Michael Enzi

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, we are about to vote on final passage of the Internet access tax moratorium. After months of negotiations, I believe the amended version before us represents a fair and reasonable compromise. It addresses, although not entirely, most of the concerns I raised when we debated this bill in November. I plan to vote for it today. I do not support taxing the Internet. I never have. I stood before you 2 years ago and proposed an amendment that would have put in place a ``permanent'' moratorium. But my colleagues, at the time, presented a very compelling argument as to why a ban on taxing the Internet should not be made permanent. They said we should simply extend the moratorium for 2 years rather than put in place a permanent mandate on technological development. The major point of contention, they said, was the way in which we defined ``Internet access.'' They said we needed to let technology develop before defining what could and could not be taxed 10 years down the road. In retrospect, I agree with my colleagues, and I agree with my colleagues now. The moratorium needs to be extended for 4 years, as is done in this compromise. We need to put in place a moratorium for 4 years because it is extremely difficult to write a definition today that will protect and promote technology even 5 years down the road. Technology is simply changing too fast for us to make those kinds of decisions with any certainty. For example, in my home State of Wyoming, we have a small telephone company in the northwestern part of the State that serves about 7,000 people. Two years ago, in this small community, the company was working to update their plain old telephone system so they could handle the capacity needed for dial-up networking. Today, after 2 years of upgrades and investments, the company now offers to every single customer a package of high-speed Internet access, digital cable service, multiple telephone lines, and voice over the Internet in some areas. Talk about rapidly changing technology. This company is making things happen. However, at the same time, the company's progress highlights the difficulty we face in determining what is and what is not Internet service. For instance, most of us don't know exactly when a local telephone call ceases to be a telephone call and becomes a dial-up Internet service. We don't understand how to decipher a digital packet of voice information from a digital packet of Internet service information. And we certainly don't know exactly how the digital data in our BlackBerrys connects to our desktop computers at home, to our laptop computers in the car, or to our mobile phones in our pockets. But, we do know when we are trying to make a phone call and when we are typing with our fingers. Voice telecommunications are treated differently than other broadband Internet services, and that is a fact. It is not fair and it is not right, but it is a fact. The compromise before us recognizes this problem. That is why it carves out VOIP or voice over the Internet. I am pleased my colleagues were able to craft language this afternoon that improved the original VOIP provision included in the McCain substitute. The new language makes it more clear and easier for our States, cities, businesses, and judicial system to interpret. I am glad my colleagues were able to reach an agreement on the issue of VOIP. Unfortunately, we weren't as lucky on the definition of ``internet access service.'' The Allen-Wyden, Alexander-Carper and McCain proposals all contained different definitions that would restrict the ability of States and locals to tax telecommunications services. What troubled me was that each definition would have cost our States millions of dollars, but nobody could tell me exactly how much it would have cost them. That is the problem. CBO was unable to estimate how much our States and locals would lose under the Allen-Wyden or McCain definitions, but clearly stated that the loss could be ``substantial.'' The most concrete numbers from CBO were provided in a letter dated November 5, 2003. In that letter, CBO estimated that revenue losses could range from $80 to $120 million per year to State and local governments that are already taxing Internet access and were covered by the ``grandfather clause.'' Additionally, CBO states that ``other states are currently imposing taxes on charges for the portions of DSL services they do not consider Internet access.'' Those States would lose between $40 and $75 million per year. As you will recall, under the Allen-Wyden and McCain definition, taxation of all DSL services would be preempted. The Multistate Tax Commission estimates that the loss could be as much as $4 billion to $8 billion under the Allen-Wyden and McCain definitions. Given these two examples, there is clearly a lot of discrepancy between the agencies that are supposed to know the most. Of course, the Alexander-Carper definition wasn't perfect either. It would have also cost our States millions of dollars over time, but it would have been far less significant. It would have prevented States from collecting new revenue from consumers who are paying for the last mile of their DSL services. However, once again, nobody could tell me-- including CBO--how much the Alexander-Carper definition would have cost. With over $20 billion being collected from taxes on telecommunications services every year, this imprecise data made it difficult for me to support any definitions. That is why we had to include other provisions--like the grandfather provisions and the VOIP language--that would help cushion the impact this bill will have on our States and locals. The grandfather provisions are important because they ensure that States and locals that are currently taxing do not lose millions of dollars over the next couple of years. I had hoped all of the grandfather clauses would expire at the same time, but we were beat fair and square. The problem is that extending the grandfather for some States for only 2 years still creates an unfunded mandate. As many of you know, this is an issue I have followed closely for years. Questions about unfunded mandates have always been the issues that cause me, especially when I served in the Wyoming State legislature, to sit up and take notice. Whenever Congress takes up an issue that could have an effect on State revenues, every State Governor and legislature stops what they are doing to see what we are up to--and how it may affect them--or more to the point--what it is going to cost them. So now, after months of hearings, meetings and negotiations, we are getting ready to pass a bill that could create an unfunded mandate for a couple of years but doesn't do it permanently, which I am pleased about. The original Allen-Wyden bill proposed a ``permanent'' moratorium on access taxes and ``permanent'' definition of internet access. My question was whether or not we should lock any type of technology in a glass box labeled ``permanent'' when that technology is changing shape and size at the speed of light. The problem with the word ``permanent'' was that it didn't allow for a lot of wiggle room. The changing shape of technology would break the glass box whether we like it or not, so I am pleased that we crafted a bill that will keep the latch open to allow for expansion and future growth. That way we can check on the progress of technology in 4 years, and then decide whether we should lock it up tighter or change its design to allow for more expansion and development. The key words here are time and change. By signing on to something that was supposed to be ``permanent'' we would have been committing ourselves to something that might not have survived the test of time. Things are moving quickly and changing fast and we are trying to make decisions about what lies down the road based on what we have just driven past--or the scenery that surrounds us right now. It might work. But it might not. It might not because no other product of technology has seen such growth and change in the past few years as the Internet and information technology. That is what has made it a difficult issue to track and to address in terms of what its future may hold. The bill we have before us is an effort to allow some of these issues to ripen, while protecting internet users from future taxation. That being said, I think we might benefit from taking a look at the past history of the issue before we try to form an opinion on its future. Two years ago, I stood before you and offered an amendment that would have--like this bill--made the moratorium on Internet access permanent. At the time, I believed we were taking a fair and equitable approach to a prohibition on taxing the Internet. My amendment, which was cosponsored by my good friend and colleague from North Dakota, Senator Dorgan, would have made the ban on taxing the Internet permanent, and it would have simplified the extremely cumbersome network of State sales and use taxes. My amendment failed, in part because most Senators did not want to put in place a ``permanent'' moratorium. The other reason my amendment failed was because it addressed a complex issue that most Senators did not understand. It was the issue of streamlined sales and use tax. I introduced the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Act in 2001 and again last year because it would greatly reduce the complexity of our system of sales and use taxes. This year, Senator Dorgan and I have been joined by 18 bipartisan cosponsors in introducing S. 1736. Like our bill in the 107th Congress, S. 1736 would make it easier for American consumers and businesses to conduct sales from remote locations and help States begin to recover from years of budgetary shortfalls. It would authorize States that have signed the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement and have passed legislation simplifying their tax system to require all sellers to collect and remit sales taxes. S. 1736 is a critical piece of legislation that many of my colleagues are learning more about and recognizing its growing importance as Internet usage explodes. Two years ago the revenue loss attributed to the Internet sales tax loophole was fairly minimal. Today, the revenue loss has ballooned as online and other remote sales have increased. The States have responded to this budget crisis by signing the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement and implementing legislation that drastically simplifies their sales and use tax systems. In fact, 20 States have already signed into law the necessary implementing legislation, while 9 others are currently in the process of doing so. Two years ago, my colleagues said the States hadn't come far enough in the process to warrant congressional action. I think the opposite can be said today. The States have taken the bull by the horns and are poised to act. Now, Congress needs to step up and do the same. The sales and use tax bill has been referred to the Finance Committee and I hope to work with Chairman Grassley and others to bring it up in committee some time this year. But, that is not what we are talking about here today. Let me be clear--we are not talking about sales and use taxes today as part of the internet access tax moratorium. These are two completely separate issues. Today we are talking about the Internet access tax moratorium. The compromise before us doesn't address every concern raised by the States and locals, but it doesn't address every concern raised by industry either. But, isn't that the sign of a true compromise? Both sides have to give a little in order to come up with the best product. I have worked with my colleagues on both sides of the issue to find middle ground that would protect consumers and ensure that States and localities don't lose billions in tax revenue. I think we have found the middle ground. I have talked to both Republicans and Democrats and this is the bipartisan solution. I urge my colleagues to vote for this bill, so we can allow the use of the Internet to continue to prosper and grow. It is a valuable resource because it provides access on demand. In addition, it is estimated that the growth of online businesses will create millions of new jobs nationwide in the coming years. I hope you will vote with me in favor of both.

