John Cornyn

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. CORNYN. It is amendment No. 4313.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, pursuant to section 904(c) of the Congressional Budget Act, I move to waive section 305(b)(2) of the Budget Act for consideration of this amendment to S. Con. Res. 70, and I ask for the yeas and nays on the motion.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, today I wish to pay my respects to one of my constitutents, Mrs. Henrietta Bell Wells, who passed away on February 27, 2008. Mrs. Wells was the last surviving member of the famous debate team from Wiley College in Marshall, Texas, whose story is told in the recent film ``The Great Debaters.'' She was a remarkable woman whose early success in challenging gender and racial barriers was followed by many years of faithful service. She will be missed but certainly not forgotten. Her life is truly an inspiration. I ask that an obituary that was published in The New York Times yesterday be printed in the Record. The material follows: [From the New York Times News Service, Mar. 12, 2008] (By Douglas Martin) Henrietta Bell Wells, the only woman, the only freshman and the last surviving member of the 1930 Wiley College debate team that participated in the first interracial collegiate debate in the United States, died Feb. 27 in Baytown, Texas. She was 96. Her friend Edward Cox confirmed the death. The story of the team, called the Great Debaters in last year's movie of the same name, began in 1924 at Wiley College, a small liberal arts college in Marshall, Texas, founded a half-century earlier by the Methodist Episcopal Church to educate ``newly freed men.'' Melvin B. Tolson arrived at the all-black school that autumn to teach English and other subjects. He also started a debate team. Tolson, who would win wide distinction as a poet, saw argumentation as a way to cultivate mental alertness. Wiley was soon debating and defeating black colleges two and three times its size. In 1930, Tolson decided to break new ground. He managed to schedule a debate with the University of Michigan Law School, an all-white school. Wiley won. Other debates with white schools followed, culminating with Wiley's 1935 victory over the national champion, the University of Southern California. Tolson's stunningly successful debate team was portrayed in ``The Great Debaters,'' directed by Denzel Washington. Describing the cinematic young debaters in The Chicago Sun- Times, the critic Roger Ebert wrote, ``They are black, proud, single-minded, focused, and they express all this most dramatically in their debating.'' In the fall of 1930, Henrietta Bell, who would later marry Wallace Wells, was a freshman in an English class taught by Tolson. The professor urged her to try out for the debate team, because she seemed to be able to think on her feet. She was the first woman on the team. In an interview with The Houston Chronicle in 2007, she said the boys ``didn't seem to mind me.'' But the work was far from easy. Bell attended classes during the day, had three campus jobs and practiced debating at night. The intensity of debating was reflected in Tolson's characterization of it as ``a blood sport.'' But the hard work paid off. In the interview with The Chronicle, Wells declared, ``We weren't intimidated.'' Henrietta Pauline Bell was born on the banks of Buffalo Bayou in Houston on Jan. 11, 1912, and raised by a hard- pressed single mother from the West Indies. When riots broke out in 1917 over police treatment of black soldiers at a World War I training camp, the family's house was searched. Wells recalled being unable to try on clothes in segregated stores. She did not debate in high school but was valedictorian of her class. She earned a modest scholarship from the YMCA to go to Wiley, Episcopal Life reported. In the spring of 1930, Bell, her teammates and her chaperone arrived at the Seventh Street Theater in Chicago. It was the largest black-owned theater in town, because no large white-owned facility would host a racially mixed audience, according to an article in The Marshall News- Messenger. Wells remembered a standing-room-only crowd. She wore a dark suit and had her hair cut in a boyish bob. In an interview with Jeffrey Porro, one of the screenwriters of ``The Great Debaters,'' she felt very small on that very big stage. ``I had to use my common sense,'' she said. She remembered Tolson urging her to punch up her delivery. ``You've got to put something in there to wake the people up,'' he had said. Wells told The Chronicle, ``It was a nondecision debate, but we felt at the time that it was a giant step toward desegregation.'' She debated for only one year, because of the need to work for money. She kept up with drama, which Tolson also coached. After graduating from college, she returned to Houston, where she met Wallace Wells and married. He was a church organist and later an Episcopal minister. She worked as a teacher and social worker. Wells advised Washington on the movie, using her scrapbooks as visual aids. She urged him to play Tolson, something he at first was not inclined to do. He called her ``another grandma.'' Wallace Wells died in 1987. Wells left no immediate survivors. Her advice to today's students was straightforward: ``Learn to speak well and learn to express yourself effectively.'' She learned this lesson directly from Tolson, whom she called her crabbiest and best teacher. He was known for issuing intellectual challenges immediately upon entering the classroom. A typical salutation: ``Bell! What is a verb?''

