Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, yesterday I described a case dealing with emergency rooms which I understand my colleague referred to in his remarks. I want to go back to that case because I think it describes the difference between our two proposals with respect to protections for emergency room treatment for patients. I described the case of little Jimmy Adams. This is a picture of Jimmy. This is a picture of a young, healthy Jimmy tugging on his big sister's shirt. Here is a picture of Jimmy Adams after he lost both his hands and both his feet because he couldn't get care at the closest emergency room. This is what happened. He was sick with a 104 degree fever. His mother called the family HMO. Officials there said you must go to a certain hospital in our network. So his parents loaded Jimmy up at 2 o'clock or so in the morning and started driving. They had to drive past the first hospital, the second hospital, and then drove past the third hospital. Finally they got to the hospital the HMO asked them to take Jimmy to. By that time, Jimmy's heart had stopped. They brought out the crash cart, intubated, and revived him. Regrettably, however, he suffered gangrene, and his hands and his feet had to be amputated. Why didn't they stop at the first emergency room? Because they couldn't; the HMO said they won't pay for that. Why didn't they stop at the second hospital emergency room or the third? The HMO won't fully pay for that care. So they drove over an hour with a young, sick child who, because he didn't get medical treatment in time, lost his hands and his feet. Now, my colleague says the Republican plan will solve little Jimmy's situation. Regrettably, it will not. Yes, the Republican plan will provide that that family could stop at that first hospital for emergency care, but it also allows the HMO to penalize the family financially for doing so. It allows the HMO to establish a financial penalty for this family to stop at out-of-network hospitals. If their bill doesn't do that, I want to see it. As I read the Republican proposal, they say: We have protections here. In fact, they don't have protections. In virtually every area of the two proposals on managed care, we see exactly the same thing. They have an emergency room provision. Is it better than currently exists? Yes, it is better. Does it solve the problem? No. This family would have been told: If you stop at the first emergency room with Jimmy, we will impose a penalty upon you. We have the right to impose a financial penalty for going to the nearest hospital emergency room. If the other side wants to prevent that, I say, join us in supporting the Graham amendment, because we prevent that. We provide real protection for families with respect to emergency room treatment. Our amendment won't allow an HMO to say: Take that sick child to an emergency room but, by the way, you have to go to an emergency room four hospitals; if you stop sooner than that, we will penalize you. That doesn't make any sense to me. This issue is not about theory. It is about real people like Jimmy. It is about what the two pieces of legislation say regarding patient protection. My colleague from Florida, Senator Graham, described the differences between the two bills on emergency care. He asked the questions and didn't get the answers, because satisfactory answers don't exist with respect to our opponents' proposal. Their proposal is, in fact, a shell. It does not offer the protections that we are offering in the proposal before the Senate.

Mr. DORGAN. Oh, yes. One of them, for example, makes well over $30 million. Another is over $40 million. Of course that is a substantial amount of money. The only point I am making is this: There is a lot of money and a lot of profit in this system. This has a lot to do with profits in for- profit medicine. On the other side, on the counterbalance, is the care for patients. Some people objected yesterday because we cited examples of patients who have been mistreated. They said this debate is not about individual patients. Of course it is. That is exactly what it is about. This debate is not about theory, it is about what kind of health care patients are going to get when they need it. When your child is sick, what kind of treatment is your child going to get? Or if your spouse has breast cancer and your employer changes HMO plans, will someone say--I ask for 1 additional minute by consent-- you cannot keep your same oncologist, you have to change doctors, even though you are in the midst of treatment? If your child needs to go to an emergency room, will someone say: We're sorry, you can't go to the one 2 miles away, you must go to the one 20 miles away? These are the kinds of issues, real people with real problems, that this debate is about. That is what this is about. Every health organization in the country supports our bill. USA Today, in an editorial said: If you want a Patients' Bill of Rights from the Republican plan, you had better be patient because it doesn't provide a Patients' Bill of Rights. There is a difference in these plans. At least we are on the right subject. But while we are on the subject of cost, let's talk a little about who is making the money here--$30 million, $20 million, $15 million in annual compensation--and then you talk to us about cost. We can't afford $1 a month to provide protection to Jimmy Adams so he can go to the nearest emergency room when he is desperately ill? Of course we can do that.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. I have come to the floor to speak on another issue, but I watched the entire soccer game on Saturday. It was exciting and wonderful. I also thought about the fact that it is an example of a regulation that works. Title IX says: Equal opportunity; you must provide equal opportunity in academics and athletics. Before title IX, of course, there was not equal opportunity. I think Saturday's game was such a testament to the regulations and requirements from title IX that have improved athletics and academics in this country.

Mr. DORGAN. I wonder if the Senator will yield?

