Michael Enzi

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce a very important bill, one that my colleague Senator Kennedy and I have been working on for some time. For decades, the United States has been the standard bearer in bringing new drugs and medications to the world market. Like it or not, the FDA has a very important role in all of our daily lives. The FDA is involved in ensuring the safety of the meals we are eating today, the pills we are taking, and even the cell phones in our pockets and briefcases. The FDA's role in our health and in our economy is broad. Nearly half of all Americans take a prescription drug daily. Anyone who prescribes, provides or takes a prescription drug could benefit from enhanced safety and risk communication about these life-saving products. Over the last few years, a spate of safety issues, such as the withdrawal of the arthritis drug Vioxx and the labeling of antidepressants for suicidality in adolescents, has caused a crisis of public confidence in the FDA. I believe the American people are losing confidence in the FDA and its ability to evaluate and weigh the benefits and risks of prescription drugs. In addition, staff at the agency feel like they are under heavy fire, with little or no protection from the prevailing political winds, due to the lack of a confirmed Commissioner of Food and Drugs for most of the last six years. I believe that only Congress can restore the public's confidence in FDA and morale at the agency. In 2005, the HELP Committee held two hearings on the issue of drug safety. We received over 50 recommendations from witnesses at those hearings. At that time, Senator Kennedy and I pledged to develop a comprehensive response to the drug safety issues raised. Last August, we introduced the Enhancing Drug Safety and Innovation Act. That bill, S. 3807, was the product of working across party lines, and created a structured framework for resolving safety concerns. Careful and comprehensive pre-approval planning of how drugmakers and FDA will identify, assess and manage serious risks post-approval is a better way to obtain safety information without compromising patient access. In September 2006, the Institute of Medicine released its report titled ``The Future of Drug Safety: Promoting and Protecting the Health of the Public.'' The recommendations in this report had much in common with S. 3807. The Senate HELP Committee held a hearing in November 2006 at which representatives of the IOM, a physician and drug safety expert, patient groups, a consumer group, and a pharmaceutical company testified about the IOM report, the bill, and the relationship between them. In addition, other stakeholder groups made additional comments on the bill. Yesterday, FDA released their response to the IOM report. Newly confirmed Commissioner Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach has put forward a number of promising ideas to improve the internal processes and culture at FDA. His leadership is outstanding and his ideas are helpful, but internal change is not enough to alter public perception. FDA needs new drug safety authorities, and this bill provides those authorities. While the bill we are introducing today reflects numerous refinements to clarify ambiguities or to address issues that S. 3807 had not addressed, we realize that there are thoughtful differences of opinion and ideas on how best to move forward with drug safety. I welcome any and all suggestions on improving this bill, and I look forward to working with my colleagues and other stakeholders to understand those concerns more fully and incorporate any necessary changes in the bill which will be considered in front of the HELP Committee in the next few weeks. I hope that all of my colleagues will take another look at this legislation and its goals and work with me to change the status quo. Everyone agrees: We must do more for drug safety. Under the Enhancing Drug Safety and Innovation Act, FDA would begin to approve drugs and biologics, and new indications for these products, with risk evaluation and mitigation strategies (REMS). The REMS is designed to be an integrated, flexible mechanism to acquire and adapt to new safety information about a drug. The sponsor and FDA will assess and review an approved REMS at least annually for the first three years, as well as in applications for a new indication, when the sponsor suggests changes, or when FDA requests a review based on new safety information. The development of tools to evaluate medical products has not kept pace with discoveries in basic science. New tools are needed to better predict safety and efficacy, which in turn would increase the speed and efficiency of applied biomedical research. The Enhancing Drug Safety and Innovation Act would spur innovation by establishing a new public- private partnership between the FDA, industry and academia to advance the Critical Path Initiative and improve the sciences of developing, manufacturing, and evaluating the safety and effectiveness of drugs, devices, biologics and diagnostics. The Enhancing Drug