Tom Daschle

Mr. DASCHLE

Mr. DASCHLE. It is not my desire to object. I was just thinking perhaps it might be in order that Senators Dodd, Kennedy, and Grassley be recognized immediately following this colloquy for purposes of recognition under morning business.

Mr. DASCHLE. Assuming we get some sort of an accommodation, I have no objection.

Mr. DASCHLE. I move to waive the Budget Act for the amendment.

Mr. DASCHLE. Reserving the right to object, I know Senator Dodd had asked for time. I am wondering if I could ask unanimous consent that-- --

Mr. DASCHLE. My only concern was that there be an accommodation for all those Senators who wish to be recognized, including Senator Murray.

Mr. DASCHLE. That might be appropriate. I do not know if there are other Senators on the leader's side of the aisle.

Mr. DASCHLE

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

Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, the legislation before us today, the Higher Education Act, is an example of what can happen when the majority makes an effort to work together with Senators from this side of the aisle to do something for the good of the country. I commend Senator Jeffords and Senator Kennedy for their good work on this bill. Unfortunately, we have seen too few examples of this type of bipartisan cooperation this year. The Higher Education Act is very important, and I am pleased we are making good progress in renewing and strengthening it. As we are all well aware, access to higher education can help unlock the door to a better future for our students and for our Nation, and this legislation provides the key for many students. Pell grants, student loans, campus- based aid and other programs have helped millions of students afford a college education. Through these programs, we provide $38 billion in financial assistance to more than 19.4 million students in postsecondary education institutions. The bill we are adopting today makes a number of important improvements in this law. First, and most important, it continues the effort to make a college education more affordable by continuing current programs, increasing the maximum Pell Grant, reducing interest rates on student loans, improving repayment options for students, and increasing the information available to families about the cost of a college education while encouraging institutions to minimize cost increases. The bill includes important incentives to improve the quality of teacher training and recruitment and to expand professional development opportunities. I commend the Committee, and in particular the Senator from New Mexico, Senator Bingaman, and the Senator from Rhode Island, Senator Reed, for their efforts to consolidate and strengthen these provisions into a more logical, coordinate system. We know that putting students in a classroom with a well-trained, qualified teacher is one of the most effective ways to help them achieve to the best of their abilities. I am also pleased that the bill establishes a demonstration program to expand post-secondary opportunities for distance learning. This will help many people, especially those in rural areas, those with disabilities and nontraditional students, gain access to programs in which they might not otherwise be able to participate. The Senator from Minnesota, Senator Wellstone, has been a strong supporter of these provisions. The bill also includes a proposal offered by the Senator from Connecticut, Senator Dodd, which I cosponsored, to encourage colleges to establish campus-based child care for low-income students. I also support provisions in the bill that will help reduce binge-drinking on college campuses and reduce campus crime levels. Finally, I strongly support the provision creating a new grant program for Tribal Colleges and Universities. These institutions, most of which struggle financially, do a remarkable job of creating educational opportunities for Native Americans. They need and deserve federal support. I would like to note that while I did not support the Kennedy amendment, I do support the study called for in the managers' amendment to determine whether there might be ways to move toward a more market- based student loan system to improve the efficiency of the student loan system. While I did support the Harkin amendment because it reduced the cost of student loans, I would note that I strongly believe we must take care to maintain a strong Federal Family Education Loan program. The evidence is strong that competition between the Direct Loan program and the FFEL program is good for both programs and ultimately good for students, and I believe it is important that we work to maintain this balance. Mr. President, the Higher Education Act is yet another example of the positive impact the federal government can have in helping our Nation invest in our future. By helping to lower the cost barriers to higher education, we help millions of young people gain the skills they will need to be contributing members of society while we build a strong work force, encourage the development of our intellectual capital and nurture the leaders of the next generation. I urge my colleagues to join me wholeheartedly in supporting this very important piece of legislation.

