John Ensign

Mr. ENSIGN

Mr. ENSIGN. If I need more time, I will ask for it.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. ENSIGN. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. President, have the yeas and nays been ordered?

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. President, this amendment is very simple. It says we should focus on low-income kids before adults. The original intention of the program was the Children's Health Insurance Program. This says 95 percent of all of those targeted--whether they are 200 or 300 percent of poverty; whatever your State is--they have to be covered before you can cover nonpregnant adults. The chairman of the Finance Committee is going to say no State can meet this. Well, if we don't set the goal for them and don't make them meet it, they won't meet it, of course. So if we are going to have a Children's Health Insurance Program, the money should be focused on the children. This says you cannot spend money on the adults unless they are pregnant adults until 95 percent of those targeted kids are enrolled in the program, and that is where the money is spent. I urge the adoption of the amendment.

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. President, I wish to talk about my amendment. My amendment says that the Children's Health Insurance Program, which is designed to cover low-income children, should first cover low-income children. Many of the States today are covering nonpregnant adults and I believe this is at the expense of low-income children. This program is called the State Children's Health Insurance Program and it is called that for a reason. It is supposed to be for low-income kids. It was not intended for nonpregnant adults. My amendment says that you cannot cover nonpregnant adults until you cover 95 percent of the targeted low-income children's population. Some States have extended their SCHIP coverage to nonpregnant adults. According to the Government Accountability Office, SCHIP covered 6 million individuals, including more than 600,000 adults in the year 2005. This means that 1 out of every 10 people covered by SCHIP was an adult. GAO indicated that in Wisconsin, two-thirds of the total SCHIP enrollees in 2005 were adults. Almost half of the enrollees in Rhode Island were adults. It also found that shortfall States are likely to cover a high proportion of adults. The GAO wrote: Adults accounted for an average of 55 percent of enrollees in shortfall States, compared with 24 percent in nonshortfall States. Covering adults is not the primary purpose of SCHIP. I am seriously concerned that nonpregnant adults may be benefitting from SCHIP funds at the expense of low-income children. We need to refocus the SCHIP program to its original intent--to make low-income children the priority. My amendment today will ensure that SCHIP funds are used to provide health insurance coverage to low-income children. In my opinion, that is the intent of the original law and the way in which SCHIP dollars should be allocated. This proposal does not deprive States of Federal dollars. What it does say is that a State can't use its SCHIP money to provide health benefits to nonpregnant adults until it has enrolled 95 percent of its targeted low-income children. We have heard a lot about the need to cover low-income kids, about keeping them healthy, and giving them a chance in life. If the States aren't forced to cover 95 percent of the low-income kids first, they will continue the current policies and many low-income kids won't be reached out to and brought into the SCHIP program. If we require the States to cover 95 percent of low-income kids, we will be amazed at how many of these kids the States will find. I believe it is important for us to adopt this amendment. If we are going to expand SCHIP, let us make sure low-income children are the priority. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. ENSIGN

Mr. ENSIGN. That is not exactly right.

