William Cohen

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. President, Derrick Robie's tiny, battered body was discovered in the afternoon of August 2, 1993. The small town was shocked to find that 13-year-old Eric Smith had murdered this 4-year-old child. Investigators found an indicator of violent crime in Eric Smith's behavioral pattern: 1 year prior to killing Derrick Robie, Eric had strangled his neighbor's cat with a hose clamp. At the time, no one paid much attention to this so-called prank. Mr. President, it is time that we took a serious look at animal abuse and it's link to crimes against people. Perpetrators of serious animal abuse often lack empathy and respect for life in general. The absence of empathy is often manifested by striking, torturing and abusing an innocent animal. Abusing animals is a despicable act, and psychologists and criminologists tell us those who lack empathy for animals may also lack empathy for humans. As a result they may be predisposed to other violent behavior. Violence begets violence. Child, spousal, and elder abuse are unfortunately too commonplace in our society. Often physical abuse is coupled with sexual abuse against a family member. Aggression is passed from one generation to another. In a hostile home environment, children often mimic their parents' abusive behavior. They become abusive to others, including the family pet, and learn that violence and cruelty are a way of life. Unless intervention occurs, this child is likely to continue violent acts to others, perhaps become an abusive spouse, and possibly commit other criminal acts. The National Research Council and the Federal Bureau of Investigation agree that cruelty to animals is one childhood behavior that is a powerful indicator of violence elsewhere in the perpetrator's life. There is a strong probability that youths who abuse animals are themselves victims and perpetrators of violence. Dr. Frank Ascione of Utah State University has been conducting research on the animal-people abuse phenomenon for more than 15 years. He has studied the common roots of violence toward people and animals and has found a strong correlation between animal abuse and people abuse. He is a leader among many researchers who have been scientifically studying this phenomenon since the 1970's. One study of 38 abuse victims at a crisis shelter found nearly 75 percent of women with pets reported their partner had threatened, hurt, or killed the animal. Researchers in child abuse cases found that in 88 percent of these family situations, the pet was also abused. Violence is not an isolated event and animal abuse is often part of a larger cycle of violence. For this reason, violence toward animals must be taken much more seriously. Cruelty to animals can be a predictor of future violence and an indicator of the violence already in the perpetrator's life. Experts in the family violence field instruct us to treat a single act of violence as indicators of past and future violence. Our public support systems must be coordinated so when an adult or child abuses an animal, the animal control officer will notify other public health officials to determine whether there is evidence of child, spousal or elder abuse. The perpetrator of animal or people abuse may, himself, be a victim of sexual or other abuse. Further, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has identified animal abuse as one of a cluster of juvenile behaviors that could suggest serious violent behavior later in life. The good news is that experts are finding that compassion and empathy can be taught. Various schools across the country have recognized the linkage of animal and people violence. They have added specialized humane education to their curriculum in order to teach compassion and empathy. In 1994 the National Research Council released a comprehensive study on understand and preventing violence, showing that childhood behavior is more important than teenage behavior in predicting future violent behavior. The report suggests that early prevention efforts have a greater potential for reducing adult crime than criminal sanctions applied later in life. Cities and towns across the country are beginning to recognize the potential for further violence in the link between animal abuses and other abuses. Last year the city of San Diego enacted an unprecedented interagency agreement, requiring its children's services agencies to report to animal control officials suspected instances of animal abuse within 24 hours of becoming aware of it. Further, the animal control officers must report suspected child abuse to the proper authorities. These workers are cross trained to recognize signs of abuse in animals and people. Other cities and States are strengthening penalties for animal abuse as well as requiring mental health care to be administered to the perpetrators of animal abuse. There is much to be done, and progress begins when those of authority become educated on the significance of animal cruelty. It is the responsibility of our private and public support systems to recognize signs that a child is in trouble and intervene in an effective manner. The FBI has identified clusters of traits indicating problems: firesetting, cruelty to animals, truancy, et cetera. When there is fire setting, there could be sexual abuse. When there is truancy, there could be drug problems. When there is fighting, and cruelty to people or animals, the perpetrator could be responding to abuses he is suffering or has suffered. Most importantly these signals should not be treated as isolated events, but rather trigger responses from the educators, criminal justice professionals, public health officials, and animal control specialists, working in concert. I believe that this cycle of violence merits further investigation. We must recognize there is continuity between animal abuse and people abuse. Further research is needed on the predictable influences of violence. Meanwhile, we must take action on the known data. Individuals, the public health system, the criminal justice professionals, and the educators must coordinate their efforts in recognizing, intervening and preventing future violent acts. In order to encourage more in-depth analyses of this link between people and animal violence, I have asked Attorney General Janet Reno to accelerate the Department of Justice's research in this area and to take appropriate action based upon what we already know. One particular area of interest to me is the education of prosecuting attorneys and judges regarding the correlation of animal cruelty to other crimes. While experts agree the penalties for such abuse should be stiffened, they are also in agreement that a mental health analysis of the entire family involved in an abusive case may be necessary. I intend to continue my examination of violence prevention and I intend to continue investigating where the public support systems may be further strengthened in breaking this cycle of violence. The professionals in criminal behavior are reporting to us that violence has warning signals. It is our responsibility to recognize these signals and intervene swiftly and effectively. Admittedly this is not an exact science. Every child that abuses an animal will not necessarily become a violent offender or become a victim of violence himself, but it would be a mistake to dismiss the strong correlation between animal and people violence. As a society, we must realize that violent behavior rarely exists in a vacuum. We must recognize at-risk youths who lack empathy and compassion for animals and other human beings. It is our responsibility to do all that we can to teach these personality attributes to our youth so that today's animal abusers don't continue these despicable actions and become tomorrow's dangerous felons, thereby perpetuating the cycle of violence that has taken such a devastating toll on our society.