Mr. DASCHLE

Mr. DASCHLE. As I understood it, Senator Hollings had 8 minutes remaining. If he does not, I yield 10 minutes to the Senator from South Carolina from my leader time.

Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes of my leader time in addition to the 8 minutes that Senator Hollings has in the remaining part of our morning business time to Senator Hollings.

Mr. DASCHLE

Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I would like to express my gratitude to all of our colleagues, Democratic and Republican, who have worked so hard for so long on the Internal Revenue Service Restructuring Act of 1998. This bipartisan legislation builds on the recommendations of the year-long National Commission on Restructuring of the IRS and addresses many of the concerns raised during Congressional hearings. These reforms have been a long time coming, and I am pleased to support them today on the last leg of their journey through the legislative process. We would not be here today, poised to enact the most sweeping restructuring of the Internal Revenue Service in living memory, if it were not for the vision, diligence, and persistence of the senior Senator from Nebraska, Bob Kerrey. Today's vote represents nearly three years of concerted effort on the part of Senator Kerrey. He developed the legislation to create the commission in 1995, co-chaired its proceedings to a successful conclusion in 1997, and has worked assiduously since then with Members of Congress and the Administration to shepherd the legislation to today's final vote. On behalf of the Senate and taxpayers across the country, I thank Senator Kerrey for his inspired public service. This legislation has two essential goals: to make the IRS more accountable to private citizens and to transform its culture into one that resembles the customer service orientation of a well-run business. Too often lately, South Dakota business owners, farmers and others have told me stories that make IRS tax collectors sound a lot more like a team of overzealous special prosecutors. With this agreement, we send a strong message that the abuse, intimidation, harassment, quota systems, and patterns of targeting middle and lower-income people--or any segment of the public--will no longer be tolerated. IRS reform will ensure that taxpayers receive the fair and equal treatment they deserve. It will also pave the way for restoring the public's confidence in our Nation's tax collector. I support this conference report because it will make the IRS more accountable to, and respectful of, taxpayers. The extensive public hearings held by the Commission and Congressional committees have highlighted management problems within the IRS as well as individual cases of abuse and harassment by some IRS employees. The new IRS Commissioner, Charles Rossotti, has begun to implement significant changes to the structure and culture of the agency. By approving the conference report, the Senate can at last give him the tools he needs to expedite these necessary changes. The bill establishes a new series of taxpayer rights, including one that places the burden of proof on the IRS in disputes before the tax court. It also permits a taxpayer to sue for civil damages if any IRS employee, in connection with any collection activity, negligently disregards the law. I am also pleased that the legislation provides a number of specific protections for taxpayers subject to audit or collection activities and establishes a private board of directors to oversee the IRS. In addition, the conference agreement begins the important process of coming to grips with the complexity of the tax code. Thanks to this legislation, in the future, Congress will have an opportunity to hear from IRS technical experts concerning the likely compliance difficulties posed by individual tax legislation proposals. I am hopeful that involving these IRS tax experts early in the drafting process will help us attain our ultimate goal of a simpler and less burdensome tax law. Nevertheless, there is one aspect of this conference agreement I find wholly unbecoming of a piece of legislation intended to protect taxpayers. Mr. President, we should be paying for this bill just like every other tax bill. Regrettably, the conference report fails to uphold the spirit of fiscal responsibility that brought us last year's historic balanced budget agreement. Our Republican colleagues have chosen to employ a blatant gimmick to cover the costs of the bill over the 10-year period required by budget rules by pushing the costs out beyond that 10-year period. In so doing, they tarnish an otherwise important victory for taxpayers. Protecting taxpayers is not limited to improving the fairness and efficiency of their tax collection system; it also involves maintaining discipline in government finances. There is no good reason why these two goals could not have been achieved simultaneously. Specifically, the Roth IRA revenue offset in the conference report raises revenue for only 3 years. Thereafter, it loses more revenue than all the other revenue raisers in the bill combined. Indeed, this bill will drain more than $30 billion from the Treasury in the second 10 years following enactment. This burden on the federal government's finances will occur at precisely the time baby boomers begin to retire in large numbers, Medicare is projected to become insolvent, and the Social Security system's finances come under pressure. I will vote for the conference report because of the many good things in it. Nevertheless, I hope that at the next opportunity Congress will correct this serious flaw in the legislation. I am also disappointed that the conference report to the IRS reform bill includes the technical corrections for the new surface transportation law. Like many veterans' advocates, I had hoped the Republican leadership would allow the Senate to debate this matter separately and reconsider its unwise and unfair decision to use $17 billion set aside for veterans' disability compensation to pay for new transportation projects. As I have stated many times, I strongly believe that veterans suffering from smoking-related illnesses as a result of their military service should be compensated. That is why I voted against efforts to eliminate this compensation during consideration of the Republican Budget Resolution earlier this year. And that is why I supported the point of order that was raised by Senator Patty Murray on this matter yesterday. Although both efforts were narrowly defeated, I look forward to continuing to work with Senator Murray, Senator Rockefeller, the ranking member of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, and others in an effort to ensure that veterans receive the disability compensation they deserve. Mr. President, despite my objections to these particular provisions, my vote in favor of this conference agreement comes down to what I believe is in the best interests of working families. The American people deserve some assurance that, if they work hard and play by the rules, they can expect fair treatment from the IRS. I am convinced this legislation can make a difference for honest taxpayers who come into contact with our tax collectors. We should pass the conference report in order to give Commissioner Rossotti the authority he needs to carry out his plans to restructure this troubled agency as rapidly as possible. I have been attempting to expedite passage of this legislation since January, and I believe that American taxpayers should not have to wait one day longer.

