unanimous consent to rename our new bridge over the C&D Canal along State Route 1 for former U.S. Senator Bill Roth, my predecessor. Senator Roth served in the Senate for 30 years and in the House of Representatives for a time before that. I see Senator Bond here; he served with him for a number of those years. Bill Roth, for over a third of a century, served the people of Delaware admirably and with distinction in the House and later, for many years, in the Senate. He also worked hard to make sure about 15 years ago that this new bridge over the C&D Canal would be built. The bill to name the State Route 1 bridge at St. Georges for Senator Roth passed the Senate unanimously. It has been held up in the House for the past year. I appreciate Senator Inhofe's and Senator Jeffords' willingness to move it forward by agreeing to add it to the Water Resources Development Act. On behalf of our State and the Roth family, we express our deepest gratitude. I also rise today to voice my support for Senator Feingold's and Senator McCain's Corps independent review amendment. It is essential that we apply the lessons that we learned from Hurricane Katrina. This amendment seeks to do that, at least in part. This past April, I had the opportunity to tour both the devastation in New Orleans, as well as the wetlands that act as a buffer for that city. As a member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, I have spent many hours hearing from experts about why the levees failed in New Orleans. One thing became inescapably clear: There were warnings that were not heeded. The McCain-Feingold amendment seeks to prevent that from happening again. The McCain-Feingold independent review amendment--which I have cosponsored--requires an independent panel of experts to be constituted to review projects that will cost greater than $40 million. That panel will be fully independent of the Corps and made up of anywhere from five to nine experts in engineering, hydrology, biology, and economics. This panel will be able to review every aspect of a proposed project, from the data and assumptions that went into the Corps' analysis into the actual design of the final project that is chosen. Having such a review of the New Orleans levee system likely would have drawn attention to the flaws in the Corps' design, including the facts that they failed to account for the natural subsidence of the city and that the flood walls were not properly anchored in the swampy southern Louisiana ground. We often talk about these proposals as ``Corps reform.'' But in a real sense, they are also congressional reforms. That is because the findings of the independent panels merely provide more information to us, the Congress. They are not binding. It will still be up to us in the Congress to decide how to proceed, and we will need to do a better job ourselves in the future. But we cannot be expected to make good decisions if we don't have good information. Moreover, in these days of tighter budgets, we are not going to be able to gather support of our constituents for big navigation projects that they fear will destroy wetlands that are needed for flood protection or for a flood control project that people don't believe will work. As the New Orleans Times-Picayune stated in a recent editorial: Taxpayers shouldn't have to wonder if there's a rational basis for spending billions of dollars. I am reminded of something that LTG Carl Strock, who commands the Army Corps of Engineers, said: Words alone will not restore trust in the Corps. These amendments will provide some substantive change to back up the claim that we will never let what happened in New Orleans happen again. I urge my colleagues to support the McCain-Feingold independent review amendment. I am pleased to be among its cosponsors. I urge its adoption. I yield back my time.

Mr. CARPER

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

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I thank Senator Specter, one, for yielding time, and, second, I thank him for offering an amendment to give me an opportunity to join him in offering this amendment. Before I get to my remarks, for folks who are listening to the debate tonight, it might be confusing. There is a question as to whether this dredge called the McFarland is seaworthy. There is a question about whether the enormous investment--as much as $20 million--is required for it to be seaworthy or to become seaworthy or remain seaworthy. This is the deal. The Coast Guard has said as recently as 4 months ago that the McFarland is seaworthy. There is no suggestion--at least that I am aware of--on behalf of the Coast Guard that says $20 million or $2 million has to be spent now or next year to make it continue to be seaworthy. The question is, What kind of investments would be needed to be made in the McFarland if it were to be transitioned to the Ready Reserve? In that case, I am told that an investment--as much as $20 million--might be needed in order to transition this vessel to the Ready Reserve. We are not proposing that the vessel be transitioned to the Ready Reserve. We are simply proposing that it be allowed to continue the work it does along the east coast and not long ago down on the gulf coast as well. I think maybe that is clarifying and maybe a little bit illuminating for some of the people who are listening to this debate on the edge of their seats to determine the future of the McFarland. The McFarland is based in Philadelphia and is one of the four hopper dredges currently owned and operated by the Army Corps of Engineers. It is the only Federal dredge stationed on the Atlantic coast. The McFarland is used for maintenance dredging on the Delaware River and the Delaware Bay as well as on the east coast and the gulf coast of our country. It is also used for emergency and for national defense dredging wherever that might be needed. The McFarland has been used to restore navigation after major emergencies, such as along the gulf coast after Hurricane Katrina, and after the four hurricanes that hit Florida in 2004. This dredge is also utilized when no private dredge is available and no reasonable bid is made by private industry. In 1979, Congress passed a law instructing the Corps to use private industry dredges when industry has the capability to do the work at reasonable prices and in a timely manner. Congress also directed the Corps to retire Federal dredges when private industry demonstrated the capability