Hillary Clinton

Mrs. CLINTON

Mrs. CLINTON. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, I add my thanks and gratitude to my good friend from Wisconsin. He has been a leader on this whole issue of campaign finance reform for so many years. He started as a young boy, and it has taken most of his life. I think progress is being made from a most unlikely source. I applaud the continued perseverance and commitment of the Senator.

Mrs. CLINTON

Mrs. CLINTON. That is fine.

Mrs. CLINTON. I thank the Senator from Arizona. I congratulate him on his leadership on the underlying bill and on this important sense of the Senate which clarifies that clinical trials are an essential part of modern medical practice and providing the opportunity for physicians to refer patients for these lifesaving treatments. Although they are experimental, it is a way we make advances in medicine which eventually help everyone. I yield the remaining time.

Mrs. CLINTON. I rise in support of this important sense of the Senate. I have a question to address to the Senator from Arizona who has done so much to bring this issue of clinical trials to the forefront. We heard yesterday important testimony from the head of the National Cancer Institute, Dr. Richard Klausner, who testified that clinical trials are not more expensive than standard therapies and that we need to make them even more accessible. This is what the sense of the Senate provides, what the underlying bill provides. Probably the premier institutions in our country that deal with cancer, the large cancer centers, are the source of so much of the research done that translates into therapies, treatments and cures, for people suffering from cancer. I ask the Senator from Arizona, I am sure his sense of the Senate as the underlying bill includes these cancer centers, places such as MD Anderson in Texas, Sloan Kettering in New York, or Dana-Farber in New York. Is my understanding correct that the cancer centers and the research they do as qualified research entities are included in the sense of the Senate?

Mrs. CLINTON

Mrs. CLINTON. Indeed, the Senator from New York does recall that. I appreciate the Senator from Illinois raising that because that, of course, is one of the objections the opponents are trying to throw up, that this bill will open the floodgates for lawsuits. In Texas that has not happened. It has not happened anywhere in the country where these protections have been afforded under State law. People are not rushing to the courthouse. They want the care that they need. They don't want a lawyer; they want a doctor; and they want the doctor to take care of them according to the doctor's best judgment. That is what doctors are telling us. They are not being permitted to do that. I appreciate my friend from Illinois raising that point because, as this debate proceeds, you are going to hear a lot of arguments about why we just cannot do this. You know, we just cannot take care of Donna and her mother Mary and all the other Donnas and Marys in our country. There will be all sorts of red herrings and all kinds of arguments made that just do not hold water. There is no basis in fact for them, but they sound good. Maybe they will scare some people. But we are tired of being scared and intimidated. This is no longer just a political issue, this goes to the very heart of who we are as Americans. Are we going to take care of each other? Are we going to let doctors and nurses practice their professions? Or are we going to turn our lives over to HMO accountants and bookkeepers and the like? I am hoping we will not only proceed to this bill, which deserves a full hearing, deserves a full debate, and deserves a unanimous vote in this Chamber. I hope when we pass this, we will be sending a very clear message to all the mothers and fathers and family members that this will never happen again. This beautiful young woman whose life was cut short tragically would still be with us today if that HMO had just said: maybe we should let you go ahead and have that test. I look forward to working with my colleagues. This has been 5 years in the making. Let's end the politics of delay and move forward with the motion to proceed.

Mrs. CLINTON. I am happy to yield.

Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, I only caught the tail end of the remarks by the Senator from Texas. But I will just point out that this bill, which we are hoping to consider today, has been in the works for years. It has gone through a number of drafts; it has been voted on in previous incarnations. It is not a new issue. It is ready for the full debate and disposition in the Senate. It is not like a budget bill that is presented without any debate and without any adequate preparation, as we experienced a few months ago. This is an issue that is more than ripe for the consideration of this body. I thank Senator Daschle for making the McCain-Edwards-Kennedy Patients' Bill of Rights the first bill he has brought to the floor as our Senate majority leader. I really rise today on behalf of the countless New Yorkers, and really millions of Americans across our country, who have been waiting for this day for a very long time. I heard some remarks by the Senator from Texas about the efforts that were made, I guess, 6, 7 years ago now, to try to provide health care coverage to every single American. I was deeply involved in those efforts, and although we were not successful, the goal was one that I think we should still keep at the forefront of our minds and hearts because when we began our work in 1993, there were approximately 33 million Americans without insurance; today we are up to 42 million. This is after the so-called managed care/HMO revolution occurred, where people have been finding it harder to afford coverage, afford the deductibles, afford the copayments, with the result that we have more people uninsured today than when many of us tried to address this problem some years ago. There are many urgent health care issues before us as a nation such as sky high prescription drugs for our seniors, too many without adequate coverage, and once they have Medicare they can't afford the additional coverage that is required in order to give them the kind of health care they should have. There are gaps in our health safety net, a shortage of nurses in our hospitals and nursing homes, and the very difficult conditions under which so many of our nurses now labor. And, of course, there is the growing crisis of the uninsured. So we have our work cut out for us in order to deliver on the promise of quality, affordable, accessible health care for all Americans. That is why I am urging we proceed without further delay or obfuscation and pass a Patients' Bill of Rights--the bipartisan Patients' Bill of Rights that Senators McCain, Edwards, and Kennedy have worked so hard to present, which has bipartisan support in the House. We have to finish this job. We have been laboring over it since 1996, in earnest with the efforts within both Houses of Congress since 1997. We have now been waiting and waiting for the Congress to act. Now is the time. I believe we should act not because it has been on the agenda for a long time, although it has, and not because it is one of those issues to which finally the stars seemed aligned and with the Democratic majority now in charge of the Senate we can actually get it to the floor but because of the patients and their families who are out there waiting and literally praying for us to act. Each of the patients I have met and heard from, and each of the families whom all of us have heard from, tell a story that describes an urgent situation needing timely and responsive care. That is why this bill is so important. It is about getting the care you need when you need it. It is about getting care in a timely manner from doctors you trust and choose. It is about having doctors and nurses in charge of your health care, not accountants and bookkeepers. My colleague, Tom Harkin from Iowa, had a memorable phrase today at the press conference. He said, ``The American people don't want their doctors doing their taxes and they don't want their accountants providing their health care.'' Each of us should be able to look to our doctors, our nurses, our health care professionals for the care that we trust and need. This is about access to an emergency room when we need it. I recall being in Ithaca, NY, about 2 years ago and meeting a young woman who came to see me with a stack of medical records, literally a foot high, just desperate. She had been in a very dangerous, nearly fatal accident on one of those winding roads that go through that beautiful part of New York. Some of you may have traveled through Ithaca or may have gone to Cornell. You know what beautiful country it is, but it has also a lot of winding roads. She was in a devastating accident, lying unconscious on the side of the road. Luckily, someone came upon her and called for aid and they were able to medivac her out with a helicopter, save her life, and she was in hospital care and rehab for nearly a year. She gets out and what does she find? She gets a bill from her HMO for the helicopter medivac emergency service because--get this--she didn't call for permission first. She is unconscious on the side of the road and they want to charge her $10,000 because she didn't call for permission. So this is about getting the emergency care you need when you need it. It is about seeing a specialist when you need it, when your doctor says: I have gone as far as I can go; you need to go see a specialist. It is about women being able to designate their OB/GYN as their specialist, and about mothers and fathers being able to designate their pediatrician as their child's general practitioner as well. It is about all of these and more--the kinds of issues that are not just written somewhere in a headline but are lived with day in and day out, which are talked about around the kitchen table, around the water cooler--the life-and-death issues that really make a vital difference to families all over New York and America--families such as that of Susan Nealy, from the Bronx, whose husband had a serious heart condition but whose referral to a cardiologist was delayed a month. The day before the appointment was finally scheduled, Mr. Nealy died of a massive heart attack, leaving behind his widow and two young children, ages 5 and 3. It is like the family of the 15-year-old boy from New York who developed complications from heart disease, but his health plan refused to allow him to see an out-of-network specialist familiar with the case and instead sent the teenager to a network provider who did not see him for 4 months, and then the boy's lungs were filling with blood, and 2 days later he collapsed in the street and died. These are just two of the stories I could pick from my innumerable conversations and letters that I have received. There are so many more we could tell. For every one of these stories, there are untold stories of families whose struggles for the care they needed were denied or delayed. According to patient reports, health plans delay needed care for 35,000 patients every day. In fact, delayed care and payment is a business practice that health plans have perfected. I have heard from many doctors who tell me that each day a health plan withholds payments represents literally thousands of dollars in interest that a health plan could earn. The practice of delay is so widespread that there is a term for it. It is called ``living off the float.'' Unfortunately, not everyone who is subject to it actually ends up living. Look, I don't blame the accountants and the bookkeepers. They are trying to maximize their shareholders' return, their profits. That is the business they are in. But this cannot go on. There have to be rules that say you must, regardless of your being in business and regardless of having to make quarterly returns, put patients, doctors, and nurses first. The physicians and nurses I speak with are so frustrated about this. They are caught between the sharp conflict, between business practices that I personally think are unscrupulous, but nevertheless they are engaged in, and the principles of the oaths that they take to do no harm, to get the health care to the patient when the patient needs it when it can do some good. Life-or-death situations rarely wait for prior authorization. Last summer, I met Dr. Thomas Lee, a neurosurgeon at the Northern Westchester Hospital Center, just up the road from where we live in Chappaqua. Dr. Lee was called to the emergency room one day about a year ago because a patient--not his patient; it was someone he had never seen before--a young woman in her early thirties collapsed at work. She was brought to the emergency room. Dr. Lee did his neurosurgical analysis, did the tests that were necessary, and discovered this young woman had a very serious tumor that was pressing on vital parts of her brain and needed to be operated on. They found her husband, thankfully, and they called the HMO that insured the family and asked for permission to perform the surgery right then. Dr. Lee said it was, if not a matter of life and death, a matter of paralysis and normal life, and they were denied. They were told that because Dr. Lee was not one of their network physicians, because the Northern Westchester Hospital Center was not the hospital center they preferred to use, he could not do the surgery. For 3 hours, Dr. Lee, his nurse, and the hospital staff were engaged in an argument with the HMO instead of performing the lifesaving surgery. It breaks one's heart to think about this neurosurgeon who could be saving lives getting on the phone trying to get permission to do what he is trained to do. Finally, he was so fed up, he said: Look, this young woman's life is at stake. I will perform the surgery free of charge so long as you will cover the hospitalization. With that deal struck, the HMO let him proceed. I am very proud Dr. Lee is practicing medicine in my neck of the woods, but I do not expect doctors and neurosurgeons to perform lifesaving heroic surgery for free. That is not the way the system is supposed to work. These are people who go to school for decades to do this work, and they deserve the respect and compensation we should be putting into our health care system, not to satisfy HMOs but to pay for the services of trained physicians and health care professionals. For the past 5 years patient advocates have worked on this bill, and we have seen every delaying tactic one can imagine. I had a front seat to this when I was down at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. We were working very hard to get this bill through the Congress. Every excuse one can come up with was thrown in the way. It became so frustrating to all of us who knew that lives were at stake, care was being denied and delayed; that passage of needed protections was being derailed. We come to this day. Luckily for us, we are here not only because it is the right thing to do but because States and courts have realized they just cannot wait any longer. They have seen firsthand what is going on in our country. New York passed a State managed care protection bill in 1996; they even passed a law in 1998 to strengthen the protections--all before the Congress chose to act. Many more States have passed such protections, including Texas, specifically aimed to permit injured patients to hold their health plans accountable for their injuries. President Clinton signed an Executive order giving 85 million Americans with federally sponsored health care, such as Medicare and Medicaid, protections similar to what we are trying to give to all Americans through a 1998 act. Even Federal courts, notably in the case of Andrews-Clarke v. Travelers Insurance, have urged the Congress to act. In that case, Judge William Young states: Although the alleged conduct of Travelers and Greenspring in this case is extraordinarily troubling, even more disturbing to the Court is the failure of Congress to amend a statute . . . that has come conspicuously awry from its original intent. Yet because of our failure to enact such a statute, at least 43 percent of all Americans with employer-sponsored private coverage are still left out in the cold. These Americans cannot afford to wait any longer. Forty percent of Americans know that passing a law today is even more urgent than it was 2 years ago, and a majority of them thought it was urgent then. Let's work in a bipartisan way. This bill is bipartisan. Senator McCain, Senator Edwards, and Senator Kennedy have all worked to get to this point. They have all made compromises. Their bill is the only bill before the Senate that applies to all 190 million Americans with private health coverage. It is the only bill before the Senate that has all the protections of Medicare and Medicaid. It is the only bill that has the support of over 500 consumer and provider advocates. Anybody who knows anything about some of these provider groups, such as the American Medical Association, knows that Congress is not their preferred venue. They are not keen on having the Congress tell them to do or not do anything, but doctors are so frustrated that even the American Medical Association has come time and again asking that this bill be passed. It is the only bill that guarantees coverage for the routine costs of FDA-approved clinical trials which are so important to patients with cancer and so important particularly to children with cancer. This is the only bill that guarantees an internal and external review as soon as it is medically necessary. In sum, this is the only bill before the Senate that protects patients, not HMOs. Just as delaying tactics by managed care organizations have injured and even killed millions of Americans over time, delaying tactics by the opponents of this bill have taken their toll. I want my colleagues to look at this patient survey that is behind me. Each day, 35,000 patients have a specialty referral delayed or denied; 18,000 every day are forced to change medications as a result of their health plan's determinations--not their doctors but their health plans. When I say ``health plans,'' I mean somebody sitting in an office, usually hundreds of miles from where the patient or doctor is, second- guessing the doctor, saying; I am sorry, your doctor may have 30, 40 years of practice and experience, but I am going to sit in this office without ever having seen you and decide that I can second-guess what kind of prescription medication you should have. Forty-one thousand patients a day experience a worsening of their condition because of actions by their HMOs. One can go through this list and see what patients are saying. Then one can look at another list that comes from surveys of doctors, those who are on the front lines. They are saying they believe their patients are confronting serious declines in their health from plan abuse. This is the kind of information that concerns me because when I go to the doctor, I expect my doctor to take care of me. He or she has sworn an oath, they have been well trained, and I have checked them out. I feel like I am putting myself in someone's hands whom I can trust, and doctors are saying they are not being permitted to practice medicine. They are being told they have to subject their decisions to people they have never met nor seen. It is because of the desire of HMOs to slow down payment, to deny payment, to keep that float I talked about going, basically to use the money they should be paying to doctors and hospitals for taking care of us for their own purposes, for their own profits, for their bottom lines. In my office I keep a picture of a young, beautiful woman named Donna Munnings. This is Donna. This is a young woman who reminds me every single day when I look up at her picture in my office of what can happen when the system does not respond until it is too late. Donna's mother Mary is a school bus driver from Scottsville, NY. She has been lobbying and advocating for this bill for years. Her daughter Donna died February 8, 1997, after having visited her primary care physician repeatedly, only to be told that she had an upper respiratory infection and suffered from panic attacks and that no diagnostic tests were necessary. Had the doctors performed a $750 lung scan in time, they would have seen not an upper respiratory infection but a football-sized blood clot in her lung. Her mother Mary said: In my subsequent research I found that HMOs can and do penalize doctors for ordering tests which HMOs feel are unnecessary. But all for the sake of money [all for the sake of a $750 test] we lost a vital, beautiful young lady who had only begun her life. We are going to hear a lot of debate. In fact, we are debating whether we can even proceed with this bill: Yet more delaying tactics, yet more efforts to obstruct the kind of care that every one of us needs. I can guarantee the people out in that lobby and the people in the offices they represent, they would not stand for not getting the care their child needs. If they had a daughter who was suffering day after day after day, and the doctors could not tell her what was wrong and they kept sending her home, I can guarantee that those executives and those lobbyists would get some other source of care for their daughter. But Mary is a school bus driver. She didn't know where else to turn. Having insurance was a pretty big deal. They didn't know what else to do, other than just keep going back, as Donna's condition got worse and worse and worse. Patients buy health insurance in order to feel assured that when they seek care under the benefits for which they have paid, that care will be available and it will be available in time to be effective. Yet we know that that does not happen. In one State, the State of New York, according to Department of Insurance statistics, of the nearly 18,000 HMO decisions challenged on appeal, over 10,000 were reversed. This means that when patients can test their HMO's decision to deny needed care, over half the time the patients are right. Yet, through a loophole in Federal law, there are too many consumers in New York--over 2.25 million--who still are not protected against these incorrect and dangerous decisions. They have no recourse. There is nothing they can do because we have not given them a Patients' Bill of Rights. They need a Federal law to give them the parity and protection their neighbors and coworkers have.