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. I thank the Chair.

Mr. CORNYN. So it would not affect the privileged status of the budget resolution to agree to my amendment at this time?

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I inquire whether adding the amendment at this point--that is, prior to any conference committee--would endanger the privileged nature of the budget resolution as opposed to offering it and adding it in conference? In other words, is there any difference between doing it now and adding it later?

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. I thought I had the floor, Madam President.

Mr. CORNYN. I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I certainly do not want to cut in line ahead of my other colleagues who have already talked about their amendments. I will patiently wait my place in line and then call it up.

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I am happy to wait for my turn in line.

Mr. CORNYN. The amendment has not been called up. I would be happy to do so, but I was told that is not possible; that there was an objection to calling up the amendment at this time.

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I have an amendment that will create a 60-vote point of order against any legislation that raises income tax rates on the American people. If this sounds familiar, it is. Last year the Senate voted, by a vote of 63 to 35, to pass this particular amendment. In a time when there is precious little bipartisan cooperation in the Senate on important matters, this is a list of the Senators on the other side of the aisle who, on March 21, 2007, voted in favor of this point of order that would require a vote of at least 60 Senators in order to raise income tax rates on the American taxpayer. Now I know the distinguished chairman of the Budget Committee and others have claimed that this budget does not contemplate an increase in taxes for the American people. I frankly do not understand that, because I do not know how you raise the kind of revenue that is necessary in order to make this budget balance without raising taxes dramatically on the American people. But I believe this point of order is an insurance policy, so when Congress decides to look into the pocketbook of taxpayers for more revenue, we ought to look first to eliminate Government waste, fraud, and abuse. What concerns families and small businesses have about the economy is now is not the time to think about raising taxes. Of course, this amendment will not hinder our efforts to close down illegal tax shelters or close perceived loopholes in the Internal Revenue Service Code. The amendment deals with the tax tables contained in 1040 forms that the IRS annually sends to every American taxpayer. Nor will it hinder efforts to overhaul the Tax Code. I believe the Tax Code is way too Byzantine and complex. We need to make our Tax Code fairer, simpler, and our tax rates flatter. But any tax simplification and reform effort will need bipartisan support from the Senate. I believe the support for the amendment as we had last year would demonstrate a strong bipartisan commitment not to raise taxes at a time particularly when our economy is starting to show some softness. As former Chief Justice John Marshall once said: The power to tax is the power to destroy. The power to tax is indeed one of the most powerful tools available to the Congress. My amendment puts in place safeguards that will protect the pocketbooks of middle-class families, college students, and hard-working American taxpayers, put a safeguard in place that will protect them. I know there will be strong bipartisan support for this amendment when it is offered. I believe it is important that the American people hear the Senate's voice that now is not the time to raise income tax rates. I ask my colleagues once again to support this strong bipartisan protection for American taxpayers. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN. I have no objection.

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I should not take more than 10 minutes, perhaps as few as 5.

