Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Of course I yield.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let the record show there is a search for scope around here. The President's number is 456-1414. Certainly, the Senator can consult with the President on that issue. It is now October 19. We are keeping the Senate in session and preventing the Senate from doing business in many ways. We have something pending. As soon as we finish these votes, do you know what is pending on the floor of the Senate? The motion to proceed to S. 2557. Do you know when the motion to proceed was filed in the Senate? A month ago; a motion to proceed to an energy bill. Does anybody think there was ever an intent to proceed to a bill? No. Why is this motion to proceed pending? To block every other amendment that would be offered by anybody else in the Senate. So the purpose is, keep us here for the desires of those who need to do the appropriations bills but don't let anybody do anything else with respect to other issues. That is the purpose of this block motion. It has been in place a month. Some of us chafe a little by being told, you stay in session for our purposes; that is, the purposes of those who control the agenda. But in terms of what you are here for, in terms of your desires and your passions on a range of issues, forget it because we will block it with this motion to proceed. Now, this continuing resolution takes us until next Wednesday. We apparently will have at least two votes stacked, two sequential votes, following this discussion. Then I guess the question is--this is Thursday--what happens tomorrow, on Friday or Saturday or Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday? Who is doing what? When are we going to get these issues resolved? I think the import of the question from my colleague was that this is somebody else's fault. Maybe so. Maybe someone hasn't provided a list of scope here or there. All I can say is it is now October 19. This is, I think, the third CR, perhaps the fourth, and more will be required, I suspect. But if we are going to be in session, if we are going to be in session for some while, some days, then I ask the question, why aren't we working on other issues? Why should we be prevented--those on this side of the aisle--from offering amendments on a range of issues? I think it is not the way to run this Senate, to put up a blocking motion. I believe it was put up September 22. It is now October 19. The import of that blocking motion to proceed was to say we are only going to allow the Senate to work on the following issues, and we will do it by blocking all other amendments to be offered. I don't know what next week will bring. I will say the President indicated he is not going to sign long-term continuing resolutions. I don't know how you could. A week from now, next Wednesday, is October 25. I don't know how much further you can take this session of Congress. At some point we have to do the appropriations bills and resolve the funding issues. I don't think anybody has had an easy job doing this. The difficulty of this job started with the passage of the budget. That budget never added up. It was not realistic. We all knew we would have to spend more money than called for in the budgets on discretionary spending.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I may not take all of the 10 minutes, but I want to speak on the continuing resolution for a moment. It is now Thursday, October 19. We have a continuing resolution, which in English means continuing the funding for the Government for appropriations bills that have not yet been completed, until next Wednesday. This is one more in a series of continuing resolutions required by this Congress because we do not have the appropriations bills completed and sent to the President to be signed into law. Now we have to do this. I understand that. We have to pass a continuing resolution. But this is not the way for the Senate to do its business. I came from a meeting we had with the President. The President indicated this is the last continuing resolution of this sort that he will sign. He indicated the next continuing resolution will be for 24 hours, no more than 24 hours. That is what he told a large group of people a bit ago. This continuing resolution takes us until next Wednesday, after which, apparently, continuing resolutions will be for no more than----

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me reclaim my time. If the Senator from Alaska heard anything that represented ``abuse,'' that was not my intent. If there were discussions yesterday about lifting the cap, yesterday was October 18, 18 days past the October 1st deadline. I happen to think the chairman of the Appropriations Committee is someone for whom I have had great respect. I don't think he has caused these problems. But I do think if you go back to the spring of this year with respect to the budget that was passed, there was not enough money in it, and we knew it then. There wasn't enough money in it for domestic discretionary programs, and we knew we would come to the end of the process with gridlock. Now we have this gridlock, and then we have these CRs that say: By the way, we will keep you in session until Wednesday but only on our issue. If you have issues--prescription drugs, minimum wage, the Patients' Bill of Rights--you ought not offer them, and we will block you. So they block it for a month. I say to my colleagues, if you were in this circumstance, I don't think you would be as quiet as we have been. The fact is, we have been blocked for a month from offering amendments dealing with the central issues that we came to Congress to deal with and resolve and deal with. People talk about not leaving people behind. There are a whole lot of folks left behind with the agenda this Congress hasn't dealt with. I am going to relinquish the floor, and we will vote on a CR. I assume this is not the last CR. I assume we will have more. I don't think any of us ought to be white eyed with surprise when we find ourselves in October trying to get out of a budget that was passed this spring. Incidentally, that is a budget I did not vote for because, in my judgment, it did not add up in the first place. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. Of course.

Mr. DORGAN. I thank the Senator for yielding for a brief question. If the Senator's contention is there was enough money in the budget this spring for domestic discretionary, why, then, are people on his side discussing the need to increase the budget caps, the spending caps?

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, will the Senator from Pennsylvania yield?

Mr. DORGAN. Reserving the right to object--and I shall not object--I would like to observe, I have yielded to requests on that side and I hope the Senator will yield at the end of his time.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, as we near the end of this Congress, one of the profound disappointments for me and for a number of others serving in the Senate is the inattention paid to the issue of arms control, especially the issue of nuclear arms reduction. As we debate a range of public policy issues in this country during the campaigns for the House and the Senate and the Presidency, we will hear a lot about health care, education, taxes, and economic growth, but we hear almost nothing about the issue of nuclear arms reduction. It is important to understand what kind of nuclear weapons exist in our world and why nuclear arms reductions are important for us, our children, and our future. The nuclear arsenal in this world totals about 32,000 nuclear weapons--32,000 nuclear weapons. The Russians have about 20,000 of them, many of them tactical nuclear weapons, some strategic. The United States has about 10,500 nuclear weapons. France, China, Israel, the United Kingdom, India, Pakistan also have nuclear weapons. We know India and Pakistan have a few nuclear weapons because they have exploded those nuclear weapons right under each other's chin by their borders. These are countries that do not like each other, and they have tested nuclear weapons recently, much to the consternation of the rest of the world. We have a nuclear arsenal in this world that is frightening. What does this mean, 32,000 nuclear weapons? Let me put it in some perspective. The bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima killed 100,000 people. The bomb was named ``Little Boy.'' It was 15 kilotons. It was 6,500 times more effective and more efficient, as they say--only people who are involved in this could use that word, I suppose--than ordinary high-explosive bombs. The amount of nuclear weapons that exist today in this world is equivalent to 1 million Hiroshima bombs. Think of that. The bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima killed 100,000 people. We have the equivalent of 1 million of those bombs among the countries that possess nuclear weapons. It is hard for anyone to understand fully what this means. The world's nuclear arsenal today has a total yield of about 15 billion tons of TNT. That is equivalent to the power of 1 million Hiroshima- type bombs. This Congress has done very little on the issue of arms control and arms reduction. It took a giant step backward, in my judgment, in the debate over the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty. A little over one year ago, on October 13, 1999, this Senate rejected ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty. The Senate did not hold hearings for 2 years on that issue. Then there were 2 days of hearings cobbled together quickly, and then the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty was brought before the Senate. There were 2\1/2\ days of floor debate, and then it was defeated. I guess it was defeated by those who say they do not want us involved in the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty. However, 160 other countries have already signed the treaty. It was interesting. Just before the vote a year ago, Mr. Blair, Mr. Chirac, and Mr. Schroeder from England, France, and Germany, wrote the following in an op-ed piece that was rather unprecedented, published in the Washington Post: Failure to ratify the CTBT will be a failure in our struggle against proliferation. The stabilizing effect of the Non-Proliferation Treaty . . . would be undermined. Disarmament negotiations would suffer. This is from three of our closest allies. Their point was we have this struggle to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Who else will gain possession of nuclear weapons? Many want them. Can we stop the spread of nuclear weapons and stop the spread of delivery vehicles for those nuclear weapons? It is a question this Congress needs to answer. Regrettably, when it voted on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty, it answered no; that is not the priority. I wonder how many of our colleagues are aware of an incident that occurred December 3, 1997, in the dark hours of the early morning in the Barents Sea off the coast of Norway. That morning of December 3, 1997, several Russian ballistic missile submarines surfaced in the cold water and prepared to fire SS-20 missiles. SS-20 missiles have the capability of carrying 10 nuclear warheads. They travel 5,000 miles-- far enough to reach the United States from the Barents Sea. On that morning, those Russian submarines surfaced and launched 20 ballistic missiles. Roaring skyward, they rose to 30,000 feet. They were tracked by our space command in NORAD, and at 30,000 feet, all of those Russian missiles exploded. Why did those Russian missiles explode? Those missiles did not have nuclear warheads on them. Those missiles were not part of a Russian missile attack on the United States. In fact, seven American weapons inspectors were there, watching from a ship a few miles away as the Russian missiles were launched. These self-destruct launches were a quick and a cheap way for the Russians to destroy submarine-launched missiles that they were required to destroy under the START I arms control treaty they have with the United States. What an interesting thing to see, the firing of missiles to destroy them--no, not to terrorize or attack an enemy, but to destroy the missiles because arms control agreements require that the missiles be destroyed. With consent, I hold up a piece of metal that comes from a Backfire bomber. This is from a wing strut on an old Soviet Union--now Russian-- bomber called the Backfire bomber. This bomber would fly in this world carrying nuclear weapons from the cold war with the United States, threatening our country. How would I have the piece of a wing strut of a Russian Backfire bomber? Did we shoot it down? No, we did not shoot this bomber down. I would like to show a picture of what we did with this bomber. This is the Backfire bomber. As you can see, we cut it in half. Why are we cutting up Russian bombers? Because our arms control agreements require a reduction in nuclear arms and vehicles to deliver nuclear weapons. I have here ground up copper wire from a Typhoon Russian submarine. This used to be wiring on a Russian submarine that would stealthily move under the waters of this world with missiles and multiple warheads, nuclear warheads aimed at the United States of America. How is it that I hold in my hand copper wire from a Typhoon-class Russian submarine? Did we sink that submarine? Did we attack it and sink it and destroy it? No. What happened to the Typhoon submarine was it was brought to a shipyard, under the arms control agreement, and it was chopped up. I do not have a picture of what was left of it when this was brought to drydock and destroyed, but the fact is