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. President, first I would like to pay tribute to Senator John Chafee of Rhode Island. Whether the issue is health care reform or indeed dealing with a balanced budget, John Chafee has been in the forefront. He has demonstrated the kind of leadership that he demonstrated many years ago at Guadalcanal. He has continued to take the lead on tough issues, joined by Democrats who show a similar amount of courage. I am thinking of John Breaux, Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, and so many others who are here on the floor today. Without that kind of leadership, we would not be able to forge this bipartisan consensus. I take my hat off to Senator Chafee for the courage he has shown over the years. People are disenchanted with politics and politicians today. I think there is a good reason for that. Because we have been drawing profiles in cowardice. We have failed to tell the people, in Walter Lippmann's words, ``What they have to know and not what they want to hear.'' As a result, we have misled them over the years by promising them more and more without the corresponding obligation they have to pay for those promises. We are where we are today because we have misled them. And so this represents a break in that particular tradition. The role of success in the past has been to keep promising more and more and never having to pay for it. Borrowing from our children, sacrificing their future, all the while paving our way to electoral success. What this group is saying is that has to stop. I was looking at an article last evening in the Atlantic Monthly. I call all of my colleagues' attention to it. It was written by Pete Peterson, the president, founder of the Concord Coalition. He has been writing about this for years now. The article--I will just quote a couple of things from it. It is one of the most powerful and persuasive cases one could possibly make about the need for this kind of proposal. He quotes from Herbert Stein saying: ``If something is unsustainable, it tends to stop.'' Or, as the old adage advises, ``If your horse dies, we suggest you dismount.'' Then he goes on to cite some really overwhelming statistics. My colleague from Maine, Senator Snowe, mentioned some of them. I am just summarizing it. Basically it says that if the Social Security trust fund and the Medicare hospital insurance, if they remain as they are, the combined cash deficit in the year 2030 will be $1.7 trillion. In other words, the horse will be quite dead. By 2040 the deficit will probably hit $3.2 trillion, and by 2050, $5.7 trillion; and even discounting inflation, without counting inflation, the deficit that year for these two senior citizen programs will approximate $700 billion or nearly four times the size of the entire 1996 Federal deficit. The numbers are staggering. The demographics are overwhelming. Consider the fact that in just 4 years 76,000 Americans are going to live to be 100 years old, the baby boomers, out of the baby boomers more than 1 million will reach the age of 100. In just four decades one-fourth, 25 percent of our population, is going to be over the age of 65 and our nursing home population is going the double. The demographics are simply overwhelming. If we are looking at tax increases, while both parties are talking about tax cuts, tax increases by the year 2040, the cost of Social Security as a share of worker payroll, is expected to rise from today's 11.5 percent to either 17 or 22 percent. If you add the Medicare Program, the workers will be paying between 35 and 55 percent of their payroll just for those two programs, not counting anything else in the entire Federal budget. The numbers are overwhelming. It is as if, Mr. President, we were told by our scientists that a giant meteor is rocketing its way toward Earth. It will arrive in about 10 or 15 years. When it strikes, it will destroy all life in the United States--maybe the entire planet. What would our reaction be? Ignore it? Say it is a lie? Or it is inevitable and nothing can be done? Besides, we will be dead and it will not matter. It is our children and our grandchildren's problem; let them contend with it. Or would we exercise the kind of courage and vision that, say, a John F. Kennedy did when he said, ``In the next decade, we are going to put a man on the moon.'' That is the kind of courage and vision we need to start exercising now. We need to say there is a giant meteor coming and we need to build something that will destroy it before it destroys us. That is the reason we are here today. I commend my colleagues, Senator Chafee, Senator Kerrey, who has been a leader in facing up to the issues of the needs of reform in our Social Security system, which is a third rail of politics, and all the other colleagues on the floor. I commend each of you for your effort to reach a bipartisan consensus on what we have to do to destroy that giant meteor that is out there heading this way.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. I am concerned that section 107 of this bill, which lifts the cap on the amount of funds that may be expended on a customs service program for small airports, could lead to abuse of this program and unfair competition. Under current law, all large airports, such as Bangor International Airport, which are designated ports of entry, must charge passengers $6.50 per ticket to pay for the cost of customs inspection and processing. In 1984, Congress established a program for small airports that could not qualify for port-of-entry status to enable them to provide customs services to international passengers. Passengers arriving at airports that qualify for this program do not pay the $6.50 fee. Instead, a user-fee airport pays a user fee directly to the Customs Service, which goes into an account that pays the salaries of the customs inspector and the cost of customs inspections and other services at the user fee airport. By law, the Secretary of the Treasury may only qualify an airport to participate in this user-fee program upon finding that the volume or value of business cleared through such airport is insufficient to justify the availability of customs services at such airport. Guidelines published by the Customs Service provide that airports with over 15,000 international passengers annually, or which meet other criteria, can qualify for port-of-entry status. By implication, airports receiving more than 15,000 passengers annually should not qualify for the user-fee program because they have sufficient volume to justify full-time customs' services. Unfortunately, there is no mechanism under current law for automatic graduation of user-fee airports into port-of-entry status. This loophole enables airports designated by the Secretary as a user-fee airport to service substantial numbers of international passengers, but circumvent the $6.50 per passenger fee that must be paid by passengers arriving at port-of-entry airports. Unless the law is changed, airports with user- fee status, that nonetheless enter the business of large-scale international transit, have a built-in competitive advantage over port- of-entry airports that must charge each passenger $6.50. I would like to ask the Chairman of the Finance Committee for his comments on this situation.