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Tony Blaylock, a fellow on my staff, be given floor privileges today.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me turn to an additional issue I believe Congress and the President must consider in the month of July. It deals with the urgent farm crisis that exists in farm country across America. If there was a massive earthquake, a series of tornadoes, fires, or floods across the Midwest, we would see Congress, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, virtually everyone involved through the Federal agencies responding immediately. The President would likely fly out and view it. Congress would send emergency help. Federal agents would be there en masse setting up offices to help. Yet in farm country we have a crisis that is just as real, not as dangerous to human health or human life as a tornado or a flood, perhaps, but just as real and just as dramatic as natural disasters. The chart here shows what has happened to the price of wheat since 1996. You can see what has happened to the price of wheat. We have mostly wheat farmers up in our part of the country. The price of wheat has collapsed like a lead weight. Ask yourself: If your income collapsed, if a Senator's income collapsed like that, do you think there would be howls of protest? Do you think that would be an emergency? How about the minimum wage, if it went down like this? How about if the stock market looked like this? Do you think there would be a problem in this country? Of course, there would. This is a huge problem in the farm belt. Family farmers are finding themselves on the precipice of going broke in record numbers. I had a call this morning from a family farmer who nearly choked up on the phone saying: I don't think my son and I can continue. We can't continue when prices have collapsed. We don't have the income to continue family farming. For them it is a dream, a lifestyle, a way of life. It is not just a business. This Congress, while prices have collapsed, largely is content to sort of meander around and talk as if it were theory. It is not theory. It is a crisis. This chart shows what is happening across the farm belt. The red indicates the counties that have lost more than 10 percent of their population, 1980-1998. Take a look at the red. What does that show? The middle part of America is being depopulated, especially now with prices collapsing, people moving out and not in. The question is, ``What are we going to do about that?'' Congress has a responsibility to do something about it and so does this President. This Congress passed the Freedom to Farm bill. The presumption of Freedom to Farm is, we will reduce support prices and you rely on the marketplace. If the marketplace has collapsed prices, there has to be a safety net. If you don't have a safety net, you won't have family farmers left. Freedom to Farm hasn't worked, and this Congress needs to understand that and do something about it. The President also has a responsibility. He signed the Freedom to Farm bill. He complained a little about it when he signed it, but he signed it and said: We will make some improvements. The Freedom to Farm bill hasn't worked. Our trade policies are bankrupt and not working. Concentration of agricultural industries means that farmers face monopolies in every direction. All of these combined together are conspiring to leave this country without family farmers in its future, and that will be, in my judgment, a massive failure for America. In the month of July, in the coming 4 weeks, the President has a responsibility, in my judgment, to come to Congress with a bold approach in dealing with this issue. Congress has a responsibility to deal with it, as well, in a bold manner. I know some in Congress say: We don't intend to do anything until the President sends us something. They didn't have that reticence about adding $6 billion to the defense bill. When the emergency bill came up for defense, they said: We don't care what the President said. We think he should have $6 billion more. This is a joint responsibility. The Congress needs to act and the President needs to act. We need to do it together, and it needs to be done now. Not later, now. If we don't take action soon, we won't have family farmers left. We won't have to worry about an emergency family farm bill because there won't be family farmers around to respond to. Again, if there was an earthquake or a flood or fire or tornado or perhaps even some hog disease, as Will Rogers used to say, you'd have all the Federal agents coming out to talk about the hog disease. They would want to know, ``what is happening here and will it spread to other hogs?'' One way to get attention, it seems to me, is for Congress and the President to decide that this is a farm crisis. It is in my part of the country, with the collapse in prices and the natural disaster that has kept about 3 million acres from being planted in North Dakota because it was too wet. The floods and the worst crop disease in this century, all piled on top of family farmers' shoulders at a time when prices are collapsed. To add to their burden, we have a trade agreement that allows the Europeans to spend 10 times as much on their farm program as we do and undercuts prices on sales to foreign governments. We let them do that in excess of ours--we won't even use our export program for reasons I don't understand--at a time of mounting burdens on family farmers in a way that is fundamentally unfair. We had better decide as a country that family farming matters to our future. If we don't, they won't be around. When they are not around, corporations will farm our country coast to coast. The price of food will go up and this country will have lost something and every small town will have lost something important. This is not just about farmers. It is about small towns and Main Streets and boarded-up business and economies that are empty shells in a lot of our small communities. My message is very simple: We have a responsibility this month. We have a responsibility now, all of us, and so does the President, to have a meeting. I want the White House to have a meeting on this with Republicans and Democrats. I want us to come together with an emergency package that responds to the farm crisis, does it boldly, does it in a way that helps real family farmers, and does it in a way that gives family farmers some hope that their future is a future in which they can make a decent living raising America's food supply. If I might make one additional point: We have to rely on foreign markets as well. We produce more food than we consume in this country. Yet I heard last week that the amount of imported food in this country has doubled in the last 7 years. We had protests at the Canadian border last weekend. It is unfair the level of imports coming from Canada. The thing I don't understand, however, is the grain market, all these folks that worship at the altar of the marketplace in the grain market. The grain market says to our farmers: Your food that you produce has no value. Yet all the testimony we hear from all around the world, Sudan included, tells us that old women are climbing trees foraging for leaves to eat because there is nothing to eat. We know that a substantial portion of the world's population goes to bed at night with an ache in their belly because of hunger. It makes no sense for us to be told that our food has no value when people go to bed hungry each night. I want the White House and the Congress together to boldly respond to this issue in the coming weeks. This 4-week period is critical. We must put this on the agenda in a bipartisan way and do so boldly. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I have sat and listened quietly and patiently to the debate over this amendment. I was thinking to myself that, if ever there were an Olympic sport for sidestepping, I surely have seen some gold medal winners this afternoon. The issue in this amendment is, whom does this piece of legislation protect? Whom does the Patients' Bill of Rights protect? Some people view this debate as a debate between a bunch of wind generators in blue suits, and they do not know whom to believe. So here is an editorial from USA Today--not from Republicans, not from Democrats. The headline of this USA Today editorial reads: ``100 Million Reasons GOP's Health Plan Fails. That's How Many People Proposal Will Leave Unprotected.'' Let me read what it says: Judging from the health insurance reform package announced this week by Senate Republicans, at least the title is correct. The proposal is called the Patients' Bill of Rights. If you are waiting for this perfunctory plan to protect you, you'll need to be patient indeed, many of the plan's key protections are restricted to the 51 million Americans who get their insurance through self-insured employer-sponsored plans subject to direct Federal regulation. But another 100 million or so whose health plans are subject to state regulation are excluded. Again, USA Today says this plan is an empty shell. This plan does not match the needs the American people ought to expect will be met. I have heard debate this afternoon I would have expected 100 years ago in this Chamber. Back in the years when suspenders and spittoons adorned this Chamber, you would have heard exactly the same debate on every issue. Meat inspection? Let the States do it. The Federal Government should not be involved. Pollution control? Let the States do it. Nursing home regulation? Let the States do it. Minimum wage? The Federal Government should not be involved. That is a debate a century old, and it is old and tired. The question here is, What kind of legislation are we going to pass that protects American families? Are we going to pass a bill that includes the 100 million people their side leaves out? You were told to be careful of stories about children who tug at your heart because somehow that is not reflective of the whole issue. Jimmy, here, is never going to stroke his mother's face, may never be able to shoot a basket. He has no arms and no legs. Why? Because in the middle of the night when 6-month-old Jimmy was desperately ill, his dad had to drive past the first hospital, drive past the second hospital, drive past the third hospital, in order to get to the hospital they approved for this little boy to get emergency treatment. As a result, he lost his hands and his feet. Our opponents bill does not provide a guarantee that this young boy would have gotten emergency treatment at the first, second, or third hospital. No such guarantee exists in their plan. If it did, it would not apply to 100 million Americans. They say don't let these stories affect you. That is what this is about. It is about patient care. It is about real people. It is about Jimmy, it is about Ethan, it is about the people I have talked about on the floor of the Senate. Let me conclude just by pointing out the differences in titles. They brought a bill to the floor of the Senate with the title the Patients' Bill of Rights. That is the same name as the piece of legislation we authored. Ours contains real protections; theirs does not. Abe Lincoln was debating Douglas, and he could not get Douglas to understand his point. Finally he said to Douglas: Let me ask it this way. He said: Tell me, how many legs does a horse have? And Douglas said, Four, of course. Abe said, Now if a horse's tail were called a leg, how many legs would a horse have? And Douglas said, Five. And Abe Lincoln said, No, that's where you are wrong. Simply calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg at all. You can call this proposal that has been offered by the majority party whatever you like, but it does not make it a patients' protection act. As USA Today says in its editorial, if you think you are going to get protection from the Republican patient protection plan, you had better be patient, because it leaves out 100 million Americans. There is a lot of misinformation that has been given on the floor of the Senate today and a lot of sidestepping on the important issues. But I say when this debate is over, do not, as the Senator from Oklahoma suggests, dismiss the concerns and stories that are raised about individual people. After all, the only question really important in this debate is how it affects the individual patients, the men, women, and children who seek treatment in our health care system. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, we are finally going to have a debate on the issue of the Patients' Bill of Rights. It will not be a debate about theory. It will not be a debate about past proposals for health care reform. It will be a debate about real protections for real people in this country. We have two plans before us. One is a patients' protection act that we have offered that has the support of virtually every health care organization in this country. The other is a piece of paper with a name--just a name, just an empty vessel--that pretends that it provides protection but in fact it doesn't. Let me describe, if I might, some of the details of these plans. I want to be very brief, but I want to do it by talking about protections for people. This young boy's name is Ethan. Ethan was born in 1992 after a difficult birth. During his delivery, oxygen was cut off from Ethan, so he was born with significant problems that required special therapy. But the HMO denied the special therapy for Ethan because they said the probability of him being able to walk by age 5--a 50-percent potential of being able to walk by age 5--was insignificant. They called a 50- percent chance of being able to walk insignificant. So corporate profits take precedence over patients' protection, and Ethan does not get the therapy he needs. Or let me show you another example. Dr. Ganske, a Republican in the U.S. House, used this chart to show a young child with a serious facial birth defect, a cleft lip. No one looking into the face of that young child could say that correcting this birth defect should not be done. Yet Dr. Ganske did a survey of reconstructive surgeons and found that 50 percent of the doctors who had patients like this have had the corrective surgery denied by HMOs. These HMOs said this procedure was not ``medically necessary.'' Would any parent in the world believe that this is not ``medically necessary''? Dr. Ganske, a Republican Congressman from the U.S. House, certainly doesn't believe that. He has been a champion for this kind of patients' protection act. Here is an example of what a young child with that deformity can look like after reconstructive surgery. Isn't that wonderful? Is that a ``medical necessity''? You bet it is. Of course, it is. But health insurance only works if patients get what they pay for. Dr. Ganske sent something around the other day that I pulled out in preparation for this debate. I want to describe this just briefly because I think it illustrates the difference between an empty vessel with the same title and a patients' protection bill that gives real protection to real people. At 3:30 in the morning, Lamona Adams found her six-month infant boy, Jimmy, panting, sweaty, and moaning. He had a temperature of 104. So she phoned her HMO to ask for permission to go to the emergency room. You have to do that, by the way--get permission to go. The voice at the other end of the 1-800 number told her to go to Scottish Rite Hospital. ``Where is it?'' asked Lamona. ``I don't know--find a map,'' came the reply. It turns out that the Adams family lived south of Atlanta, Georgia, and Scottish Rite was an hour away on the other side of the Atlanta metro area. Lamona held little Jimmy while his dad drove as fast as he could. Twenty miles into the trip while driving through Atlanta, they passed Emory University Hospital's ER, then Georgia Baptist's ER, then Grady Memorial's ER. But they pushed on to Scottish Rite Medical Center--still 22 miles away, because they knew that if they stopped at an unauthorized hospital, their HMO would deny treatment and they would be left with the bill. They knew Jimmy was sick, but they didn't know how sick. After all, they weren't trained professionals. They pushed on to where the HMO said they could stop. With miles yet to go, Jimmy's eyes fell shut and wouldn't open. Lamona frantically called out to him. But he didn't awaken. His heart had stopped. Imagine Jimmy's dad driving as fast as he could to the ER while his mother is desperately trying to keep him alive. They finally pulled into the emergency room entrance. Jimmy's mother leaped out of the car and raced into the ER with Jimmy in her arms calling, ``Help my baby! Help my baby!" They gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation while a pediatric ``crash cart'' was rushed to the room. Doctors and nurses raced to see if the miracles of modern medicine could save his life. He was intubated and intravenous medicines were given and he was cardiopulmonary resuscitated again. He was a tough little guy. He survived despite the delay in treatment by his HMO. But he didn't survive whole. He ended up with gangrene in both his hands and feet, and the doctors had to amputate both of Jimmy's hands and feet. This is a picture of little Jimmy before his illness, and then afterward. His folks drove past three hospital emergency rooms because the HMO said he had to go to the fourth one miles and miles and miles away. And this young boy has no hands and no feet now because of that. We have two plans on the floor. One of the plans, our bill, says that families have a right to the emergency care they need at the nearest hospital. The other plan says they offer such a right--until you read the fine print. The other side will tell you they have a good plan, but they have an empty vessel. On the issue of emergency care, little Jimmy, his parents, and others across this country will understand that it doesn't improve care when HMOs are allowed to determine which emergency rooms they will allow patients to stop at to get emergency treatment for these children. My point is this: We are going to debate theory all week. But it is not theory that is important. What is important is children like Jimmy, children like Ethan, or children like this little boy who has a severe birth defect of the face and was told by an HMO that this deformity need not be fixed. We know that is not right. This debate is about profits, patient care, insurance companies, and the rights of patients who are sick. I think at the end of the day and at the end of this week all of us will see that there are two plans. One is supported by virtually every medical and consumer group in the country because they know it allows real protections to allow doctors to practice medicine--not an insurance accountant thousands of miles away making decisions about patients' health care.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, we are now turning to a 4-week period here in the Senate in which we will work, prior to the August recess, on a range of issues--today beginning with the Patients' Bill of Rights, and then turning to appropriations bills and other matters. I want to call to everyone's attention two issues that are of vital concern that I think ought to be and must be part of the Senate agenda. The first is an issue dealing with the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty is something that has been before the Senate now for some long while. Efforts to achieve a nuclear test ban treaty originated with President Eisenhower. It has been around a long time. This President, after long negotiations through many administrations, finally signed the treaty. It has now been sent to the Senate for ratification. But it has languished in the Senate for 658 days, during which time there has not been even a hearing on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. I will put up a couple of charts to describe the circumstances with this treaty. The rule in the Senate requires that the Senate should consider treaties as soon as possible after their submission. In fact, the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963 was considered by the Senate in 