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I understand the concerns of the Senator. It will take 60 votes to waive the point of order. Sixty-three Senators voted for the amendment last year. My hope would be they would vote with me to waive the point of order. Unfortunately, the Senator is correct. After 63 Senators voted on a bipartisan basis for this amendment last year, it was stripped in the conference. Unfortunately, this is the kind of thing that tends to undermine public confidence in what we are doing, when we see a strong bipartisan show of support for a commonsense amendment and then, behind closed doors, it is later stripped from the legislation. I respect and understand the concerns of the Senator. I will move to waive the budget point of order at the appropriate time. I thank the Chair.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I think people watching this on C-SPAN or wherever they may be watching--from the Galleries--can be forgiven if their head is spinning after this back and forth of how their tax dollars are being spent. At a time when our economy has undergone tremendous growth over the last 5 years but has now hit a soft stretch, particularly in the housing area, where we are talking about the credit crunch coming from the subprime credit crisis, we have acted in a bipartisan way to try to get the economy moving again by passing a stimulus package. The Speaker, the Republican leader of the House, and the White House have joined to try to do what can be done on a bipartisan basis to get the economy moving again. But the fact of the matter is, there is no better stimulus for the American economy other than leaving people with their own hard-earned money to spend it as they see fit. That is what helps create jobs in this country. The last thing we would want to do or should do is to see taxes be increased, particularly on small businesses, which are the primary job generator in this country, because it is through jobs and opportunity that people are able to achieve their own life and their own dreams and not depend on Government. We ought to aspire to be a country where everyone can declare their own independence on Government and not say we must be more dependent on Government, which seems to be the conflicting visions we see play out on the Senate floor.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, so the question presented by this budget is whether we are going to make it easier for the average American to meet the obligations of their family budget or whether we are going to grow the size of the Federal Government to the point that it makes it virtually impossible for them to balance their own budget. This budget, unfortunately, does nothing to bring down the price of gasoline at the pump or to make it more affordable to buy your own health insurance, which are the two primary cost drivers which are making it harder and harder for people working in this country to make ends meet. Instead, what this resolution does is, it adds additional burdens onto the average taxpayer. I know, as I said a moment ago, the heads of the people who are listening must be spinning trying to keep up with the various arguments that are being made back and forth. But the fact of the matter is, this budget resolution is the blueprint which authorizes additional activity, such as tax cuts. The Baucus amendment is nothing more than an authorization, which if there is no action to actually cut those taxes, nothing will happen. That is what happened, that is what occurred last year. Under the very pay-go principles, the pay-as-you-go principles--which is sound, certainly, in theory, which says the Federal Government will not spend money it does not have, that it will pay as you go--that is a promise made to the American people that is honored more in the breach than in the observance. I agree with the Senator from New Hampshire, the ranking member of the Budget Committee. This class rhetoric of: Well, we are just going to tax the rich--let me give you an example of how that usually turns out. The best example I can think of is the alternative minimum tax, which back in the 1960s was designed to target about 155 taxpayers who did not otherwise pay Federal income tax because of deductions they had. Well, as a result of the failure to index that tax, 155 taxpayers turned into, last year, 6 million taxpayers and would have turned into 23 million middle-class taxpayers if we had not acted to provide some temporary relief on a 1-year basis last year. That is exactly what happens every time the Federal Government says: We are just going to tax the rich. Because people will be amazed at how much the Federal Government considers ultimately the middle class, those people who are the most productive in our society, those people who create the jobs--by creating the small businesses that produce that opportunity--those are the producers who basically the Federal Government all too often seems at war with in the way we spend their hard-earned money. Now, this budget does set out the framework over a period of 5 years. It contemplates a source of revenue in order to pay the bills. Under the pay-go principles that Congress has embraced, the only way those bills can be paid is if you have additional revenue or taxes to pay for them. So that is why, under this resolution, you will see, for example, 18 million seniors who will incur an additional tax burden of $2,200 each. You will see 43 million families incur an additional tax burden of $2,300 each. You will see the small businesses--27 million small businesses--incur additional tax obligations of $4,100 each. Now, if our goal is to create jobs, it ought to be to lower the burden, to lower taxation, to lower the regulatory burden, and to reduce frivolous litigation to the point that small businesses can prosper and create jobs, not add to their burden. Additional taxes for each of these categories of taxpayers will do nothing but depress job creation in this country, not encourage it. But I have to tell you, the most discouraging part of this budget is not what it does but what it fails to do. As the distinguished chairman of the Budget Committee knows, because he is the chief sponsor, along with the ranking member, of a