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. President, many of us in the Senate are today mourning the loss of a very dear friend, long-time aide to Senators Edmund S. Muskie and George J. Mitchell, and former Postmaster of the U.S. Senate. Gayle Cory died Wednesday night, succumbing to the cancer that caused her retirement in January 1995 after a too brief career as Senate Postmaster. Her death comes nearly 1 month after the death of her dear friend, former Secretary of State Edmund S. Muskie. Gayle was a member of Senator Muskie's staff from the very beginning of his Senate career in 1959, and she was at his side throughout his years in the Senate. She was one of a very few Senate aides who moved with him to the Department of State when Senator Muskie was appointed Secretary of State in 1980. But their friendship, and Gayle's friendship with Jane Muskie and the Muskie children, continued long after Senator Muskie left public life. She returned to the Senate to join the staff of former Senator George J. Mitchell. She served as his top personal assistant until he became Senate Majority Leader, when he appointed her Postmaster of the U.S. Senate. As Senate Postmaster, Gayle oversaw many improvements in the post office security operations. She also instituted many reforms which effectively preserved the integrity of the Senate Post Office during the same period of time that the House postal services were engulfed by scandal. Gayle Cory was very special to all of us fortunate enough to know her and work with her. She did not have acquaintances * * * to meet Gayle was to be her friend, and all of us, regardless of our political affiliation, knew we could count on her help and her wise counsel. Few of us in this body today understand the workings of the Senate as thoroughly as Gayle did, and she used her knowledge and experience to work for the people of Maine. She loved Maine deeply, and the people of Maine were always her first priority. She was the first contact for many Mainers coming to Washington, and even those meeting her for the first time were made to feel welcome, to know they had found a friend. In fact recently, my office was visited by a family from Gayle's hometown of Bath, whose sole reason for stopping by was to inquire about Gayle. Gayle worked hard and successfully over the years but she never sought personal recognition for her efforts. She was loved and deeply respected by members of my staff, many of whom kept in touch with her after her retirement. We are deeply saddened by her passing. We have lost a wonderful friend, but she will live on in our memories and in our hearts. I want to extend my deepest sympathies to Gayle's husband, Don, to their two daughters, Carole and Melissa, and to her brother and sister, Duane Fitzgerald and Carole Rouillard of Bath, ME. I extend my sympathies, too, to Gayle's extended family here in the Senate--the staffs of former Senators Edmund S. Muskie and George Mitchell, and the staff of the Senate Post Office. They, too, have lost a member of their family.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. President, I wish to announce that the Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management and the District of Columbia, Committee on Governmental Affairs, will hold a hearing on Tuesday, April 30, 1996, at 9:30 a.m., in room 342 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, on Aviation Safety: Are FAA Inspectors Adequately Trained, Targeted, and Supervised? committee on energy and natural resources subcommittee on parks, historic preservation, and recreation

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. President, I rise in support of S. 1028, the Health Insurance Reform Act, which promises to relieve the anxiety that millions of Americans are feeling that they may lose their health care coverage if they change their jobs, lose their jobs, or become ill. Health care reform is certainly not a new issue for any of us. In fact, I introduced my first comprehensive health care reform bill back in 1990. It was 76 pages long and it dealt with these same issues--the availability and affordability of health insurance. Over the subsequent 6 years, we have spent countless hours studying and debating the issue. If we have learned anything, it is that the American people want health care reform, but they want something they can understand and afford, and something that builds upon rather than reinvents the current system. The American public wisely rejected the big-government approach proposed in the last Congress by the administration--that 1,400 page proposal literally collapsed under its own weight. More Government bureaucracy is clearly not the way to lower health care costs or ensure access to care. But rising health care costs and expanding gaps in coverage are still very much on the minds of the American people. Poll after poll continues to show that health care remains a top priority. In fact, a poll conducted late last year by Princeton Survey Research Associates found that more Americans are concerned about their own health care coverage than they are about crime, high taxes, the political system, or the economy. Americans clearly want health care reform. But what they mean when they say that is: ``If I lose my job or get sick, I want to keep my health insurance and I don't want it to cost so much.'' They want Congress to enact sensible, targeted reforms to make health insurance more affordable and available, and to ensure that they do not lose the coverage that they currently have. We have that opportunity today. Despite the partisan and sometimes bitter debate over this issue in recent years, there is now broad- based, bipartisan support for this bill, which would benefit as many as 25 million Americans each year, at no additional cost to the taxpayers. The legislation currently has 65 Senate cosponsors and is supported by a wide range of diverse organizations including the National Governors' Association, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Association of Retired Persons, and the American Medical Association. The Health Care Reform Act of 1996 builds upon and strengthens our current private insurance system to make it easier for individuals and their employers to buy and keep their health insurance. It contains a number of common sense, market-based reforms that are designed to guarantee that private health insurance coverage will be affordable, available, and portable. Most of these reforms have been included in my own health care bills over the years, and they have also been common elements of legislation introduced in past Congresses by both Republicans and Democrats. First, the bill limits the ability of insurers and employers to restrict or exclude coverage for pre-existing health conditions like heart disease or cancer, making it easier for workers to change jobs and eliminating job lock. Insurers will also be prohibited from dropping or denying coverage for an individual when they or a family member becomes ill. The legislation also provides a safety net for people who lose their employer-paid coverage--insurers will now be required to sell them individual policies. Some have expressed concern that this provision will cause premiums in the individual market to skyrocket. However, our experience in Maine--where insurers have been required to sell policies to any individual who applies since 1993--shows that this change should have only minimal price consequences. In fact, one Maine insurer reduced rates for its individual policies by 16 percent last year. And finally, the bill assists employers and individuals in forming private, voluntary coalitions to purchase health insurance and negotiate with providers and health plans. These kinds of arrangements can provide small employers and individuals with the same kind of purchasing clout enjoyed by large employers, making insurance coverage more affordable. No one pretends that the reforms contained in this bill are the answer to all of our Nation's health care woes. They are targeted and they are specific. But they will provide all Americans with what Robert Samuelson of Newsweek has termed ``a little more peace of mind.'' We should not underestimate the importance of providing this peace of mind to people like Susan Rogan, of Herndon, VA, who testified before the Labor Committee last summer. She told the committee that the experience of obtaining health insurance after her husband's employers had gone bankrupt had been a nightmare, even though he quickly found a new job. Insurers were reluctant or unwilling