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. President, the bill before us today would reauthorize SCHIP for 5 years with a $35 billion expansion in spending. But because of the way the budget gimmicks were worked in this bill, it is actually an expansion of somewhere around $110 billion. This expansion, or at least part of it, is going to be funded by an increase in the Federal tobacco tax by 61 cents per pack and up to $10 per cigar. The problem with the funding mechanism in this bill, the way I see it, is that for the funding to still be there, we actually need to encourage people to smoke. Today, in our health care system, smokers contribute to a lot of diseases and this imposes large costs. In the future, as we raise the price of tobacco, fewer people smoking will mean less revenue. The proposal to fund the SCHIP expansion will yield diminishing returns. In the future, the tobacco tax will not adequately pay for the spending that is provided for in this bill. This bill greatly increases dependency on the Federal Government and the dependency of the Federal Government on this tobacco tax revenue. The expansions included in this bill will have little bang for the buck in terms of reducing the ranks of the uninsured. As more money is poured into expanding SCHIP, less of the new funds will go to providing coverage to low-income children who currently go without coverage. SCHIP expansion will only serve to coax individuals and families out of the private insurance market and into Government coverage. Undermining private health insurance coverage by creating more Government dependence is not an effective way to address shortfalls in coverage. We should have more of a comprehensive approach. This approach should include fiscal discipline, not more taxes and higher spending. We should be working to strengthen private sector health insurance options and increase parental choice and responsibility. My amendment, however, will not address taking a more comprehensive approach to coverage. We will have other amendments during this debate that will address more of a comprehensive approach to insurance coverage. I strongly believe in the role of Federal Government plays in promoting basic research. Some have noted that an increase in the tobacco tax should be used to fund the costs that tobacco imposes on our society. I agree with that. My amendment would establish a trust fund that will be known as the Disease Prevention and Treatment Research Trust Fund. The revenue from increased tobacco tax rates in the underlying bill will be transferred to this trust fund. From there, the dollars will be made available to fund research on diseases that are often associated with tobacco use. I also believe the chronic underfunding of research in areas such as pediatric cancer need to be addressed, so I have expanded the permissible use of these funds to cover research on other diseases as well. I urge my colleagues to support my amendment to help discover new knowledge and treatments that improve and save lives. Our current health care system is a sick care system. We do not spend nearly as much money on prevention as we do on getting people healthy once they are sick. This trust fund will fund research into areas to keep people healthy, to make sure we are spending money on disease research that actually keeps people out of hospitals, that keeps people as healthy as possible for as long as possible throughout their lives. I think this is a better use of taxpayers' dollars, especially when we are going to be raising those taxes on people who smoke. Let's use that money to fund disease research instead of taking people from the private health market onto the Government-funded health market. I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. ENSIGN. I am willing to yield back time so we can get back on schedule for a 10:30 vote, if that will be OK with the Senator?

Mr. ENSIGN. As you heard in my statement, pediatric cancer research is underfunded.

Mr. ENSIGN. Let me explain it to you and then I will yield for a question. It says: There are hereby appropriated to the Disease Prevention and Treatment Reserve Trust Fund-- which we are talking about here, --amounts equivalent to the taxes received in the Treasury attributable to the amendments made by section 701. . . . That is the tobacco taxes. We are taking the tobacco taxes, which would fund part of the increase the SCHIP expansion, and apply it to the Disease Prevention and Treatment Research Trust Fund. We are not taking money out of the trust fund; it is the revenues generated from the expansion of the tobacco tax from which we are taking the money.

Mr. ENSIGN. I believe in taking a more comprehensive approach that actually doesn't increase the dependence on the Government. I am addressing something different with this amendment. What I believe is we should do this amendment to fund disease prevention research, but then do a comprehensive approach that takes care of kids, that takes care of those uninsured adults, that gets them into the private insurance market. The more people, especially a lot of younger people, healthier people who are currently uninsured, whom we get into the private health insurance markets--the more the better. There are several proposals out there, whether it is tax credits or tax deductions; there is a blend of the two that has been talked about. We need to explore those because if we are doing it in a way that will take care of the uninsured, we bring in the folks who are healthier which will bring down the cost of health care insurance for all Americans. That is the direction we should be going. SCHIP will take people out of the private insurance market. The program, the expansion you have done--and this is according to CBO--will take children who are currently in the private health insurance market and it will move them to Government programs. There will be a great incentive in the future to do more and more of this.

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have a letter from Dr. Neal Birnbaum, president of the American College of Radiology, printed at the end of my remarks on amendment No. 2538. The letter expresses support for my amendment, which would use the tobacco tax increase to fund research on diseases that are often associated with tobacco use, including arthritis.

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. President, to be clear, this amendment funds cancer research, including: . . . pediatric, lung, breast, ovarian, uterine, prostate, colon, rectal, oral, skin, bone, kidney, liver, stomach, bladder-- any kind of cancer you can think of. Respiratory diseases . . . chronic obstructive pulmonary disease-- We hear so much about that today. --tuberculosis, bronchitis, asthma and emphysema. All the related problems we see so much with smoking: ``Cardiovascular diseases''--a huge killer in the United States with huge costs to our health care system. We are going to fund a lot more research with this money. I think this money is going to some very good things in America, things that will benefit not just children but will benefit all Americans. It doesn't spend the money twice as I pointed out. It takes the money from the expansion and actually spends it, I believe, in more appropriate areas. Then, later in the bill, we are going to be offering some alternatives that will make sure the kids are covered and we will be looking at some other alternatives to do more comprehensive care. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment. Have the yeas and nays been ordered?