Mr. DASCHLE

Mr. DASCHLE. Well, the Senator from Connecticut has demonstrated his characteristic eloquence again. I would answer in the affirmative. I do not know what motivation there may have been on the part of the majority leader, but I must say this, that it complicates dramatically the position of those who support this legislation, complicates it dramatically. As the Senator from Connecticut correctly points out, it could actually kill the very bill they are trying to pass. Now, for those of us who want to protect Senators' rights, we are surprised and I guess somewhat amazed at the actions just taken by the majority. Keep in mind, if we pass cloture, all relevant amendments will be barred. And yet our Republican colleagues have already laid an amendment down, an amendment, I might add, that nobody has seen. You talk about a legislative pig in a poke; there isn't a Senator on this side, maybe with one exception, who has seen the amendment just laid down by the majority leader--not one, with one exception perhaps. I have not talked to Senator Rockefeller. So I am astounded that our Republican colleagues would say, ``We want our amendments, but we don't want you to have any. We're going to pass our amendment, but on the chance that you could pass one of yours, we're going to preclude them all.'' Mr. President, the Senate cannot work that way. As the Senator from Connecticut just pointed out, we are acting more and more like the House of Representatives. If any one of our colleagues wishes to run, let them declare their candidacy. There are all kinds of open seats, uncontested seats, on the other side. Go run. But if you want to be a U.S. Senator, live up to the responsibilities of the U.S. Senate. This is supposed to be the greatest deliberative body in the world. How deliberative can we be when, vote after vote, amendment after amendment, bill after bill, this side is precluded from offering amendments either because the majority leader pulls the bill or they file cloture immediately upon filing? That cannot work, Mr. President. So I appreciate the wisdom of the Senator from Connecticut, and I must say the courage, because clearly there could be Senators who misinterpret, were it not for his eloquent explanation just now, why he is going to work to protect Senators' rights. I must say, there will be Senators on the other side who will want their rights protected at some point. Majority or minority, it does not matter, it happens to all of us. So I appreciate the position taken by the Senator from Connecticut. I hope all of our colleagues have heard his explanation and his reasons. And I hope a lot of our Republican colleagues will join us. Cloture must be defeated. We must protect Senators' rights, and we must protect the institution of the U.S. Senate. I yield the floor. Mr. GORTON addressed the Chair.