to cover the family because their daughter has cerebral palsy. She urged us to work together, saying: It is your responsibility, in Congress, to find a solution to the insurance problems that have caused so much heartache for so many American families. We voted for you, and we expect no less of you. And Susan Rogan is right. She should expect no less of us. It is our responsibility to work together and take this positive step forward to tear down the barriers that millions of working Americans and their families face in obtaining and keeping essential health care coverage. I therefore join the chairman and ranking member of the Labor Committee in urging my colleagues to resist the temptation to weigh down this important piece of legislation with highly controversial or extraneous amendments. Some of the amendments that may be offered today are ones that I would, under other circumstances, support. For instance, I have been a long-time supporter of Senator Domenici's legislation to provide people with serious mental illness with health benefits and coverage that are comparable to those provided to people with physical illness. However, this is neither the time nor the vehicle, and I intend to vote against all such extraneous amendments. We simply do not want to run the risk of having this very sensible and eminently doable package grow into yet another 1,400-page bundle of expensive mandates, more Government bureaucracy, and untested proposals. We should not let the ghosts of health reform past destroy the promise that this important piece of legislation holds for resolving some of the most serious problems plaguing our health care system, and I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting it.

Mr. COHEN. Will the Senator yield? I inquire whether or not he included the antifraud provision in his amendment?

Mr. COHEN. According to the CBO, they scored a $3 billion savings. I want to commend Senators Dole and Roth for including it in the package. We are losing roughly $18 billion a year just out of the Medicare Program itself, and we are losing about $100 billion itself throughout the health care system. It works out to about $275 million a day, $11.5 million an hour. I would also like to thank Mary Gerwin, Helen Albert, and Priscilla Hanley from the Aging Committee for all their hard work on the fraud legislation. Mr. President, last spring the Medicare trustees, on a bipartisan basis, issued an urgent warning that the Medicare hospital trust fund will go broke by the year 2002, unless major changes are made to protect the system. Since that alarm was sounded, the Congress has been wrestling with ways to bring Medicare spending under control, in order to forestall impending bankruptcy and to strengthen Medicare for both current and future beneficiaries. The debate over how--and how much--to control the unsustainable growth of Medicare spending was part of the budget reconciliation process which now remains stalled. A major step we can and must take toward Medicare reform is to crack down on the fraud and abuse that drives up the costs of health care for senior citizens and taxpayers. Estimates are that Medicare loses over $18 billion each year to fraud and abuse, and that fraudulent schemes cost the entire health care system and our economy over $100 billion each year. The investigation of the Senate Special Committee on Aging, which I chair, has revealed that it is shockingly simple to commit health care fraud, and that the size, complexity, and splintering of the current health care system creates an environment ripe for abuse. Health care fraud is equal opportunity employer that does not discriminate against any part of the system. All Government health care programs--Medicare, Medicaid, CHAMP- US, and other Federal and State health plans, as well as private sector health plans, are ravaged by fraud and abuse. Similarly, no one type of health care provider or provider group corners the market on health care fraud. Scams against the system run the gamut from small companies or practitioners who occasionally pad their Medicare billings because they know they'll never get caught, to large criminal organizations that systematically steal millions of dollars from Medicare, Medicaid, and other insurers. According to the FBI, health care fraud is growing much faster than law enforcement ever anticipated, and even cocaine distributions are switching from drug dealing to health care fraud schemes because the chances of being caught are so small--and the profits so big. Of particular concern is the growing evidence that health care fraud has infiltrated the health care industries providing services to our nation's elderly and disabled Americans, and in turn, contributing to the runaway costs of these entitlement programs. The Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services, for example, has cited problems in home health care, nursing home, and medical supplier industries as significant trends in Medicare and Medicaid fraud and abuse. Padding claims and cost reports, charging the government and patients outrageous prices for unbundled services, and billing Medicare for costs that have nothing to do with patient care are just a few of the schemes that are occurring in these industries. Unscrupulous providers are enjoying a feeding frenzy on Medicare and Medicaid, while taxpayers are picking up the tab for their feast. It is time that we crack down--and shut down--these schemes that are bilking billions of dollars from Medicare and other health care programs. If we have asked honest health care providers to take cuts in reimbursement and asked Medicare and Medicaid recipients to pay more out-of-pocket costs to bring spending under control, we have an absolute duty to ensure the American public that their health care dollars are not lining the pockets of criminals and greedy providers who are manipulating the system through fraud and abuse. I was very pleased that the budget reconciliation bill includes anti- fraud legislation that I introduced last year as a result of an investigation of the Special Committee on Aging and I am pleased that my legislation is included in the leadership amendment on the Kassebaum bill. Specifically, the proposal creates tough new criminal statutes to help prosecutors pursue health care fraud more swiftly and efficiently, increases fines and penalties for billing Medicare and Medicaid for unnecessary services, overbilling, and for other frauds against these and all Federal health care programs, and makes it easier to kick fraudulent providers out of the Medicare and Medicaid Program, so they do not continue to rip off the system. Most importantly, the bill establishes an antifraud and abuse program to coordinate Federal and State efforts against health care fraud, and substantially increases funding for investigative efforts, auditors, and prosecutors. According to the Congressional Budget Office, these provisions will yield over $3 billion in scorable savings to Medicare--without costing a penny to senior citizens. I am convinced that the long-term savings are much greater, and that billions more will be saved once dishonest providers realize that we are cracking down on fraud, and that they can no longer get away with illegally padding their bills to pad their own pockets. The legislation has received the support of the FBI Director, the Attorney General, the HHS' Secretary, and the Congress, which passed it as part of Budget Reconciliation. We should not let an opportunity to pass this bill go by. We lose as much as $275 million per day or as much as $11.5 million per hour to health care fraud and abuse. Every day we wait, will be a victory to those unscrupulous providers who are bankrupting our public health programs. I urge my colleagues to support this important endeavor and I would like to thank Senators Roth and Dole for including this proposal as part of the leadership amendment.