Safety and Innovation Act also establishes a central clearinghouse for information about clinical trials and their results to help patients, providers and researchers learn new information and make more informed health care decisions. Finally, the Enhancing Drug Safety and Innovation Act would make improvements to FDA's process for screening advisory committee members for financial conflicts of interest. FDA relies on its 30 advisory committees to provide independent expert advice, lend credibility to the product review process, and inform consumers of trends in product development. The bill would clarify and streamline FDA's processes for evaluating candidates for service on an advisory committee, and address the key challenge of identifying a sufficient number of people with the necessary expertise and the fewest potential conflicts of interest to serve on advisory committees. I want to thank the dozens of stakeholders, including the Food and Drug Administration, patient and consumer groups, industry associations, individual companies, and scientific experts who have taken the time and effort to give us their comments and input on the bill. Their assistance has been invaluable, and I look forward to continuing to work with them as we go through this legislative process. Senator Kennedy and I believe that this bipartisan effort will bring more consistency, transparency, and accountability to the process of assuring a drug's safety after it is approved. The 110th Congress will hold an exceptionally full agenda with respect to the FDA. In addition to updating the FDA's authorities as we are proposing today, Congress must renew the drug and device user fee programs, as well as the Best Pharmaceuticals for Children and Pediatric Research Equity Acts. The introduction of this bill today is the beginning, not the end, of the process, and I look forward to working with my colleagues to advance these important pieces of legislation.

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Madam President, I yield back.

Mr. ENZI. Thank you.

Mr. ENZI. Madam President, I would like to thank both the leaders for their kind words. I thank them on behalf of both Senator Kennedy and myself. We do have a philosophy of working together, and it does work. I am pleased we are at this point today. The bill the Senate has crafted is the right approach to take on this issue. The approach is combining an increase in the minimum wage with provisions that will assist those small business employers who face the greatest difficulties in paying such increased costs. The Senate has not forgotten that while we may be able to mandate a wage, we cannot mandate the existence of a job. I hope our colleagues in the House will not forget that either. In legislating, it is often important to find a third way. The third way is represented by the substitute amendment that was the product of extensive bipartisan cooperation. Democrats and Republicans working together acknowledged the fact that mandated cost increases can have negative economic effects, and together we developed a means of addressing those concerns in the form of the bipartisan substitute amendment. It will affect millions of Americans. I am glad we are at this point. I would like to thank all of the staffs who have been involved in this issue, doing research and getting information that will help us to be as sure as we can be that we have made the right decisions on the best information possible. From my staff, that includes my staff director, Katherine McGuire, and Brian Hayes, Kyle Hicks, Ilyse Schuman, Amy Shank, Shana Christrup, Andrew Patzman, Randi Reid, Tara Ord, Greg Dean, Craig Orfield, and Michael Mahaffey. That is a lot of people, but it takes a lot of people to do something like the tax package and the bill we have before us, plus all of the other things that were considered during the process. From the Republican leader's office, I thank Mike Solon, Malloy McDaniel, and Rohit Kumar. I also thank Ed Egee with Senator Isakson. From the Finance committee, I thank Russ Sullivan and Mark Prater; and from the Republican whip's office, Manny Rossman and John O'Neill. But I would be very remiss if I did not thank those in Senator Kennedy's office and his staff: Michael Myers, Holly Fechner, Portia Wu, Missy Rohrbach, and Lauren McGarity. They have done just an outstanding job of keeping us on track and also searching through all of the different things we have had to consider, even those that nobody ever saw discussed here on the Senate floor. It was tireless work, which often goes on late into the nights, well beyond the time Senators are around here--of course, I do not want to give you the impression that Senators are necessarily going home. Sometimes they are working late as well, just in a different building. We get to spend our days here and our nights in our office building. But without the help of all of those people, this bill would not be at the point it is now. We really appreciate their work. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum, with the time equally divided.