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. I ask unanimous consent that the filing deadline under cloture rules for second-degree amendments to the Daschle amendment occur at 11:30 a.m. today.

Mr. ENZI. Madam President, I am a little disturbed at some of the words I heard on the Senate floor this morning. The minority is trying to take the President apart at the cost of our troops, and we cannot stand for that. We have people fighting in Iraq. Two weeks ago I was in Germany, and I met with some of the wounded troops. We thought we would have to pump them up, but they pumped us up. Their message to us was: How come everything sounds so bad back home when it is improving in Iraq? They said the people of Iraq appreciate what we are doing. We are making a difference. Let us do our job. Then we hear this rhetoric which is just based on a Presidential election. It has nothing to do with the true feelings in Iraq or the protection of our troops. In much the same way, I hear people on that side of the aisle trying to scare seniors about Medicare. Seniors are about to get the best advantage they have ever had since the founding of Medicare, and that is the new prescription drug program. Next week, we will take the first step in the history of Medicare toward providing seniors with the help they need to pay for their prescription drugs. We made improvements to Medicare in a three-stage parcel so that it can be done right. What begins next week is that people begin to get information so they can select a prescription drug card where they will get 10- to 20-percent discounts on the drugs they are taking now. They can do it easily. They can go online and make a comparison, or they can call 1-800-MEDICARE and talk to live people, tell them what their drugs are, and get some help in gathering information. But they do not have to make the decision right now. That is just a telephone call to find out what the best possibility is right now. So seniors can begin to run options through their minds and make the best selection for the drugs they take to get the biggest discount they possibly can. This is an historic new benefit for seniors, and I am sorry there has been so much rhetoric surrounding the new law. There are some people who would prefer to have had an issue instead of a solution. But President Bush said we are going to have a prescription drug plan, and because he put the effort behind it, and because people here believed in it, we got a solution. The solution comes in three parts: By June 1, seniors can get the drug card. That is the 2004 benefit. In 2005, for the first time seniors under Medicare will be able to get a physical, part of preventive medicine. We think that it is important that people find out what their medical problems are early and solve them. Preventive medicine is proven to be the most beneficial for the patient and absolutely the best from a pain standpoint, and it does prevent problems from happening, which is also a huge cost saver. So get on the phone or get on the Internet. Seniors should call in, find out how the drug benefit works, and they will receive up to 10 to 20 percent off the prices they are paying now for their drugs. And if they happen to be a low-income senior who signs up for the card, they will receive an extra $600 in credit in 2004 and 2005 to help pay for their prescriptions. A number of the pharmaceutical companies also have agreed to provide their brands of drugs free of charge to seniors who exhaust their $600 credit. That is going to cost the companies quite a bit of money. Some people who say we didn't do anything, that there is a donut hole in the benefit. My response is, before we did the Medicare bill there was not even a donut. Now there is only a donut hole. So in 2006, there will be more extensive and comprehensive coverage of prescription drugs, and a maximum out-of-pocket spending of $3,600 per person on drugs before catastrophic coverage kicks in. There has been a tremendous benefit that has been delivered, but seniors have to participate if they are under Medicare. They have to do the research to find out what the best discount card for them would be. There are two ways to do that. One is on the Internet at Medicare.gov. The other is by telephone at 1-800-MEDICARE. There will be live people on the phone to help seniors gather the information by June 1. Seniors do not have to sign up until June 1, but they should do the research and watch what happens to the price as competition kicks in. That is what this is, a number of companies vying for the business of seniors, all seniors, because all seniors will have help with their drug benefit--up to 10 to 20 percent, in some cases higher with the discount cards, but $600 if they are low income, and some other benefits beyond that. I hope we can end some of the rhetoric that is coming from the other side of the aisle about what this does and does not do, and we can get on board and help seniors to take advantage of what has been done. We talked about doing a benefit for years, and it did not get done. The President got behind it, pushed it, said we will have it done, and it is done. The reality is now that seniors have access to new benefits under Medicare, they can sign up for that with a drug discount card beginning next week. They do not have to sign up until June 1 with no penalty if they wait until then. So let us do what is right by seniors and put politics aside for a moment. There will be plenty of time later for debating and campaigning. The great majority of seniors will benefit from the new Medicare discount cards. Let me recap again what this bill does. Next month, seniors can begin signing up for a Medicare-endorsed drug discount card that will save them 10 to 20 percent, at least, off retail drug prices. Seniors with low incomes will also get up to $600 in credit to help them pay for their prescriptions. Next year, Medicare will cover new preventive benefits, including a ``Welcome to Medicare'' physical exam for all Americans when they turn 65. And in 2006, Medicare will offer voluntary, comprehensive drug coverage, with special benefits for seniors with low incomes and seniors with high drug bills. The new drug benefit will be voluntary. It will offer the most help to those who need the help most. And it will provide much-needed security and peace of mind to seniors who worry about losing their life savings in the event of a devastating illness. Despite all of these good things, there are still some who insist on ``talking down'' this new Medicare drug benefit. There are some who are trying to convince seniors and their families that this is somehow a raw deal, a sham, or worse. I hear that, and I know that other Members who voted for the Medicare bill from both sides of the aisle hear these things. And then I review again what the bill actually does, and I wonder what the problem is. I think I have finally figured out the problem. The problem is that this new Medicare drug benefit does not fit the tired old storyline about Republicans and healthcare. We Republicans know the story all too well. I am surprised someone has not turned it into a children's book yet, so that kids can hear it when they are very young. Or maybe someone has. The tired old story changes over time, but the main points are always the same. The tired old story is that Republicans do not care about healthcare; they do not care if healthcare is affordable or available to everyone; they do not care if people with low incomes can get care when they need it; they do not care about seniors and their drug bills. And the problem for the storytellers is that the facts on the Medicare drug benefit do not support their story. Nevertheless, the storytellers persist in peddling this tale. It is so bad right now that some of the storytellers are trying to undo this important legislation before it even gets off the ground. In fact, some are completely reversing their longstanding positions on this issue, in an attempt to remove parts of the new Medicare law that are nearly identical to sections of their bills from recent years. I understand why some in the minority are upset with the new Medicare law. They are upset because Republicans campaigned 2 years ago on a promise to pass a meaningful drug benefit for seniors, and we delivered on that promise. But the reality is that now seniors have access to new benefits under Medicare, and they can sign up for the first new benefit--the drug discount card--beginning next week. So let's do right by seniors and put politics aside for a moment. There will be plenty of time later for debating and campaigning. The great majority of seniors will benefit from the new Medicare drug discount cards. Our job should be to work together to help seniors make the best decisions about their own healthcare and their own finances. Let's give them the right information so they can decide whether to sign up, and which card to choose. Let's do this now, because seniors deserve nothing less. I yield the floor.

