Mike DeWine

Mr. DeWINE

Mr. DeWINE. The House included $305 million in its Fiscal Year 2004 Labor-Health and Human Services-Education bill. I have agreed to withdraw my amendment, but I urge the senior Senator from Pennsylvania to continue working to provide in conference the most funding possible for the Graduate Medical Education program.

Mr. DeWINE. Children's hospitals train almost 30 percent of all pediatricians and half of all pediatric specialists. They also provide more than 40 percent of the hospital care in this country for children needing cardiac surgery, children suffering with cancer, and children with cerebral palsy.

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

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I thank my colleague, Senator Specter, for all of the work he has put into drafting and shepherding the Fiscal Year 2004 Labor-Health and Human Services-Education appropriations bill. His leadership and his efforts should be commended. Last week, I offered an amendment in support of our Nation's children's hospitals. My amendment would equalize the funding that children's hospitals receive compared to adult hospitals. Specifically, the amendment would provide an additional $15 million to fund the pediatric Graduate Medical Education program at $305 million. These monies are used by children's hospitals across the country to hire and retain residents who are interested in pediatric research and in becoming pediatricians. I ask my colleague, the Senior Senator from Pennsylvania, if he supports our Nation's children's hospitals and the Graduate Medical Education program?

Mr. DeWINE

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

Mr. DeWINE. Madam President, the amendment I offer now, along with Senators Alexander, Stabenow, Grassley, and Voinovich, will provide $3 million in funding for the Underground Railroad Education and Cultural Act, a 1998 law that Senator Collins and I wrote together. The Underground Railroad Education and Cultural Act was designed to assist in establishing programs to research, display, interpret, and collect artifacts and other items relating to the history of the underground railroad. The bill before us now has unfortunately zero-funded this program. I believe we must correct that. Our amendment would provide $3 million for this program. As my colleagues know, the history of the underground railroad is a vital part of the history of our great country. In the 20 years or so prior to the Civil War, it is estimated--of course, no one will ever know what the true figure is--that more than 40,000 slaves used this underground railroad, as we refer to it, as a pathway to their ultimate freedom. It is a great story in the history of our country. It is a great story every schoolchild in America should know about. More than 150 underground railroad sites have been identified in my State of Ohio alone. But Ohio is not unique. All the States that border along the Ohio River and were actually considered to be border States have sites on the underground railroad. There were people all along on both sides who helped slaves escape. African Americans helped slaves escape. White Americans helped slaves escape. There were so many heroes. Their stories need to be told. There are many more other sites out there that frankly need to be identified, and their stories need to be told as well. These sites symbolize freedom for thousands and thousands of enslaved Americans. When I visit these sites, as I have with my family--in fact, I had the opportunity this August during our recess to visit several of them--it makes me pause and think about the sacrifice that was made by so many people. It reminds us of the history of this country. It reminds us of the horror of slavery, a part of our history that simply has to be told. But it also reminds us of the good part of that history; that is, the sacrifice made by so many people so others could be free. This program is very important. I urge my colleagues to join me in support of this funding request. This funding request will enable this story to be told and told in a better way. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent at this point that the amendment be set aside.

Mr. DeWINE. Madam President, I will at some point, as I indicated this morning, be coming to the floor and offering an amendment concerning President Bush's International Mother and Child Prevention of HIV initiative. As I indicated this morning, unfortunately the bill before us does fall short by $60 million what the President requested. The President requested $150 million in regard to the amount of money to be provided for this initiative. I will be talking about this later and will be offering an amendment concerning it. This is the most cost- effective way to save lives. A number of my colleagues went with Senator Bill Frist to Africa. We returned just last week. We saw firsthand the good this program is already doing. For as little as $3, a pregnant woman can be given the help, the drugs she needs to ensure that her child will not be born HIV positive. The statistics are staggering. For a mother who is HIV positive, the odds are approximately 30 percent that she, untreated, will give birth to a child who will be HIV positive. We all know what that means, what horrible tragedy that is. In countries we visited such as Namibia and South Africa, there are now ongoing programs. Many of them, because of the initiative of President Bush and this Congress, are good people working, reaching out to these pregnant mothers who are HIV positive. They have reduced that percentage now down to 5 or 10 percent. If that mother can be given a drug prior to the birth of that child--as I said, it now costs as little as $2, $3, maybe $4--we can reduce the odds from 30 percent to giving birth to a child who is HIV positive down to as little as 10 percent and possibly as low as 5 percent. That is why it is so very important that we restore the funding in this bill to the $150 million requested by President Bush. I will be coming to the floor later on as we debate this bill and offering an amendment to restore the funding to the level President Bush requested. I will be back on the floor later on to do so. I yield the floor.

Mr. DeWINE. Madam President, I now call up amendment No. 1560.