Mr. ENSIGN. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. ENSIGN. We are taking it from the expansion, which is not just children. We are going to have other amendments to make sure the prioritization is on low-income kids. Part of the expansion is in States where the folks being covered are not just those under 200 percent of the poverty level. The expansion of SCHIP has been part of the problem. I believe in actually covering everybody, but doing it in a way that is different than the approach in the bill. What we want to do is take the tobacco taxes and take those funds that are raised by the tobacco taxes and dedicate those funds to disease research. The budget gimmicks used in the SCHIP expansion are so phony that it is ridiculous, some of the worst I have seen around here. These gimmicks assume these folks are going away in a few years, that they are not going to be on the program at the end of the 5-year reauthorization. This is how they got the SCHIP expansion to meet pay-go requirements. But we say let's take the money and put it in a trust fund and with those real dollars that are in the trust fund, we are going to fund disease research that will help children, that will help adults, that will help all Americans.

Mr. ENSIGN. Yes.

Mr. ENSIGN. That is exactly why I believe in a comprehensive approach to solve the problem we have in the country. You do not take care of all of the children in America in this bill.

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. President, our amendment clearly takes the money from the increase in the tobacco tax, and instead of dedicating to the expansion of SCHIP, puts it into a disease research trust fund. SCHIP is still authorized; we don't do anything to the underlying program that currently exists. We take the money out of the expansion, this is tobacco tax money out of the expansion, and we apply it to the trust fund to be used for disease research. That is what this bill does. That is what the amendment does.

Mr. ENSIGN. Yes, but let me explain it.

Mr. ENSIGN

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. President, in the November 2004 elections, Nevadans entered a new frontier for casting their votes. We became the first State in the Nation to require that voter-verified paper audit trail printers be used with touch-screen voting machines. Despite what critics of these machines might tell you, Nevada's elections were a success. The machines worked well and were well- received by voters. During a post-election audit, Nevada compared 60,000 electronic ballots with their corresponding voter-verified paper record and found that they matched with 100 percent consistency. As a result, all Nevadans who used these machines can be confident that their votes were counted accurately. I understand better than most the importance of the integrity of the ballot box. I was at the mercy of a paperless-machine election in my 1998 race for the U.S. Senate. When the votes were tallied with a difference of only a few hundred, I asked for a recount in Clark County, the only county at the time using electronic voting machines. The result of the recount was identical to the first count. That is because there was nothing to recount. After rerunning a computer program, the computer predictably produced the same exact tally. I conceded that race and was elected to Nevada's other Senate seat in 2000. But that experience made me realize the importance of ensuring Americans that their votes will count, it is absolutely fundamental to our democracy. That is why I led the fight for voter verification paper trails in the Help America Vote Act, known as HAVA, which President Bush signed into law in 2002. When Congress passed HAVA, we expressed our commitment to the principle of ``one person, one vote.'' One important component of HAVA provided States with funds to replace aging voting machines which had a tendency to malfunction. A voting machine that fails to record a vote properly affects voters in the same way as if the voters were denied access to the voting booth. Either way their vote is not counted. Despite these gains, HAVA falls short in one critical area. It does not require that electronic voting machines produce a paper trail of each ballot. A voter-verified paper trail would allow voters to review a physical printout of their ballot and correct any errors before leaving the voting booth. This printout would be preserved at the polling place for use in any recounts. This is exactly what Nevadans experienced when they voted in November. This technology is important. It increases voter confidence. With the close elections America has seen recently, it is important that each American trust the outcome of our elections. Machines that allow voters to review a separate paper record of their ballots give voters confidence that their votes have been cast and will be counted accurately. Paper-trail technology ensures that no votes will be lost if a voting machine fails. The paper record can be used as the ballot of record if a machine malfunctions and fails to record the votes that were cast prior to a machine failing. This technology also gives State election officials a necessary backup to verify results. Nevada's post-election audit ensures that each machine operated properly. This type of audit guarantees accuracy in a way that cannot be guaranteed otherwise. Unfortunately, the language that is contained in HAVA has not resolved this issue for most other States. Now, I am working to ensure voting integrity across the country. In introducing the Voting Integrity and Verification Act, I want to ensure that HAVA is clear-- voters must be assured that their votes will be accurate and will be counted properly. My bill requires that all voting systems purchased after December 31, 2012 have an individual permanent paper record for each ballot cast. Additionally, this bill will help to advance technology for persons with disabilities to ensure that disabled voters enjoy the same independence when exercising their right to vote as non-disabled voters enjoy. Technology has transformed the way we do many things, including voting. But we cannot simply sit on the sidelines and assume that our democracy will withstand such changes. Our continued work to ensure that each vote counts here in the U.S. underscores the idea that we must always be vigilant in protecting democracy, whether it is brand new or more than 200 years old. The Voting Integrity and Verification Act protects democracy by protecting the sanctity of our vote.