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I want to talk a little bit about energy. We have regulated ourselves out of business. We have regulated ourselves to higher prices. We have regulated ourselves so the source of our oil is in the Middle East. In 1973 we had a crisis. Senator Hansen was the Senator from Wyoming who held this seat. I had him speak to a Wyoming Jaycees session about what was happening when we got cut off from oil in the Middle East. Beginning then, Senators were saying we needed to do something so we would never have an oil crisis again, that we could not be dependent on the Middle East. I think we were at 35 percent use from the Middle East at that time. We are now at 60 percent use from the Middle East. They hold us in the palm of their hand for our money. Our money is sponsoring whatever happens in the Middle East. They don't base the price on true supply and demand. They control the price. I once got to meet the fellow who determined how many barrels they ought to ship, to raise the price or lower the price. Lower the price, you say? Yes, lower the price. If you lower the price drastically you can drive production in the United States out of business. They have done it twice. They have driven it out of business. What happens when the price shoots back up and we buy more oil from them? The U.S. production cannot recover because the people who used to be in that business had to find other work. Finding trained people in that business, to do what they had been doing, is impossible. That is how the Middle East has manipulated us twice that I know of. I think they do it, on a much more minute basis, on a regular basis now. Earlier there were some numbers over there on a chart. It showed 77 cents as the cost of a gallon of crude oil. Then it showed manufacture, and it showed the filling station--manufacture at 25 cents, filling station at 10 cents, and Federal taxes at 52 cents, which came to $1.64, which was listed as the fair price for a gallon of gas. I love to get into the numbers because I am the only accountant in the Senate. That is based, I guess, on 42 gallons of oil to the barrel. But 42 gallons at the current price would be 88 cents a gallon, not 77 cents a gallon. But that is based on the whole 42 gallons being able to be made into gasoline when in fact you end up with 19.4 gallons--yes, less than half of what was in that barrel actually is able to go into your car gas tank. So instead of 88 cents--well, there are byproducts they get to sell, too, and that is how they are able to hold it down, I guess. I want to comment a little bit on the 25 cents, the 25 cents that goes to the refiner. The 25 cents that goes to the refiner is not profit. Boy, I bet they wish it were. The 10 cents that goes to the filling station is not profit. That is the difference between what they buy it for and what they sell it for. All of them have to provide employees, they have to provide facilities, and they have to pay taxes. So there are a lot of costs that go into it. Particularly with the refinery again, we need to have regulations to make sure we keep our environment clean, but we have to be sure what we are doing is what really needs to be done. Nobody is building a refinery in this country anymore--nobody. In fact, we are reducing the number of refineries, which means we are reducing our capacity to provide what needs to be provided, and at the same time we are saying there have to be a whole bunch of different kinds of gasoline. These gasolines are going to be designed which means they are more complicated for particular parts of the country. If you keep doing that, you keep driving up the price. That is part of the 25 cents that the refiner has to use. The more you increase the cost and reduce that 25 cents, the less gas you are going to have in this country. I was out in California a while ago. The Senator from California was making some of these speeches. I have to say I don't think you have seen anything in the way of an energy crisis yet, unless we can do something with an energy bill. I was out in California. As you go from Las Vegas, you will see this real dark cloud that appears. That is coming from California. When I was there, I found that they have a pooling lane for high-occupancy vehicles. You need two people in the car to be a high-occupancy vehicle. I have never driven on a wide road like that in Wyoming, but out there they have five and six lanes. One of those lanes is saved for people who carpool. I think it was rush hour. I can tell you that the other five lanes were jammed with traffic. They weren't going anywhere. My wife and I in our car constituted the two and we could use the pooling lane. We just zipped right through. It was absolutely amazing. But I thought I must be seeing half of California's population stalled, creating pollution and not carpooling like they are suggesting the rest of us ought to do. There are some things that can be done, which need to be done and hopefully will be done. But you haven't seen anything in the way of energy prices, if we don't get a national energy policy and don't get some reliability as to what we have in the United States. We have been touting natural gas as clean fuel, and it is. But there is only one State that has an increase in the amount of natural gas it is producing. That is Wyoming. The rest of them are declining. Let us see what happens if the use slows up and the supply goes down. Oh, the price goes up. You could be seeing the lowest prices in energy that you are ever going to see if we could use some of that U.S. ingenuity and figure out ways to make hydrogen out of the coal or other things. But I do have a lot of faith in U.S. ingenuity, provided we don't regulate them out of business.