3 weeks; SALT I, 3 months; the ABM Treaty, 10 weeks; ABM Treaty Protocols, 14 months; START I, 11 months. We have had the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty before the Senate for 658 days with not even a hearing. I think that is a shame. This treaty ought to be part of this Senate's agenda. If we do not have a hearing and do not ratify this treaty by the end of September, we will have only a limited role when a conference is formed in October of the countries that have ratified this treaty to discuss its entry into force. It does not make any sense to me. This country ought to lead on issues concerning the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons. One way to lead on those issues is to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. It does not make any sense for the treaty to have been signed, negotiated and sent to this Senate, and then to have it languish for all of these days. I would like to put up a chart which shows a concern that some of the critics have. They say: Well, gosh, with all this Chinese espionage, the last thing we want, is to do something with respect to a treaty on banning nuclear tests. The Cox report on the Chinese espionage makes references to the CTBT. The report says it will be more difficult for the Chinese to develop advanced nuclear weapons if we have this treaty in place. If the People's Republic of China violated the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty by testing surreptitiously to further accelerate its nuclear development, we could detect it given the monitoring system imposed by the treaty. If the Chinese are signatories to the treaty and the Russians are signatories to the treaty--and they are waiting for us-- and we can stop testing, the only conceivable way they could validate any kind of nuclear stockpile is through the use of advanced computers. The restrictions imposed by the CTBT make it extremely difficult or impossible to improve nuclear weapons designs except by high performance computers. The Cox report appears to make the point that it is more important for us to restrict the shipment of advanced computers to the Chinese. The point is this--we deserve an opportunity to debate the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. We should have done so long ago. I don't mean to argue the merits of it on the floor today. My hope is, we will not go through July as if this treaty doesn't exist. It was negotiated, signed, and has been before the Senate over 600 days. There hasn't been one hearing. There ought to be a hearing. It ought to be brought to the floor so the American people can, through this Senate, debate that treaty. Finally, support for the nuclear test ban: 75 percent, 74 percent, 85 percent, 80 percent, these are national polls over time, always consistently high support for this kind of a treaty. This Congress has a responsibility. I say to my colleagues who really don't want to do this: You have a responsibility to the country to do this. I hope that in the month of July we can make progress in passing this Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that these amendments be agreed to.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that any remaining amendments at the desk be withdrawn.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I think we are ready for third reading. Let me, in 10 seconds, thank the staff on both sides who have worked so hard on this legislation. I think all of the amendments have been disposed of. We are ready for final passage.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, there are a number of amendments that Senator Campbell and I have discussed, which we are prepared to accept. He has a number of them he will mention. Let me mention the amendments by number that we are prepared to accept: No. 1209, by Senator Harkin, and he will be modifying that in a moment; amendment No. 1213, by Senator Torricelli; amendment No. 1212, by Senator Wellstone; amendment No. 1198, by Senator Enzi. My understanding is that the remaining amendments that are pending will be withdrawn. My understanding, also, is that there is no request at this point for a recorded vote on final passage. I am happy to yield to the chairman, Senator Campbell.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I send three amendments to the desk, en bloc.

Mr. DORGAN. The Senator is correct. The $6 million reduction is the result of the Subcommittee's re-estimation of the likely workload at FLETC combined with a small across-the-board cut on all salaries covered by the Treasury Department appropriations bill.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I do not oppose the motion to proceed. I expect the Senate will perhaps vote unanimously to proceed on this issue, but I do want to give some historic perspective to this issue of a lockbox. I proposed a lockbox amendment in 1983. I offered an amendment the day when the Ways and Means Committee passed the Social Security reform package in 1983. I said: If we do not put this extra Social Security money away, it will be used as part of the operating budget and it will not be saved. My amendment lost in the Ways and Means Committee in 1983. So this is not a new idea. One of the interesting things about this debate is, it was not too many years ago that we debated a constitutional amendment to balance the budget in the Senate. I voted against that, and the constitutional amendment lost by one vote. I went through some very interesting times politically back home and across the country because I cast a vote that defeated the constitutional amendment to balance the budget. One of the points I continued to make in the Senate as we debated that--and I was accused of talking about gimmicks and using gimmicks at that point--was the constitutional amendment to balance the budget was written in a way that said all revenue that comes into the Federal Government shall be considered revenue for the purposes of the budget. There was no distinction between Social Security moneys and other moneys; it is all operating budget revenue. To the extent we require a balanced budget, it means we can use the Social Security money as ordinary revenue and then we can claim we balanced the budget. I said that is writing in the Constitution the invitation to continue doing what we have been doing, which is looting Social Security. What I heard in response was no. There were three stages of denial: First, we deny we are looting Social Security. That was the first stage of denial. The second was: Well, even though we deny it, if, in fact, we are doing it, we promise to quit. And the third stage of denial was: We insist we are not doing it, but if we are doing it, we promise to quit. And if