Mr. DASCHLE. I think the Senator from Massachusetts raises a very important point. Exactly. We have seen this in a series of different episodes over the course of the year. It is a dangerous precedent to be setting. It is a remarkable admission from the other side that they are unwilling to face the reality here, to face the opportunity to have a good debate on key votes having to do with improvement of the bill, having to do with different views on a bill. Just as we saw with tobacco. I yield to the Senator from Massachusetts.

Mr. DASCHLE. I would be happy to yield to the Senator from Massachusetts.

Mr. DASCHLE. It is the right of all Senators to fulfill the functions of their responsibilities as U.S. Senators to offer amendments, to have a debate. For us to file cloture, for the Senate to file cloture on a bill of this import, without one speech, without one amendment, without any consideration, is absolutely reprehensible. I am very, very disappointed that the majority leader has seen fit to do it. I guess I would ask, What are they afraid of? What is it they don't want us to offer? What is it about the amendment process that worries our colleagues on the other side? What is it about not having a good debate that so appeals to them? Mr. President, I don't know. But I do know this. Senators on this side of the aisle will continue to fight for our rights to offer amendments, regardless of circumstance. There are many of our colleagues who may support this bill on final passage, and I respect their rights even though I disagree. I personally think this bill is as bad as all the others that have been proposed, and I hope that we have a good debate about how good or how bad this legislation truly is. But for us to start the debate by saying that there will be little or no debate, especially when it comes to our opportunity to offer amendments, precluding the very right of every Senator to be heard, precluding the opportunity for us to offer ways in which we think it could be improved. So we will have this debate over and over and over again. But on so many occasions now, our colleagues on the other side insist on denying the rights of every Senator to be heard. That doesn't have to happen. This is not the House of Representatives. This is not the most deliberative body in the world so long as we continue to utilize this practice. There is a time and a place for cloture, but that time and that place is not as soon as the bill is laid down. Many of us could have objected to the motion to proceed. We could have voted against going to the motion to proceed. We could have even filibustered the motion to proceed. We didn't do that. Why? Because, in good faith, we felt it was important to get on to the bill. But now what do we have? Another in a continued pattern by our Republican colleagues to curtail debate, to curtail thoughtful consideration of a very important issue. I don't know of a more complicated bill that any one of us will have to address in this session of Congress than product liability. We could offer a pop quiz today, and I am sure many of our colleagues would probably fail simply because we are not familiar with all the ramifications of this issue. So for us, now, just at the beginning of the debate to say we don't want amendments, we are not even sure we want a lot of debate, we are just going to get this out of our way so we can move on to other things, that is not the way the Senate ought to work. That is not what we ought to be doing here. What goes around comes around. This issue is going to come around again and again and again. We will not be denied our rights. So I am just very hopeful that even many of our Republican colleagues who may have misgivings about this bill will join Democrats in defeating cloture when the occasion arises on Thursday. Several Senators addressed the Chair.

Mr. DASCHLE. I thank the distinguished Senator from Kentucky. Mr. President, I am very disappointed with the action just taken by my good friend, the majority leader. He has filed cloture on one of the most controversial, complex, far-reaching pieces of legal legislation that we will address in this decade. We have done this before, and it would seem to me that our colleagues would understand that when this happens, we are denying the very function of the U.S. Senate, the right of every Senator to offer amendments, the right to have a deliberative----

Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, my reaction is, here we go again. Yet another piece of legislation laid down without any opportunity----

Mr. DASCHLE. The Senator from Massachusetts raises a very important note here. It seems that our colleagues on the other side are reverting to two practices: One is to file cloture as soon as a bill is laid down. That is what they did in this case. That is what they did--what they did on the Coverdell bill. The other practice is to offer a bill, and as soon as we offer an amendment that is in disagreement with their larger scheme, they pull the bill. That is what happened to the Ag appropriations bill when we offered tobacco on Ag appropriations. That is what just happened on the VA-HUD bill. So it seems to me there are two actions taken by our Republican colleagues with some frequency here: File cloture, deny the colleagues the right to offer amendments because of cloture; or pull the bill and move on to something else and never come back. So the Senator from Massachusetts raises a very good point.