we cut these weapons systems up as part of our arms control agreements. This is what the submarine looks like in drydock as it is being destroyed. In the Ukraine, there is a little spot where you can travel and see some sunflowers growing. Do you know what used to be where the sunflowers now exist? A Russian missile with multiple nuclear warheads aimed at the United States of America. The missile is now gone. Under arms control agreements, it was pulled out and destroyed because our agreements with the Russians require that to happen. Where there was once a missile aimed at the United States of America, there is now a field of sunflowers. What a wonderful metaphor for progress. I raise all these issues simply to say we have made significant progress in arms control and arms reduction, but not nearly as much as we must. Here is a chart of some of the examples of what we have done: 5,314 nuclear warheads have been removed, 507 ICBMs, 65 silos, 15 ballistic missile submarines, and 62 heavy long range bombers are gone--because we, through what is called the Nunn-Lugar program, have provided taxpayer funding to destroy the weapons that existed in the old Soviet Union, and now in Russia, to say, in concert with our agreements, we will reduce nuclear weapons. We have reduced nuclear weapons and they have reduced nuclear weapons. It makes a lot more sense to destroy these airplanes, missiles and warheads before they are used in hostile actions. It makes a lot more sense to destroy them by arms control agreements and arms reduction agreements. That is exactly what has been happening. Going back to the chart I put up, despite all the progress and all the reductions in nuclear arms, here is what is left. It is troublesome because there are a lot of countries that want to get into these arsenals, especially this one. There are a lot of countries, a lot of people, a lot of terrorist groups that want to grab hold of a nuclear weapon here or there, and have nuclear capability for themselves. That is very dangerous. That makes for a very dangerous world and a very dangerous future. Some days ago we witnessed a cowardly terrorist act of a couple of people in a boat, pulling up by the side of an American Navy ship, the U.S.S. Cole, creating an explosion that took the life of many of our young sailors who were serving their country. I indicated before, I send my thoughts and prayers to all of those families who are now grieving the loss of their loved ones. They should know the service and dedication of their loved ones in serving this country is something a grateful nation will never forget. But it is a dangerous world. The attack on the Cole reminds us again that there are those who want to commit acts of terrorism. It is a dangerous world. What if that small boat had contained a nuclear weapon? Don't you think those terrorists would love to get their hands on a nuclear weapon? Of course they would. There are many countries that do not yet have the capability of building nuclear weapons that desperately want it. They are struggling, even now, to try to get their hands on the arsenal, and on the mechanics and capabilities of making a nuclear weapon. We must understand how dangerous it will be for our future and for our children if we do not make arms reduction, and the development of new agreements and new treaties to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons job No. 1; we must understand how dangerous that is for our future. This Congress, as I indicated, decided it would not support the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty. Lord only knows why they would make that decision. It is beyond me. The test ban treaty has formally been ratified by 66 states, signed by 160 states. The major holdouts, incidentally, are the U.S., China, India, Pakistan, and North Korea. Six countries have signed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty and 14 have ratified it since our vote to turn it down last October. All of the NATO states, all of our NATO allies, have ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty except the United States. We are told by the critics that we not only should threaten our arms reduction agreements, including START I and START II, and the prospect of a Start III, we should also threaten all our arms control agreements--including the anti-ballistic missile agreement, which is so important, the center pole of the tent on arms reduction--we should threaten all of those for the sake of building a national missile defense program. We should threaten all of those for the sake of defeating the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty. It is interesting that this country has already decided of its own volition we will not test nuclear weapons. We decided 7 years ago we would not test nuclear weapons. So we have unilaterally said we will not test nuclear weapons, but we are then the country that says we will refuse to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty. That is not a step forward; that is a huge step backwards. I cannot describe my disappointment at a Congress that turns down the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty and the responsibility that should come with this country considering the nuclear weapons it has. I cannot describe how profound my disappointment is. We have a responsibility to provide leadership. It is our responsibility. We are the world's leader in this area. We must say that we and our allies and all other countries must work every day, all day, to make sure the spread of nuclear weapons stops; to make sure those who want to achieve the capability of making nuclear weapons will not be able to achieve that capability. We must do that. That is our responsibility. It is on our watch. We have a Senate that turns down a Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty but says: Let us build a national missile defense no matter what it costs; let's build a national missile defense system no matter what its consequences to our relationship with others in the nuclear club; let's build a national missile defense system no matter what it does to our arms control agreements. Build it, just build it; all the other things are irrelevant, they say. I disagree with that. We have a lot of threats to which this country must respond. Some of them are nuclear threats. Some of them are nuclear threats that result from a rogue state acquiring a ballistic missile, and attaching to that missile a nuclear warhead, and aiming it at the United States. That truly is a threat. However, it is one of the least likely threats, I might suggest, and all experts have suggested that as well. The most likely threat, by far, is not to have a rogue nation acquire an intercontinental ballistic missile and fire it at the United States with a nuclear warhead; the most likely threat, by far, is for a rogue nation or a terrorist group to achieve some sort of suitcase nuclear bomb and plant it in the trunk of a rusty Yugo car, set that car on a dock in New York City, and hold the city hostage. That has nothing to do with an intercontinental ballistic missile. Far more likely is a small glass vial of deadly biological or chemical agents that can kill 100 million people. Or far more likely, in my judgment--if the threat is a missile threat--is from a cruise missile, not an intercontinental ballistic missile. A cruise missile, which would be more readily available, is a missile which travels at 500 feet above the ground at 500 miles an hour, roughly, and is not detectable or defensible from a national missile defense system once it is built. So we have our colleagues who turn down the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty and then say, by the way, we want to build a national missile defense system, and it will protect against one small sliver of the threat, and almost all the rest of the threat will be unresolved because we have spent all the money on this one small sliver, which is the least likely threat. If the attack on the U.S.S. Cole teaches us--and it should --it ought to teach us that the more likely threat to this country is a terrorist threat by two people on a boat or by someone driving a rental truck that is filled with a fertilizer bomb, as happened in Oklahoma City, or dozens of other approaches in which terrorists, or others, use their skill to try to wreak havoc through terrorist acts. My hope is that while this Congress seems oblivious to the value of arms control and arms reductions, we will at least have some kind of a discussion in this campaign going on in this country about how we feel, as Members of Congress and as Presidential candidates, about our responsibility to provide leadership to reduce the stockpile of nuclear arms and reduce the threat of nuclear war, and especially to stop the spread of nuclear weapons to those who want them but do not yet have them. What is our leadership responsibility? Some say: It is not our job. Not now. Not us. It is not time. I do not agree with that. We are kind of waltzing along as a country. Everything seems pretty good. The economy is doing pretty well. We have a great deal of uncertainty in the world. We have a country such as Russia with 20,000 nuclear weapons. We have a lot of others that aspire to get access to the delivery vehicles and to nuclear weapons. We have terrorist groups who are in terrorist training camps, as I speak, who would love to acquire small, low-yield nuclear weapons. We have command and control issues in Russia on both strategic and tactical nuclear weapons. Yet there is almost no discussion here in this Chamber--almost no discussion in the Senate--about these issues. To the extent there is discussion, it is discussion with a set of very special blinders, saying: Let's do the following. Let's build a national missile defense system. And let's build it now. And notwithstanding the consequences, we don't care what it costs, and we don't care what its consequences might be with respect to arms control agreements that now exist. That is not, in my judgment, the best of what we ought to be doing for future generations. It is our responsibility to lead on the issue of arms reduction and arms control. It is our responsibility to say to the world that 20,000 nuclear weapons in the Russian stockpile is too much, and 10,500 nuclear weapons in our stockpile is too much, and we need to begin systematic reduction. We know what does not work, and we know what does work. What does work is the Nunn-Lugar program, in which this country engages in treaties and, with the verification of those treaties, helps pay for the systematic destruction of nuclear weapons and delivery systems for those nuclear weapons. We know that works. We have been doing it now for several years. I held in my hand, as I said earlier, a part of a Russian bomber wing. We did not shoot it down, we sawed it up. I held something from a nuclear submarine. We did not sink it, we dismantled it. One day, on the floor of the Senate, I held a hinge from an ICBM silo that was located in the Ukraine. I had that metal hinge not because we destroyed that silo with a nuclear weapon but because we sent bulldozers and heavy equipment over there and took the silo out. What a remarkable success. Nunn-Lugar, that is what the program is called; Republican- Democrat; Lugar a Republican, Nunn a Democrat. Nunn-Lugar: These two people provided leadership in the Senate saying, this is the program we ought to have to try to steer an area of arms reductions compliance with treaties that actually reduce the nuclear threat. But it is just a step. It is just a step in what ought to be a journey for us, a long journey, but one we must stick to and must reflect as a priority for our country. So I just wanted to come, as we finish this session of Congress, to say I have been profoundly disappointed that in this Congress we have made no progress on the issue of stopping the spread of nuclear weapons. We have a requirement to provide the leadership in this world on that issue. We have made no progress on the two major issues: The Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty, we took a huge step backward in terms of our world leadership responsibilities; and, second, on the issue of national missile defense, we have sent a signal to others that our arms control agreements really do not matter very much. That is, in my judgment, exactly the wrong signal to be sending. I heard the Senator from Texas, my colleague, Mr. Gramm, talk about another issue. I can't do his Texas twang, but he said: I am going to be here next year. Well, he is. I am going to be here next year as well. We have terms in the Senate. I was elected by my State to come and serve my State's interests here in the Senate and serve the interests of this country. I am going to be here. It is my intention, with whatever strength I have, to try to provide some constructive leadership, with my colleagues, to say: This country has a significant responsibility to address the issue of stopping the spread of nuclear weapons. To the extent that we don't care much about it, don't do much about it, don't discuss it, don't talk about it, don't debate it, in my judgment, our country's future is severely injured. I hope that as we turn the corner and come to January and swear in the 107th Congress, the issue of arms control and arms reductions-- dealing with the stopping of the spread of nuclear weapons and the proliferation of both nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles for them-- can become part of a significant debate in Congress because all Members of Congress will understand our responsibility and its importance. Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning business for 20 minutes.