Mr. ENZI. Madam President, I rise today to speak in support of final passage of H.R. 2, as amended. I think it is a very exciting time. I appreciate the wise direction this body has decided upon with regard to the minimum wage. Yesterday, 88 Members of the Senate correctly concluded that raising the minimum wage, without providing relief for small business that must pay for that increase, is simply not an option. Rather the option we did strongly decide on included tax benefits to help offset the impact on small business. I wish to reiterate my hope that our colleagues in the House will not derail this bipartisan approach to offering real support and relief to the middle class and to the minimum wage earner. The minimum wage increase will shortly be in their hands. I hope they will be judicious and perhaps even forgo some of their jurisdictional concerns in order to see that this is done for the people of America. The Senate's reasonable approach recognizes that small businesses have been the steady engine of our growing economy and that they have been a source of new job creation, and a source of job training. People with no skills often go to work at minimum wage and get the training they need to advance to higher levels of pay and to other more skilled jobs. That is all training which is done for free by small business. The Senate's approach also recognizes that small businesses are middle-class families, too. I am proud that this body has chosen a path which attempts to preserve this segment of the economy, which employs so many working men and women. The Senate has acknowledged the simple fact that a raise in the minimum wage is of no benefit to a worker who doesn't have a job or a job seeker who doesn't have a prospect. As this Congress moves forward, we will need to confront a range of issues facing working families: the rising cost of health insurance and the availability of such insurance, the necessity and costs of education and job training, and the desire to achieve an appropriate balance between work and family life. The lessons we have learned in this debate should not be forgotten as we approach new and equally complex issues. In addressing minimum wage, we have rejected the notion that it will be a clean bill. Ultimately, we did so because it is not a clean issue, it is a very complicated issue, and around here, clean more often than not means ``do it my way'' and doesn't respect the democratic process of the Senate and allow the Senate to work its will. There were claims that no Democrats offered amendments to the bill. That is false. The chairman of the Committee on Small Business, Senator John Kerry, offered two amendments, and the Senator from Wisconsin, Mr. Feingold, offered an amendment on ``Buy American'' standards. In fact, it is my understanding that part of the delay we are experiencing on final passage is that a Democrat was trying to figure out a way to get a vote for a third cloture and a Republican is also trying to do something very similar. While I believe these have now been resolved, that is kind of what has been holding us up here in waiting for a final vote. Throughout this debate, Members on both sides of the aisle were not aiming to delay passage but were offering amendments to improve the bill. I remember when I first went into the Wyoming Legislature and presented my first bill, I thought it was a pretty simple bill. It only had three sentences in it. It dealt with unemployment insurance for business owners. Well, this little, simple, three-sentence bill, when it went to committee, got two amendments, and when it went to the floor, it got three more amendments. When it went to the Senate, it made it out of committee without any additional amendments but had two more added on the floor. However, what I realized through the process was we had all of these different people from different backgrounds looking at the same problem from different perspectives, and every one of those amendments improved the bill. They looked at the bill and saw things that I hadn't seen. Afterwards I hoped that in the future, as I went through the process of legislating, I would see those things and see bills from other people's perspective. But that is the beauty of the system we have here--100 Senators take a look at a bill and 435 people in the House take a look at a bill and that should result in some changes. No bill I have ever seen winds up the same as it started. Of course, sometimes the biggest animosity around here is between the House and the Senate, and that is true in State legislatures, too. I finally figured out the reason for that is we here in the Senate work on a bill, we make it perfect, we send it over there, and they decide something else has to be done to it. That creates animosity. And they do bills and send them here, and we decide there ought to be changes to them, and that creates animosity here. Fortunately, we have a conference committee process that is supposed to get the two sides together to work out the differences. That also works, although it takes more time. So we are not the fastest in governing, but I think we are the most inclusive in governing. I think this bill has gone through a very similar process. I am pleased we have proven to the American people that we can indeed work together and provide solutions to complex and difficult problems. The Senate chose the right course of coupling an increased minimum wage with provisions that will assist small business employers who will face the greatest difficulties in paying such increased costs. I hope we do not forget the wisdom of this approach as we address other workplace, economic, and