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

Mr. DeWINE. Madam President, this amendment would increase the amount of pediatric graduate medical education funding to $305 million--up from the $290 million currently in the bill. I remind my colleagues that a sense-of-the-Senate amendment was attached to this year's budget resolution which indicated that children's graduate medical education should be funded at $305 million. This amendment would mirror the sense-of-the-Senate resolution which we have already adopted. That is all it would do. But I believe it is important that we provide these additional dollars. This funding for pediatric graduate medical education is truly a vital part of our efforts to protect children's health in this country. To date, children's hospitals, though they represent only 1 percent of all hospitals in the country, train 30 percent of all pediatricians and 50 percent of all pediatric specialists. They also provide hospital care to almost 50 percent of all seriously ill children in this country. Furthermore, children's hospitals serve as the health care safety net for low-income children in their respective communities and are often the sole regional providers of many critical pediatric services. These children's hospitals are often the only source of many pediatric specialty services, and it is their graduate training programs that make these services possible. Funding for pediatric graduate medical education helps provide our Nation with highly qualified pediatricians, pediatricians who can properly treat and care for our children when they are sick. Clearly, funding for GME in children's hospitals is a sound investment in children's health and provides stability for the future of the pediatric workforce. I urge my colleagues to join me in providing this additional $15 million in funding for graduate medical education in children's hospitals. Anyone who has had the occasion to take their child to a children's hospital, as I have, and to see the magical work these children's hospitals do, I think can appreciate the need for this amendment. To see the specialists descend on your child when you are concerned about that child's safety, maybe that child's life, is just something you really cannot describe. The children's hospitals will tell you that this graduate medical education money has been a lifesaver for them. It is essential that we provide this money through the appropriations process, frankly, because of a quirk in the law. It is a quirk in the law that we have to do it through the appropriations process because they do not automatically get the money through the entitlement process because, obviously, they do not serve many Medicare patients. So it does not come to them automatically, as it does all the other hospitals in the country. So every year we have to go through this process. I am simply asking that the funds be increased to $305 million. It is the right thing to do. It is the proper thing to do. I ask my colleagues to support this very simple amendment. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that this amendment be set aside for the time being.

Mr. DeWINE. Madam President, I call up my amendment numbered 1561.

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

Mr. DeWINE. Madam President, at this point I call up amendment No. 1578.

Mr. DeWINE. I would be more than happy to do that.

Mr. DeWINE. I yield.

Mr. DeWINE. Madam President, this amendment is a sense-of-the-Senate amendment expressing the importance of pediatric research at NIH. Specifically, this amendment says we should continue the work of the Pediatric Research Initiative. This is an effort I worked on with several of my colleagues and was included in the Children's Public Health Act of the year 2000. This initiative helps ensure that more funds can be dedicated to children's health research within the National Institutes of Health.

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

Mr. DeWINE. Madam President, the amendment I am now offering would fully fund poison control centers at $27.6 million. That is an increase of $5 million from what the bill currently funds at $22.3 million. Members of the Senate, there are currently over 70 poison control centers nationwide. These centers have fielded over 1 million phone calls since January 2002, answering questions about poisonings, drug abuse, product contents, substance identification interactions, and adverse reactions. They can answer questions and concerns about what would typically be called poison products--things such as cleaners, bleaches, anything you would find in your home, any emergency a family might face. This is the most common poison exposure for children, children who typically ingest household products such as cosmetics and personal care products, cleaning substances, pain relievers, foreign bodies, and plants. Our Nation's poison control centers handle an average of one poison call every 15 seconds. Clearly, these centers provide a vital service to the parents and family members. The money we provide in this bill will go toward the continuation of the centers' work, as well as the maintenance of the toll-free nationwide poison control hotline. That number, of course, is 1-800- 222-1222. Let me repeat that: 1-800-222-1222. That is a number that anybody in this country now can call. Wherever you are, if you are on vacation, if you are in your own home, if you are visiting someone, you can pick up the phone and call that number, and you will go onto a poison control hotline. I have used it. My daughter has used it for her children. It is something that is so very valuable for a parent, anyone who has children. And certainly it is not just for somebody with children. It is for anybody who is in a position to be around someone who has ingested something and they don't know what it is. As anyone who has visited poison control centers can tell you, it is also now particularly important in a day and age when we worry about terrorism. Poison control centers have a particular meaning for us today. With the funding in the bill, and with the additional funding that would be provided by my amendment, we are not just making an investment in poison control; rather, we are making it easier to keep our children, our friends, and ourselves safe and healthier. I therefore urge my colleagues to support this very modest investment in our health. And I might say, the Federal Government is only a small partner in the poison control centers. When you go and visit the poison control centers around the country, what you will find is that they are funded many times by the local hospitals that pay for them themselves. They are funded by State and local government units. The money we provide is a small part of the overall money, but it is a very crucial and very important part of that contribution to keep these poison control centers going. This is a very modest amendment, but it is a very important amendment. I urge my colleagues to support it when we do, in fact, vote on the amendment. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that this amendment be set aside.