we can't quit it, we will at least taper off. Those were the three stages of denial in the Senate. Because those of us who said, we will not write into the Constitution an amendment that permits forever the use of Social Security trust funds as part of the operating budget, we were told: Well, would it be all right if we said we will keep using the Social Security trust funds for the next 12 years? I said: No, that would not be all right. So that was the debate back a few years ago. Now we come to a debate today, and the folks who then called our position on Social Security revenues a gimmick are now proposing a lockbox. I say, I think we should have a lockbox. But I do not think you ought to do a lockbox in isolation. I think you should have a lockbox with respect to the Social Security revenues so they cannot be used for ordinary operating revenue. That money is taken from workers' paychecks. It is called Social Security dedicated taxes. It goes into a dedicated fund and ought not be available under any circumstances for any other purposes. That is the point we made on the constitutional amendment to balance the budget. I have some charts here, that I will not use, that describe what was told to us during that debate: Gee, you're standing up talking about gimmicks. Of course you have to use the Social Security money as part of the regular budget in order to balance the budget. You can't balance the budget without using Social Security money. History, of course, shows that was nonsense. But here we are, and the question is the lockbox. We ought to have a lockbox. We ought to do several things at the same time, however. Because I worry. I see this week Reuters has a press story: ``How Republicans Propose $1 trillion in tax cuts.'' If you do a lockbox on Social Security revenues only and then say, all right, now we have locked away Social Security revenues only, and we propose $1 trillion in tax cuts, the question in two areas is: What have you done to extend the life of Social Security? And what have you done in this fiscal policy to extend the life of Medicare? Unfortunately, the answer in both cases could be, you have done nothing to save for Medicare; and while you might have given $1 trillion in tax cuts, you may have done nothing to extend, even by 1 year, the Social Security program. So let us do a couple of things. Let us do--together--a lockbox. I support that. I was ridiculed for it back in the constitutional amendment debate, but I have always supported it. I supported it going back to 1983 when I offered the amendment to do it in the House Ways and Means Committee. But let us not just do the lockbox. Let's do the lockbox the right way. Secondly, let us make sure that some of the additional revenue that is available extends the life of Medicare and extends the life of Social Security. I ask unanimous consent for 2 additional minutes.

Mr. DORGAN. This would provide a guarantee that the revenue stream for Social Security is available only for Social Security; that is, the tax money that is available for it goes only into the Social Security trust fund and can be used only for that purpose. But it would do two other things as well. It would say, let us use some additional resources not just for a $1 trillion tax cut but also to extend the life of Social Security and the life of Medicare. Doing both of these things, I think, will give the American people the reassurance that both of these programs, which have been so important in the lives of so many Americans in this country, will be available for many years to come. I do not think, as I said when I started, there will be a debate here on whether we should proceed. Let's proceed. I expect the motion to proceed will carry, perhaps unanimously. We will have a debate on the lockbox issue. But my point is, let us not debate that in isolation. Let us debate it with the eye on this ball: That we need to extend the life of Social Security and extend the life of Medicare, even as we do what we should have done long ago; and that is, make certain that no Social Security revenues are used for any purpose other than the solvency of the Social Security system itself. That is what workers expect. That is the basis on which money is taken from their paychecks and put into a dedicated tax fund. That is what senior citizens expect from this program, which was a solemn promise made to them many decades ago. I thank the Senator from New Jersey for the time. I look forward to the debate following the motion to proceed. Mr. LAUTENBERG addressed the Chair.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I send a group of amendments to the desk pursuant to the unanimous consent agreement to have them offered by 12 o'clock. I will read their names: an amendment by Senator Reid; amendment by Senator Baucus, amendments by Senators Schumer, Moynihan, Harkin; another from Senators Schumer, Landrieu, Wellstone, Torricelli, and Lautenberg. I ask they be set aside.

Mr. DORGAN. On behalf of Senator Moynihan, I ask unanimous consent to be allowed to withdraw amendment 1191.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, if the Senator from Colorado will yield, let me make one final observation. He mentions the issue of alcohol. He comes from a particular perspective, being a Native American. I want to tell him just about two people, and I will do it in 30 seconds. I toured a hospital one day. He talks about fetal alcohol syndrome. A young Native American woman had just given birth to a baby. The woman was an alcoholic. The baby was born with a .21 blood-alcohol content, a young baby born dead drunk. This woman, having had a third baby, wanted nothing to do with that child, didn't want to see that child. That child will probably have fetal alcohol syndrome. But I was down at a hospital not far from this building and I saw babies born from crack-addicted mothers, and I saw babies born drug addicted, addicted to hard drugs. The doctors told me what those babies are like as they try to shed this addiction, being born of mothers who had taken drugs during this pregnancy. We have problems in all of these areas. I do not deny that. But this program deals with drugs. I think it has a chance of working. I hope we can allow that to happen with this vote.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I have three amendments, two of which were to be offered by Senator Graham and one to be offered by Senator Cochran. The amendments were left in the Cloakrooms on a timely basis but were not part of the submissions that Senator Campbell and I offered before the 12 noon deadline. Senator Campbell and I ask consent that these three amendments be considered timely filed and offered. I send the amendments to the desk.