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Nevada for his courtesy and his previous offer to let me speak. I am glad to have this opportunity to talk about a number of things that have come up today. We have talked a little bit about the war in Iraq. We have talked a little bit about the environment because Earth Day is tomorrow. We have talked a little bit about overtime and we have talked a lot about energy. I am going to cover those topics as well as some other things that need to be known. I am going to start with the war in Iraq because last week I had the opportunity to go with Senator Sessions and Senator Chambliss to visit NATO and then to go into Germany and to visit with some of the troops that have been wounded in Iraq. Some of them have been wounded very severely. In fact, those who are not severely wounded do not leave Iraq. There are hospitals in Iraq that take care of them and then get them back into the fray. Those who have been injured worse are flown to Landstuhl Hospital in Germany where they are stabilized, treated, and then sent back to the United States for more treatment. The three of us had an opportunity to visit that hospital. We split up into three groups so we could talk to more of the soldiers. We thought we would be able to perhaps pump them up a little bit after what they had been through. Quite the reverse happened. They pumped us up. It was a tremendous experience. These people, men and women, to a person said: We are making a difference in Iraq. We know the people over there, we know our job, we are doing our job, the people are responding to what we are doing, and we are making a difference. The other side is so worried that they are bringing in people to take us on. Every one of them wanted to be patched up as fast as possible and go back to help their buddies. They knew what the job was. They knew the people there. It was tremendously inspirational. The next day we went to an Army training base that a lot of U.S. soldiers in the past had been assigned to and are still assigned to, but they have been moved to Iraq. They have been assigned to Iraq and they had just been on another overseas assignment, had been back about 8 months and were assigned to Iraq. Some of the spouses there had had husbands extended in Iraq. We wanted to find out what they were feeling, what they were thinking. It was a chance to visit with them, and so we did. Again, we were the ones who were encouraged. I remember one of the spouses explaining that part of the job of a soldier is to watch the back of his buddy, and when some of the troops are pulled out prematurely there is nobody to watch somebody's back. Then the lady said: If my husband was the one who had to stay and somebody got pulled out, I would not be able to take it. So if my husband is the one who has to stay to protect somebody else, that is their job. That is what I want him to do. That is what he needs to do. That is what will make the difference. What I noticed at both of those meetings was that other countries of the world say the reason we are the most powerful country in the world is because of the money we spend on being powerful. Some people would say it is because of the technology we have developed that makes us more equipped with more advanced things than any other country in the world. Both of those play a small role, but what makes the difference between the United States and the other countries is the people of this country, the young men and women who are serving in our Armed Forces-- their dedication, their innovation, their ability to think, their ability to react, and their patriotism. Then we have another secret weapon, and that secret weapon is the spouses and the families who are praying for and supporting the troops. That is a force other countries cannot reckon with, and we should be so appreciative. I want to mention one other thing that might seem unusual. When we were meeting with one of the generals, the general prayed. Now, I am not sure that is acceptable under the Constitution as it might be interpreted by some judges, but he prayed. He knows that will make a difference. One of the things that occurred to me while he was doing that is we often almost always remember to pray for our troops, but I think we probably ought to be praying for the opposition as well. We ought to be praying for the opposition to soften their hearts, for the opposition to realize what is happening in the world and the role they are playing. Praying can make a difference, and it is up to all of us to try that, with faith, and see if it will not support these admirable troops, their spouses, and their families.

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I will take 1 last minute to thank Secretary Chao for the work she did on overtime. We had a lot of discussions about the proposed overtime rule that was put out for comment. What you saw on this floor was an action to try to stop reviewing the 80,000 comments that have come in. We allowed her to look at those 80,000 comments. I commend the Secretary for the work she did in paying attention to what people were saying. We don't see much of that in the Government, but the Department of Labor, under Secretary Chao, took a look at what people have been saying and made corrections in the rule before the final rule was published. She raised the amount to the maximum. We had already raised the amount on the minimum. She made sure that first responders would not lose overtime; that nurses would not lose overtime; and that veterans trained and going into the job force would not lose overtime. I commend her for reading those 80,000 letters. I commend her and the Department for taking the corrective action. Doing the process makes a difference. She did the process and she made sure they responded. I yield the floor. I reserve the remainder of our time.

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, yes, we should get an equal amount of time in order to respond to what the Senator from Nevada said.

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. I will switch to another topic now. Tomorrow is Earth Day and all of us are concerned about the future of the Earth. We are concerned about the environment, and we are concerned about the activities that happen in that environment. Earlier there was a comment about wilderness areas and how wilderness study areas can be violated. I need to address this wilderness study issue because Wyoming is the only State in the Nation that negotiated its wilderness areas years ago. We wanted to get that figured out. We wanted to protect vast areas, and we did. There is always the recommendation that there be additional wilderness study areas, and we do not have any problem with that, with a small caveat, and that is that the wilderness study areas are often areas that are being used as part of the economy of our State. They are already areas that have had development. Do my colleagues know what happens when they go into a wilderness study area. They go into an indefinite period of being studied with nothing being allowed to happen on that land. The things that were already happening cannot continue. It moves back to a primitive state, with no activity, for an indefinite period of time. There are some wilderness impact study areas that have been looked at for 20 years. Do my colleagues not think a decision ought to be able to be made in less than 20 years? There might even be some out there that are longer than that. The fear of people whose economy relies on an area that they have already been using is it will be designated a wilderness impact study area and they will lose their right to use it for what they have been earning their living at, for years, while it is not being studied. That is a crime. Another problem we have is it is a big country and things tend to be one size fits all. For instance, I just saw an ad in the paper asking people to send money to help preserve wolves. It was a glorious ad. That is what ads are. They are to sell people on doing things. But they only tell one side of the story, and I hope before people send their money they will check with areas that are being impacted by a wolf population. It has a little bit to do with our Endangered Species Act. The Endangered Species Act is a Federal policy. It has to be. This is a vast country and we try to save things all over--and we need to. But it is an unfunded mandate for States, for counties, for towns, and particularly for individuals. That is against the law, to put unfunded mandates on the States, the counties, and the people, but we do it with the Endangered Species Act. Right now, Wyoming's wolf program costs about $1.2 million a year. That is coming out of the Wyoming pocket; that is not coming out of the Federal pocket. There are county expenses involved in it that are not being paid for by the Federal Government. There are individuals who can no longer use their land, they can't make the living on their land they were making because of a Federal policy. Do we pay them anything for that? No, we don't. We should. There are definitely laws about takings, but the Endangered Species Act has not adjusted to that. Just today, in the Wyoming media, there was an article about the failure of the Feds to list the Colorado River cutthroat trout. So far none of the cutthroat trout has been listed as endangered. We have been doing a job in Wyoming of replacing them in traditional streams where they have been. In fact, in Saratoga, WY, we killed off a huge brook trout population and replaced it with cutthroat trout which were the native trout of that area. The people were a little disturbed to find out that the Colorado cutthroat doesn't grow as big as the brook trout which they were used to fishing. The whole stream was poisoned out and these other fish were put in, and they were prohibited from using any fish in this river for a number of years. Most of the people I know do catch-and-release fishing, but there can be fish killed doing that. Under the Endangered Species Act, that would result in Federal action against the fisherman. I am hoping the fishermen of the country are paying attention, as they are talking about listing some of these endangered species. The fishermen of this country have been doing a marvelous job of making sure species are preserved. I will tell you an interesting little story. There is a fish hatchery near Saratoga. It doesn't have brook trout or Colorado cutthroat trout in it; it has lake trout in it. How did they come to get in the lake trout business in Wyoming? A number of years ago, some lake trout were caught out of the Great Lakes. They were transported by rail to Montana. They were backpacked into Yellowstone and planted in a lake there and they grew well. Eventually the lake trout in the Great Lakes had a problem. They died off. Where did they go to replace them? We built a hatchery in southern Wyoming. We caught lake trout out of Yellowstone Park, put them in this hatchery, raised them to maturity and got eggs, grew some of those, took some back in the form of eggs and planted them in the Great Lakes. So the loop of preservation was provided by the State of Wyoming. That is the way species have to be provided for, not by prohibiting and stopping, through regulation, people from being able to use what they have traditionally used. The fishermen are some of the people who are working to overcome this. There is a little animal called the black-footed ferret. It was extinct. You would think that was supposed to mean there weren't any around. They found some in Wyoming. A little while after they discovered this animal still existed, they found out that a number of them were being wiped out by a plague. The State of Wyoming went in and trapped all of the rest of the black-footed ferret, and the State of Wyoming built a special facility to raise them and try to get as much cross development as possible. Today the black-footed ferret has been planted back in rural areas of the western United States. It has made a huge difference. But that was all done at Wyoming expense; that was not done at Federal expense. Something needs to be done about the Endangered Species Act.