Mr. DeWINE. I yield.

Mr. DeWINE

Mr. DeWINE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on September 4, 2003 at 9:30 a.m., in open and closed session to receive testimony on the proposed lease of 100 KC-767 aerial refueling tanker aircraft by the U.S. Air Force.

Mr. DeWINE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Science, Technology and Space be authorized to meet on September 4, 2003, at 3:30 pm on a new kind of science.

Mr. DeWINE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, September 4 at 2:30 p.m. to hold a closed hearing.

Mr. DeWINE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Property Rights be authorized to meet to conduct a hearing on ``What is Needed to Defend the Bipartisan Defense of Marriage Act of 1996,'' on Thursday, September 4, 2003, at 2:00 p.m. in SD226. Witness List Panel I: Rev. Dr. Ray Alexander Hammond II, Pastor, Bethel AME Church, Boston, MA; Mrs. Maggie Gallagher, President, Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, New York, NY; Mr. Gregory S. Coleman, Esq., Weil Gotshal & Manges LLP, Former Solicitor General, State of Texas, Austin, TX; Mr. Michael P. Farris, Esq., Chairman & General Counsel, Home School Legal Defense Association, President and Professor of Government, Patrick Henry College, Purcellville, VA; Prof. Dale Carpenter, Associate Professor of Law, University of Minnesota Law School, Minneapolis, MN; Mr. Keith Bradkowski, San Francisco, CA.

Mr. DeWINE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be authorized to meet during the session on Thursday, September 4, 2003, at 10:00 a.m., to hear testimony regarding U.S.-Cuba Economic Relations.

Mr. DeWINE

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to speak about an amendment I will be offering that will bring up the level of President Bush's international mother and child prevention of HIV initiative to the level which the President actually requested. Right now, the bill before us falls $60 million short of what the President requested. I believe we need to fix that. We need to get the numbers back up to what President Bush asked this Senate and asked this Congress to provide. The international mother and child prevention of HIV initiative is truly one of the most cost-effective ways that we can stop the spread of HIV/AIDS to children. This initiative very simply allows doctors and nurses to give drugs to pregnant women who are HIV positive, or who have AIDS, to lessen the chance that this disease is then passed on to their unborn babies. For as little as $3, doctors and nurses can give these mothers the drugs they need to lessen the likelihood that their babies are born HIV positive. In fact, when treated with drugs, we are seeing HIV/AIDS transmission rates from the mother who has AIDS to a child about to be born drop from 30 percent to 5 to 10 percent. It is almost a miracle. Less than a week ago, I returned from a 10-day trip to southern Africa, along with Majority Leader Bill Frist and Senators Warner, Enzi, Coleman, and Alexander. We traveled to South Africa, Mozambique, Botswana, and Namibia to assess the HIV/AIDS crisis in each one of these nations. On this trip, we saw firsthand how well these mother-to- child transmission programs are working in these countries and how important they are to saving the lives of these unborn babies. There are already many programs in place in these countries and in other countries around the world--programs that are working and programs that are saving lives. We heard so many times people saying, Thank you--thank you to the United States, thank you to President Bush--for helping set up these programs and for making these programs work. The bill in front of us provides additional resources for the continuation of these programs and the creation of more programs. The problem is that it does not go far enough. I simply will be asking in this amendment to fulfill the commitment and the request that President Bush made of this Congress to provide a specific amount which he has asked us to provide. These programs work. We need to get them fully funded. On our recent trip, for example, we visited a mother-to-child prevention program run by Catholic AIDS Action in Namibia, a nation with a 22.5-percent HIV rate for pregnant women--the fifth highest in the world. At St. Mary's Hospital in Rehoboth, Namibia, Catholic AIDS Action is doing a very good job in enrolling pregnant women in the Women-To-Infant Program. The program has an excellent success rate and is making a difference. We could see that difference. We heard about it. We met with and talked with a HIV-positive mother. She told us about how this program had reached out to her. She was so very happy and so very proud that, even though she was HIV positive, she had given birth to a child who was healthy and was not HIV positive. She was so very happy. What a miracle it was. What a great thing it was to see. We saw so many more examples of this throughout our trip. We saw so many good programs out there. People are already doing so much good work to stop the spread of this disease from mother to child. There are many more good programs ready to go. We just need to get them funded with all the funds they truly need. One of the most important things I took away from this trip is that we don't have time to delay in helping these people. Each day we delay, people die--real people, not statistics, real parents and children and babies. And there are things we can do now to start saving these lives. Time, as the President of the United States told this Congress, is simply not on our side. We need to move forward and provide the proper levels of assistance. So I will be asking my colleagues to support the amendment I will be offering, an amendment to provide the President of the United States with the level of funding he requested for the mother and child initiative. Doing so will help save countless lives and offer hope to the next generation for a life free from HIV. It is the right thing to do. I thank the Chair and yield the floor. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.