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

Mr. DORGAN. I will use time allocated by Senator Campbell. Mr. President, it is a rare occasion when I rise to oppose an amendment on alcohol offered by my colleague from New Jersey. I just heard the moving comments by the Senator from West Virginia. On almost every other occasion on the Senate floor, I have supported their initiatives. The .08 national standard on drunk driving, I have supported it. You name it, I have supported it. My mother was killed by a drunk driver. I have been in an accident caused by a drunk driver in which the car I was driving was totaled. Senator Byrd described graduation parties. My cousin's son Jesse was at a graduation party one night--the night before he was to graduate from high school--a wonderful young boy, great golfer, slight of build, a handsome young man--and at midnight got in the wrong car, a car driven by a young man who had had too much to drink. They drove across a railroad track and were hit by a train, and that young boy lost his life. I know about the scourges of alcohol. I know about drunk driving. I know about the disease of alcoholism. I also know about the issue of illegal drugs in this country and want to tell a story about that, if I might. I visited Oak Hill Detention Center recently, within the last matter of weeks. Oak Hill Detention Center is not too far from this building. It is a half-hour drive. It houses some of the toughest young criminals who have committed crimes on the streets of the District of Columbia. These are kids, in many cases tough, hardened criminals but still kids. I met a young man who at age 12 was dealing drugs and was addicted to hard drugs on the streets of the District of Columbia. He was shot a number of times, picked up, and convicted of armed robbery. At age 12, he was selling and addicted to hard drugs. Across the table from him sat another young man who, at age 12, was also dealing drugs and convicted of armed robbery. Across the table was a young girl who, at age 13, was on hard drugs and selling drugs and had a baby--all in the first year of her teenage life. The security fellow in one of the areas of the Oak Hill Detention Center said to me--and I could tell he liked these kids; he cared about these kids; he knew them, knew them well--said: You know, these are tough kids. These are kids who have done wrong, in most cases have had a tough life, but they are still kids. He said: What I regret most about this job is going to their funerals. There are too many funerals. After they serve their time at the Oak Hill Detention Center and they are back on the streets--too often relapsing back on hard drugs--I go to their funerals. The common element to the discussions I had at that Oak Hill Youth Detention Center was hard drugs--addicted to drugs at a very young age and then followed a life of crime, and in most cases violent crime as well. This country has a problem with drugs. One approach to addressing this problem was recommended by the administration and some in Congress to say: We know that television has an influence on people's lives. Television advertising, hundreds of billions of dollars of television advertising has an influence on what people buy, what they wear, how they look, and what they sing. If it has that kind of influence, can we use television in a way that can influence people with respect to drugs and how they view drugs? So the proposal was to put together a $1 billion program over 5 years to do intensive drug education television advertising. I support that. This year, this subcommittee cut the funding for that by $50 million. In other words, there will be $50 million less than was requested for it and $50 million less than was spent last year on this program. This program ought to be allowed to work so we can determine with what effectiveness we can change people's vision and view about drugs, especially young people. We are in the third year. We need to allow this to work. Cutting this program by $50 million was the last thing we wanted to do, but the budget allocations would not allow us to fully fund it. Now we are told by our colleagues, we want to add other things to it. I will support in an instant a proposal brought to the floor of the Senate that says let us do something of exactly the same scale on alcohol. I will support that in an instant. A $1 billion program over 5 years to educate young people about alcohol, we ought to do that. But I don't think, having cut this program by $50 million this year-- understanding that when you talk to young people anyplace in this country who have been involved in violent crime, you will find out that the origin of that and the genesis of much of that behavior comes from addiction to drugs--now is the time to both cut this program by $50 million, which is what has happened in this subcommittee, and then also add other responsibilities to that program. I indicated that my family was visited by the horror of the phone call late at night saying that my mother had been killed. Others in my family have been victims of drunk driving accidents. I understand all that. But the subject here is about drugs. I have spoken on the floor about six times of a person I am going to speak about just briefly again, Leo Gonzales Wright. A young attorney with, I am sure, great hope and stars in her eyes moves to Washington, DC, to practice environmental law. In her early twenties, her name was Bettina Pruckmayr. Bettina Pruckmayr ended her life in this town with the kind of horror that is not visited upon many. She stopped at an ATM machine, was abducted by a man named Leo Gonzales Wright, and stabbed over 30 times by this violent felon. Who was Leo Gonzales Wright? A man addicted to drugs, a man high on drugs, a man who had been convicted of murder before, let out of prison on patrol, tested positive for drugs but not put back in prison. What do drugs mean? What do drugs do? It means that people on our streets, who are addicted to drugs and are willing to commit violent acts, murder innocent people like young Bettina Pruckmayr. The origin of this is the problem of drugs. It