bill that creates a task force to deal with runaway entitlement spending, this budget does nothing to deal with $66 trillion of future obligations of the American Government under entitlement spending, under Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security. As a matter of fact, if we do nothing, within the next decade we will see both Medicare and Social Security become insolvent. That is because, irresponsibly, we are spending the surplus of Social Security today to try to balance the books of the Federal Government, by spending Social Security taxes that are paid by average American workers. We are spending that in order to try to fund the operations of the Federal Government today. So what this plan does, by inaction, is it creates the additional debt for our children of $27,000 each. I believe, if I am correct, the unfunded liabilities going into the future of $66 trillion, if you divide that by each and every American man, woman, and child, would result in $175,000 of debt for each of those men, women, and children. This budget does exactly zero to address that. I don't blame people across this country who look at Washington and are absolutely convinced that Washington is broken, because rather than solving problems, rather than trying to work together on a bipartisan basis to address these legitimate concerns, all they hear is more and more talk and precious little action, and particularly when it comes to the growing threat of entitlement spending and the increased debt that is passed down to our children and grandchildren. I know we didn't get here overnight. This has been a long time coming, but I hope we have the courage to deal with this today because, frankly, it is no mystery why change is the most dominant word in our political discourse today. The status quo is broken because Washington is not working, and people increasingly are turned off by what they see coming out of our Nation's Capital. They feel as if it is absolutely irrelevant to their lives or, if relevant, that Washington is burdening them and not helping them with their day-to-day concerns. By raising taxes by $1.2 trillion over the next 5 years, by dramatically increasing spending, by growing debt by $2 trillion, by playing gimmicks with things such as pay as you go, which is more honored in the breach than in the observance, by ignoring $66 trillion in unfunded liabilities into the future, this budget resolution is a failure. We can and we should do better. We should focus on what we can do to help the average American balance their family budget and not present a budget that is a train wreck upon delivery. This budget will not work. If the average American tried to conduct their business--if a small business man or woman tried to conduct their business as the Federal Government, they would find themselves bankrupt or else they would find themselves in jail. It is only the Federal Government that can operate this way. It is only the Federal Government that can operate in a way that every man, woman, and child in this country cannot, and we can do better. I urge my colleagues to do better by turning down this budget and coming up with one that will help the average American balance their budget and not wreck the Federal budget in the process.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I will.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for up to 15 minutes.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. I thank the majority leader. Mr. President, I wish to now transition to talk about the issue that will be in front of the Senate next week, and this has to do with the Federal budget. This is so important across so many areas because not only does this budget talk about what the tax burden of hard-working Americans will be in the coming year, it also has an impact on energy costs, on health insurance costs, on the ability of Americans to buy homes. How do we create better schools for better jobs? How do we deal with the issue of runaway lawsuits that threaten the business environment and have a dampening effect on job creation? How do we revive capital markets, rebuild our roads, bridges, railroads and airports? How do we provide a simpler, fairer tax system than we have now? And How do we make sure Americans retain the right to work in the job of their choosing without having to become part of a union when they don't want to? The part of this budget that concerns me the most is not the proposed $1.2 trillion tax hike that is contemplated under this budget that passed strictly along party lines in the Budget Committee yesterday afternoon, although that is bad enough. It will hit family budgets hard. Mr. President, 43 million families will owe an average of $2,300 more in 2009 in taxes as a result of this budget if it is adopted on the Senate floor. I am also concerned about the spending increase under this budget, some $211 billion in additional spending that is part of this budget proposed from the Budget Committee that will be before the Senate this next week. That means, in fiscal year 2009, if adopted, a 9-percent increase over what the Federal Government spent in fiscal year 2008. Now, as bad as the higher taxes and higher spending is, I wish I could say that was the end of the story, but it goes on from there and it doesn't get any better. As a result of the increased spending and the increased taxes contemplated under this budget, America will find itself $2 trillion deeper in debt by the year 2013 if this budget is adopted. That is more than $6,000 in extra debt for every American. And I would say this budget also fails in another important respect. It fails to deal with the impending crisis in entitlement spending and the future insolvency of both Medicare and Social Security, two important safety net programs, and ones we have made a promise to fund and to make sure is there for not only present beneficiaries of these programs but for our children and grandchildren as well. We know that unless something dramatic happens, we will not be able to keep that commitment. As a matter of fact, unless this Congress acts, there is $66 trillion in unfunded responsibilities under the current entitlement programs we need to fix; that we need to take into account. Now, there