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I want to take a few moments to share my thoughts on the prescription drug reimportation provision included in the Agriculture appropriations conference report before the Senate. As my colleagues know, I have been concerned for a long while that American consumers are charged two to three times more for prescription drugs than consumers in other countries pay. In fact, in June of 1999, I introduced bipartisan legislation, the International Prescription Drug Parity Act, to address this unfair pricing situation by allowing U.S. pharmacists and drug wholesalers to reimport FDA-approved prescription drugs from other countries at a fraction of the cost. Ten months ago on a cold, snowy day, I accompanied a group of North Dakota senior citizens and pharmacists on a trip to Emerson in Manitoba, Canada. Emerson, Canada, is a tiny one-horse town just 5 miles from the North Dakota-Canadian border. In Emerson, I watched as my North Dakota constituents saved hundreds of dollars each on the exact same prescription drugs available to them in the United States. One of the folks who went with me was a 70-year-old Medicare beneficiary from Fargo, ND, named Sylvia Miller. Sylvia has diabetes, heart problems, and emphysema, and she takes at least seven different medications each day for her various ailments. Sylvia told me that last year she received $4,700 in Social Security benefits and paid $4,900 for her prescription drugs. ``Things don't add up, do they?'' she asked. By making the short trip across the border to Canada, Sylvia was able to cut her monthly prescription drug bill in half. As Sylvia said in a Fargo Forum article about this trip, ``It sure would be nice if I could just go over to my own drug store and get those prices.'' Sylvia couldn't be more right. No American should be forced to travel to Canada or Mexico just to get more affordable prices for his or her prescription drugs. Yet a prescription drug that costs $1 in the United States costs only 64 cents in Canada, 65 cents in Great Britain, 57 cents in France, and 51 cents in Italy. Those price differences compel many senior citizens who are struggling to pay for their medications and make ends meet to leave the United States to get lower prices elsewhere. Time and again over the last several years I have been asked by North Dakota consumers why the global economy doesn't work when it comes to prescription drugs. Why can't local pharmacists travel to Canada to buy these same medications at the lower prices and pass along the savings to their customers? Good question. The answer is that, under current Federal law, only the pharmaceutical manufacturers can reimport prescription drugs into the United States from another country--even though these drugs were originally made in America and approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The lack of competition in the U.S. marketplace has created a situation in which the big drug companies can charge American consumers the maximum the market can bear. And if their 18 percent profit margins are any indication, that is exactly what the drugmakers are doing. During the Senate's debate on the Agriculture appropriations bill, Senator Jeffords and I, along with Senators Wellstone, Gorton, and others, offered an amendment to allow U.S. pharmacists and wholesalers to reimport FDA-approved prescription drugs from Canada, Mexico, and other countries where these medications are sold at a fraction of the price. Our amendment included appropriate safeguards to ensure that only safe and effective FDA-approved medications, made in FDA-approved manufacturing facilities and for which safe handling could be assured, would be imported. This amendment was passed overwhelmingly by the Senate by a 74-21 vote. The House also overwhelmingly passed amendments to the Agriculture bill back in July that would have allowed for prescription drug importation, although without the safety measures adopted in the Senate. Normally at this point, a House-Senate conference committee would have begun meeting to iron out the differences between the House and Senate bills. This year, however, most of the details were worked out behind closed doors and without the involvement of most of the members of the conference committee. As a result, many of us who have been working on prescription drug importation legislation for nearly 2 years were shut out of the negotiations. I am very disappointed with the route that the House and Senate leadership took to develop the final reimportation language. When the Agriculture Appropriations Conference Committee, on which I served, met, the conferees were presented with final language that had been negotiated largely among only the House and Senate majority leadership. While this language is similar to the Jeffords-Dorgan amendment passed in July, there are some changes in the language. Some of these changes represent improvement, but some changes were not made that should have been. I share in my colleagues' disappointment that some of the changes that I and others proposed, which would have improved this provision, were not included in the final language. After the Senate passed the Jeffords-Dorgan amendment, a few changes were brought to our attention that would help to ensure that our amendment meets the goal of achieving lower prices for American consumers. Therefore, during the conference, I tried to strengthen the final language in a few key areas. The changes I proposed would have provided greater certainty that this approach would meet my goal of lowering drug prices for American consumers, but unfortunately they were rejected. First, the FDA suggested, and I agreed, that we should require the drug companies to provide importers with the FDA-approved labeling. I think it is pretty indisputable that I, as well as the other authors of the various prescription drug importation bills, intended all along for imported products to be FDA-approved, including having the appropriate labeling. I would prefer that the final provision make this explicit. However, I believe the final language, which gives the Secretary of Health and Human Services new authority to do whatever she believes is necessary to facilitate importation, provides the needed authorization to accomplish this end through the regulations implementing importation. It is my hope that the Secretary who implements this provision will write strong rules to ensure that reimportation will succeed in giving Americans access to safe, cost-effective medicines. Second, Congressman Waxman and others pointed out that drug companies could prevent reimportation from occurring by requiring their foreign distributors to sign contracts promising not to re-sell their products to U.S. importers. To address this concern, the final provision includes language not in the original Jeffords-Dorgan amendment to prevent the drugmakers from entering into agreements with their distributors that would have the effect of preventing reimportation. Here, too, I wish that this language were stronger and broader, and I unsuccessfully proposed strengthening it. I have no doubt that the drug companies are already searching for ways to thwart this legislation. If the drug manufacturers do take steps to clearly and purposefully circumvent this legislation, I personally am committed to closing any loopholes or taking another tact altogether to achieve fairer drug prices for American consumers. Let me make one final point. I think this legislation sends an important message to the big drug companies that Congress will no longer tolerate unfair prescription drug prices. But this legislation is just one step, and it is no substitute for adding a prescription drug benefit to the Medicare program. I have been saying all along that we have a two-prong problem with prescription drugs in this country. First, prescription drugs cost too much, and I have been fighting for a strong reimportation provision so that we can put pressure on the drug companies to lower their prices. Second, there are too many Medicare beneficiaries who have no prescription drug coverage, and they need it. When the Medicare program was created in 1965, prescription drugs weren't the significant part of the practice of medicine that they are today. Congress must modernize the Medicare program by creating a prescription drug benefit in Medicare, and we should do it this year.