Mr. ENZI

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

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I rise to speak about the Nation's medical litigation crisis. I begin by explaining where we are in this process. It is the right of the majority leader to bring a bill up for debate. On the Senate side, it requires unanimous consent to have that debate. We have been denied unanimous consent to debate the medical litigation solution. What are the options? We can have a cloture vote. We will have that tomorrow afternoon. The cloture vote requires 60 votes of approval in order to debate the medical litigation crisis solution. On most of the bills we see brought up, the unanimous consent is almost automatic. However, on this particular bill, we are not even able to debate the bill. We can debate it, but it has no effect. There can be no amendments. There can be no votes until the filibuster is broken. What happens when the filibuster is broken? Technically there can be 30 hours of debate on that particular right to debate before the actual debate begins. Then when we actually do get to the debate, every single amendment can be filibustered and the bill can be filibustered. Supposing we make it past those roadblocks and the House passes the bill and there are differences between the two, there has to be a conference committee. At that point, there can be three more filibusters. Our Founding Fathers intended for the Senate to be the cooling saucer for legislation. I don't think they intended it to become a stagnant pond. I do think they intended the bills would be debated and conclusions reached, there would be some time taken, but not all time taken. We have a medical litigation crisis in this country. The system is broken. We need to start working to fix it. I urge my colleagues to vote for cloture on the Gregg-Ensign bill. It is time to stop filibustering and to start working. We should not be having this filibuster on whether to debate. We need to pass the motion to proceed and get into amendments on the bill if amendments are needed. This is the third time in this Congress we have brought a medical litigation reform bill to the Senate. We need to pass this legislation. We need to pass some legislation that deals with this crisis. Passing this bill would be the best thing we can do to stabilize medical liability premiums in the short term, which will allow us to retain doctors in states like Wyoming, which will allow people to have access to doctors. I proposed legislation aimed at solving this problem over the long term and I will speak to that later. But right now, we need to vote in favor of ending this filibuster against this bill so we can begin to debate the bill. I am willing to consider any amendments my colleagues in the minority might have, but we cannot consider any of their amendments until they agree to end this filibuster and begin debate on the bill. I understand some Senators are concerned this bill would limit the ability of an injured patient to get fair compensation. This bill would do no such thing. This bill will not limit the ability of an injured patient to get fair compensation. This bill would permit full and fair compensation to patients for their economic losses. This is an important point for everyone to keep in mind. If a judge and jury were to decide a person suffered an injury due to a doctor's mistake or a hospital's negligence, that person would still be entitled, under this bill, to receive full compensation for their economic loss, including everything from rehabilitation to lost wages resulting from their injury. I cannot stress this point strongly enough. This bill would not limit awards for economic losses. What the bill would do is place a ceiling on noneconomic damages. The bill would limit the maximum award for noneconomic damages to $250,000 in States that do not have their own limits on such awards. Noneconomic damages are those for pain and suffering. I want to ask, How much pain and suffering do you have if you cannot even see a doctor? And if you cannot see a doctor, and you die, who do you sue? The trial lawyers? Maybe so. They are a part of the problem. I am not going to try to cover all of the parts of the problem. We are trying to fix one specific part of the problem. This bill will not take care of the whole thing. But I want to ask you, How much pain and suffering do you have if you cannot even see a doctor? This is not primarily a city problem. You can have the problem in the city, and doctors are leaving cities as well. But in cities it gets glossed over a bit because there are so many doctors. There are so many doctors everybody anticipates they can find a doctor. Well, there are also more people in cities, so there are more people waiting in lines to see the doctors. There is a limit to how long you want to wait in line to see a doctor, particularly if you are having an emergency. This bill only covers two categories; one is emergency medical services, and the other is people who deliver babies. So I ask again: how long do you want to wait in the emergency room? Is this proposal for a limit of $250,000 for noneconomic damages way out of line? I do not know. I do know California passed this limit. California put a limit of $250,000 on noneconomic damages, and it has made a difference. They are one of the few States in the Nation that is not having the problem. Now, California, viewed by Wyoming folks, where I am from, is considered to be very liberal. So if they did it, this could not be a conservative move. If California can have a $250,000 limit, why shouldn't other places be able to? You may say: Well, States could pass their own. California did. States can. It is a very long procedure for some States. Wyoming has very limited legislative time, and then a lengthy procedure for having votes of the people before it then comes back to the legislature for additional work. So there are limitations in the States. This can be handled on a national basis. If you hear this bill would limit an injured patient to receiving $250,000 in compensation, though, you can say that is simply false. There is no other way to put it. That contention is false. This bill would also only apply, as I mentioned, to obstetrical services and emergency medical services. These are two of the areas of medicine where patients are in the most danger of losing their access to these services. Once more, I ask, how many will be harmed by not getting to see a doctor? What do you do if you are a woman and you cannot see a doctor to deliver your baby? Baby doctors are particularly hard hit because the child can sue when the child reaches age, so the tail on their insurance is extremely long, and that provides additional opportunities to sue, which means additional cost for the insurance. But we are also talking about the emergency medical services. In an emergency, as Senator Frist, the doctor of the Senate, pointed out, every single moment counts. There is, at most, a ``golden hour'' in emergency treatment. So if you have to spend that golden hour traveling 750 miles--as the Senator from Texas showed on his chart of Texas showing how far some people have to travel for specialized care--it could be too late. Physicians are being hit with six-figure annual premiums in the medical specialties of obstetrics and trauma care. As a result, they are curtailing their practices, retiring early, or moving to States with better legal environments, because a better legal environment means lower insurance premiums. In Wyoming, we have one of those bad legal environments. We do not have limits on noneconomic damage awards. We do not have limits, despite evidence that shows reasonable limits on noneconomic damage awards have helped control the rising cost of medical liability insurance premiums in other States. As a result, people in Wyoming are losing access to affordable health care in their communities. The rising cost of medical liability insurance in my State of Wyoming is forcing doctors to curtail their practices or close them entirely. We have a shortage of doctors in Wyoming as it is, and the cost of medical liability insurance is making a bad problem even worse. I want my colleagues to know we have a full-fledged medical liability crisis on our hands in this country, and particularly in Wyoming. Just last month, the largest of the three insurers in Wyoming announced they would be leaving the Wyoming market later this year. As a result, 381 doctors and 7 hospitals are going to have to find new insurance coverage. Of the two companies that are left, one of them is not writing new policies for emergency and trauma care physicians. So the few emergency room specialists we have in Wyoming soon will have only one company to choose from for their professional insurance. These insurance company executives are not dumb people. Just as doctors are moving to States with better legal environments, so are the insurance companies. As I mentioned, some have left Wyoming. People say, well, yes, there go those rich insurance companies. They are going to move somewhere else where they can make a lot more money. Did you know some of them are going broke? If the profit is all that prolific, why are some going broke? One of the doctors in Wyoming was doing his calculation about whether to stay in business or not, whether to deliver babies anymore or not. He ran a calculation based on the rise in insurance premium costs he had, despite that he has not been sued at all. He found out $25 of each doctor visit goes to pay the insurance. If you are paying $100 for a doctor visit, $25 of that is going to pay for the insurance. The other $75 is not all profit either. It has to go to pay for the nurses, the supplies, the building--all of those things. But $25 of each visit goes to insurance. I do not care which insurance companies are writing policies in my State, as long as there are some. But I do care when good doctors leave the State. Wyoming is a big State with a lot of small communities. In fact, people out here in the East cannot even comprehend the small communities we have. If you grew up in a small town, you probably got to know your family doctor pretty well. Doctors are part of the fabric of life in the small towns that dot the map of my State. It is not easy for them to pick up and leave, but that is what is happening. As hard as it is for the doctors to leave, it is even harder on the families they serve--the families who have grown comfortable with the care these doctors provide. I commend Senators Gregg and Ensign and our majority leader, Dr. Frist, for trying again to pass a sensible short-term solution to this Nation's crisis. They have developed a bill that is focused on providing relief to the doctors who serve mothers and their babies, and the doctors who save lives in our Nation's emergency rooms. Every day, thousands of patients depend on these doctors when it