Mr. COHEN. I would be glad to yield to my colleague.

Mr. COHEN. My colleague is correct. I have long been interested in promoting alternative medical treatments and I do not have any desire to enact a new law which might treat such providers unfairly. Could the Senator from Utah share with me specific concerns?

Mr. COHEN. I agree with my colleague that the practice of alternative medicine in itself would not constitute fraud.

Mr. COHEN. My language does not cover malpractice at all. Further, it is my intent that the new data collection system be coordinated with existing data bases, so that there is no costly and burdensome duplication of effort. I have revised the language to reflect my colleague's concerns in this area. The new language makes it clear that there should be coordination with existing databases.

Mr. COHEN. That is correct. I would want to make certain that participants in the system can avail themselves of due process guarantees, and that only final actions be included in the new database.

Mr. COHEN. That is certainly not my intent. I have revised the language in the bill to state specifically that only exclusions for program violations are to be reported.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. President, if I can be as brief as I can within the 5- minute limitation, the fraud and abuse provisions that we adopted in the leadership amendment is something that I have worked on now for over 3 years. It passed both the House and the Senate last year as part of the budget reconciliation act. It was included in the administration's budget reconciliation proposal. So the legislation we have passed and adopted is something that has been completely vetted; it has been negotiated through a lengthy process; it has been through the hearing process; it has been on the floor on several occasions--in fact, numerous times. Additionally, it has received the endorsement of the administration, the Attorney General, Secretary of Health and Human Services, the Finance Committee of the House and Senate, as well as many private groups. The Harkin legislation has not gone through any such review or scrubbing; it has not received these endorsements, to my knowledge. In fact, I am sure we do not know of all the objections to his provisions. I do believe that there are several that are the subject of controversy. I am not here to argue the merits of each of the items I am about to raise, but I know that both Health and Human Services and HCFA, the Health Care Financing Administration, object to the section that requires HCFA to acquire commercial software technology for Medicare claims processing. I know HCFA has concerns with the Harkin section that requires Medicare payments for certain items. Again, I am not here to argue the merits of these particular items tonight. I merely say to my colleagues, they are not without controversy. If our objective is to pass the Kassebaum-Kennedy bill because we want to see legislation that guarantees access, affordability and portability, it seems to me the best thing we can do is stay with the legislation we adopted. That is why it was included in the leadership amendment. So we have adopted it on several occasions. There may be some merit to Senator Harkin's proposal, but I think because of the items that are in controversy, it is only going to jeopardize the legislation. I believe the fraud and abuse provisions we have adopted are an enormous step forward. CBO has scored the amendment we adopted as saving some $3 billion, and that is going to pay for a number of items in the bill itself. So, Mr. President, I hope that my colleagues, when the appropriate time comes, will move to table the Harkin amendment, that we will enjoy the support of our colleagues, because I believe the Harkin amendment does raise controversial issues, and the last thing we need at this time is more controversy on this bill.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Mr. BIDEN addressed the Chair.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the period of morning business be extended until the hour of 1:30, with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. President, last Tuesday, an industrial giant died, David Packard, a former Deputy Secretary of Defense during the Nixon administration. I have a letter sent to me as chairman of the Seapower Subcommittee by the Secretary of the Navy. I ask unanimous consent that this letter to me be printed in the Record.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. President, last Tuesday, the State of Maine and the entire Nation mourned the loss of a political giant, Edmund S. Muskie. From Maine to California, the newspapers are filled with long stories detailing and encapsulating the life and times of Ed Muskie and his accomplishments. There were columns that appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the Bangor Daily News, the Portland Press Herald--all across the country. While each of the articles was written from the unique perspective of the authors, there were common elements in each one of them. The articles spoke of Senator Muskie's intellect, which indeed was muscular. They spoke of his integrity, which was unquestioned. They spoke of his candor, which was unmatched. They spoke of his courage, which I think was incomparable. He took on some of the most powerful interests in this country and, never once, did he ever flinch, he never sought favor, and never acted out of fear. He was indeed a brave heart. He was careful, and some say he was cautious. I read a tribute recently, which I will quote: Perhaps the strongest feature in his character was prudence, never acting until every circumstance, every consideration, was maturely weighed; refraining when he saw doubt, but when once decided, going through with his purpose whatever obstacles opposed. His integrity was the most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known, no motives or interest or consanguinity, or friendship or hatred being able to bias his decision. He was indeed, in every sense of the words, a wise, a good, and a great man. These words were not about Ed Muskie. These are the words of Thomas Jefferson assessing the character of George Washington. But they might just as well have been said about Ed Muskie. In Ecclesiastes, the question is asked, ``What is best for men to do during their few days of life under the