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, last evening I watched the Presidential debate, as I am sure many other Americans did as well. I was thinking, after the debate, that those who claim there is not a difference between these candidates, and not a choice in this election, just have not been listening. There is clearly a choice and a difference between the two Presidential candidates. I happen to believe both are pretty good people. You don't get to the point where you achieve the nomination from your party for the Presidency of the United States without having some significant experience and talent. But there are vast differences in public policy. I want to talk just a little about this, and especially about one of the significant issues in this campaign: the proposals for tax cuts. Governor Bush has proposed tax cuts that are somewhere in the vicinity of $1.5 trillion over the coming 10 years. We have had a wonderful economy in recent years. This country has been blessed with economic opportunity and growth that is unprecedented. We have the strongest economy in the world. Virtually everything in our economy has been headed in the right direction. Unemployment has been down; inflation has been down; home ownership up. Virtually all of the indicators of economic health have been good. This economy has been heading in the right direction. One factor in that health is that Congress made some choices early on; difficult choices, to be sure, but ones that helped put this economy back on track. I worry very much that, as some economists tell us there will be surpluses for the next 10 years, this rush to enact $1.5 trillion in tax cuts even before the surpluses exist could lead us to a much different economic place. If we take that path, and if we don't get the surpluses we expect, then we will begin to experience, once again, Federal budget deficits. We will be right back in the same dark hole of budget deficits and lower economic growth and more economic trouble. I will read a couple of quotes. There is no cause for worry. The high tide of prosperity is going to continue. September 1928, by Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon. No Congress of the United States ever assembled on surveying the state of the Union has met a more pleasing prospect than that which appears at the present time. December 4, 1928, President Calvin Coolidge. Economic forecasting is a tricky business under the very best of circumstances. But it is particularly suspect in the political arena, when partisan agendas are at stake and when the forecasts purport to show whether someone's agenda can work or not work. We have two classes of forecasters, according to one economist: those who don't know, and those who don't know they don't know. We might want to add a third class of economist: those who don't know but don't care because they have an agenda to justify in the political arena with their forecasts. The problem with economic forecasting is not just uncertainty around the edges. The problem goes to the very core of the endeavor. Most forecasting is simply linear; that is, it assumes that tomorrow will be pretty much like yesterday with just a little something added on. Of course, life is not linear. There are sudden lurches and jolts which none of us can anticipate. Yet forecasters always have a model they use that anticipates tomorrow will reflect the experience of yesterday. If we start writing tax refund checks with money we don't yet have and return to the staggering deficits of recent times--a $290 billion deficit the year this administration took office 8 years ago--we will have a much less certain economic future. All of us should understand that. The reason I want to talk about this is that it is at the core of the debate in the Presidential contest. The question for me is, Are we going to move forward and build on our economic success, or are we going to risk slipping back into big deficits? How much budget surplus is there? We hear candidates talk about trillions, $3 trillion, $4 trillion, $4.5 trillion. I went to a high school with 40 kids in all four grades. My class was ninth. We didn't have a lot of advanced math. We never studied trillions, I confess. I am not sure I understand what a trillion is. I know how many zeros exist in a trillion, but I am not sure I, nor anyone else in this Chamber, knows exactly what a trillion is. So we hear the Congressional Budget Office say, you have an estimated $4.6 trillion surplus in the coming 10 years. Then we hear candidates say, if we have all this surplus, let's propose a $1.5 trillion tax cut, most of which will go to the upper income folks, which I will talk about in a moment. The problem here is this: We may never have this surplus. First of all, $2.4 trillion belongs to the Social Security trust fund. It has to go there and should not be touched by anyone for any other purpose. Another $360 billion goes to the Medicare trust fund. It ought to be put away and not touched for any other purpose. Realistic spending adjustments will be about $600 billion; we are making these right now to exceed the budget caps because the budget that was passed earlier this year was wildly unrealistic in terms of what is needed for education and health care and a range of other issues, just to keep pace with increased population needs. These figures, incidentally, are from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. This organization says that, if you also include amounts necessary for Social Security and Medicare solvency, which you are going to have to do, you have probably a $700 billion estimated surplus. That is if everything goes right--$700 billion, not $4.6 trillion. Now, with this prospect, if you add a $1.5 trillion tax cut, what do you have left? Almost a $1 trillion deficit. Should we be a bit cautious? Should we be concerned about talk of giving back taxes on a permanent basis based on surpluses that don't yet exist? The answer is yes. We would be, in my judgment, far better off if we decided to establish some basic principles for the use of any estimated surplus. The priorities I think are these: First, we ought to pay down the Federal debt. Second, we ought to ensure the long-term solvency of Social Security and Medicare. Then we ought to address the urgent needs of this Nation, such as repairing our schools and making sure our kids are walking through classroom doors in the best schools in the world; and dealing with the prescription drug prices that are too high for many of our senior citizens to afford. Then we should provide targeted tax relief for working families. There is a very big difference in the agenda of the candidates for President. Governor Bush says his priority is to provide a very large tax cut. The risk is that we won't have the money for a $1.5 trillion tax cut. The risk is that we may well go into a $1 trillion deficit because of that proposed tax cut. I hope that will not be the case, but it is certainly possible. The problem with the tax cut itself is, even if you decided we should cut some taxes, the question is for whom and which taxes. Here is the proposed tax cut by Governor Bush. You can see the lowest 20 percent get $42 apiece a year, and the top 1 percent get $46,000 each. In the debate last night, Governor Bush said: Well, of course, the wealthy, the upper income people get most of the tax cuts; they pay most of the taxes. You can say that only if you are using a magnifying glass to suggest that the only taxes people pay are income taxes. I have a chart that shows something interesting. People pay $612 billion in payroll taxes in this country. Go to a convenience store somewhere. Maybe you will run into a person working in that convenience store for the minimum wage, working 40 hours a week, trying to raise two or three kids. They pay more in payroll taxes than they pay in income taxes. Yet that doesn't count, according to Governor Bush. All that counts is this: Let's give money back based on income taxes. How about proposing a tax cut to the American people based on their real tax burden? Let me show you that burden. The fact is, 99 percent of the people in the bottom fifth income bracket in this country pay more in payroll taxes than they do in income taxes. As to the second fifth, 92 percent pay more in payroll taxes than they do in income taxes. Those folks work hard every day. They get a check that is less than their salary because money is taken out. Why is money taken out? For taxes. Which taxes? Payroll taxes as well as income taxes. Then they are told that when it comes to tax cuts, they don't count because we are going to give tax cuts based solely on who pays income taxes. So the wealthiest get the biggest tax cuts. Is that fair to the people at the bottom of the economic ladder who work hard every day and who pay heavier payroll taxes than they do income taxes? The answer is absolutely not. That is another difference in philosophy. There are people in this Chamber and people who are advisers to Governor Bush and others who believe that the proper approach to taxation is to tax work and exempt investment. That is their philosophy. Why? It is a typical political debate that has gone on for decades. Do you believe this economy works best by pouring something in at the top--that is called trickle down--or by nurturing something at the bottom, called percolate up? Do you believe America's economic engine works best if you just get some cans and pour it in the top? Or do you believe that if you give everybody at the bottom a little something to work with, that this economic engine works because things percolate up? It is a difference in philosophy. Governor Bush believes, as do those who control the Congress, in the trickle-down approach. I received a note from a North Dakotan one day, a farmer. He said: I have been living under this trickle-down stuff for 15 years, and I ain't even got damp yet. Of course, Hubert Humphrey used to describe the trickle-down approach in his famous quote: That is where you give the horse some hay to eat, hoping that later the birds will have something to nibble on. So we have this debate in the country. Who is right? It seems to me that if we are going to do this in a conservative, thoughtful way, we ought to decide the following: We don't know what the future holds. Let us hope the future is as wonderful as the last 6 or 8 years have been in terms of economic performance. Things are better in the country; everyone understands things are better. You can stand on this floor and say, like the rooster taking credit for the sunup, that this person or that person should get the credit for the success of the economy. The fact is, we were headed in the wrong direction. This economy was in deep trouble. We had run up a $5.7 trillion in debt, and we had a $290 billion annual deficit in 1992. We were moving in the wrong direction very rapidly. We in this Chamber, and over in the House--by one vote in each Chamber--passed a new economic plan. It was controversial as the dickens. It was not easy to vote for. In fact, let me read a couple of statements that were made at the time on the floor of the Senate. I will not read the authors, but we had people stand up on the floor of the Senate, and they had their own predictions regarding what this economic plan would be for our country. On August 6, 1993, one of my colleagues stood up and said: So we are still going to pile up some more debt, but most of all, we are going to cost jobs in this country [with this plan]. Another Senator, another colleague, said: Make no mistake, these higher rates will cost jobs [in this plan of yours]. Another one said: When all is said and done, people will pay more taxes, the economy will create fewer jobs, government will spend more money, and the American people will be worse off. Another said: It will flatten the economy. That was at a time when we had an anemic economy, with slow growth, huge deficits, and moving in the wrong direction. And where are we in the year 1999 and the year 2000, after 8 years of that experience? We have an economy that is the envy of the world, growing faster than any other industrial economy in the world. Unemployment is down. More people are working. Welfare rolls are down. Inflation is down. Home ownership is up. Almost every indicator of economic health describes a country that is doing better. What should we do at this point? Some say give huge tax cuts, right now. Let's put them in law right now, lock them down. If during good economic times you don't use the opportunity to pay down the Federal debt, you are never going to be able to pay down the debt. When you run up debt during tougher times, you ought to pay it down during better times. That is as conservative an ethic as you can have, it seems to me. Why this Congress would not embrace that is beyond me. Why we would not agree together that it is our responsibility to pay down the debt during better times--what greater gift could there be to America's children than to unsaddle them from the debt, the $4.7 trillion that was added between 1980 and the late 1990s? What better gift could we give to them than to say our first job is to pay down this Federal debt? But, no, there is some political attractiveness, I guess, to say we want to give tax cuts. Gee, that is an easy thing to say, but it is not at this point a very responsible fiscal policy--especially when the largest portion of those cuts would go to the wealthiest Americans who have done the best in this economy. It seems to me that tax cuts ought to come after the paydown of the debt and a number of other obligations. But second, when we do them-- and we should if we have surpluses--we ought to do them based upon the burden the American families have in the workplace, which includes not just the income tax but also the payroll tax. Those are the things I think we ought to consider. Now, the other issue in the debate last night was, whose side are you on? I know there is a difference between the two candidates. Let me say I am not here to say one candidate is bad and the other is good. That is not my role. My role is to say there is a very significant difference in what they believe and how they approach public policy. I think on the key issues the American people ought to evaluate these matters that were before this Congress. A Patients' Bill of Rights: Who is on whose side on the Patients' Bill of Rights? Does anybody really believe that with the growth of the HMOs and managed care organizations that patients are just fine; let them fend for themselves? Or do people really understand it is time to do something to pass a Patients' Bill of Rights? And if they believe we ought to, why has this Congress not been willing to do it? I will tell you why: because too many in this Congress stand with the insurance companies and the managed care organizations, and too few have been willing to stand on the side of patients. We have heard story after story of people who have had to fight cancer and fight their HMOs at the same time. These stories have been told on the floor of this Senate. I will state again that at one hearing I held on this issue with my colleague from Nevada, a woman stood up and held a picture of her son. She began crying as she described her son's death on his 16th birthday. Her son suffered from leukemia and desperately needed a special kind of treatment in order to have a chance to live. But he had to fight his cancer and fight his managed care organization at the same time because the managed care organization withheld that treatment. She said her son looked up at him from his bedside and said: Mom, how can they do this to a kid like me? It is not fair to have a child or have parents fight cancer and the insurance company at the same time. That is not a fair fight. Should we pass a Patients' Bill of Rights? Yes, we should. It is what Vice President Gore said last evening. It is what we said in this Congress. Why don't we do it? Because too many stand on the side of the bigger economic interests and are unwilling to stand on the side of patients. They say the Senate passed a Patients' Bill of Rights. No, the Senate passed a ``patients' bill of goods.'' It was like playing charades, pulling on your ear and saying: It sounds like. Those who wrote it knew what they were doing. Republicans in the House of Representatives say it not only is not worth anything, it is a giant step backwards. The Republicans in the House who support the bipartisan Dingell-Norwood bill know what we ought to do, and this Senate has been unwilling to do it. Minimum wage: We have people every day who are working their hearts out trying to take care of their families at the bottom of the economic ladder. Somehow, while this Congress is in a rush to help those at the top of the income ladder with tax cuts, these folks who are working at the bottom of the economic ladder, trying to get ahead, are left behind. They deserve an increase in the minimum wage. They deserve to keep pace. It ought to be a priority in this Congress to say work matters and we value you. If you are struggling to work and take care of your families--good for you. We want to do something to make sure you keep pace with that minimum wage. Other issues include prescription drugs and Medicare. Of course we ought to add a prescription drug benefit to Medicare, but this Congress does not seem to want to get there. Helping family farmers: You can't say you are pro family and not stand for family farmers. Education: We have not even passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. We have a lot to do. There are big differences between the political parties. That doesn't mean one is good and one is bad. It simply means there are significant policy choices the American people have an opportunity to make. We have been struggling mightily on these issues. We are a minority on my side of the aisle. The debate last night highlighted some of the differences. And America needs to make a choice. Which path do they want to choose? One with more risk that might upset this economy of ours and throw us back into the same deficit ditch we were in before, or one that is more cautious, that says one of our priorities is to pay down the debt? Or will we choose a course that says we want to stand with the American people against the larger economic interests? It is not a myth that the economic interests are getting bigger and bigger. Open the paper today and see who merged today. Yesterday it was two big oil companies. Tomorrow it will be two big banks. Every day the economic enterprises are getting bigger. And what is happening is every day the American people are finding they have less power in dealing with them, they have less power in confronting the prescription drug prices because the pharmaceutical manufacturers decide what the prices are, and they tell the American people: Pay up. If you don't like it, don't buy it. And they will charge ten times more for a cancer drug in the United States than the same drug they sell in Canada. The American people need some help in confronting these concentrations of economic power. That is what we have been fighting for. My hope is that the next time someone says there is no difference in these campaigns, there is no difference between the two candidates for President, no difference between the Republican and Democrats, I hope they look at the record. There is a big difference. I hope they make a choice that says that difference matters in their lives, as well. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, the Senator from Montana, Mr. Baucus, wishes to make a presentation on the Agriculture appropriations bill. I intend to make a longer presentation. I ask he be recognized; that following his presentation, I be recognized in the regular order.

