Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Yes, that is correct.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, Senator Alexander has not indicated to me the purpose of his presence on the floor, but we are most anxious to get started on the Indian Health Care Improvement Act. That was scheduled for 9:30 this morning. I wish to begin an opening statement at some point, and I know Senator Murkowski would, and we want to do a managers' package. Senator Coburn is here, because I asked if he would be here at 9:30, and he has a number of amendments. I appreciate very much his work and his efforts on Indian health care. I am hoping we can work with Senator Coburn this morning to deal with some of his amendments. I know he has filed a number of them, and he and I have had many discussions about it. I appreciate his attendance. He has just walked into the Chamber. Our interest is in getting a lot of work done this morning and this afternoon in order to try to see if we can finish this bill. This will be the third day that the Indian Health Care Improvement bill has been on the floor, so I wish to begin on that. I know Senator Alexander has appeared, though I don't know for what purpose, and perhaps I would be happy to yield to him if he would tell us if he is wanting to do something else on the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. I have no objection to that. The Senator and I have talked about this. He wants to get all of his amendments pending. But he will be asking for discussion and votes on a number of them.

Mr. DORGAN. I have no objection.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, the Senator from Oklahoma cannot possibly win a debate we are not having. I have given his speech 17 times on the floor of the Senate. There is no disagreement between us. I am going to give him a chance to be bold, however, as we go down the road on appropriations because that is what he started talking about: the need for the resources, the need for the money. We have to reform this system. I agree with that. Then we have to fund it. The fact is, we are going to have amendments that add sufficient money. You talk about the fact that we are spending twice as much per person on Federal prisoners for health care as we are to meet our responsibility for American Indians--twice as much for those we have incarcerated because we have a responsibility for their health care. Now, we need additional money in this system, and we need an overhaul of the system itself. The Senator will find no controversy with me with respect to giving American Indians a card to show up at a health facility and get the health care they need. He knows, and I know, there are many American Indians who live far out on a reservation, 90 miles away from the nearest hospital, and they do not have competition in the health delivery system. They have one place to go when they are sick that morning or their child is sick that afternoon. So we are going to have a chance to be bold. This is an authorization bill, not an appropriations bill. When appropriations come up, we will have a chance to be bold. I hope the Senator will join me on that. Let me make a couple comments about this issue.

Mr. DORGAN. I am happy to.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me thank the Senator from Arizona. He has been working very hard with us to try to move this bill along. I would say to my colleagues on this side of the aisle as well: If you have amendments, please bring them. The majority leader has indicated we are going to finish this bill this week, and that will be a significant step forward. I thank the Senator from Alaska and the Senator from Arizona for their work to help us move this bill. He is correct that we had four or five very controversial issues that provoked some opposition. We worked through those, negotiated, and I think all of them are now resolved. I think when the Senator from Alaska has completed any statement she is going to make, we do have the managers' amendment that amends the substitute we had offered, and that has been negotiated and agreed to on both sides. So when Senator Murkowski has completed her statement, we will ask that it be completed as well.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I object. I have not had a chance to visit with my colleague. I wish to do so first.

Mr. DORGAN. I object. I have not had a chance to visit with the Senator, and I will be glad to do so at some point.

Mr. DORGAN. I object.

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, let me say to the Senator from Vermont, I understand his passion. He knows I have a lot of passion about this bill, and I have expressed it this morning. I understand his passion about LIHEAP. Somebody from Vermont does not have to tell somebody from North Dakota about cold weather. I know about cold weather and my constituents do. LIHEAP is unbelievably important, and we need to find a way to get the money out for LIHEAP. I understand that. I am very sorry he was unable to get the yeas and nays and so on. But he also understands you have to try to offer amendments where you can to authorization bills. I understand that. He is a supporter of this bill, the underlying Indian health care bill we need to get done. It is also the case, I am sure, that the Senator from Alaska knows a little about cold weather. I have been to Alaska. So my hope is that working together in this Chamber we will fund the LIHEAP program, because it is very important. That also can be life or death for people, so my hope is we can get that done. But having said all of that, again let me say we have a managers' package that perfects--after having negotiated now for several weeks on about five or six very controversial issues, we have negotiated in a way that we have reached a compromise on all of them, satisfactory to all of the parties. We now have that in a managers' package which we intend to offer next. It has not yet cleared. It has been a couple of hours since we have been able to clear that. My hope is that in the next 30 minutes or so we can clear that so at least we can get the managers' package done. I believe Senator Coburn will be here. He has some amendments filed. I hope he will be here to call up amendments which I believe he will do reasonably soon, and I think Senator Tester wishes to speak on the bill generally. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. DORGAN. This is an authorization bill. The Senator is amending it. Does his amendment anticipate an increase by $2 billion for the authorized level because we are authorizing expenditures? The Senator will perhaps offer a $2 billion appropriations measure. I will as well. I hope we will be able to work together on that. But we will also have to increase the authorization. Does the amendment increase the authorization?