sun?'' Well, it was clear from the very beginning what the answer was for Ed Muskie. He was not born to be a spectator or a bystander. He did not come into this world to sit in a darkened theater and express his approval or rejection of those on stage. He knew, as Justice Holmes before him knew, that ``Life is action and passion, and we must share in that action and passion at the risk of being judged not to have lived.'' Ed Muskie was at the very center of the action of his days--whether it was on the civil rights legislation, or protecting the environment, or waging the fight to control the budget, as chairman of the Budget Committee, or promoting America's role in a dangerous world, as the Secretary of State. When he was on the Senate floor in full-throated debate, and when he blended that magnificent mind of his with the rhetorical power and grace of the orator, then he became one with the poet Hopkins, who said, ``What I do is for me; for this I care.'' Dr. Robert Sheehan once wrote, ``The world belongs to those who laugh and cry. Laughter is the beginning of wisdom, the first evidence of the divine sense of humor. Those who know laughter have learned the secret of living.'' Well, Ed laughed a lot. He had a wry, down-east Yankee wit. He loved a good cigar, a good story, and he loved a good joke. While passion was his virtue, it was also said to be his vice. He had a cool, cerebral intellect, but he also had a quick and, some would say, also Vesuvian temper, particularly when he witnessed an injustice being done, an act of hypocrisy or unfairness being inflicted. He had little tolerance for character assassination. We are all familiar with that fateful moment in New Hampshire when he was standing on a flatbed during a snowfall. Ed Muskie decided that he had enough of the dirty tricks that were being practiced upon him at that time, enough of the daily diatribes that appeared in one of New Hampshire's newspapers. But, of course, he was not the only object of attack that week. He rose on that day to denounce the attacks against his wife, Jane, as being mean and cowardly. There was one prominent journalist, David Broder, who wrote that Senator Muskie appeared to be crying during that time--although, to this day, there is some question as to whether they were actually snowflakes falling or streaming down his cheeks, as opposed to tears. But it was a moment in history--a turning point in his campaign for the Presidency because many, after that moment, judged him to be too passionate to be President. There is some irony in the retelling of this story and this event because, some 16 years later, another Democratic candidate for the Presidency was thought to be too cool, too bland, and bloodless in his response to a question about what he would do if his wife had been raped. So we have come to learn that politics is not a sport where the rules are always well defined, or indeed consistent. Some people who have run unsuccessfully for the Presidency are broken by the experience. Defeat never shattered Ed Muskie's love of politics and his love for this institution. He possessed an inner self- confidence and self-awareness of his place in the uncompleted puzzle of existence. It was a serenity which permitted him to continue to serve nobly in the Senate and then later as Secretary of State. Mr. President, back in 1976, I had given consideration to running against Senator Muskie. I was then a young Congressman from the Second Congressional District of Maine. I was being urged, indeed, to run against Senator Muskie. I was pondering. I thought about it for a long time. I retreated to Sugarloaf Mountain in Maine to contemplate whether or not I would take this great step. I had with me at that time a book called ``Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'' written by Robert Pirsig. It was one of the most intellectually challenging books I think I had read at that time. As I was reading through the book, the decision really clicked into my mind. I came across the words of Pirsig when he said: When you try to climb a mountain to prove how big you are, you almost never make it. And even if you do, it's a hollow victory. In order to sustain the victory you have to prove yourself again and again in some other way, and again and again and again, driven forever to fill a false image, haunted by the fear that the image is not true and someone will find out. That's never the way. . . . I knew, upon reading these words, that I was in danger of letting my own ambition race beyond my abilities and that even if I could defeat Ed Muskie--and the polls showed me doing that--I knew in my heart that I would need a fistful of four-leaf clovers and a whole lot of money. Even then in my heart of hearts I knew that it would be a tough race for me to run, and that, even if I were to win--which was always in doubt--the State of Maine and this country would not have been well served. He was by far a superior man, and history has proven that to be the case. So I declined to enter the race. I called Ed Muskie and told him of my decision--never revealing at that time that I had been reading ``Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'' which helped me reach that conclusion. John Kennedy once remarked that when the high court of history sits in judgment on each of us, recording in our brief span of service whether we fulfilled our responsibilities, our success will be measured by the answers to four questions: First, were we truly men of courage? Second, were we truly men of judgment? Third, were we truly men of integrity? Fourth, were we truly men of dedication? As history judges Ed Muskie, the answer to each of these questions is an unqualified ``yes.'' These are the very qualities that characterized his service in Government. He will be remembered as one of the finest public servants to ever have graced the Governor's Mansion in Maine, the U.S. Senate, and the Office of Secretary of State. Tomorrow when he is laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery, Ed Muskie will be in the hearts and in the minds of the people of Maine and this country and shall remain there for generations to come. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Mr. ROTH addressed the Chair.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Senate Resolution 236, submitted earlier today by Senator Dole and Senator Daschle.