comes time to bring a new life into the world or to save a life that is already here. I hope we can all agree to support this short-term solution that will maintain access to the services these doctors provide. I have noticed something interesting during the debate on the issue of medical liability reform. While we have been debating the pros and cons of reform, no one is standing up to defend our current system of medical litigation. I have yet to hear a rousing defense of our medical litigation system. Even some of the lawyers in this body have agreed that frivolous lawsuits are a problem and that our medical liability system needs reform. Why aren't we hearing anyone defend the merits of our current medical litigation system? It is because it is indefensible. Our system does not work. It does not work for patients, nor does it work for their doctors. The bill we are debating today is a good bill. It will help us stabilize insurance premiums and preserve access to critical medical services. But even the sponsors would probably admit it is a short-term measure that does not address the fundamental problems with our medical litigation system. This is an important bill, but it is just a tourniquet to stop the bleeding. It is not going to heal our broken system. It reminds me of the town that lived on the edge of a cliff. The town had a tremendous problem because kids fell off of this cliff, and the fall killed a lot of them. They decided they needed to do something about it. After extensive meetings and committee work, they purchased the finest ambulance that could be found, and they put that ambulance at the base of the cliff. They hired the best EMTs they could get so the person could be loaded on to the ambulance and served while they got to the nearest hospital. Somebody then suggested: Why don't you just put a fence on the cliff. And they said: No, we don't do fences. That is what we are doing with this medical litigation crisis. We are avoiding putting up the fence for the short-term solution and we are letting people fall off the cliff; then we are trying to provide them with the best possible service we can after they fall. What are we going to do when they use this fine ambulance and these great EMTs and they get to the hospital and there is no emergency room doctor? We need the fence and the emergency room doctors too. This bill is designed to make sure there is medical liability insurance so the doctors can continue to operate. We like to say that justice is blind. With respect to our medical litigation system, I would say that justice is absent and nowhere to be found. Every Member of this body wants to make sure that someone who is truly injured by a medical error gets the compensation they deserve. But a number of studies have shown that many patients who were hurt by negligent actions received no compensation at all for their losses. I have also seen studies that suggest that those who receive compensation end up with about 40 cents on every dollar in insurance premiums, once the lawyers' fees and their courtroom costs are subtracted. So the victim gets 40 cents on the dollar. Somebody else is getting the other 60 cents. I don't think that sounds fair. What is more, studies have demonstrated the likelihood of a doctor or hospital being sued, and the result of such a suit, bears little relation to whether the doctor or hospital was at fault. These facts led the congressionally chartered Institute of Medicine to issue a report in 2002. That report called upon Congress to create demonstration projects to encourage States to evaluate alternatives to current medical tort litigation. In response, I have introduced a bill that would turn these expert recommendations into action. My bill, the Reliable Medical Justice Act, would authorize funding for States to create alternatives to current tort litigation. The funding would cover the costs of planning and initiating proposals. My bill would require participating States and the Federal Government to work together in evaluating the results of the alternatives as compared to the traditional tort litigation. This way all States and the Federal Government could learn from new approaches. We could see if there is not a way to get people fairly and justly compensated, compensated more quickly, and to actually receive the majority of the money, not just a small pittance. The bill outlines some model approaches States could employ. For instance, one State might want to evaluate the idea of health care courts where judges with special expertise could hear medical cases. This concept is similar to the special courts we have for taxes, domestic violence, drugs, and other complex and emotional issues. That way we would get some fairness between cases. One person with the same kind of hurt would get compensated the same way, approximately, that somebody else with that same hurt had, not based on who picked the best lawyer or who picked the best injury--with fairness, quickness, and the victim receiving the money. Another State might want to test an administrative approach. For instance, a State could set up classes of avoidable injuries and a schedule of compensation for them and then establish an administrative board to resolve claims related to those injuries. A scientific process of identifying preventable injuries and setting appropriate compensation for them might offer better results than the randomness of the court system. Another State might want to provide health care providers and organizations with immunity from lawsuits if they make a timely offer to compensate an injured patient for his or her losses. This could give a health care provider who makes an honest mistake the chance to make amends financially with a patient without the provider fearing that their honesty would land them in a lawsuit. The point of my bill is there are plenty of ideas for better ways to resolve medical disputes. One of the best ways Congress can help fix the flawed litigation system in the long term is by encouraging States to test alternatives and to learn from them. As I speak, some States are already looking into alternatives. My State of Wyoming is one of them. Another is Massachusetts, where the Governor is working with Harvard University on an innovative project. Another is Florida, where the Governor's task force recommended projects for which my bill could provide support. Believe it or not, both Newt Gingrich and the editors of the New York Times have endorsed this idea. If Newt Gingrich and the New York Times can agree on something, maybe we can find enough support for it in this Chamber as well. I want to remind my colleagues that I support the Gregg-Ensign bill. It will provide some short-term relief for this medical liability crisis. We don't have time just for testing at the moment. We are losing the doctors who provide emergency care and the doctors who deliver babies. In my own State, several of the doctors have quit delivering babies because they can't afford the insurance. Others have had to cut back on the number of babies they deliver to be able to afford the insurance. That means ladies having babies are not able to get doctors with the necessary expertise. We need short-term relief from the medical liability crisis, and I know many of my colleagues will join me in voting for it. But I know that some will vote against it. Regardless of whether you feel this is the right solution for the short term, let's acknowledge that our medical litigation system is failing us and that we must work together to find a long-term solution. Medical lawsuits are supposed to compensate people fairly and deter future errors, but most patients don't get fair and timely compensation. There is nothing to show that lawsuits are deterring medical errors or making patients safer. I urge Members to vote for the Gregg-Ensign bill. I also ask that Members take a serious look at S. 1518. My basic reason for introducing S. 1518 is that most patients don't want to sue their doctors. If their doctor made a mistake, they want an apology. They want to be compensated for their loss. They want the situation to be resolved quickly and fairly. I believe most physicians want the same thing. They want to apologize. They want to make amends financially. If patients and their doctors want the same thing, what stands in the way? Our legal system, that is what. Our legal system pits doctors against their patients. Doctors cannot apologize to their patients because admitting a mistake might end a doctor up in court, and probably would. As a result, doctors order more expensive tests and spend less time getting to know their patients-- anything to protect against a career-threatening lawsuit. Patients feel this distrust, and they respond in kind. If a patient has a bad medical outcome, they assume their doctor was at fault, even if there was nothing their doctor would or could have done differently. Sometimes bad outcomes happen in health care, and no one is at fault. But if a doctor doesn't feel free to say ``I am sorry'' when he or she makes a mistake, how will a patient know whether their doctor is at fault? It is hard to blame the patient for assuming the worst. This is a fundamental flaw in the way we resolve medical disputes today. The courtroom stands between the people who matter most--the patient and the doctor. The courtroom ought to be the last resort for resolving disputes, not the only resort. Patients and doctors ought to be on the same side, working together; but fear of the legal system puts them in opposite corners and pits them against one another. There has to be a better way. My bill would be another step toward replacing the medical lawsuits with a better and fairer system for compensating and protecting patients. But it is a long-term solution, and we do have a short-term solution, the Gregg-Ensign bill. I hope we can work together to find the long-term solution, but that we will do the short-term solution now. Again, our debate now is whether we get to the debate the bill. Unless we have cloture tomorrow, we won't actually get to debate the short-term solution. I want to recap and remind you that this bill doesn't limit economic damages. It will assure that we can have emergency care, that doctors who deliver babies can continue to deliver babies. If you don't get care at all, how much pain and suffering will you have? How much injury can be caused if you cannot go to a doctor in your community and you have to travel extensively to do it? This bill is a limit on noneconomic damages, similar to the limit in California, where the crisis has been averted. I ask my colleagues to support cloture on the motion to proceed so we can proceed to pass the Gregg-Ensign bill, so we will have a short-term solution to the medical liability crisis we face in our country, which keeps us from getting the medical treatment we need, when we need it. I yield the floor.