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

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I wish to make a comment about the tragic death last evening of Governor Carnahan of Missouri. Governor Carnahan, of course, was also a candidate for the Senate, a Governor of Missouri, Lieutenant Governor, and a distinguished officeholder for many years in the State of Missouri. His tragic death last evening is something that obviously allows all to say to his family, his widow, and the folks who were his friends and relatives, that our thoughts and prayers are with them. It is a difficult time, I know. This is a man who gave so much service to his country and such distinguished service to our country. My thoughts are with him and his family this morning.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I indicated I wanted to talk today about the appropriations bill conference report that is going to be considered by the Senate. The vote at this point is ordered for tomorrow. It is a vote on the Agriculture appropriations bill conference report. I am a member of the subcommittee dealing with Agriculture appropriations in the Senate. We have had a lengthy conference with the House of Representatives and have reported out a piece of legislation. While I am critical of the farm bill we have in this country because I believe it does not work, I do not want to start with criticism of anything or anybody. Rather, I want to start with compliments. I compliment Senator Thad Cochran who is the chairman of the Senate Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee. He does just an excellent job. I appreciate very much the work he does. I compliment Senator Herb Kohl who is the ranking member on that subcommittee. I thank Galen Fountain, our minority clerk on the subcommittee, who does a lot of work with us, and good work; Rebecca Davies, Martha Scott-Poindexter, Les Spivey, Hunt Shipman--staff people who have done a great deal of work to put this legislation together. On my staff, Dale Thorenson and Nicole Kroetsch, Brian Moran, and Stephanie Mohl, who worked on parts of this. Thanks to all those people. When we bring a piece of legislation to the floor of the Senate after it has gone through conference, it has gone through a long, tortured process. It is not an easy thing to put together. It represents a lot of work and compromise. Thanks to all the people I have mentioned. I will try to, for a moment, describe why all of this is important to me. There are a lot of things in this legislation dealing with research, agricultural research, food research, Food for Peace--you name it, there is a whole range of programs that deal with very important and serious issues. But I want to focus on one thing, and that is family farming. I come from a State that is largely an agricultural State. The fact is, our family farmers in this country are in deep trouble. Some people probably couldn't care less. They get their butter from a carton, they get their eggs from a carton, they buy their milk in a bottle, they get their pasta in a package, and they couldn't care less what is happening to family farmers. Those who think a lot about it understand the importance of farmers who are out there with their families living on the farm, with the yard light that illuminates their place at night. They understand its culture, and understand its contribution to our country. Those who think about it understand the importance of broad-based economic ownership in our country's food production. I want to read a couple of letters because we are in a situation where commodity prices have collapsed, the grain prices are rock bottom, and our farmers are in desperate trouble. They are losing their livelihood, losing their farms, having to quit. This is a letter I received a couple of days ago from a woman named Lois. I will not read her last name. I do not know if she has indicated she would want me to read this on the floor of the Senate. This is a family farm in North Dakota. Lois and her husband run a family farm. The letter says: Dear Byron, it's 6 a.m. I woke up [this morning] and feel compelled to write, as I feel farmers here are now at rock bottom. Right now as we harvest a worthless crop, pay huge prices for our oil products, face winter and bills to pay, we find the [crops sprout damaged and injured] by rain. Harvest brings more stress and fears to all of us. I'm afraid for us. I'm afraid for my neighbors and others like us who can't make a profit thru no fault of our own. We . . . have other jobs, but we can't keep farming. . . . I am taking time off these days (from my work) to drive a grain truck. I'm hauling grain that is below $1 a bushel. . . . We need a price that is more than cost. It's called profit. I don't have a lot of answers. We've attended many meetings. . . . We can feed the world . . . we should feel pride in that. But what's wrong? There's something not connecting here. She, like so many others, is trying to make a living on a family farm, and they are going broke. A farm family--a man and his wife--wrote to me about a week ago and said: It is with tears in my eyes that I find myself writing to you today. After I have been assisting in what should be a joyous time, it just couldn't be further from that. So for the first time, I am taking steps to try and find help, for not only ourselves, but all of those who are worse off around us. Somebody has to help us now. . . . My husband and I farm--near a small community in the northwest corner of North Dakota. We are blessed with some of the greatest soil and we felt very fortunate until now that it has helped to provide us with thousands of bushels of grain, plus cattle. In fact, up until recently, we had thought we were very fortunate. We couldn't have been more wrong, however. We are facing the worst times our 3rd generation farm has ever seen since its existence began in 1914. As combines are cutting our fields, the last thing I would normally be doing right now is writing a letter, but we have no choice. Something has to be done and people need to know what kind of devastation is [occurring] in our economy. It was just this morning that we were told that our very rare and beautifully colored, disease free durum wheat is now only worth 80 cents a bushel. Our neighbors were not so ``lucky.'' There is no market for theirs as it was not close to perfect. Our banks will not collect on their loans, young people like ourselves are going to just pack up and leave. . . . There is just no reason for us to continually be abused. . . . She raises the questions, as other farmers do, about everyone else making record profits that handle their grain. The grain elevators, railroads, and the grain trade all make record profits. She says: We are one of the very few young farmers left in our community and after this harvest there will be many more forced to leave. There just will be no alternative. Another letter from another family farm in North Dakota. A farmer writes: So why do I write? Simply to encourage you to continue the battle, to be a voice alerting the nation to the financial, cultural and social devastation that is taking place in rural America. As a seventy two year old lifetime farmer, now retired, I am a witness to farm after farm being discontinued. The immediate community in which I live vastly changed and changing. Good young family farmers are quitting one after the other, some forced out financially, others giving up before complete financial ruin. There is no profit incentive, the gamble is too great, the fight against weather, disease, regulations and prices too heavy a burden to bear. This farmer writes: Personally, I have a son now forty five, who has farmed since graduating from the University of North Dakota. His hope is fading. He talks of farming one more year and [then giving up]. He is a fourth generation farmer ready to give up. His son now seven never to continue into the fifth generation [on the family farm]. He says: My concern is for my family, my community, the nation. I will not read any more. I have so many letters from farmers. They are out there wondering what is wrong with an economic system which rewards everyone except those who produce the crops. Some say: The ``family farm,'' that is kind of like the little old diner that gets left behind when the interstate comes through. It was a great old place once, but it is irrelevant now because the interstate moves people past that diner. They say that is what the family farm is like. They couldn't be more wrong. I have indicated before, go to Europe, if you wonder what an economy ought to be with respect to rural values. Europe was hungry at one point so it decided never to be hungry again. One part of national security is to make sure you have a network of producers, a network of family farms producing your food. That way you will not have concentration; you will have broad-based economic ownership, and you will provide national security with respect to food. Europe has a healthy agricultural base. Europe has family farmers who are making money and small towns that have life on their main streets. Why? Because Europe has chosen an economic model that says they intend to keep their family farmers on the farm. Our country ought to do the same, for a whole series of reasons, some economic, some cultural, some social. But family farms contribute more than just grain. They contribute families, yes; they contribute community; they contribute a culture that is very important to this country. A wonderful author named Critchfield used to write about the nurturing of family values in this country. He said family values have always started, in the two centuries of America, on its family farms, and rolled to its small towns and to its cities. The refreshment and nurturing of family values has always come from the seedbed of family values; and that is our family farms. If one wonders what kind of cultural devastation occurs or what kind of cultural changes will occur in this country if we lose our family farms, our rural economy, and turn into a country in which corporations farm all of America from coast to coast--one can see that model in a number of other areas. It is not something that advances our country's interests. Rather, it retards our country's interests. So I do not come here making excuses in support of family farms. I come saying that the support of family farms is essential for the long term well-being of this country. How do we support family farms? Well, we have a farm bill that is a disaster called Freedom to Farm. We gave farmers so-called freedom to farm, but not freedom to sell. So farmers are prevented from selling into certain markets. The freedom to farm is a presumption that individual family farmers have the economic clout in which to deal with everyone else with whom they have to deal. Does a family farmer have a chance when complaining about railroad rates? I do not think so. Ask the folks in Montana who filed a complaint against the railroad rates. Ask them if they got a fair shake when it took 16 years to get the complaint processed down through the ICC. Who wins when the family farmer is overcharged by a railroad for hauling grain? The railroad wins. Who wins when the food manufacturers or the grain trade takes a kernel of wheat, moves it somewhere down the line on the railroad and into a plant, puffs it up, puts it on a grocery store, and calls it puffed wheat? Who wins when they take produce from farmers and give them a pittance for it, and then charge a fortune