Mr. COHEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statements relating to the resolution appear at the appropriate place in the Record.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. President, today, we are considering legislation which will extend the current $4.9 trillion debt ceiling to $5.5 trillion. I am pleased that the administration and the leadership on both sides were able to come together to take permanent action on this issue. However, I want to focus my comments on another important change included in this bill: Senator McCain's proposal to raise the Social Security earnings limit. This has been a priority for many years because of the earning limit's detrimental impact on retirees with low and moderate incomes who have to work out of necessity to maintain a decent standard of living. I hope that raising the limit will help these senior citizens who are just barely getting by with a Social Security check and whatever other income they can scrape together. It is also clear that more and more retirees will need to work in the future. Retirement forecasters report that baby boomers did not get an early start on saving for retirement, so even more senior citizens will find it necessary to supplement their retirement savings and benefits with work to maintain a decent standard of living in the future. To minimize the impact on the financial health of the trust fund that will occur when the limit is raised, we have had to accept tradeoffs. We will eliminate drug addiction and alcoholism as a basis for disability under the Supplemental Security Income Program and the Disability Insurance Program. This change is estimated to save about $5.5 billion in spending. The operation of these two programs has a direct effect on the stability of Social Security. The public's positive perception of Social Security as our most successful Federal program is being threatened--not only because of the risk of insolvency--but also because of fraud and program inefficiencies in the Federal disability programs. I want to remind my colleagues that we are already shifting payroll taxes away from the retirement side of Social Security to shore up the disability insurance trust fund. This reallocation has represented a shift of more than $38 billion in the last 2 years. By 2004, more than $190 billion will be transferred to the Disability Insurance Program. We must continue to guard against the abuse of these Federal benefits, particularly when we are taking funds out of retirement and putting funds into a program that is deeply troubled. A blatant example of how our Federal disability programs have gone haywire came to light more than 2 years ago in an investigation of SSI and SSDI benefits being paid to drug addicts and alcoholics. The investigation was conducted by my staff on the Special Committee on Aging with the General Accounting Office. We found that the word on the street is that SSI benefits are an easy source of cash for drugs and alcohol. The message of the disability programs had been: ``If you are an addict or an alcoholic, the money will keep flowing as long as you stay addicted. If you get off the addiction, the money stops.'' Rather than encouraging rehabilitation and treatment, the disability programs' cash payments have perpetuated and enabled drug addiction and dependency. At a hearing of the Senate Special Committee on Aging I chaired, we heard from Bob Cote, the director of a homeless shelter in Denver. Mr Cote told the committee in riveting testimony that he personally knew 46 drug addicts who had died from drug overdoses from the drugs they bought with SSI checks. Mr. Cote went on to testify that a liquor store down the street from his shelter was the representative payee for over $200,000 in SSI checks, and a bar just two doors down from his shelter was the representative payee for $160,000 in SSI checks. Taxpayers were outraged to learn that situations like these have been going on for years with almost no oversight by the Social Security Administration on how these tax dollars and trust fund moneys have been used. Congress took steps to place better protections on the disability payments made to addicts and alcoholics. We mandated that all persons receiving disability benefits due to alcohol or drug abuse must receive treatment, imposed a 3-year cutoff for benefits for addicts and alcoholics, and toughened the representative payee rules in order to get cash out of the hands of addicts. These reforms are now in effect and early examination suggests that this carrot and stick approach has worked to stem abuses in the disability program. The referral and monitoring system which was overhauled in 1994 more than pays for itself and will save the Federal Government more than $25 million in 1996. The legislation before us today allows the Commissioner of the Social Security Administration to continue to refer drug addicts and alcoholics to treatment. Eliminating drug addiction and alcoholism as a disability will result in only 25 percent of recipients diagnosed as drug addicts or alcoholics actually leaving the program. A substantial portion will stay on the rolls, continuing to receive checks without receiving treatment. It is very important that the treatment money be made available to the States to rehabilitate substance abusers. The legislation continues to require the use of responsible representative payees who will ensure that the Federal checks are being used for living expenses--not drugs and not alcohol. The legislation also takes the necessary step to allocate funding to conduct continuing disability reviews [CDR's]. Until now, our hands have been tied because of the appropriations caps on discretionary spending. I commend Senator McCain's acknowledgment that it is short- sighted to ignore the need to provide more resources to SSA to comply with the mandate to perform CDR's. In the SSDI program, the agency is experiencing a backlog rate of more than 1.4 million cases. With that type of backlog, getting on disability means a lifetime of benefits, even for persons who could return to work. A recent HHS Inspector General report concluded that $1.4 billion could be saved if we could perform CDR's just on those backlogged cases. Finally, we need to turn our attention to the current return to work policies in these two programs. Last year, the Senate Aging Committee began to review the record of SSA to promote rehabilitation for people with disabilities. Appallingly, only about 1 in every 1,000 persons on the disability rolls gets off the program through the SSA's rehabilitation efforts. The Federal disability programs have failed to keep pace with a more accessible workplace being created through the Americans With Disabilities Act and advances in medical technology. More must be done to ensure that people with disabilities who can and want to return to the work force are given some assistance. There are a significant number of disabled recipients who want to work. Unfortunately, the program now discourages recipients from even trying to work, because they fail to take into consideration how recipients can be retrained and rehabilitated to eventually leave the rolls. I believe that we must pursue a policy which will put a greater emphasis on rehabilitation and return to work. At the same time we are acknowledging the benefits of allowing senior citizens to retain more of their earnings--a work incentive--we need to be open to the same ideas for people with disabilities.