Mrs. CLINTON

Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, last week, the administration made headlines when it said it would stop the bombing in Vieques. But is that really true? Let's look at the fine print. First, the administration did not commit to stopping the bombing immediately and permanently, as so many of us have called for. In fact, the bombing runs continue this week. Second, the administration said it would stop the bombing by May 1, 2003. But is that really something new? Let's look at the date by which the bombing would stop under the current agreement and existing law, which provides for an end to the bombing if the people vote for it. The current agreement and existing law call for an end to the bombing by May 1, 2003--the very same date. In other words, the administration is saying nothing more than what current law mandates if the people of Vieques vote to stop the bombing. If that is all the administration announced--that the bombing would stop by the same date provided for under current law--then this flurry of attention would be little more than an overblown story about this President's desire to abide by the letter and spirit of the agreement entered into between the Federal Government and the representatives of the people of Vieques and Puerto Rico. But that is not all the administration announced. It also announced that it wanted to stop the November referendum. The devil is in the details, they say. Well, this is one powerful devil of an idea that has not received the scrutiny it deserves. For what the administration is really attempting to do is to undermine the intent of the law and subvert the will of the people of Vieques. The administration says that a referendum is unnecessary, because it already plans to end the bombing by 2003. I say a referendum is more important than ever, because without an electoral mandate to require an end to the bombing, any administration expression of intent is nothing more than that: an expression of intent. Not a legal requirement. And ``intentions'' can change at a moment's notice. I wholeheartedly support all efforts to find a viable alternative site to train our naval forces. We need such training, to protect our national interest and to protect our troops. And we must work hard to find places and ways to provide such a vital element of our defense. As I have said before, the people of Puerto Rico are great patriots; its sons and daughters volunteer for our Nation's armed forces at one of the highest rates in our country. Thousands of Puerto Ricans have lost their lives in service of their country during all the wars of the 20th century. We need the good training to protect all our troops, many of whom are Puerto Rican. So this is not a matter in which the people of Vieques or Puerto Rico should be pitted against the interests of national security. We are all Americans. We are all on the same team and we want the same thing: the best trained armed forces in the world. And so, I agree with President Bush when he says the ``Navy will find another place to practice.'' I agree with Secretary Powell when he says, ``Let's find alternative ways of making sure that our troops are ready . . . using technology, using simulators and also finding a place to conduct live fire.'' But here's the bottom line: Under current law, if the people of Vieques vote in November to end the bombing by May 1, 2003, the bombing must end by that date. Pure and simple. However, under the administration's plan, there will be no referendum. And therefore, there will be no mandate and no requirement to end the bombing by 2003. Only a policy to do so. And that policy could be altered by the President anytime between now and 2003. In fact, Secretary Rumsfeld has already said that the Navy might stay on Vieques for another, and I quote, ``two, three, four years'' until it can arrange ``the training that's needed in other ways.'' Defense Department officials were also quick to point out that while the President said that the Navy would find another place to practice within ``a reasonable period of time'' he never defined ``reasonable.'' Secretary England said he wanted to ``have us control our destiny,'' meaning the Navy, as opposed to allowing what he called ``this level of emotion'' distract ``our attention from the real issue.'' In other words, the will of the people of Vieques is an ``emotion'' that must be put aside, and the people of Vieques should not control their destiny--the Navy should. I believe that is the wrong way to deal with this very important issue. I believe we should work toward a solution to this problem without circumventing the law of the land, without abrogating an agreement, without obviating the will of the American citizens of Vieques. I will stand up against any effort to shut down the referendum in Vieques. Let the votes be cast. Let them be counted. And let the voice of the people be heard and respected.