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I rise to speak about an amendment I wish to offer to the bill currently under consideration to reauthorize the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. This program is one of the largest Federal programs ever designed to help families reach self sufficiency. I believe this amendment is a strong addition to the current bill, and one that this body should pass. I thank my friend and colleague from Iowa, the chairman of the Finance Committee, for his hard work in preparing this bill for floor consideration and for making important improvements to the 1996 welfare reauthorization. The 1996 reauthorization is one of the greatest success stories of the recent past. Even now, it continues to produce positive results far beyond what many thought was possible. Now it only makes sense for us to pass this legislation to continue the reforms we began 8 years ago. Mr. President, as I mentioned, the key principle of this welfare reauthorization is self-sufficiency. As this body considered welfare reform in 1996 we found that families could end their dependence on Federal assistance if we provided the incentives to help them find jobs and start providing for themselves. It was the most important change we could have ever made. In response, families went out and found good jobs that provided them with the resources they needed to make ends meet today and prepare for their future needs. Even today, the results of that effort continue to speak for themselves. As my colleague from Pennsylvania has pointed out, child poverty has declined significantly since 1996. Families receiving welfare assistance have found a renewed sense of confidence and self worth by meeting life on their own terms. Their newfound jobs have given them a sense of security many have never had before. We congratulate all those who have been able to work themselves off the welfare rolls and we encourage those who are trying to do the same not to be discouraged. That is why this legislation is so important. It enables us to continue that piece of the reform we started, to get people into work and on to self-sufficiency. I don't think there is any more vital aspect of self-sufficiency than making sure that these families know how to budget and manage their money wisely so they can maintain their financial independence and work toward financial security. That calls for education in financial literacy. When I served as mayor of Gillette, WY, I saw firsthand the effectiveness of helping individuals understand the importance of financial planning. This is a skill that is essential to self- sufficiency, and it should be a part of the welfare assistance program. My amendment would permit welfare recipients to participate in a limited amount of financial literacy training that would allow them to learn about personal finance management, credit counseling, budgeting, and debt management. This important course work and study would then count toward the work requirement under the Financial bill. As my colleagues are aware, the Finance bill separates the permissible work hour activities into two groups: core work and work preparation activities, and allowable activities. Both are required for a recipient to meet the work hour requirement. My amendment would add financial literacy training as an allowable activity. Financial literacy and education is an essential tool that must be mastered to fully participate in today's society. Only an educated individual consumer will be able to fully unlock the financial markets available to them. A basic understanding of the credit process and managing personal finances will prepare consumers and their families for making major financial purchases like a home, saving for college and planning for retirement. All of these are part of achieving self- sufficiency because they require people to create a plan that will enable them to meet short term needs and still reach long term goals. It is essential that welfare recipients be given an opportunity to receive this training and that states have an incentive to provide it. The Federal Government operates several financial literacy and education information programs designed to help individuals make smart decisions about their finances. It is my hope that by including financial literacy training in the welfare reauthorization we will improve and build upon the growing Federal recognition of the importance of this training. I thank the Chair.

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, March 30, 2004, at 10 a.m. to hold a hearing on nominations.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Indian Affairs be authorized to meet on Tuesday, March 30, 2004, at 9 a.m., in room 485 of the Russell Senate Office building to conduct an oversight hearing on the Inter-Tribal Timber Council's Indian Forest Management Assessment Team Report. Immediately following the close of that hearing, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Indian Affairs be authorized to meet at 10 a.m. to conduct a hearing on S. 868, a bill to amend the Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Restoration Amendments Act of 2003.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on March 30, 2004, at 2:30 p.m., to hold a closed hearing on intelligence matters.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Aviation Subcommittee on Commerce, Science and Transportation be authorized to meet on Tuesday, March 30, 2004, at 9:30 a.m. for a closed hearing on Aviation Security, in SR-253.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, March 30, 2004, at 2 p.m., to conduct a vote on the nomination of the Honorable Alphonso R. Jackson, of Texas, to be Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and to conduct a markup of S. 2238, ``The Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2004.''

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be authorized to meet Tuesday, March 30, 2004, at 2:30 p.m. on the nominations of Theodore W. Kassinger, to be Deputy Secretary of DOT, Deborah Hersman to be a Member of the NTSB, Thomas Moore to be a Commissioner of the CPSC, Joseph Brennan, to be a Commissioner of the FMC, Paul Anderson to be a Commissioner of the FMC, and Jack McGregor to be a Member of the Advisory Board of the Saint Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation, in SR253.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, March 30, at 10 a.m. The purpose of the hearing is to receive testimony on the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be authorized to meet in open Executive Session during the session on Tuesday, March 30, 2004, to consider favorably reporting the nomination of Donald Korb, to be Chief Counsel for the Internal Revenue Service and an Assistant General Counsel in the Department of the Treasury.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on National Parks of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, March 30, 2004, at 2:30 p.m. The purpose of this hearing is to conduct oversight on National Heritage Areas, including findings and recommendations of the General Accounting Office, the definition of a National Heritage Area, the definition of National Significance as it relates to national heritage areas, recommendations for establishing national heritage areas as units of the national park system, recommendations for prioritizing proposed studies and designations, and options for developing a national heritage area program within the National Park Service.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Airland of the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on March 30, 2004, at 2 p.m., in open session to receive testimony on Army aviation programs, in review of the Defense authorization request for fiscal year 2005 and the future years Defense program.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Governmental Affairs' Subcommittee on Financial Management, the Budget, and International Security be authorized to meet on Tuesday, March 30, 2004, at 2:30 p.m., for a hearing entitled, ``The Federal Government's Role In Empowering Americans To Make Informed Financial Decisions.''