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. President, much of the debate today has addressed issues that are important but peripheral to the focus of this bill, which is the size and organization of the State Department and associated foreign policy agencies. Going back to the Nixon administration, numerous reviews have been conducted by the Foreign Relations Committee, its House counterpart, and many executive branch-appointed groups to determine how best to streamline the array of foreign policy agencies that exist. My staff at the Oversight of Government Management has studied this issue, as well. A common theme of these reviews has been that more efficiencies can be achieved, and this probably should include the merging of some existing agencies. The conference report now before the Senate directs, in essence, the elimination of at least one of three agencies--the Agency for International Development [AID], the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency [ACDA], or the U.S. Information Agency [USIA]--with primary focus on AID and ACDA. The 1989 House Foreign Affairs Committee report coauthored by Congressmen Hamilton and Gilman called for AID's elimination. A 1992 report by a bipartisan group appointed by AID, itself, called for AID's merger into the State Department. A decade ago, I cochaired with Harold Brown a study group at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. We commissioned a paper on why ACDA should not be merged into the State Department. Quite frankly, despite the best efforts of the author who was an advocate of ACDA, the resulting paper produced only weak arguments for keeping ACDA as an independent agency. Three years ago, Lynn Davis, a protege of Secretary Browns, was appointed by the Clinton administration to be Under Secretary of State. One of her first initiatives was to push to merge ACDA into the State Department, but her effort failed in the face of congressional opposition. Last year, Secretary Christopher, himself, proposed merging these three agencies into the State Department, but his proposal was not accepted. So the concept of merging ACDA, at least, into the State Department is hardly radical. And few would argue that, in after the ``reinvention'' initiatives undertaken by the current administrator, more must be done to reduce the size and improve the effectiveness of AID. This bill makes clear the desire of Congress to see genuine streamlining, talked about for so many years, finally and effectively implemented. At the same time, legitimate questions have been raised as to whether the specific mechanism in the conference report is the best way to go about it. Throughout the Reagan and Bush administrations, Republicans criticized congressional micromanage- ment of the President's foreign policy. Some will ask why now, in 1996, we seem to be shifting direction and trying to impose restrictions on the President. Even more than in the case of the reorganization provisions of the conference report, this is true for many of the conference report's policy provisions. In this regard, I would highlight sections dealing with the Housing Investment Guarantee Program, Vietnamese migrants, and China. Besides being unrelated to the core function of this bill, many such provisions contain unwise policy prescriptions. We should encourage, for example, aid programs that leverage private international investment, not terminate such programs as the conference report would do. We should encourage enhanced dialogue between United States and Chinese officials, rather than discourage it as the conference report would do. Despite these deficiencies, however, the bill does make progress on the decades-old project of streamlining the various foreign policy agencies, and so I intend to vote for it. If the President does veto the conference report, I hope that we can act promptly to rework it into a bill that can be enacted by deleting or modifying these objectionable provisions.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. President, I continue to oppose the product liability reform bill for two main reasons: it unnecessarily intrudes upon the prerogatives of our State governments and the purported problem the bill attempts to address--the impact of punitive damages--is overstated. For over two centuries, tort law has been developed by our common law courts and State legislatures. The same is true for our contract law, real property law, insurance law, and a host of other subjects. The core principles of tort law are the same across the country, but each State has adjusted its laws to suit its individual needs, experimented with liability reforms, and attempted to strike a careful balance the interests of business and consumers. The Federal product liability bill would put an end to this era of local experimentation and adjustment. Instead, it would contribute to the trend of the last half century of centralizing power in Washington. Unfortunately, the product liability bill will be only the first step in this process. Once it is completed other interests will follow with pleas for Federal intervention. And eventually the States will be stripped of yet another area of authority. This trend runs entirely counter to the generally accepted principle that the Federal Government is too big and that more authority should be returned to the States and localities. Ironically, we are taking this step at a time when the States are vigorously engaged in the topic of tort reform. Just this year, New Jersey, Indiana, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Texas have passed tort reform legislation. In fact, since 1986, 31 States have altered their product liability laws, 30 States limit the amount of punitive damages in some manner and 41 States have changed or abolished the rule of joint and several liability. With this much activity on the state level, there is no justification for this sweeping, intrusive Federal bill. I also believe that the case for tort reform has been exaggerated. Unfortunately, the debate over this legislation has been driven more by anecdote and horror stories than objective facts. Indeed, the dearth of solid, unbiased research led the Wall Street Journal to conclude last year that ``Truth Is the First Casualty of the Tort-Reform Debate.'' A review of some data collected by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, a neutral arbiter on this topic, demonstrates that runaway jury verdicts are not as great of a problem as the tort reform advocates suggest. The study showed that courts in the 75 largest counties in the country decided 762,000 civil cases in 1992. Punitive damages were awarded in only 364 of these cases--.04 percent. Only 360 of the 762,000 cases involved product liability. Punitive damages were awarded in only three of those cases. And the total amount of punitive damages awarded was only $40,000. The study also suggests that if we are looking to solve problems with the application of punitive damages, perhaps we should be addressing other areas of the law. Of the cases in which the plaintiff won a jury verdict, punitive damages were awarded in 30 percent of all slander cases, 21 percent of all fraud cases, but only 2 percent of all product liability cases. I do not deny that there have been abusive cases where excessive awards have been made for minor injuries. But to address this problem, we need to do more to punish attorneys who bring frivolous cases or use the force of the legal system to coerce companies to settle meritless claims. We also need to encourage judges to intervene when juries run amok. Instead of taking these steps, this bill places caps on damages and limits the ability of injured parties to collect judgments imposed against wrongdoers. In essence, it limits the ability of those with meritorious claims to gain full compensation in order to rid the system of shameful cases that should have never been filed in the first place. In my view, this is an unwise approach that will do damage to our principle of federalism. I will vote against this conference report.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. President, I wish to announce that the Special Committee on Aging will hold a hearing on Thursday, March 28, 1996, at 9:30 a.m., in room 562 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. The hearing will discuss adverse drug reactions and the effects on the elderly.