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, why don't we do that, provide the authorized room? The Senator this morning indicated--and I agreed--that we are about $2 billion short of fully funding Indian health care. We have full-scale rationing going on. The amendment has a restriction in it. He limits the amount of funding in his amendment to the amount of funding that currently exists in Indian health. The President has just proposed a reduction in funding, even though we are only meeting 60 percent of current need. My question is, should we not then remove that restriction and actually increase the authorization because he and I have the same goal. Let's get the amount of money in the system that provides health care for Indians that we have promised.

Mr. DORGAN. If the Senator will yield further, one of the dilemmas in providing Indian health care, not so much in the State of Oklahoma but in other areas where there are reservations, is in many cases the only health care that is available is the Indian Health Service clinic, and you are 80 miles away from the nearest hospital. In many cases there will never be competition in an area where someone is desperately sick and needs to see a doctor quickly. I happen to agree the underlying notion of this amendment of providing a card to someone to say, take this card to a health care facility and get that need fixed, if you must--I happen to think that has merit. I will be working with the Senator on that with respect to the bolder approaches to Indian health care. But on page 4, line 4, is where you have budget neutrality: In conducting the program under this section, the Secretary shall ensure the aggregate payments made to carry out the program do not exceed the amount of Federal expenditures which have been made available. That is saying that we want to do all of this, which would expand contract care and so on but within the same amount of money that currently exists in Indian health care. It is kind of a chicken and egg.

Mr. DORGAN. Yes. Let me do this. Let me say the managers' package is something we have negotiated. I believe it has been agreed to unanimously. I do not know of any objection to the package itself. I do know of some objections to the process because one Senator who is not here has staff objecting. Let me suggest in about 5 minutes I am going to send the managers' package to the desk and ask for its consideration. If there is someone who feels a managers' package that has been unanimously agreed to and worked on very hard--by the way, let me say--and my colleague Senator Murkowski can add to it--we have about five or six areas in the managers' package that are very controversial and had caused us a lot of problems. We worked and worked and negotiated with all of those for whom this controversy exists, and we negotiated something that is agreeable to everybody. It was a good thing to have done. Finally, this managers' package, I think, is now agreeable to everybody, and it is a good piece of work. So in about 5 minutes I wish to send it to the desk and ask for its consideration.

Mr. DORGAN. I would be happy to yield.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, how much time is Senator Byrd requesting?

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, February 14, 2008, at 11:10 a.m. in open session, in order to receive testimony on the strategy in Afghanistan and recent reports by the Afghanistan study group and the Atlantic Council of the United States.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, February 14, 2008, at 2:30 p.m. in open session, in order to receive testimony on the strategy in Afghanistan and recent reports by the Afghanistan study group and the Atlantic Council of the United States.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, February 14, 2008, at 1:30 p.m. in order to conduct a hearing entitled ``The Homeland Security Department's Budget Submission for Fiscal Year 2009.''

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Indian Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate, on Thursday, February 14, at 9:30 a.m. in room 628 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building in order to conduct an Oversight Hearing on the President's fiscal year 2009 Budget Request for Tribal Programs.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate, in order to conduct an executive business meeting on Thursday, February 14, 2008 at 10 a.m. in room SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Agenda: I. Bills: S. 2304, Mentally Ill Offender Treatment and Crime Reduction Reauthorization and Improvement Act of 2007 (Domenici, Kennedy, Specter, Leahy); S. 2449, Sunshine in Litigation Act of 2007 (Kohl, Leahy, Graham); S. 352, Sunshine in the Courtroom Act of 2007 (Grassley, Schumer, Leahy, Specter, Graham, Feingold, Cornyn, Durbin); S. 2136, Helping Families Save Their Homes in Bankruptcy Act of 2007 (Durbin; Schumer, Whitehouse, Biden); S. 2133, Home Owners ``Mortgage and Equity Savings Act'' (Specter, Coleman). II. Nominations: Kevin J. O'Connor to be Associate Attorney General, Department of Justice, Gregory G. Katsas to be Assistant Attorney General, Civil Division, Department of Justice.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs' Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, the Federal Workforce, and the District of Columbia be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, February 14, 2008, at 9:45 a.m., in order to conduct a hearing entitled, ``Building and Strengthening the Federal Acquisition Workforce.''

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on February 14, 2008, at 2:30 p.m., to hold an open hearing.