for it on the grocery store shelf? It is the same kernel of wheat, only it has had a puff added to it. The puff is worth more than the wheat. The people selling the puffed wheat are making a fortune, and the family farmers are going broke. Is that an economic model that has any justice in it at all? The answer is no. So we ought to have a farm program that works. And we do not. Next year we ought to commit ourselves to repealing Freedom to Farm, and rewriting a bill that works for family farmers, that provides a safety net for family farms in the country. This is not rocket science. They do it in Europe. We ought to be able to do it in our country. Let me describe, just for a moment, what we have in this appropriations bill. We have disaster assistance in this appropriations bill. I want to show a couple of charts that talk about what happened in North Dakota in the spring of this year after the crops were planted. This chart happens to show a grain field. It does not look like it, but it is a grain field. From the evening of June 12 until the morning of June 14--a day and a half--a stalled thunderstorm system--actually several thunderstorms converging together--dumped as much as 18 inches of rain in the Red River Valley, near Grand Forks, ND. North Dakota is a state that usually gets 15 to 17 inches of rain a year. We are a semiarid state which averages 15 to 17 inches of rainfall a year. From June 12 through June 14, in some of these areas, we had 18 inches in 36 hours. A few days later on the evening of June 19, around 7 o'clock in the evening, flash flooding and severe thunderstorms hit the Fargo-Morehead area about 80 miles south of the first set of storms in the Red River Valley. By 11 p.m. that evening, more than 4 inches of rain had fallen, and it looked as if maybe the worst had passed. But thundershower after thundershower pummeled the area after midnight, dropping an additional 2 inches of rain in 90 minutes. So, this area ended up with a total of 6 inches of rain in a very short period. This is a totally flat terrain. It caused massive sheet flooding. Throughout the area around Fargo, seven to 9 inches of rain in total fell in the timespan of 6 hours. This chart shows what a grain field looked like the day after. Here is another picture of grain fields. As you can see, there is no grain there. This is a lake. In fact, this area used to be Lake Agassiz long before any of us were around. But you can see what this does if you are a family farmer and you have been out in the spring planting grain. We now have a flood. The floods in North Dakota, the drought in Texas, the drought in Georgia, the drought in Mississippi, and other parts of our country, the disasters in Montana, all persuaded this Agriculture appropriations subcommittee to add more funding for disaster aid. We originally added $450 million for Crop Loss Assistance due to weather disasters when the bill was in the Senate--an amendment I offered on the floor of the Senate. When it went to conference, the need was obvious, so we added more. It went to $1.1 billion for disaster aid because we had had continued disasters in Texas and in the Deep South. In fact, look at Georgia here. The weekend before we lost our late colleague, Senator Coverdell--who was a distinguished Senator and one I deeply admired-- the weekend before we tragically lost our colleague, I had spoken to him about what was happening in Georgia. He said that he was going to cosponsor with me a disaster piece that would provide assistance for farmers in that area of the country. We had need--because of the floods--in our area as well. We have had drought in the Deep South. As shown on this chart, we can see these red areas. We have had flooding in other areas. We have had a pretty difficult time this year in many areas of the country. So this piece of legislation adds $1.1 billion for disaster assistance. This help allows farmers who have been struck by natural disasters to be able to claim some help for crops that they were not able to harvest. In addition to that, we had folks up in this part of North Dakota that harvested a crop--a crop that looked great--but they had a disaster when they delivered that crop to the grain elevator. They took a durum crop from the field--a 45-bushel-to-the-acre crop, which is a pretty good crop--only to discover that when they got it to the grain elevator it was full of disease and sprout damage. They found out that grain they thought was going to be worth a decent price was now valued by the grain trade at only 80 cents a bushel. The cost of producing this grain is probably $4 to $4.50 a bushel. So, they had a field waving in the wind, getting ripe and ready to be harvested. They got the combine out, took the grain off, and then discovered what cost them $4.50 a bushel to produce was now worth 80 cents. To make matters worse, they also found out that the crop insurance they had taken out to insure their crop does not provide help for them to cover the quality loss. That is called a quality loss adjustment. Actually a better word for it is a catastrophe. If you have a product that you have produced, and it turns out to be worth almost nothing, that is a catastrophe. Here is what has happened to our farmers. You can see, going back to 1996, wheat prices were very high. That is when Congress passed Freedom to Farm. Many of us stood on the floor of the Senate warning, at that point, this isn't going to continue. But Freedom to Farm provided specific payments over a period of time after which there would be a phaseout of the program altogether. You can see what has happened to prices. You can see with prices at rock bottom, having collapsed and stayed down for some while, that the quality loss adjustments mean that farmers are getting pennies for their crop. This disaster is not a natural disaster, but rather it has resulted in quality loss adjustments by the grain trade that had to be addressed in this bill. For the first time, this legislation will provide $500 million for quality loss adjustments. I will talk through that for a moment so people understand why this is in the bill and why it was necessary. These farmers haven't caused the problem. These are good family farmers who have discovered that their crop, especially in our part of the country up in North Dakota, with the worst crop disease in a century, these are farmers who have discovered that they have produced a rather bountiful crop that is worth nothing when they take it to the grain elevator. Without the quality loss assistance, we would have had a wholesale migration from our family farms. We are going to have a lot of migration anyway by family farmers who simply can't make it. But the disaster aid and the quality loss adjustment is going to be a step in the right direction by at least extending a hand to say until we change this farm bill, here is some help. I pushed very hard on quality loss assistance. I know I might have bruised some feelings here and there, but I just didn't think we had any choice. We can't say to family farmers, when their prices are collapsed, that it doesn't matter. We can't say to family farmers who are out there struggling: When your crop is hit by disease, it doesn't matter; when your crop insurance doesn't pay off, it doesn't matter; if you are hit 6 or 7 years in a row by natural disaster, as has been the case with many counties in North Dakota, it doesn't matter. We have a responsibility to define the kind of economy we want in this country. The kind of economy I want is an economy that values that which is produced on our family farms. Our farm program needs changing desperately. We have not been able to get that done this year. In the meantime, this piece of legislation, this Agriculture appropriations bill, does provide some fill so that with respect to disaster and quality loss adjustments, we are able to provide some short-term, interim help to family farmers. I say to Senator Cochran, Senator Kohl, and others who were willing to allow me to press as hard as I did to put this in the bill, I appreciate--and the family farmers in my State will appreciate--the opportunity to continue to try to make that family farm work and to make a living. I say, again, that we have a responsibility to decide as a Congress whether we want family farms in our future. For those who don't, let's just keep doing what we are doing and that is where we will end up. We will eventually not have any family farmers left in this country. But for those who, like me, believe that a network of family farms is essential to this country, to its culture and its economy, then we better wake up and work together and write a farm bill that works and gives farmers some hope. We better do that, not 2 years from now, not 3 years from now. We better do that now. We are about ready to adjourn, I suppose, at the end of this week or the end of next week, and we will reconvene as a Congress, the 107th Congress, in January. My hope is one of the first items of business is for us to understand that rural America has not shared in this bountiful prosperity of our country. It is not just that food has no value. You look around the world at night on your television screen, you will discover that there are people who are hungry, there are children who are going to bed with an ache in their belly in every corner of the globe. Food does have value. But the food that is produced in this country, regrettably, has value only for established monopolistic interests, those who have become big enough to flex their economic muscle at the expense of those who produce the food. Everyone who touches a bushel of grain produced by a family farmer seems to be making record profits. Every enterprise that touches it seems to be doing well. The railroads, the grain trade, the grocery manufacturers, they are all doing well. In fact, they are doing so well, they are marrying each other. Every day you read about another merger. They want to get hitched. They have so much money, they are all rolling in cash. It is the folks out here who took all the risks and plowed the ground and seeded the ground and harvested the crop. They are the ones who can't make a living. There is something disconnected about that kind of economic circumstance. We can have the kind of economy we choose to have. It is within our ability to define the kind of economy we want for this country. I hope, beginning next year, we will decide that there is a different way, a better way to extend the help for family farmers with a farm program that really works during tough times and a farm program that we would not need during better economic times when grain prices reflected the real value of the grain produced by family farms. We have made some progress in the Agriculture appropriations bill dealing with sanctions. It is not the best, but we have made some progress. Many of us in the Senate, many in the Congress, have believed that it is relatively foolish for our farmers to bear the brunt of national security interests by having sanctions against other countries that say you can't ship food or medicine to certain countries because we are angry with their leaders. That has never made any sense to me. We can be as angry as we like with the country of Iran or Libya or Cuba or Iraq, but refusing to ship food to those countries doesn't hurt Saddam Hussein or Fidel Castro. All that does is hurt hungry, sick, and poor children. It hurts hungry people, sick people, and poor people in countries to which we are not allowed to ship food and medicine. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot, our public policy has been to say ready, aim, fire, and we shoot ourselves right smack in the foot on the issue of sanctions. I don't have a quarrel with those who want to strap economic sanctions on the country of Iraq. That is fine with me. But sanctions should not include food. We have tried mightily to get rid of the sanctions with respect to a range of countries with whom we now prevent the shipment of food and medicine. This legislation marginally moves in that direction. It includes some elements of the amendment I put in the appropriations bill as it went through the Senate. But, once again, it is reactionary with respect to Cuba. There is going to be no grain sold to Cuba because of restrictions put in here by a few people who were trying to hijack this debate in the conference. The result is it tightens up on travel restrictions to Cuba, and virtually means there will be no food sold in Cuba. In my judgment, that is very foolish, but we will live to fight another day on that issue. At least part of what is done in this legislation dealing with sanctions on agricultural shipments is a step in the right direction. There is much more to talk about in this legislation. Let me end by mentioning my thanks to the people who helped put this legislation together. It is not easy to do. On balance, while there are some things I don't agree with--I have not described what those are--I think it is a good piece of legislation and a pretty good appropriations bill. It ought to be a precursor for all of us who support family farmers to understand that year after year, when you have to add a disaster piece and emergency pieces to deal with the failure of a farm program, it is time to rewrite the farm program from the start. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, it has been more than a year since the Columbine tragedy, but still this Republican Congress refuses to act on sensible gun legislation. Since Columbine, thousands of Americans have been killed by gunfire. Until we act, Democrats in the Senate will read the names of some of those who have lost their lives to gun violence in the past year, and we will continue to do so every day that the Senate is in session. In the name of those who died, we will continue this fight. Following are the names of some of the people who were killed by gunfire one year ago today. October 17, 1999: Ariosto Bautista, 20, Rochester, NY; Tavaris Covington, 20, Charlotte, NC; Jilad Edwards, 16, Detroit, MI; Jason Jones, 16, Baltimore, MD; Edward Mason, 76, Dallas, TX; Luis Hernandez, 30, Oakland, CA; Hiram J. Rumlin, 25, Rochester, NY; Herbert Sanford, 21, Detroit, MI; John Williams, 36, Baltimore, MD; Ladrandria Williams, 18, Detroit, MI; and Unidentified Male, 82, Portland, OR. Following are the names of some of the people who were killed by gunfire one year ago Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. October 13, 1999: Adnan Ahmed Ali, 21, Memphis, TN; Richard Baker, 27, Philadelphia, PA; Ivan Cook, Sr., 68, Knoxville, TN; Granville Deshields, 23, Philadelphia, PA; Kevin Hooker, 20, Atlanta, GA; Robert Liggins, 35, Dallas, TX; Christopher Scott, 25, Baltimore, MD; Theresa Scott, 38, Detroit, MI; Zzeene Stukes, 23, Baltimore, MD; Davey Taylor, 22, Detroit, MI; Unidentified Male, Long Beach, CA; Unidentified Male, Portland, OR; and Unidentified Male, Washington, DC. October 14, 1999: Andre Chamberlin, 23, Washington, DC; Nathen Davis, 23, Washington, DC; Luis Fernandez, 38, Miami-Dade County, FL; Ronnell Johnson, 22, Baltimore, MD; Shaun Lynch, 20, Houston, TX; Jennifer Monte, 23, Philadelphia, PA; David Naysmith, 29, Detroit, MI; Eliezer Nieves, 30, Miami-Dade County, FL; and Unidentified Male, 19, Portland, OR. October 15, 1999: Justin Alban, 23, Baltimore, MD; Albert Carballo, 48, Miami-Dade County, FL; Carl Creary, 48, Miami-Dade County, FL; Devadiipa Creary, Miami-Dade County, FL; Sylvester Exum, 45, Memphis, TN; Juan Godin, 42, Houston, TX; Brian Harrington, 3, Detroit, MI; Wanda Harrington, 47, Detroit, MI; Guillermo Marquez, 32, Houston, TX; Anton Parker, 19, Washington, DC; Mario Pujol, 53, Miami-Dade County, FL; Magdeil Rivera, 25, Bridgeport, CT; Luis Velez, 20, Bridgeport, CT Clifton Walker, 31, Philadelphia, PA; Unidentified Male, 16, Chicago, IL; Unidentified Male, 96, Long Beach, CA; and Unidentified Male, 17, Norfolk, VA. October 16, 1999: Hector Aviles, 21, Philadelphia, PA; Norris Bradley, 19, Washington, DC; Elenora Fisher, 35, New Orleans, LA; Anthony Harth, 25, Kansas City, MO; Pretlow Howell, 22, Chicago, IL; Bruce Kelly, 35, Akron, OH; Jose Martines, 22, Houston, TX; Jose Ramos, 24, Philadelphia, PA; David Stopka, 25, Chicago, IL; Carey Thompkins, 28, Cincinnati, OH; George Zafereo, 52, Victoria, TX; and Unidentified Male, 82, Portland, OR. We cannot sit back and allow such senseless gun violence to continue. The deaths of these people are a reminder to all of us that we need to enact sensible gun legislation now.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I thank the majority leader. This was obviously a senseless act of terrorism. Acts of terrorism are, in most cases, perpetrated by cowards who want to inflict terrible mayhem on especially those from our country, but others around the world as well. Yesterday, when we learned the news that the U.S.S. Cole had been attacked, all of us were deeply saddened. Our thoughts and prayers go out to all of the families of those who are now known dead and those who are presumed dead or missing. As Senator Conrad indicated, we have just learned from the U.S. Navy this morning that a young man named Kevin Rux from Portland, ND, is among those missing and presumed dead, according to the U.S. Navy. I want to add my voice to my colleagues' comments that my thoughts and prayers go out to his family. We are thinking of them and praying for them today. We feel the same about all of those who have been the victims of this attack. It tells us, once again, that this is a difficult and in some cases troubled world, and those who wear the uniform of this country in all parts of this globe, who stand for peace, do so at some risk to themselves and on behalf of a grateful Nation. Again, I want to simply say we are thinking of the Rux family and all of the other families whose loved ones have become victims of this cowardly terrorist attack. I say, as well, that this country has said to its President and Members of Congress that those responsible for this attack must be found and brought to justice for it. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I am pleased that today the Senate has passed S. 623, the Dakota Water Resources Act. My colleague from North Dakota, Senator Kent Conrad, and I have worked on this legislation for quite some time. We have worked closely with others who have an interest in this bill and passage of S. 623 today is a result of tireless negotiation between our delegation and the downstream states, especially Missouri and Minnesota. The compromise that the Senate adopted today strikes an important balance between meeting the water needs of North Dakota and protecting the needs of other states. This bill is essential to meeting the water needs of North Dakota. The bill, as amended, will provide authorization for the development of municipal, rural, and industrial water projects across the State of North Dakota. The bill would also help to meet the water needs of the four Indian Reservations in the state. The Dakota Water Resources Act authorizes $631.5 million. This includes a $200 million authorization for municipal, rural and industrial water development and another $200 million authorization to meet the critical water needs of the four Indian reservations in the state. The Red River Valley water supply needs will also receive a $200 millions authorization. The bill includes $25 million for a natural resources trust and $6.5 million for recreation projects in North Dakota. Mr. President, the Dakota Water Resources Act represents a responsible way for the federal government to fulfill their role in the state. It also represents a serious compromise on the part of North Dakota, while still meeting our highest priority water supply needs. The bill clearly lays out the process for meeting the water needs for the Red River Valley in eastern North Dakota. First, the Secretary of the Interior will identify these water needs and evaluate options for meeting them. The Department must submit a report on the needs and suggest possible solutions to the Congress. The Secretary is also required to complete an environmental impact statement, EIS, on the Red River Valley project and select the best option. In the event that the Secretary of the Interior determines that the best option includes a transfer of Missouri River water to meet the Red River Valley needs, then a further act of Congress authorizing that option must occur before construction of that feature or features could begin. This is a key provision that will allow all of our colleagues downstream to have input on such a proposal. However, if an in-basin source of water is chosen, then no further action is needed from Congress. This is a good bill that reflects hard work and compromise of many stakeholders all along the Missouri River. I am pleased that we were able to develop a win-win solution, that allows us to move forward in meeting the needs of North Dakotans while protecting the interests of those who are downstream. I am confident that this bill can be signed into law this year, and look forward to working with our friends in the other body to pass this bill and send it to the President for his signature.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, it has been more than a year since the Columbine tragedy, but still this Republican Congress refuses to act on sensible gun legislation. Since Columbine, thousands of Americans have been killed by gunfire. Until we act, Democrats in the Senate will read the names of some of those who have lost their lives to gun violence in the past year, and we will continue to do so every day that the Senate is in session. In the name of those who died, we will continue this fight. Following are the names of some of the people who were killed by gunfire one year ago today. October 10, 1999: Delbert Deaton, Dallas, TX; Sedric Gillespie, 24, Denver, CO; Julian Lanier, 31, Denver, CO; Maria-Teresa Marquicias, San Francisco, CA; Dexter Lamont McKee, 19, Washington, DC; Cherry L. Minor, 22, New Orleans, LA; Donald Nelms, 56, Hollywood, FL; Jack Nowlin, 63, Miami- Dade County, FL; Joseph Ridual, San Francisco, CA; Noel Ridual, San Francisco, CA; Cliff Roberts, 22, Bloomington, IN; Baltazar Torres, 18, Wilmington, DE; Craig Watkins, 23, Baltimore, MD; Derrick White, 30, Oakland, CA; Anthony M. Witt, 27, Chicago, IL; Unidentified Male, 26, Norfolk, VA; and Unidentified Male, San Francisco, CA. One victim of gun violence I mentioned, 22-year-old Cherry Minor of New Orleans, was pregnant when she was shot and killed one year ago today. Cherry was at home with her two small children and a friend when her husband forced his way into her house and shot her in the head. Cherry was separated from her husband, who police say had a history of domestic violence. We cannot sit back and allow such senseless gun violence to continue. The deaths of these people are a reminder to all of us that we need to enact sensible gun legislation now.