is an important piece of legislation I think we ought to take up and that is the Conrad-Gregg task force to deal with this gathering storm of an entitlement crisis. It is a bipartisan bill by the chairman and the ranking member of the Budget Committee. But we are not taking that up, as we should, as part of dealing with the Federal budget. Because we know that if we don't do anything, there is going to be a terrible financial catastrophe, and the people who will ultimately suffer as a result of our failure to act will be future beneficiaries under Social Security and Medicare--our children, our grandchildren, and future generations. The last thing I wish to mention with regard to the budget is what the Wall Street Journal has called the pay-go farce. You will recall that pay-go was the name given to pay-as-you-go requirements under the budget. Sounds good. That is what the family budget has to do. If there is no money coming in the front door, then you are not going to be able to spend yourself into debt. You pay as you go. That is the way most businesses operate but not the Federal Government. The Federal Government can continue to print money and spend money it doesn't have and pass the debt down to our children and grandchildren. If you take into account this unfunded liability of $66 trillion because of the entitlement crisis--the gathering storm I mentioned a moment ago--that boils down to about $175,000 per person--every man, woman, and child--that we owe now for those unfunded liabilities unless we take action now. But the pay-go farce the Wall Street Journal article mentions--and the date of this article is December 10, 2007-- quotes Speaker Nancy Pelosi in remarks she made on December 12, 2006. She said: Democrats are committed to ending years of irresponsible budget policies that have produced historic deficits. Instead of compiling trillions of dollars of debt onto our children and grandchildren, we will restore pay-as-you-go budget discipline. Now, I have to tell you, just taken at face value, that sounds pretty good. We do need to take responsibility. We do need to do that on a bipartisan basis. But the pay-go promise made by this Congress looks like Swiss cheese. There are so many holes in it that you could drive-- not to mix my metaphors--but you could drive a truck through it. And let me explain why. First of all, these pay-go rules that promise financial discipline do not apply to discretionary spending. That is about $1 trillion a year. And it doesn't restrain spending increases under current law in entitlements, such as Medicare or Medicaid, the programs I mentioned a moment ago. The main goal, and this is a problem, is that it is designed to make tax relief for working families and small businesses almost impossible. Now, we ran into this pay-go requirement when it came to relieving middle-class taxpayers from the alternative minimum tax this last December. And I agree in that instance it was important to waive the pay-go requirement. Because, frankly, if you will recall, the alternative minimum tax was never designed to hit the middle class. But because it was not indexed for inflation this last year, it covered 6 million taxpayers. If we hadn't acted, it would have hit 23 million middle-class taxpayers. So I agree it was appropriate not to require pay-as-you-go principles for that alternative minimum tax that Congress never intended the middle class to have to pay. As a matter of fact, back in the 1960s, the alternative minimum tax was adopted, as a result of a report issued by the Department of Treasury that said that 155 high-income taxpayers did not pay Federal income tax because of other deductions. But as is typical in schemes designed to ``tax the rich,''--we have heard that before--eventually it grows and grows and grows to cover the middle class. So be wary when Congress says: We are only going to tax the rich. That means we all need to put our hand on our wallet because it eventually grows into a middle-class tax. Another time Congress used the pay-go gimmick, which gives rise to the title of this article called ``The Pay-go Farce,'' was on SCHIP. Now, you will recall that is the State Children's Health Insurance Plan, something we all support on a bipartisan basis. But the way it was proposed by the leadership last year, to fund the 140-percent increase in this program, was a joke. The SCHIP bill included a spending cliff that disguised its actual cost. It assumed spending would rise to $14 billion by 2012, but then pretended the costs would fall to less than half in 2013, which just so happens to fall outside the 5-year budget scoring window. Some $60 billion in spending over the next 10 years were hidden through this ploy of creating a cliff in spending, suggesting that somehow Congress would cut this program in half and deny children access to health insurance, something we all know would not happen. So that is why the pay-go requirement has been called a farce and why I likened it to Swiss cheese. It has so many holes in it, it doesn't do what it has promised to do, which is to restore budget discipline; and it unfairly impacts the ability to provide tax relief to working families in a way that can grow the economy and allow people to keep more of what they earn--money they can use to pay for things like education, health care, and transportation. As a matter of fact, as a result of the 2001-2003 tax relief that this Congress voted on and passed in the wake of 9/11, in the wake of the stock market scandals, and with the recession at the beginning of that decade, we saw more than 50 months of uninterrupted job growth in the country, with 9 million new jobs being created. It should not be surprising that tax relief ends up being one of the best stimulae we could possibly give the economy. We saw Federal revenues at historic highs and that is because more people working means more people paying taxes and more revenue to the Federal Government; and thus the budget deficit reduced from roughly 1.9 percent of the gross domestic product to about 1.2 last year. So, in closing, I would say this debate we are going to have next week is vitally important, and the question is: Are we going to wreck the Federal budget or will we find ways to help families