Mr. DASCHLE. Unfortunately, I have to report to the Senator from Massachusetts that there doesn't appear to be any end in sight to this gagging of Democrats, to this notion that you either proceed on our terms or we won't proceed at all. As the Senator from Massachusetts just noted, we are no longer in a position where the regular order is to go back to an appropriations bill. They have been shelved. They have been put back on the calendar. Now, we have to move to a motion to proceed to bring the bills back, where at least before we had the bills as the regular order should we fail to reach any kind of an agreement on how to proceed on a current bill.

Mr. DASCHLE. That is the irony, I would say to the Senator from Massachusetts. And the real sad thing is that this goes beyond the bill. This goes to the fact that 3,000 kids a day start smoking. It goes to the tremendous number of victims of managed care abuses all over this country, in every State of the Union, who have said if you do anything in Congress this year, we want you to fix managed care. We don't want you to wait until we lose more people. We want you to solve this problem this year. And that is what we are trying to do. We have 10 weeks to go, fewer than 40 legislative days. If we don't do it now, when are we going to do it? The Senator from Massachusetts makes a very important point. I yield to the Senator from Vermont.

Mr. DASCHLE

Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, could we have order?

Mr. DASCHLE

Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I have an amendment and I send it to the desk.

Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I know there is an understanding that we will go to the veterans amendment at some point, and I would be happy to lay aside this amendment to accommodate Senator McCain and others who may wish to offer their amendment, with the understanding that we might have a vote on both amendments at some point in the future. But I wanted to lay this amendment down, and I will be brief because I know the distinguished Senator from New Mexico also wishes to speak.

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

Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, the issue of patient protection is among the most important health questions facing the American people today. In survey after survey, the American people have said without equivocation that they want Congress to deal with this issue. More and more, from places all over the country, we hear reports about victims of our current system and cries for reform. The need to address this issue, this year, has become more and more pronounced. For many months, we have worked in concert with the White House and with our House colleagues to come up with a way to comprehensively respond to the growing array of concerns and problems that people from all over the country have raised as they talk about the current situation we face with regard to health insurance and HMOs. After a great deal of attention, study, thoughtful analysis, and working with over 100 organizations from all philosophical and political persuasions, we have introduced legislation that provides a number of very basic patient protections: providing access to needed specialists including pediatric specialists for children; ensuring access to an independent appeal board when insurance companies deny care and requiring timely resolution of those appeals; guaranteeing access to the closest emergency room so that people don't have to waste precious time as they drive miles to save their insurance company a few dollars; allowing patients to see the same doctor through a pregnancy or a difficult treatment even if their doctor stops participating in an HMO; allowing women direct access to their ob/gyn without asking their insurance company for permission; preventing drive-through mastectomies and other inappropriate insurance company interference with good medical practice; and holding HMOs accountable when their decisions to deny or delay health care result in injury or death. These provisions, and a number of others that I will not list now, were very carefully thought through before we incorporated them in this patient protection bill. I do not know of another piece of legislation that has higher priority. I do not know of another piece of legislation that deserves the attention of the Senate more than this one. Every day we fail to act on basic patient protections, the list of families who suffer continues to grow. We have fewer than 10 weeks remaining before the end of the session. We have yet to spend 1 day talking about the Patients' Bill of Rights, debating patient protections, and dealing with this issue in a comprehensive way. My hope is that we can work through this amendment and come up with a way in which to address this issue on this bill. I also would like very much to be able to schedule debate and a vote on this legislation. To date, we have not been able to do that. So I offer this amendment in good faith and hope that we can finally come to closure on what I consider to be the single most important piece of health legislation facing the Congress and our country today. I yield the floor. Mr. BOND addressed the Chair.