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, we are nearing the end of the 106th Congress. No one is quite sure where the finish line is. My expectation is that within a week or two this Congress will be history. Many will ask what this Congress did and what it did not do. There will be some people who will be joyous about its accomplishments and some who will be sorely disappointed over its failures. I think its accomplishments, however, will be a rather short list, and the areas where we could have and should have done better will represent a very long list. I rise to briefly discuss two of those areas before we near the end of the session. I have spoken many times in the Senate about health care, and especially the two issues this Congress has a responsibility to address. One issue is providing a prescription drug benefit to the Medicare program. We have talked about providing a prescription drug benefit to the Medicare program for some long while. We are near the end of this session, and it looks as though it will not get done. Why? Because some people don't want to do it well. Everybody here talks about wanting to do this, but somehow they are not willing to support a plan that really accomplishes it. On the second issue, we are nearing the end of the legislative session and we are apparently not going to pass a Patients' Bill of Rights. The Patients' Bill of Rights has been an issue over which we have battled for 2 to 3 years, and it has been a tough battle. I don't think there ought to be room left for those who believe there is not a need for a Patients' Bill of Rights. All we have to do is look at the evidence. The evidence is overwhelming that we need to pass a real Patients' Bill of Rights. The House did it; we have not. This Senate has dug in its heels and has not moved on either of these issues. I will talk first about the issue of a prescription drug benefit in the Medicare program. When the Medicare program was developed, many of the miracle drugs that now exist weren't available. People got old. They did what they were expected to when they got old. They retired and led a more sedentary life. Then something might happen to them. They would be hospitalized. They would stay for long periods in acute care beds in the hospital. It was very expensive. The kinds of prescription drugs that are available now were not available then. So when Medicare was created, a prescription drug benefit was not made a part of the Medicare program. When Medicare was developed, that too was fairly controversial. In the early 1960s, a fair number of Members of this Senate said: No, we can't do that. We can't provide health insurance for older Americans. We oppose that. That is some sort of encroachment of government into our lives. I wasn't here at the time of that debate. But when they had that debate, fully one-half of all senior citizens in this country had no health insurance coverage at all. Why? Because it was too expensive. Insurance companies aren't running around this country trying to find old people to sell health insurance to. That is just a fact of life. They want to find somebody who is 22 years old and healthy as a horse and isn't going to need any health care treatment for a long while. There are not people running around trying to figure out how they can attract a 70-year-old or a 75-year-old to buy their health insurance policy. They are not doing that because it is much more expensive to insure people who are 70 and 80 years of age. The result was, nearly 40 years ago half of the senior citizens in this country had no health insurance coverage at all. So this Congress had a big debate. As is typical, those progressive voices who said this is something we should do were met by those voices of negativity who oppose everything for the first time. There are always people who just dig in their heels at any suggestion and say, no, this can't be done; no, it won't work. Well, enough votes prevailed in the Congress over time that it passed a Medicare proposal. Now 99 percent of America's senior citizens are covered with health insurance under the Medicare program. What a remarkable success. People are living longer, better, healthier lives. Now we know, however, that there is a deficiency in the Medicare program. The deficiency is that it does not cover prescription drugs. Let us me read some letters from North Dakotans. We could name a different State, and we would get exactly the same letters. My colleague from Florida just spoke. His constituents, I am sure, are writing exactly the same letters. This is from a woman who lives in Bismarck, ND. She writes: Dear Senator Dorgan: I am writing in regard to the medication I take. I think something has to be done about the prices they charge. I get $303 each month in Social Security. I pay $400 a month for my medication. I have had heart surgery and I have osteoporosis and this medicine is very high-priced. We are using our savings now and I am 86 years old so I can't work. Can you help? This is a letter from a fellow in Rolla, ND. He writes: Between me and my wife, we pay $350 to $400 a month on prescription drugs. We receive less than $900 a month in combined Social Security benefits. We have trouble paying for our prescription drugs. A person from Rocklake, ND, writes: One-fourth of my Social Security check goes for my prescription drugs, so that doesn't leave a lot for household and personal expenses. It would sure help if Medicare covered these. A man from Cavalier, ND, writes: Our drugs for the two of us--he is referring to his wife and himself--just about tripled last year from the year before. The total for last year was near $2300, and it only gets worse. We need a little help. A woman from Williston, ND, who titled her letter ``Message In A Bottle,'' writes: I have asthma and my medications and inhalers cost me over $100 each month, and my health insurance does not cover prescriptions. I am 84 years old, and it would be a great help to me to get Medicare coverage on my medications. A woman from Bismarck, ND, writes: Dear Senator Dorgan: Enclosed please find my prescription bottles. I just had these medicines filled today. I am having a hard time financially with a Social Security check of $400 a month. My medicines cost $175 per month. That doesn't leave much to pay for food, rent, utilities and gas. Something has to be done with the high cost of prescription medicines. I am thinking of stopping some of my medicines. Please help!!! These letters could have come from any State, from senior citizens everywhere struggling mightily to pay for their prescription drugs. Senior citizens make up 12 percent of America's population, but they consume one-third of all the prescription drugs in our country because they have reached that age where they have various ailments and problems and they need prescription drugs. We need to add a prescription drug benefit to the Medicare Program. We have been trying very hard to do that. Some have said, well, let's not put it in the Medicare program, let's pay the insurance industry so they will sell an insurance policy providing for prescription drug benefits. The problem with that is, the Health Insurance Association of America says insurance companies will not be able to put together a policy like that which is affordable. In fact, I had CEOs from two insurance companies come to my office, and one said: In order to provide $1,000 worth of benefits to a senior citizen for prescription drugs, I would have to charge $1,100 for the premium. Do you know anybody that will pay $1,100 for an insurance policy that provides $1,000 worth of benefits? Not where I live. I say to those who say we can have the private insurance industry deal with this: it won't work. Even if they could offer the policy, it would not be affordable. We must, it seems to me, put a prescription drug benefit in the Medicare program, and we ought to do it now. We are nearing the end of this session and this ought to have been one of the top priorities for the Congress. It just should have been one of our top priorities. We live in good economic times, we have unprecedented economic growth, and we are going to have some surpluses this year and, we hope, in the years ahead. But do you know what the priority was for the surpluses? The priority was to run out here on a big trolley a huge batch of tax proposals that would give big tax cuts really fast. Let's provide very large tax cuts, most of which will go to the upper-income folks in this country, and let's do it even before we experience these surpluses. My feeling is that we ought to have a more balanced approach. First, if we have surpluses, let's use some of those funds to pay down the Federal debt. Yes, we can use some, perhaps, for middle-income tax cuts, and we could use some of it to make the other investments we need to make. We should put a prescription drug benefit in the Medicare Program that is optional, has a copayment, and provides Medicare recipients protection against these high drug prices. The proposal I support also has the ability, through purchasing power, to drive down prescription drug prices. So I say to those who schedule the Senate: Time is wasting here. Let's see if between now and the end of this week or next week we can perhaps get a prescription drug benefit bill to the floor of the Senate and get it passed. Those who want to give tax cuts to the top 1 percent of the income earners were certainly quick to get that to the floor of the Senate. Let's see if we can't do something similar in terms of legislative speed to try to add a prescription drug benefit to the Medicare program. We have time to do that. The question is, Do we have the will to do it? Just one other point. I want to talk for a moment about the issue of a Patients' Bill of Rights. A Patients' Bill of Rights is not some theory that represents our interests or a wish. It is an absolute necessity to provide protection for patients in this country. Some managed care plans--although not all of them--have decided that health care is a function of their profit and loss. They administer their health care plans that way. The result has been devastating to some patients in our health care system. In fact, in some cases an HMO will not tell you all of your options for medical treatment, only the cheapest options. That is not fair. Every patient in this country ought to have a right to understand all of his or her options for medical treatment, not just the cheapest one. There are some HMOs that don't give you the opportunity to have emergency room treatment when you have an emergency. That ought to be a patient's right. There have been instances of people hauled into an emergency room unconscious who are denied coverage because the HMO said they didn't get prior approval for the emergency room. It ought to be a patient's right, if you have insurance through an HMO, to have emergency room treatment when you have an emergency. How about oncology care? In the case of a woman who has breast cancer and whose spouse's employer switches to a different health care plan, should that woman not be able to continue with her same oncologist and with the same cancer treatment under the new plan? Of course she ought to be able to. That ought to be a right. I had a hearing recently with some of my colleagues on this subject, and a woman named Mary Lewandowski came. It was the third time Mary has come to Washington, DC, at her own expense. I want, for Mary's benefit, to put in the Record her complete testimony from this hearing. I ask unanimous consent that her entire testimony be printed in the Record.