to do the work. At the same time, the Corps was charged with maintaining a federally owned fleet to carry out emergency and national defense work. In attempting to balance these responsibilities, the Army Corps produced a report in 2004 calling for the decommissioning of the McFarland dredge, saying that private dredgers had increased their capacity to do the same job for less. But the Corps report was sharply criticized subsequently by the Government Accountability Office for flaws in its analysis and its cost estimates. As a result, a new report was produced last year by the Army Corps. While it still called for the decommissioning of the McFarland, it raised several troubling questions about private industry's capacity and the Army Corps' ability to respond to emergencies without the McFarland. The report indicated that the Corps' dredge fleet is still sometimes needed, saying ``industry alone has not been able to meet peak demands.'' The report goes on further to say that when private capacity is stretched, the Corps fleet is needed to protect the taxpayers' dollars and ensure reasonable bids. It states: With such a limited number of vessels in the fleet, and during peak workload periods when only one bidder may be available, there is a tendency to exercise the principles of supply and demand, and costs will rise. The Corps' presence will serve as a deterrent for potential cost increases. Without the McFarland, when private industry is at capacity and unable to respond to dredging needs on the east coast, we will have to turn to the Wheeler dredge, which is stationed in New Orleans. But this dredge is already in high demand. And in recent years, both dredges have been needed to respond to natural emergencies. Emergency situations were considered by the Corps. They looked at a ``worst case scenario'' in their report, using the 2004 hurricane season as a good example of a worst case scenario. That year, private industry's capacity was stretched and natural disasters created an emergency need for still further dredge work. The Army Corps pointed out in their report that the McFarland was needed in 2004 to respond to the four hurricanes that hit Florida. But the report downplayed the likelihood of a worst case scenario occurring again, saying: Having four hurricanes in a row with the extent and magnitude of damages experienced is not a common occurrence. I wish that were true. Sadly, the following year, demonstrated that the worst Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma case scenario can come in different forms. And more active hurricane seasons are predicted to continue to occur this year, next year, and the year after that. We would all love to believe that this type of disaster will not happen again and that we do not have to plan for that possibility. But we have no choice. Active hurricane seasons should be expected, and we cannot fail to clear our navigation channels after a disaster--they are too important to our economy and our national security. Finally, the Corps has found that smaller channels and smaller jobs sometimes do not attract as many bids from private industry. The Corps expressed concern about this in their report. In discussing the industry's lack of ability to meet peak demands, it pointed out that private industry may not always have the right kind of dredge available to serve a smaller channel. These same concerns can apply to smaller jobs, where it is not cost effective to move a private industry dredge to perform the work. In fact, without the McFarland, it might not be economical to use the remaining federal dredges to respond to such jobs. It could cost as much to move the Wheeler to the northeast Atlantic coast and back to the gulf as it would cost to operate it for 2 weeks. In this case, it would be more economical to keep the McFarland where it is. This way it can be used when there is not enough private dredge capacity to meet the needs along the east coast. We must ensure that we can maintain our waterways and access to our ports, whether small or large. We should also continue to support the growing private dredge industry. However, we cannot and should not expect private industry to do work that is not profitable or beyond their capacity. Nor can we plan for only the best case scenarios. Recent hurricane seasons have proven that we don't have that luxury. To my colleagues, I urge support for this amendment. I thank Senator Specter for offering it. I am pleased, again, to join him in doing so. I yield back whatever time I have not consumed.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. I thank my colleague for yielding. I am moved by the comments of Senator Lincoln, and I suspect we could go throughout the Senate Chamber from desk to desk, from Member to Member, and each of us could tell a personal story from our own family as moving as I found her description of the life of her father. In my own family, my grandfather, a wonderful role model as a butcher from West Virginia, had Parkinson's disease. He got up every morning and drove through the mountain roads to the butcher shop to cut meat. Every day I would watch him leave the House, his hands shaking, fingers shaking, wondering if he was going to chop one off, and he never did in all the years that he ran that butcher shop. I think of the time, looking at Senator Harkin and myself and some others in the Chamber who served in the House, we served with Mo Udall. I remember riding back and forth on the subway between the House buildings, the Rayburn Building, riding over to the Senate Chamber with Mo Udall and watching his body slowly deteriorate. I think of Ford King, my brother in law, now deceased, who was controlled by ALS over a decade or so ago and watching his life slowly fade away as ALS took its toll on him. I think of Alzheimer's and my own mom who passed away last year, her mom who was a victim of Alzheimer's, and the millions of others who die from that disease in our country. I think of my own healthy sons, thank God, 16 and 18 years of age, and I think of their friends having to prick their bodies or their fingers several times a day, as much as 10 times a day, to take insulin shots and know that is the way they are going to have to live for the rest of their life. Today is a day of tremendous opportunity. It is an opportunity to push for the kind of medical research that will make a difference in the lives of the people--not the people I just mentioned, unfortunately, for