Mrs. CLINTON

Mrs. CLINTON. Madam President, if I could have 2 minutes to associate myself completely with the majority leader's eloquent statement, I rise in opposition to this amendment for all of the reasons that the majority leader has just outlined; but also, further, to say I was honored to serve for 8 years as the Honorary Chair of the Girl Scouts of America. I know the value of the Girl Scouts and the Boy Scouts. To deprive any youngster of the opportunity to participate over this issue strikes me as regrettable at the very least. The Girl Scouts don't discriminate. We have had an organization that has gone for so many years without any of this difficulty. It should be up to the local level to determine whether or not a local school district wishes to have the Boy Scouts offer these services to youngsters in their schools and in their districts. I am absolutely amazed that my friends on the other side would propose an amendment that so totally eviscerates local control. It is already unnecessary, as we know, with respect to the use of facilities. The Supreme Court has already, as it did again yesterday, reaffirmed access to public school facilities. If we are saying that having the Boy Scouts either in its present form or with slight modifications determined by the local parents and the schools would in any way jeopardize all Federal funding, it just absolutely amazes me that people on the other side could make such an argument. So I believe, with all my heart, that we should not be discriminating against anyone in our country. But certainly a local district that tries to work out whatever its problems are with the Boy Scouts, and makes a decision that it considers in the best interests of its children, should not face the peril of losing all Federal funding that should be made available to educate our children, which is what we have been debating now for more than a month. So I hope all of us will join in rejecting this amendment and making clear that we respect the Boy Scouts, we respect the Girl Scouts, and we especially respect local control over educational facilities and opportunities. Thank you, Madam President.

Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, I rise today in opposition to both Senator Sessions' and Senator Harkin's amendments, which attempt to reach the goal of helping school districts establish and implement discipline policies that are consistent for every child in the school district. I strongly believe that we do need to come to a resolution in Federal law that will help school districts appropriately discipline students when they act out violently or in a way that disrupts the learning of other students, but that we should be certain that our actions do not punish children for their disabilities. The problem we have, at hand, is that the 1997 IDEA reauthorization, as passed and implemented, has developed a separate discipline policy for children in special education, which many school superintendents have found unequal and unfair in their efforts to maintain discipline in their schools. In fact, a recent GAO report, published in January of this year, found that while many principals believe that the differing school policies had a neutral effect on their schools, 27 percent of principals did believe that a separate discipline policy for special education students is unfair to the regular student population. Now, I want to be very clear that my intention is not to go back to the pre-1975 days when students with disabilities were segregated from the regular student population or, even worse, were denied education all together. In fact, in the early 1970s, I walked door to door trying to figure out why so many children were staying home from school. The census, at the time, showed that there were 2 million children out of school so the Children's Defense Fund worked to answer the question of why these children were not in school. While working for the Children's Defense Fund, I was one of the researchers who found that approximately 750,000 of these children were being kept out of school because they were handicapped. This research led to the first-ever report by the Children's Defense Fund, ``Children out of School in America,'' which helped provide solid research to pass the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975. As the Progressive Policy Institute so eloquently concluded in a recent report, thanks to this law ``today many disabled children in America have the opportunity to obtain high-quality educational experience tailored to their needs and circumstances, the priorities of their parents, and the judgements of their teachers.'' This report goes on, however, to point out that the law has not kept up with the challenges faced by today's schools. Discipline is a primary example. While IDEA provides protection for disabled students, many believe it goes too far. That, while protecting disabled students, the law may unintentionally harm the educational progress of other students in the classroom. Senator Sessions' amendment attempts to fix this problem by eliminating all due process for children with disabilities who have disciplinary problems. Senator Harkin's amendment, on the other hand, attempts to address the problem by encouraging local school districts to implement uniform discipline policies while, at the same time, recodifying current IDEA law as it relates to the discipline policy. I oppose these amendments because I do not believe that either amendment adequately addresses the problem of working toward a uniform discipline policy that allows school administrators to maintain discipline so that all children are offered the opportunity to learn and are not interrupted due to the actions of one child, while protecting the civil rights of children with disabilities to receive a free and appropriate education. There is much work we need to do on this issue and I believe that we should develop balanced policies that can be part of the discussion and debate during the 2002 reauthorization of IDEA. We need to look for policies that help prevent children with discipline problems from unnecessarily being identified as in need of special education. We need to ensure that quality alternative educational settings are developed for those students who need alternative placements. And, most importantly, we need to fully fund IDEA so that children with disabilities receive appropriate treatment.

Mrs. CLINTON

Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to lay aside the pending amendment and call up amendment No. 516, as modified, and ask that it be further modified with the language I send to the desk.

Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, last week I offered this amendment to address two critical concerns faced by our schools that often do not rise to the forefront of our education debate but frequently have a direct impact on how well our children can learn and how much it costs to run the average school in our country. The first issue is ensuring that our children attend schools that are environmentally sound in order to protect their health and well-being. The second issue is helping schools save money on their energy bills by providing them with resources to become more energy efficient. Our schools can then reinvest those energy savings where they belong, into educational resources such as books or computers or more training for teachers, which can really make a difference in the lives of children. I understand that since the time I offered this amendment, there has been some concerns that the amendment might help to fund new school construction or renovation projects. Let me be very clear that while I do support a Federal role in school modernization, construction, and renovation, this amendment is not intended to address the unmet needs of our Nation's schools when it comes to construction and renovation. I have offered this amendment because I am very concerned that we simply do not have a comprehensive understanding of the problems children face who attend environmentally unhealthy or dilapidated schools. There are no nationwide statistics or in-depth research to help us know and understand the extent of the problems in our schools. While the majority in this body may not agree that the Federal Government should have a role in helping States and localities construct and renovate public schools, I do strongly believe--and believe there should be broad support for the proposition--that we must understand better the health and educational impacts children may face if they attend schools that have environmentally unhealthy conditions, or that the deterioration of the schools are such that it affects a child's health. Every day, in old or poorly maintained school buildings around the country, students of all ages sit in classrooms where they are forced to breathe in stale air or even mold spores that make them sick and could have long-term debilitating effects on their abilities to learn. We know from a 1996 GAO study that 15,000 schools in our country have indoor pollution or ventilation problems affecting over 11 million children and that, furthermore, as many as 25 million children nationwide are attending schools with at least one unsatisfactory environmental condition. But we often have no idea whatsoever what effects these so-called ``sick" schools have on the students who attend them. At least once a week I read stories in the press such as the one I found in the New York Post this morning. The Post reported that while doing work on subway stations in the Bronx, transit crews chipped lead paint into the air, with no protection to catch that paint, which then fell into the yard of a public school filled with students from kindergarten through to the seventh grade. I also know the Presiding Officer is deeply concerned about something we recently learned, which is that playground equipment is sometimes treated with arsenic and that arsenic-treated playground equipment is then put into the playgrounds of our schools. The Presiding Officer has been a leader in trying to end this terrible practice so that we protect our children who, based on my experience--being one once a very long time ago, but having raised my own and going to many playgrounds-- children do the strangest things. They roll on the ground. They put the dirt in their mouths. They bite the playground equipment. You never know what a child may do. That is my point. We have to be sure the environment in which our children attend school and the playgrounds on which they play are not causing them harm. In that 1996 GAO study, we found that two-thirds of the schools that were investigated were not in compliance with requirements to remove or correct hazardous substances, including asbestos, lead, underground storage tanks, and radon. Experts believe that exposures during the early years, when children are developing, can have severe long-term effects. Even more alarming, a recent study indicates that children exposed to levels of lead now considered safe may be at risk of lead poisoning from peeling paint. Listen to this new research conducted by the Children's Hospital Medical Center of Cincinnati, OH, showing that children who have less than 10 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood experience a decline in their IQs. There was an average of a 5.5-percent drop in a child's IQ for every 10-microgram increase in lead. Children in this study experienced hearing loss, speech delay, balance difficulties, and even tendencies toward acting out and violent behavior. I am also concerned that we are facing a soaring rate of asthma across the country. The epicenter is in New York City and California, but it affects every State in the Union. The indoor air quality of our schools must be examined to find out whether or not it is contributing to this skyrocketing rate of asthma, which is the leading cause of school absenteeism. These bits and pieces of research, only a few of which I have shared in these remarks, paint a picture of a problem that we must learn more about. Groups around the country have done a great job bringing this to our attention. I, again, applaud the Healthy Schools Network in Albany, NY, for all the tremendous work it has done to document this problem in New York State. Since I introduced this amendment, I have been pleased to receive the endorsement of the American Lung Association, the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, the American Public Health Association, the Institute of Children's Environmental Health, the Massachusetts Healthy Schools Network, the New York City Board of Education, the Parent Teacher Association, the American Federation of Teachers, and the Children's Environmental Health Network. The American Public Health Association recently passed a resolution calling for further research on the extent and impact of children's environmental health and safety risks and exposures at school and prevention measures, including research sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education. This amendment would authorize $2 million for a study conducted by the Department of Education, in conjunction with the Centers for Disease Control and the Environmental Protection Agency, to evaluate the health and learning impacts of environmentally unhealthy and dilapidated public school buildings, the impacts on children who have attended or are attending such schools. We would ask the researchers specifically to determine the characteristics of our public elementary and secondary school buildings that contribute to any unhealthy environment. In addition to this study, I have also called for resources to help our States and local school districts make their schools healthier and more energy efficient. I am very pleased I was able to work closely with Senator Murkowski to align my amendment with a concept he had included in his comprehensive energy bill to help our schools become more energy efficient. Both the chair of the Energy Committee, Senator Bingaman, and the ranking minority member, Senator Murkowski, have offered their support for this amendment. They recognize the importance of helping our schools become more energy efficient and being able to increase our energy supply while paying for the cost of energy. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that schools could save 25 to 30 percent of the money they spend on energy. That is about $1.5 billion. And they could achieve this through better building design, using energy-efficient and renewable energy technologies, and improving operations and maintenance. About 2 weeks ago, I went to Kingston, NY. I visited a school district that is ahead of the curve, which got a grant to do exactly what the grants in this amendment would provide. They have already saved--in this rather small school district--$400,000. Because of that, I put out this brochure, ``Smart Schools Save Energy.'' It is to promote energy efficiency in New York State schools. We have distributed it to every single superintendent in New York. It talks about what can be done to save energy costs. The catch is, as superintendents have told me, there is no money in their current budgets to do this. It is kind of a catch-22 problem. If they could save the money from energy use, then they would have the money to put into other needs, such as better teacher training and the like. This amendment provides the grants that will help schools make their buildings healthier and more energy efficient. By incorporating provisions of legislation I recently introduced, the Healthy and High Performance Schools Act of 2001, we will be able to provide more information about the materials to be used and to help districts organize and conduct programs for school board members and personnel and to help provide compliance with Federal and State codes to make each of our schools healthier and more energy efficient. I stress that, while these funds could not be used to construct new buildings, they would help schools assess how they can become more energy efficient when and if they do renovate their schools, which would save money in the long run. This is the kind of common sense help we could provide to our schools around the country. I believe we owe it to our students and certainly to the parents who send their children off to school every day to make sure there is nothing at all in any schoolroom in any school building or on any school playground that could harm their child. If we undertake this study, we will be able to give the kind of information and help that every parent and every school district needs, and we will be able to provide assistance to make sure schools are energy efficient, which will save money. As we have talked now for weeks, trying to provide the resources to enable our children to learn is the primary goal of every single one of us here. I would be very grateful for support for this amendment to enable this to come about as part of our overall educational reform efforts. I ask for a vote on the amendment, and I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mrs. CLINTON