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on March 30, 2004, at 9:30 a.m., in closed session to receive testimony on the Second Interim Report of the Iraq Survey Group.

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Madam President, I thank my colleague from Georgia for his outstanding comments. There is a war going on and he made some outstanding points. I have heard several of his speeches and learned a lot from each of them. I am going to speak now on, I believe, the pending amendment, the Boxer-Kennedy amendment. I will share my thoughts about raising the Federal minimum wage. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle keep talking about the loss of American jobs, but their actions don't match up to their words. If my colleagues are so concerned about unemployment, why would they do something that would eliminate jobs in this country? If my colleagues are so concerned about helping poor families, why would they do something that hurts poor families the most? Their effort to increase the minimum wage, while attacking the President on job creation, is not based on sound policy and economics. There is an effort underway to put a smokescreen of unrelated amendments that mask election year politics in misleading rhetoric. It is being done on the reauthorization of the welfare bill. It is time for us to look beyond the smokescreen and see who is really helped and who is really hurt by Senator Kennedy's amendment to raise the Federal minimum wage. Every student who has taken an economics course knows if you increase the price of something--in this case, the minimum wage job--you decrease the demand for those jobs. A survey of members of the American Economic Association revealed that 77 percent of economists believe that a minimum wage hike causes job loss. For small businesses, where most of the job creation in this country is generated, a minimum wage increase is particularly harmful. Having owned a small business in Wyoming, I can speak from personal experience about how detrimental a minimum wage increase would be for small businesses and job growth. I need to explain something. Very few people in the shoe business I was in were working at the minimum wage, which my wife and I preferred to call the level of minimum skills. Those are the people who first came in and did not have any capability in the kind of job they were going to be doing and we had a starting wage, a starting skills wage. Anybody who was in that wage more than 3 months was not paying attention, and that is the way with most of the businesses in this country. The minimum wage is the minimum skills wage, and it is the starting wage. It does have an effect on other wages as well. When we raise the minimum wage, then to keep the proper spread between employees of different skills, other jobs get raises, too. Of course, when that happens, there has to be a way to pay for it, and the way to pay for that almost always comes from raising prices. If you raise prices and wages, there is not much gain. How do I explain to my constituents, most of whom rely on small business for their livelihood, that Congress wants to do something that would foster job loss instead of job creation? Every day I read letters to the editors of the Wyoming newspapers. One appeared in the Casper Star from one of my constituents about his concerns in September 2002. I came across this letter again. It was written by Imo Harned of Douglas, WY, about the effects of a minimum wage increase. It is a reminder about the true cost of minimum wage increases. I ask unanimous consent to print this letter in the Record.

Mr. ENZI. Madam President, I have listened to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who support a minimum wage increase. I have seen their charts and heard their arguments. However, none of their charts or arguments can refute the commonsense and real world observation of Imo Harned from Douglas, WY. Mr. Harned writes--I am quoting part of it and the whole letter is printed in the Record. I am sure my colleagues will want to read it: . . . I have made it a habit from time to time to ask an employer if raising minimum wage makes a difference to his business. No matter if he pays one person or dozens, the answer is always the same: ``There are X number of dollars in the budget and I can't exceed that amount. If it means cutting hours or firing workers, I have to do it to stay within the budget.'' Personal observations show that within a week of a raise in minimum wage, groceries will raise enough to absorb the increase. Also, people who make more than minimum have to pay the increased costs, too, so it amounts to a cut in pay for those who make more. Mr. Harned saw through the phony economics of a minimum wage increase. He reached the same conclusion as two Stanford economists: A minimum wage increase is paid for by higher prices that hurt poor families the most. Some argue that we need to increase the minimum wage to help poor families. However, the 2001 study conducted by Stanford University economists found that only one in four of the poorest 20 percent of families would benefit from an increase in the minimum wage. Three in four of the poorest workers would be hurt by a wage hike because they would shoulder the costs of resulting higher prices. A Federal wage hike will hurt the very people the underlying welfare reauthorization bill is designed to help: America's poor families. I have held on to Mr. Harned's letter as a reminder of the dangers of a ``Washington knows best'' and a ``one size fits all'' mentality. An increase in the Federal minimum wage is a classic lesson that Washington does not know best and one size does not fit all. A Federal wage mandate does not account for the cost of living that varies across the country. It costs over twice as much to live in New York City than in Cheyenne, WY. However, a Federal minimum wage hike that applies coast to coast is like saying a bag of groceries in New York City must cost the same as a bag of groceries in Cheyenne. Local labor market conditions and the cost of living determines pay rates, not Federal minimum wage laws dictated from Washington. I support an increase for all wages, but that increase should be fueled by a strong, free market economy, not by an artificial Federal mandate that hurts business and workers alike. Artificial wage hikes drive prices up. We should not trick workers into thinking they are earning more when they still cannot pay the bills at the end of the month. We should not trick the American people into believing that the phony economics of a minimum wage increase will improve the standard of living in this country. Nor should we trick the American people into believing that a minimum wage increase is without cost. The smoke and mirrors of a minimum wage increase is not the way for American workers to find and keep well-paying jobs. We have to encourage, not discourage, job creation, and we have to equip our workers with the skills needed to compete in the new global economy. It is one of my goals to make sure that the unfilled higher paying jobs can be filled by Americans. I talked about the minimum wage being a minimum skills wage. There are higher paying jobs out there, but you have to have the skills for them. How do you get the skills for them? We have a bill. It is called the Workforce Investment Act. It reauthorizes the Nation's job training and employment system, and it updates it to the modern jobs. It allows people to be working in the areas of highest need in this country, instead of forcing those jobs overseas. That bill passed out of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee unanimously. We passed it on the Senate floor by unanimous consent last November. That means nobody wanted to amend it and nobody objected to what was in the bill. That is as bipartisan as you can get. Where is that bill now? It is languishing around here because the minority party will not let us get a conference committee appointed to resolve the differences with the House, the final step for the bill. The House has passed a bill. It is a little different from the Senate bill. But we need to meet and work out the differences and get that final bill. What does this mean in the way of jobs? Training for 900,000 jobs a year. That is pretty significant, training for 900,000 jobs a year. I kind of get the feeling we do not want to resolve that until after November so that it can be a part of the politics of the Presidency. That is wrong. It ought to be worked out now. We ought to have a conference committee. We ought to get it done. If we want to take care of jobs in this country, if we want people to be making more and to be making more real money, we ought to get them trained into the skilled positions in the jobs that are vacant in this country right now before we ship them over to another country. We need to have a conference committee. That would provide jobs. That will provide increased wages. That will provide real increased wages, not just inflationary wages that will drive up the price of all of the goods and absorb, as Mr. Harned said, in 1 week the amount of the raise. I owe Mr. Harned and all my constituents sound policy, not election year rhetoric. I owe it to Mr. Harned and all of my constituents to remove the smokescreen around the minimum wage debate and expose its true cost. The Boxer-Kennedy amendment to raise the Federal minimum wage ignores the true cost of a minimum wage increase on America's workers and businessmen. I hope we can put this debate, which is unrelated to the underlying bill, behind us. I hope we can move beyond election year theatrics and get to the real work of helping America's low-income families. I urge my colleagues to oppose the Boxer-Kennedy amendment and to read the letter of Mr. Harned in full. I yield the floor.