the most part, but in the lives of their children and their grandchildren. It is an opportunity to help find treatment for diseases such as the ones I mentioned, Parkinson's disease and juvenile diabetes and autoimmune disorders and heart disease and even, if we are lucky, cancer. We know that stem cells hold great promise. Already stem cells have been used to help paralyzed rats regain the ability to move. Stem cells have been converted into motor neurons which could help treat spinal cord injuries or Lou Gehrig's disease--ALS. Stem cells have also been coaxed into becoming brain cells to one day help patients with Parkinson's disease, such as my own grandfather, such as our old colleague, Mo Udall. Today, though, is about more than just curing diseases. It is also about keeping America's research centers competitive and relevant. Stem cell research is likely to be an important area of science and medicine for a long time to come. Instead of treading water, as we have done under President Bush's stem cell policy, America should be leading the way and making other countries play catchup, instead of us playing catchup to them. We have done this in the past. The United States has always been a valuable contributor to the prevention and treatment of illness. We have developed vaccines and antibiotics that have saved literally millions of lives. We have made tremendous advances in the areas of biotechnology and pharmaceutical research. Now we have an opportunity to make a national commitment to expand the frontiers of medical research once again. If we focus our resources and attention today to find cures, we will save lives, and we will save money in the long run. H.R. 810, the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act which is before us today, was introduced in the House of Representatives by my own Congressman, Mike Castle. Here in the Senate, it has been shepherded by two of our finest colleagues, Senator Specter and Tom Harkin of Iowa. This bill would greatly expand our ability to take the next steps in stem cell research by expanding the number of stem lines eligible for Federal funding. It would also strengthen the ethical rules that govern stem cell research. Under the administration's current policy, the number of stem cell lines available for federally funded research has continued to shrink. There are now, I am told, only 22 lines available. What is more, many of those current lines are contaminated or have reached the end of their useful life. The Castle bill would allow new lines to be derived from excess in vitro fertilization embryos that would otherwise be thrown away. The choice seems clear, at least to me and I know to a lot of people in my State. Rather than allow these embryos to be discarded and thrown away, with the consent of the couple who want to donate those embryos, with their permission, we can use those embryos to further lifesaving research. These new stem cell lines will dramatically expand our ability to study and find treatments for a wide range of illnesses. The benefits will come not only from having more stem cell lines but from having better lines. By expanding our research policy, we can create stem cell lines that help us study specific diseases or create specific treatments. I urge all our colleagues to support H.R. 810. I know there are a couple on the brink, who are undecided. They know who they are. I encourage them to listen to the folks from their own States and their own families whose lives could have been enhanced, been lengthened--or in the future will be. Let's vote today to expand stem cell research so we, our children, our grandchildren, and a whole lot of people beyond them can benefit in the future.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I rise, reluctantly, today in opposition to the amendment offered by my friend from New Jersey. I agree with my colleagues--certainly, with the Senator from Vermont and the Senator from Maine, and others who have spoken against the amendment--that it is not the right path for us to follow. I will say this, though. I agree with my colleagues who do support this amendment when they say that places such as New York and Washington, DC, are the most vulnerable to terrorist attack. Unfortunately, that is true. These are places that were attacked 5 years ago on 9/11, and they are surely the targets foremost in the minds of those who want to do us further harm. Those places deserve more first responder aid than other communities, including communities in my own State. What my colleagues who support this amendment ignore, however, is that communities across the Nation face some vulnerability to terrorist attacks as well. This amendment would cut first responder aid for all but the largest communities by two-thirds or more. And with all due respect, I do not believe that is responsible. I could stand here today and list all the places in my own State of Delaware that I think are especially vulnerable. I will mention a few. Delaware is home to some of the largest chemical companies and plants in the country. Right across the river, we have three nuclear power plants. They are closer to my home than they are to any of the Senators or the Governor of New Jersey, for that matter. We have I-95 that cuts right through my State, carrying all kinds of cargo, including hazardous cargoes. The Northeast Corridor of Amtrak runs right through my State. We have two major rail lines, all of which carry hazardous and dangerous cargo from time to time. We have all kinds of shipping going up the Delaware River, which divides Delaware and New Jersey. The cargo it carries is dangerous as well. Frankly, a lot of it is an attractive target for terrorists, those who would do us harm. And everybody else, probably, in the Chamber today, or those who will be showing up to vote in a few minutes, could say the same. They could go through a litany of similar kinds of concerns as to targets in their own States that would make them vulnerable, too. But that is not the point of this debate. This debate is about whether we want States such as Delaware or States such as South Carolina or States such as Washington or States such as Arkansas or New Hampshire or others--that are represented on the floor at this moment--whether we want our States to have the resources we need to achieve even minimum preparedness, goals that are set by the Department of Homeland Security for our country. We will not be able