Mrs. CLINTON. Madam President, I commend and thank my good friend, the Senator from California, for her usual eloquence and energy in putting forth a very commonsense proposal, which is that we ought to do everything in our power to make sure our public schools work before turning our backs on them. I especially note her telling all of us that voters in California and Michigan, who have been given the chance to vote on vouchers in their own States, have not only rejected that proposal but have done so overwhelmingly. I join my friend from California, and so many others, in opposing the Gregg amendment which would provide $50 million for a voucher demonstration program. I think it is fair to ask: Why would I and others oppose a mere experiment? What I would like to do is just reflect back for a minute on an experience I had which really crystallized my opposition for me. A few years ago I was in Northern Ireland, in Belfast, where I was privileged to meet with a number of people who were crossing sectarian lines to try to come together to find a way to peacefully coexist after decades and decades of troubles between Protestant and Catholic citizens. I was so struck, after a daylong conference--where we spoke about how to set up a governing assembly, how to provide economic opportunity, how we could get more people involved in the participation required for a democracy to work--when several people said: But the real problem we face is in our schools. I said: What do you mean? A number of them went on to tell me that from the very earliest of ages children from the two religious traditions grew up in very separate environments. There are literally barriers between Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods, and then they go to schools that are run by the respective churches into which they are born. Person after person said to me: We will never live and work in peace if we don't go to school together. We won't have a chance to get to know one another. Can't you help us have a public school system like you have in America? That made such an impression on me because I have been fortunate to travel all over the world. I have been in many countries on every continent except Antarctica. In every country I go to, I meet very smart people. I meet athletic stars, Olympic gold medal winners. I meet scientists, very successful business leaders, and great artists. Yet there is something very different about every other society than ours because no other society has committed itself to the proposition that all people have the opportunity to live up to their God-given potential and that we will provide universal public education, to offer that to each young boy and girl. We are not perfect. We know that. We know we have schools that fail at this responsibility. Yet the goal we have set and the results we have seen, from a commitment to public education for so many years now, have been realized in the success of this country, in the uniqueness of our mobility, and in the opportunities we make available. There are some children who, frankly, start out pretty far behind the starting line. They do not have the family background. They do not have the environmental enrichment. They do not have families who will help them succeed in school. They are often trapped in generational poverty. When you have poor people, you often have poor services. It is a challenge to those of us who believe in public education to come up with reasons to oppose something that sounds so good. You can read the supporters' comments. They say: In some of our large cities, children are trapped in failing schools. They should be set free. And we should, therefore, give them money to go to a private or parochial school. And it sounds so good. But it has a number of serious flaws that I hope will lead a majority in this Chamber to vote against it. Let's take, first, the fact that the experiments that have been run-- because we have already run experiments on vouchers--have demonstrated absolutely no evidence that vouchers help to improve student achievement. Secondly, we know vouchers do not help the students who need the help the most. Thirdly, vouchers do nothing to help improve public schools. In fact, research shows clearly that vouchers only further segregate and stratify our public schools. That does not stop the proponents. I often have remarked since I have been in Washington that Washington operates in an evidence-free zone. You can put out the evidence, and if it runs counter to the ideology, then the evidence does not count. But clearly there is no evidence. In fact, a 1998 study of the Milwaukee public school choice program, done by Cecilia Rouse of Princeton University, found that students in public schools with smaller class size and additional State funding experienced significantly faster reading scoring gains than students who attended private schools through the program. In Cleveland, a study of the voucher program found no significant difference between the achievement of voucher students and their public school counterparts in reading, mathematics, social studies--the full battery of tests--after controlling for background characteristics, including prior achievement. So I do not think we need another experiment to tell us vouchers do not work. We already have clear evidence of that fact. But there are those who argue that increasing competition among public schools, through vouchers, will help improve student achievement in failing schools. But we know that, too, is a false promise. We know what does work--strong accountability, coupled with the extra attention that students who need it require, and the kinds of intervention we have heard about--everything from preschool to parental involvement to afterschool and summer school. Scholars from the Economic Policy Institute, Duke University, and the Charles A. Dana Center at the University of Texas, as well as Stanford University, have found that States with strong accountability systems which do not include vouchers were successful in improving student achievement in the lowest performing public schools. Researchers call it the scarlet-letter effect, which shows that if a school is termed ``failing,'' the school is often motivated to improve. That is what we should be focusing on now, and that is what we are focusing on in this education debate. I also worry that trying to provide sufficient funds to afford a student a choice that is meaningful will siphon much needed funds out of our public school system. A $1,500 voucher, for example, is just not sufficient in most large cities I am aware of, and we, therefore, know that families have to add a substantial contribution themselves. In Milwaukee, for example, as many as 46 percent of students dropped out of the voucher program in the first year, and 28 percent dropped out in the fifth year because the $3,600 voucher was not sufficient to cover costs such as registration fees, books, uniforms, and transportation. We also have to worry that if you implement vouchers, then very often the motivated students and their parents will take advantage of them and we will see the kind of exodus from the public schools that will only make it more difficult to change their futures. How can we justify taking $50 million away from proven practices of improving student achievement? We need to do more to lower class sizes. Yet we were unsuccessful in continuing a proven program to do just that by helping to fund teachers in the classroom. Our friends on the other side said: That is not something the Federal Government should be doing; so even though we know it works, we won't vote for it. We were unsuccessful in having construction and modernization and repair funding available where we know that so many schools, particularly the very schools we are talking about, are literally falling down around the heads of students and teachers. We were told: Well, modernizing our schools is not a Federal responsibility. We need to recruit and retain teachers, and we know we are not going to do that if we don't provide competitive salaries and bonuses and other financial rewards. And we have a long way to go before we have the teaching core, the quality teaching core we need in our country. Instead of investing in proven measures to raise student achievement, we are being asked to divert and siphon off these dollars. I started by saying that my concern is not only based on the fact there isn't any evidence this works, that it siphons money out of the public schools, that, in effect, it opens the door to giving up on what we know makes a difference in our children's lives, but that also public schools, for me, are the distinguishing characteristic that sets us apart from many other societies. They are the bedrock of our democracy. I don't think we would be giving up on any of our fundamental freedoms so easily. I don't think we would be turning our back on our Constitution or our Bill of Rights. Yet without a strong public school system, we could, in effect, be doing just that. At a time when we are trying to hold students and teachers to higher standards, diverting scarce resources to fund an experiment that we already know has weak results and could very well undermine the future of public education, which takes care of 95 percent of our students and works well in most parts of our country, is a very tragic step in the wrong direction. I heard the end of the remarks of my colleague from California. I know she is a very strong supporter of public education, as I am. And like her, I went to public schools from kindergarten through high school. I believe in public schools. I was struck by what she said. If we were already doing what we know works, if we had lowered class sizes, if we had imposed the discipline, if we had recruited and paid teachers in the hard-to-teach schools what they should be paid, if we had modernized our schools so we didn't have chunks of plaster falling on teachers' heads, as recently happened in a school in my State, then if we still didn't have results, maybe even we very strong public school advocates would be willing to say: Well, we need to try something. But we are nowhere near there. We have turned our backs on the children who need us the most. We have basically left them in the most poorly funded schools with the least qualified teachers, often not even encountering a certified teacher without adequate resources, without being held accountable, and we say: Well, what do you know; it is failure. This is similar to so many of the other proposals that would undermine public education. It is aimed not at solving the problem but at coming up with a short-term, ideologically driven answer to a complicated set of issues. It is tragic that when we know what works, we are unwilling to step up and fund the resources that will give every child in America, no matter who that child's parents might be, the same chance I was given. I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment. I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mrs. CLINTON. I yield myself 15 minutes.