balance their budget, especially with the economic challenges that they face? It is all about taxing, it is all about spending, it is all about whether we are going to increase the Federal debt, it is all about whether we are going to meet our responsibilities as elected officials to deal with the impending entitlement crisis which threatens to act similar to a tsunami and engulf us in a huge wave of red ink. Mr. President, I appreciate the courtesy of the majority leader, and I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Senator from Vermont, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, for his courtesy. When the Senate debates the budget next week, we will hear a lot about the tax gap. This is the name given to uncollected taxes which some have said, if collected, could pay up to $300 billion in additional revenue to the Federal Treasury. I wish to talk about this in a minute, first of all to ask the question why it is, notwithstanding this so-called tax gap, we have not seen any money at all collected over the last year to fill that gap. But first I want to talk about the intelligence gap. This has to do with the critical information the United States should be collecting in pursuit of radical Islamists but is not because of burdensome and unnecessary legal restrictions--restrictions Congress has within its power to remove. To the Senate's credit, in a bipartisan fashion, the Senate Intelligence Committee passed out a bill that I hope the House of Representatives will vote on soon. That same bill passed by a bipartisan majority of 68 Senators. That is not easy, but it does demonstrate a bipartisan consensus in this body to make sure we have our eyes open and our ears open when it comes to foreign intelligence that could detect, deter, and even defeat future terrorist attacks against the United States and our allies. The intelligence gap is also closed not only by passing that important legislation which the House of Representatives has inexplicably sat on for the last couple of weeks but also by providing protection against frivolous litigation against communications providers that have assisted the Nation in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on a voluntary basis. It is no secret that the Director of National Intelligence has noted that given this world of wireless communications, we need to adopt new means to intercept communications from foreign nationals to other foreign nationals which could well be directed through the infrastructure in the United States and which, unless we pass this legislation, we would not be able to intercept. The biggest problem we have, of course, is that their cooperation is entirely voluntary, and unless we protect them under this bipartisan Senate legislation from frivolous litigation, in the future not only will citizens--whether they be individuals or corporate--not cooperate, but we will be left with a fraction of the actionable intelligence necessary to detect, deter, and defeat those whose sole wish is the murder of innocent Americans. I quote the Democratic chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who said: What people have to understand here is the quality of intelligence we are going to receive is going to be degraded. Those, of course, are not my remarks, and they are not the words of a member of the Bush administration; those are the words of Jay Rockefeller, the distinguished chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. That is why this legislation passed out of the Senate with a strong bipartisan vote. I don't know about the political implications of the Democratic House leadership's failure to act responsibly, and I am not here to talk about politics, but I do know there are serious national security interests that we face, and threats, and the majority of Democrats in the House are not taking those threats seriously enough. So rather than taking a vacation from their duties, it is past time for the House to act and to do the responsible thing. I hope Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Hoyer will call up this important bipartisan legislation and allow an up-or-down vote on the bipartisan Senate legislation that will make this Nation safer from the terrorist threats we face. Mr. President, I have other remarks I wish to make, but I see the distinguished majority leader on the floor. I want to make sure--if he has any housekeeping business he wants to take care of, I will be glad to defer to him for that purpose and then to reclaim the floor later on. I do not want to have him necessarily have to wait. I understand he is motioning for me to continue, and I will do that. I thank the Senator.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I don't believe this extension includes the immunity provision for the telecoms; thus, I will object.

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, you don't have to be an expert in health care policy to know our health care system is in need of reform. Today, we spend over $2 trillion on health care, almost $7,500 per person. In 10 years, national health care expenditures are expected to reach $4.3 trillion, or $13,000 per person, which would comprise 19.5 percent of our gross domestic product. Clearly, this rate of increase is unsustainable. We must work together to develop creative solutions that will change the way we deliver health care. The goal should be to allow health care providers to develop treatment plans based on what is in the best interest of the patient. But the current system under which we pay physicians neither puts patients first nor reduces costs. A decade ago, instead of creating a mechanism that changed the way physicians deliver care, Congress attempted to curb rising health care costs through an arbitrary annual expenditure cap on physician payments. And what has the result been? Physicians have seen their reimbursements lag far behind their costs, in Texas and nationally--a 15-percent gap. In order to recoup lost revenue, physicians often increased the number of patients they were seeing per day, meaning they were spending less and less time with their patients, lowering the quality of care delivered. Moreover, we are starting to see problems with beneficiary access. At an increasing