is a very significant problem. The attempt was to decide whether we could alter behavior, educate young children with $1 billion in a 5-year program of advertising dealing with drugs. I happen to think that makes sense. We have tried a lot of different things. It makes sense to try this. Does it make sense to do a lot more on alcohol? Absolutely. I am willing to support that and do that. I don't think, however, it ought to be used to dilute this effort. This effort is an effort that is in its third year. We have already had to dilute it by reducing funding $50 million. I say to my colleague, with whom I voted on every occasion on this issue, let us find another way to fund this program and I will be with you. I understand the scourge of alcohol and alcohol addiction, the carnage it causes on American roads, and the devastation it causes to American families. I also think those who spoke about that with such gripping emotion today probably could tell us stories that they understand the carnage caused by drug addiction in this country to hard drugs and the number of families whose hearts ache tonight because their loved one was killed by someone high on drugs, addicted to drugs for a number of years in a circumstance where perhaps, had we done things differently, had we done things better, had we had more influence on those lives, we might have avoided having that person addicted to drugs and, therefore, committed to a life of crime. That is what this effort is about. It is what General McCaffrey and the Office of Drug Control Policy, it is what we are trying to do in a 5-year period. I think we ought to continue to do that. One final point: One of my regrets, standing as I am today, is a woman named Karolyn Nunnallee, whom I consider a good friend. She is the national president of the Mothers Against Drunk Driving. She and her organization very strongly support the Lautenberg amendment. I almost never have disagreed with Mothers Against Drug Driving. I think they have done more in this country than most any other organization I know to influence and alter behavior dealing with the issue of drunk driving. I regret very much not supporting them on this issue. For reasons I have already stated, I think we ought to stay the course on this question of drug addiction and education dealing with drug addiction among America's youth. At the same time, I want to join in and support in any way possible the efforts of Senator Lautenberg and Senator Byrd and others to add money to transportation bills on drunk driving issues, to add money to health bills on drunk driving. I will support a billion-dollar program in 5 years. Sign me up. But don't dilute this program. Let us let this program work to see, at the end of 5 years, whether we have altered the behavior and substantially changed the determination by some young people in this country to understand more about drugs. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Mr. CAMPBELL addressed the Chair.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me make just a couple of concluding comments, again reiterating I am really quite uncomfortable in the position of opposing Senator Lautenberg. But I do not think this is a forced choice of the type he suggests we make; I do not think this is a choice that we ought to be required to make. One might at some point put together a program, which I would fully support, to say let us do $1 billion advertising in 5 years, targeted to Americans, especially America's kids, dealing with alcohol abuse. I would support that. Then one would say, perhaps, coming to the floor of the Senate: This program you have dealing with alcohol abuse, why doesn't it include drugs? Or, Why doesn't it include addiction to smoking cigarettes? I would support that as well. But we ought to do them as programs we can measure and evaluate. The program we are talking about now is a program dealing with drugs. It is 3 years into the program. People say: Why doesn't it include alcohol? Let's do a program on alcohol. I will support that. The story I told earlier, about going to the Oak Hill Detention Center and seeing these young children, kids on drugs who were convicted of violent crimes, do you know the other thing about their stories? In every case, they were 12 or 13 years old and they were addicted to drugs, selling drugs, shooting people, committing armed robbery, being involved in violent crimes; and the other common denominator in every single case was they had parents addicted to drugs. They came from homes, often with only a single parent, in which that parent was addicted to drugs, died at a young age, and was an abusive parent because of being addicted to drugs. There is a common denominator. This program is a program designed to say to America's youth, through drug education by television commercials: Don't do drugs. We know television advertising works. We all use it. Hundreds of billions of dollars a year are spent on television ads to convince people to listen to certain kinds of music, wear certain kinds of jeans, to buy certain kinds of food. We know it works. I think it will work with respect to this issue of drugs as well. We are 3 years into the program. I will support gladly, and with great excitement, a program on alcohol. I have supported every initiative dealing with alcohol abuse and drunk driving in this Senate. I will support it as well dealing with the addiction to cigarettes. The targeting of alcohol and cigarettes, both legal products, to this country's youth, is unforgivable. But this is a separate issue. We have a campaign underway. It is 3 years in progress. It is designed very deliberately to change the understanding and the culture dealing with drugs. I think it has a chance of working. So let us do that. We had to cut it $50 million this year alone just on this issue. Let us allow this to work. At another time I will be happy to join my colleague from New Jersey and others in designing an identical program dealing with alcohol abuse.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, we have reviewed the amendment and the modification, and we have no objection to it.