Mr. ENSIGN

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. President, in the November 2004 elections, Nevadans entered a new frontier for casting their votes. We became the first State in the Nation to require that voter-verified paper audit trail printers be used with touch-screen voting machines. Despite what critics of these machines might tell you, Nevada's elections were a success. The machines worked well and were well- received by voters. During a post-election audit, Nevada compared 60,000 electronic ballots with their corresponding voter-verified paper record and found that they matched with 100 percent consistency. As a result, all Nevadans who used these machines can be confident that their votes were counted accurately. I understand better than most the importance of the integrity of the ballot box. I was at the mercy of a paperless-machine election in my 1998 race for the U.S. Senate. When the votes were tallied with a difference of only a few hundred, I asked for a recount in Clark County, the only county at the time using electronic voting machines. The result of the recount was identical to the first count. That is because there was nothing to recount. After rerunning a computer program, the computer predictably produced the same exact tally. I conceded that race and was elected to Nevada's other Senate seat in 2000. But that experience made me realize the importance of ensuring Americans that their votes will count, it is absolutely fundamental to our democracy. That is why I led the fight for voter verification paper trails in the Help America Vote Act, known as HAVA, which President Bush signed into law in 2002. When Congress passed HAVA, we expressed our commitment to the principle of ``one person, one vote.'' One important component of HAVA provided States with funds to replace aging voting machines which had a tendency to malfunction. A voting machine that fails to record a vote properly affects voters in the same way as if the voters were denied access to the voting booth. Either way their vote is not counted. Despite these gains, HAVA falls short in one critical area. It does not require that electronic voting machines produce a paper trail of each ballot. A voter-verified paper trail would allow voters to review a physical printout of their ballot and correct any errors before leaving the voting booth. This printout would be preserved at the polling place for use in any recounts. This is exactly what Nevadans experienced when they voted in November. This technology is important. It increases voter confidence. With the close elections America has seen recently, it is important that each American trust the outcome of our elections. Machines that allow voters to review a separate paper record of their ballots give voters confidence that their votes have been cast and will be counted accurately. Paper-trail technology ensures that no votes will be lost if a voting machine fails. The paper record can be used as the ballot of record if a machine malfunctions and fails to record the votes that were cast prior to a machine failing. This technology also gives State election officials a necessary backup to verify results. Nevada's post-election audit ensures that each machine operated properly. This type of audit guarantees accuracy in a way that cannot be guaranteed otherwise. Unfortunately, the language that is contained in HAVA has not resolved this issue for most other States. Now, I am working to ensure voting integrity across the country. In introducing the Voting Integrity and Verification Act, I want to ensure that HAVA is clear-- voters must be assured that their votes will be accurate and will be counted properly. My bill requires that all voting systems purchased after December 31, 2012 have an individual permanent paper record for each ballot cast. Additionally, this bill will help to advance technology for persons with disabilities to ensure that disabled voters enjoy the same independence when exercising their right to vote as non-disabled voters enjoy. Technology has transformed the way we do many things, including voting. But we cannot simply sit on the sidelines and assume that our democracy will withstand such changes. Our continued work to ensure that each vote counts here in the U.S. underscores the idea that we must always be vigilant in protecting democracy, whether it is brand new or more than 200 years old. The Voting Integrity and Verification Act protects democracy by protecting the sanctity of our vote.

Mr. ENSIGN

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. President, first I want to address what Senator Kennedy said in case there is misinformation out there in what he said, that Mel Martinez and others would not qualify for benefits under my amendment. That is absolutely false. We have cleared this, we have run the traps on it. It is necessary to make sure that not just someone who is here illegally now who is stealing someone's identity but it is when they become legalized that we want to prevent them from getting Social Security benefits. That is the problem with the Stabenow amendment, that illegals cannot get benefits now. What we want to do is prevent them, if they become legalized--that the work they did when they stole someone's Social Security number, we don't want them to have benefits. Mr. President, is all time expired?

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

Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. President, I yield back the remainder of my time. I make a point of order that the second-degree amendment is not germane.