Mrs. CLINTON

Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, I rise today to focus the attention of my colleagues and our country on the environmental health and energy efficiency of our Nation's schools. Throughout this debate, we have come to the floor to propose solutions for improving student achievement and ensuring that all of our children are provided with a world-class education. I am very pleased that we have made a lot of progress in coming to consensus on some basic tenets--that all children should be guaranteed an education focused around high academic standards, that every child should be taught by a quality teacher, and that we should hold educators accountable for making sure their students can meet these high standards. There is something we have not yet addressed; that is, to ensure that our children attend schools that are in good working condition and that are conducive to their learning and not detrimental to their health. I was disappointed that we were not successful in our efforts to provide needed Federal support for repairs and renovations to modernize our schools, and we have done a disservice to many of our children. In the State of New York, for example, we have children who attend schools that are in deplorable condition. Approximately 67 percent of all the schools in New York have at least one inadequate building feature. That can mean a leaky roof or poor plumbing or electrical shortages, windows that are broken, heating, ventilating, air- conditioning systems that just don't work. What I hope we can do is to take a hard look at what the effects of these building conditions are on our children. We have children in New York attending classes in school buildings that average 50 years of age. In upstate New York the average is 38. These are the problems that are brought to my attention every single day--leaking roofs and bad filtration conditions that are beginning to demonstrate health problems in the schools. In central New York, the Council for Occupational Health and Safety began receiving complaints from teachers and students about a particular school. When the director inspected the building, he discovered that the air filtration system was filled with hundreds of colonies of fungus and that another part of the system was filled with stagnant water. At another school in Cohoes, NY, near Albany, the ventilation problem in the city's middle school was so bad that the school administration banned the use of chalk because the dust hung in the air, making it difficult for students and teachers to breathe. I recently received an e-mail from a father in Schenectady, NY. He wrote me the following: My children attend school in the city of Schenectady. At the 90-year-old elementary school they attend, peeling lead- based paint, a malfunctioning heat system resulting in 80-90 degree classroom temperatures, and general disrepair have been the norm for years. There have been persistent roof leaks, resulting in molds growing in the building. Maintenance of playgrounds to conform to safety standards has been neglected. Many of these problems continue to exist today. I believe that the primary cause of this is the highly constrained financial resources that are available in aging, low- to moderate-income urban communities. This morning, the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle reported that tomorrow in Pittsford, NY, there will be a 3-hour public forum on the impact that environmental hazards in school buildings have on teachers and students. This forum in Pittsford is part of a series of EPA informational sessions on environmental problems in our schools. These stories from New York reflect a serious problem across our country. A 1996 GAO study found that 15,000 schools in the United States have indoor pollution or ventilation problems affecting over 11 million children. Furthermore, as many as 25 million students nationwide are attending schools with at least one unsatisfactory environmental condition. This is something I don't think we can afford to ignore because indoor air can have an even greater effect on children than the air they breathe outside. The EPA warns that Americans spend 90 percent of our time indoors. With children spending much of their day inside schools, that pollution can add up, and it can be a greater stress on them than anything they encounter outside. We know that poor indoor air quality severely impacts children's health. According to the American Lung Association, asthma accounts for 10 million lost schooldays annually and is the leading cause of school absenteeism attributed to a chronic condition. Furthermore, a survey conducted by New York City Health Schools Working Group found that 40 percent of schoolchildren who had a preexisting condition, such as asthma, worsened from their being in school. In addition to facing poor air quality, we also know that our children are exposed to chemicals, lead paint, and other hazardous substances. In fact, the GAO found in their 1996 study that two-thirds of schools were not in compliance with requirements to remove or correct hazardous substances, including asbestos, lead, underground storage tanks, and radon. And experts believe that exposure during childhood, when children are developing, may have severe long-term effects. In Monroe County, NY, a group called Rochesterians Against the Misuse of Pesticides have been doing surveys of indoor and outdoor pesticide use by schools since 1987. That latest survey in 1999 showed that schools in Rochester were using 72 different pesticides. That is, as one member of the group said, a real chemical soup to which our children are being subjected. What I am hoping is that we can build on the work that has been done in some places, such as Rochester, and the Healthy Schools Network in Albany, NY, and try to find out more about what happens to our children's health inside our schools. The American Public Health Association recently passed a resolution calling for further research on the extent and impact of children's environmental health and safety risks and exposures at schools and prevention measures, including research sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education. My amendment would authorize $2 million for a study conducted by the Department of Education in conjunction with the Centers for Disease Control and the Environmental Protection Agency to evaluate the health and learning impacts of sick and dilapidated public school buildings on the children who attend those schools. This study would specifically call for researchers to determine the characteristics of our public schools that contribute to unhealthy environments, including the prevalence of such characteristics as the ones I have just mentioned in our elementary and secondary school buildings. How can we better monitor the situation and what steps can we take or help our local school districts take to remedy this situation? Hand in hand with our environmental health is the issue of energy efficiency because many of the problems are from old ventilating systems, old heating systems that are not in working order and cause health problems, as well as costing more in energy than should be the norm. In this amendment, we are asking that we help our schools deal with their energy costs. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that schools can save 25 to 30 percent of the money they currently spend on energy--namely, about $1.5 billion--through better building design and use of energy-efficient appliances, renewable energy technologies, and just plain improvements to operations and maintenance. I recently visited the John F. Kennedy Elementary School in Kingston, NY. It is leading the way in our State in making schools more energy efficient and saving money. In fact, last year, the Kingston School District saved $395,000 through energy-efficient upgrades. When I was there, I released a brochure that we are sending to every school superintendent in New York called ``Smart Schools Save Energy, Promoting Energy Efficiency in New York State Schools,'' with a lot of good ideas about how to go about making the schools energy efficient and saving money to be used on computers or other important needs of the school. What we have been told is that many school personnel want to do what is being recommended in this brochure and is known to many school districts, but they need a little bit of help to do it. They need that startup grant money that will enable them to make the changes that will save them money. This amendment would provide grants to States to help districts make their buildings healthier and more energy efficient. By incorporating provisions of legislation I recently introduced, the Healthy and High Performance Schools Act of 2001, this amendment would provide funds for States to provide information and materials to schools, help States organize, and conduct programs for school board members, school district personnel, architects, engineers, and others, and would help bring our schools up to code, the codes that will make our schools healthier and a better investment when it comes to energy usage, to install insulation, energy-efficient fixtures, and the like. With these Federal funds, we can make our schools more energy efficient which can save money which can then be used to reinvestment in our children's education that all of us in this body support. I thank Senators Kennedy and Gregg for the opportunity to offer this important amendment. I also reference the energy legislation that has been introduced by Senators Murkowski and Bingaman which include provisions to bring this about. I appreciate the opportunity for the entire Senate to vote on this amendment which will be a healthy vote as well as an energy-efficient vote on behalf of our children. No parent should have to worry about sending a child to school because it is a health risk. No school district should have to worry more about paying the lighting bill or the heating bill than paying their teachers. Understanding the effects of unhealthy classrooms and school buildings and moving toward energy efficiency goes hand in hand with the high standards we set in this bill. I urge all of my colleagues to vote for healthy schools, energy-efficient schools, and better educational outcomes for all of our children. I ask unanimous consent that my amendment be laid aside and await a vote which I hope we will be able to schedule for next week. I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to modify the amendment and send the modification to the desk.

Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, I thank my good friend and colleague from Texas for her leadership on this and so many other issues. The remarks she made very well describe why I stand in support of this amendment. I believe public school choice should be expanded and as broadly as possible. Certainly, there should not be any obstacle to providing single-sex choice within the public school system. I thank the Senator from Texas for being a leader in promoting quality single-sex education and for working with me, as well as our colleagues from Maryland and Maine, and with the chairman of the Education Committee, to find a compromise that would further the ability of our school districts around the country to develop and implement quality single-sex educational opportunities as a part of providing a diversity of public school choices to students and parents but in doing it in a way that in no way undermines title IX or the equal protection clause of the Constitution. We know, as the Senator from Texas has said, that single-sex schools and classes can help young people, boys and girls, improve their achievement. In New York City, we have one of the premier public schools for girls in our Nation. In fact, yesterday the New York Times reported that the first class of girls graduating from the Young Women's Leadership Academy in East Harlem in New York City--all 32 of the seniors--have been accepted by 4-year colleges, and all but one are going to attend while the other young woman has decided to pursue a career in the Air Force, which we know is also an opportunity for young women. We have to look at the achievements of a school such as the one in New York City that I mentioned, the Young Women's Leadership Academy, or other schools that are springing up around the country. We know this has energized students and parents. We could use more schools such as this. With the negotiations we have engaged in over this amendment, there was some disagreement that we had to work out about how to comply with title IX and with the Constitution because there has been confusion around our country in school districts about how they can develop single-sex educational opportunities without running afoul of the law or a constitutional prohibition. This amendment clearly states that school districts should have the opportunity to spend Federal educational funds on promoting single-sex opportunities so long as they are consistent with applicable law. It also makes clear that the U.S. Department of Education should clarify to our school districts what they can and cannot do. Their guidance should be developed as soon as possible. The Senator from Texas and I will watch closely to make sure this guidance is available to school districts. Both title IX and the equal protection clause provide strong protections so schools cannot fall back on harmful stereotypes. For example, we have done away with the prohibition that used to keep girls out of shop classes. I can remember that--even out of prestigious academic high schools because they were boys only. We have broken down those barriers. We don't in any way want this amendment to start building them up. We are trying to be very clear that we uphold title IX and the Constitution while we create more young women's leadership academies that will make a real difference in the lives of young women and young men. For example, we do not need another situation as we had with VMI, where young women were first prohibited from attending the school and then were provided with an alternative that was not in any way the same as what was available to the boys. The language offered here strikes the important balance between providing flexibility to offer single-sex educational opportunities and providing the legal safeguards pursuant to the VMI decision, and key title IX protections, to ensure that we do not turn back the clock. What the Senator from Texas and I want to do is to provide more and more opportunities for our young people to chart their own courses, to make it clear that they are able to have their own futures in their hands by getting the best possible public school education. So I am very grateful that we have come together today on behalf of this important amendment which will send a clear signal that we want public schools to provide choices. We want to eliminate sex-based stereotyping. We want to make it clear that every young girl can reach her fullest potential and should be able to choose from among options that will make that possible; and the same for our young boys as well. So I thank the Senator from Texas for not only putting forth this amendment but for working so hard on making it really do what we intend it to do, so there will be the kind of opportunities for our children that we in this Chamber favor and that we hope this bill will bring about. Mr. President, I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment under consideration be set aside.

Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, I did not realize that the Senator from Minnesota wanted to continue at this moment. I yield to him.

Mrs. CLINTON. I am trying to propose the amendment, but I will lay it aside, and I am not asking for a vote. Amendment No. 466

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

Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to lay aside the pending amendment.

Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 516.

Mrs. CLINTON

Mrs. CLINTON. Yes.