to achieve those goals in Delaware and in a number of other States with the cuts that, unfortunately, this amendment proposed by my friend from New Jersey would require. From their inception, the State grant programs funded through this bill have directed some 60 percent or more of their resources to the largest most vulnerable areas. And we should do that. In addition, the Urban Areas Security Initiative directs even more money to the largest most densely populated cities. All of it is distributed based on vulnerability. There are not any cities in Delaware or in very many other small States that are competing for those funds. What the amendment before us, regrettably, would do is tie the Department of Homeland Security's hands, forcing those who manage these grant programs to direct virtually every dollar we appropriate in first responder aid to a handful of States and larger cities. The Department officials would have no ability to consider whether a State or city actually needs the money they are getting or whether a grant recipient is even capable of spending those dollars effectively. As I mentioned before, I am all for giving the most vulnerable communities more money. We should. This amendment, however, takes that worthy goal, in my view, several steps too far, taking a significant amount away from 36 States and, apparently, would even cut the allocation for Washington, DC. I do not think we want to do that either. Every State has seen a decrease in first responder aid in recent years, as money has been diverted to other priorities. I do not necessarily agree with those decisions, but I certainly do not agree the solution to this problem that this amendment before us suggests-- that is, to jeopardize the security of citizens in States such as mine and dozens of other States similar to it across the country--is the course we should follow. I will reluctantly vote no on this amendment and encourage many of my colleagues to do the same. I yield back my time.

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, the Senator has said it well. There is nothing much I can add. When it comes to proportioning these funds, we need to use common sense. If we do, I think we will vote no on the amendment. I thank the Senator from Maine for all the leadership she provides.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, it is with great disappointment that I cast a ``nay'' vote on the Oman Free Trade Agreement today. Last summer, when we were debating the Central America Free Trade Agreement, or CAFTA, I expressed frustration with the direction of free-trade agreements and free-trade policy, in general. I expressed a hope that the administration would do more to consult with Congress and, particularly, with moderate, free-trade Democrats. Many times, representatives of this administration have said that they want to bring back the strong bipartisan support for free-trade agreements and ``make it easier for Democrats to support free-trade agreements.'' Well, one of the ways they can do that is by consulting with and responding to concerns expressed by Democrats and moderates in Congress--before we are asked to vote up or down on those agreements. When the Oman Free Trade Agreement was considered in the Finance Committee, 18 members voted in favor of an amendment offered by Senator Conrad that would ban the import of goods made by slave labor or by workers trapped in abusive conditions through human trafficking. And with that amendment approved, all 19 members of the Finance Committee were able to support the free-trade agreement. Clearly, supporting that language was a way to make it easier for Members of Congress to support this agreement. Yet the administration decided to ignore that strong signal. They did not try to address the concerns voiced through the adoption of the Conrad amendment. They chose to omit the amendment from the implementing language they sent to the Congress for its approval. This action may not backfire today: the Oman agreement may still pass. However, it will backfire one day, and I expect it to be in the not so distant future. Next year, Congress will be asked to reauthorize trade promotion authority. But trade promotion authority is about trust, and the actions taken by this administration in agreement after agreement have not inspired trust. And at this point, they have very little time to reestablish that trust before the vote on trade promotion authority next summer. Lowering trade barriers and promoting free trade is about more than just economics. It is about increasing opportunities and improving quality of life both here and abroad. In offering access to our markets, we can help to peacefully spread democracy and encourage developing countries to increase transparency in government, strengthen their judiciary, improve conditions for their workforce, and protect their environment. But this administration does not seem to recognize this opportunity, even when strong supporters of trade--like myself-- tell them that this is an important part of our support for free-trade agreements. So today we have been sent a free-trade agreement that does not reflect an understanding of the concerns expressed by Members of Congress. This bill is not amendable. All I can do is vote yes or no. Last summer I voted yes, giving the administration the benefit of the doubt and hoping that they would listen to the concerns expressed by moderates in Congress. Today, I am going to vote no and hope that the administration will recognize that they must listen to the concerns expressed by the legislative branch and that they cannot take our votes for granted. I invite the administration to use the time between now and the consideration of the Peru Free Trade Agreement to show that you are listening, to incorporate our ideas into that agreement, and to prove that you deserve the trust we showed in granting trade promotion authority. I believe in lowering trade barriers, and that is why I have supported every trade agreement that has come before me, until today. But that will become considerably more difficult without trade promotion authority. I sincerely hope we can work together over the next year to save it.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I yield back the remainder of my time, and I will continue the rest of my speech at a later time today. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. CARPER

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