rate, beneficiaries across the country are reporting difficulties in scheduling appointments with their physicians. But declining reimbursements are also influencing the development of future generations of physicians--especially in primary care--as there is a disincentive to enter the profession or an incentive to forgo primary care for more lucrative specialties. This is especially alarming, as the Medicare population grows and many physicians will be retiring. For example, my State of Texas already has a below-average physician-to-population ratio, while 39 percent of practicing physicians are already over 50. There are over 30 health care reform plans floating around inside and outside of Congress. Few of these plans address the fundamental question: What good is coverage without access to that coverage? If we are serious about changing our health care system, we need to start with changing the way we pay physicians--that would send a strong message not only about the need for better quality care but also the need to ensure a future generation of American physicians. I am pleased to introduce the Ensuring the Future Physician Workforce Act of 2008. This bill will provide positive reimbursement updates for providers; eliminate the ineffectual expenditure cap; increase incentives for physician data reporting; facilitate adoption of Health Information Technology, HIT, by addressing cost and legislative barriers; educate and empower physicians and beneficiaries in relation to Medicare spending and benefits usage; and study ways to realign the way Medicare pays for health care. Every few years, Congress goes through the same rituals of trying to fix the physician reimbursement mechanism. First, CMS tells us the expenditure cap requires Medicare physician reimbursements to be cut by a certain percent. Next, Congress struggles to find a way to prevent this cut, knowing how harmful it would be. Yet delaying this cut is extremely expensive. Congress then swears that this is the last time they will go through this process and that it must come up with a comprehensive fix. Ultimately, Congress never seems able to fix the problem. This bill stops the charade, resets the baseline for the next year and a half, and then eliminates the expenditure cap thereafter. Rather than pretending like we are going to adhere to an arbitrary cap of $80, for example, only to spend more later, this bill puts up front the true cost that we are really going to spend $100 or $101. The effect on spending is the same, but physicians and beneficiaries have certainty. If Congress fails to act, Texas physicians will lose $860 million between July 2008 and December 2009, which is a cut of $18,000 to each Texas physician. That figure balloons to $16.5 billion by 2016 due to nearly a decade of scheduled cuts. Two widely identified ways of moving toward lower costs and better quality stem from the collection of health care data and the implementation of health information technology. First, increasing incentives for the reporting of data will improve our ability to assess how we deliver care and the level of that care. In this bill we go beyond general reporting and focus on the most expensive diseases. The director of the Congressional Budget Office, Peter Orszag, likes to ask the paradoxical question: ``How can the best medical care in the world cost twice as much as the best medical care in the world?'' It does because we deliver care in vastly different ways and at vastly different costs. By focusing our data collection efforts, we will better understand how these differences occur. Second, there are few who would argue with the notion that implementation of HIT is beneficial from a cost and quality perspective; HIT provides transparency, efficiency, portability, safety, and reductions in duplicative and wasteful procedures. However, various cost and legislative barriers have inhibited widespread adoption. There is a large cost associated with implementing HIT because of the cost of hardware, software, and time needed to train staff. Additionally, there is a disincentive to invest in HIT because the Department of Health and Human Services has yet to finalize its standards. Providers are stuck in neutral. Under the current regulatory environment, doctors have limited ability to accept hardware, software, or help in training from hospitals. Not only does this unfairly harm patients in these practices, it negatively impacts community health. This bill provides a safe harbor to that regulation but maintains the spirit of the law by allowing hospitals to help physicians in their implementation of HIT-- either in the purchasing of hardware or software or in training--as long as these hospitals do not restrict the physician's interoperability, clinical practice, or referral system for their own financial benefit. This bill provides the incentive to voluntarily implement HIT and commonsense regulations that move communities into the 21st century. Once beneficiaries begin to see the benefits HIT will have on the quality of their care and in their wallets, providers will not be able to ignore the demand. Finally, this bill would provide comparative reports to physicians on their billings and to beneficiaries on their usage of services. Physicians want to do the right thing for their patients, but we need to ensure that they have the tools necessary to appropriately deliver that care. When physicians look at these reports and see how they compare to other providers in their area or across the Nation, they will take that report seriously and evaluate why their practices differ. Similarly, beneficiaries will have a tool to evaluate their level of care and a tool to engage the physician-patient relationship. Mr. President, it is no secret that the path Medicare is on is unsustainable. So far, our only recourse has been to prolong the inevitable collapse, rather than reforming the doomed system. This bill is a small step toward righting the Medicare ship, and with it, America's health care system as a whole. It is time we move forward in health care and help create a system that provides the best care at the best prices. I hope my colleagues will join me in supporting this bill and ensuring a better future for American health care.