social issues. It has been mentioned that 10 years ago when the last minimum wage raise was done, that was the first time there were things put on the bill to offset the impact on small businesses. I was running for office and in Washington at the time that bill was being conferenced and finally debated, and I was pleased to see the former Senator from Wyoming, Mr. Simpson, was the chair on the conference committee, along with Senator Kennedy. The two of them worked out a package that had a raise in the minimum wage and some offsetting things for small business. When the bill was signed in the Rose Garden, then-President Clinton commented on what a great compromise it was that it would drive our economy. Senator Kennedy received a lot of the compliments for that, as he will this time. Senator Baucus and Senator Grassley will be complimented as well. I can't emphasize enough how pleased I am that the two of them worked together to put this tax package together. It is not an easy job. In fact, I think tax provisions are some of the most difficult and complex matters there are to work on. The Senator from Montana, Mr. Baucus, and the Senator from Iowa, Mr. Grassley, have worked together on most of the Finance Committee issues. I have noticed through the years that they are most successful when they work together. I tried to build on that knowledge when I became the chairman of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. It worked well for us for the last 2 years, to work in a very bipartisan way. Almost every issue the Committee had came through this body unanimously. Oh, we had the pension bill, which was a 980-page bill and very complicated and very difficult. And that one wasn't unanimous; it was only 98 to 2. I think my colleagues can see my point on this--that when we work together, we have amazing things happen in fairly short order. That bill took an hour of debate with two amendments and a final vote, and that was all agreed to before it was even brought to the floor. So when we work together, there can be good things, such as the bill we have right now. The Senate has chosen the right course of coupling an increased wage with provisions that will assist those small business employers who will face the greatest difficulty in paying those increased costs. I hope we don't forget the wisdom of that approach, as I mentioned before. I am also heartened that in the course of this debate, we have begun to recognize what I know from my own life to be true; that is, that working families are not only those who are employed by businesses, they are also those who own the businesses. I know from personal experience that all small businesses have two families--their own and the people who work for them. I also know that small business owners feel the pressure of rising costs, the dilemma of difficult options, and the uncomfortable squeeze of modern life in both of their families, as many workers do on their own. And I know that the smaller the business, the more likely it is that the employees and the employers recognize each other's difficulties and how interdependent and sometimes fragile their businesses and their jobs actually are. I think there is a greater tendency for them to work together under those circumstances. America has heard a lot of partisan rhetoric during the course of this debate, such as the talk of the so-called war on the middle class and the claim of leaving people out. I would like to note for the record that such rhetoric got us nowhere. There wasn't an attempt to leave anybody out. The middle class is actually made up of those small businessmen who we are trying to help, and in some cases the employees who are working for them. We didn't try to start a war over statistics, although we were tempted. I do have to mention there were some charts out here to show that wages used to be pretty close together, and the chart had five quintiles. I am more used to quartiles than quintiles, but this had five quintiles. So each 20 percent of the wage capability of the population was shown on the chart, and it showed that from 1943 until 1980, the numbers were pretty close together. Then we saw another chart, and it had this bar on the end which extended far beyond any of the quintiles. I paid a little bit of attention to that chart. It didn't just have quintiles on it; it had quintiles, plus one. If you look at the quintiles, they were almost the same today as they were at the time of the 1943 chart. However this big bar graph at the end--made it look so skewed that it made people look really rich and I guess by association holding the rest of the people down. Well, instead of just having quintiles on there, the chart had quintiles plus the top 1 percent earners in the United States. I am pretty sure that if you go back to 1943 through whatever date you want and you take the top 1 percent earners in the United States, you will find that they earn drastically more than even the highest quintile. So the chart doesn't treat the wage data equally. I suspect that Bill Gates himself skewed that chart pretty badly. The top 1 percent always makes a lot more money than everybody else and I think that is pretty much the case through the history of the United States. So if we are going to talk about quintiles, we need to talk about the quintiles equally. That is just one example of how we could have spent more time concentrating on the charts and arguing back and forth. But our point wasn't whether to increase the minimum wage; our point was whether we could do it and keep the economy moving by eliminating some of the impact of the increase on the small businesses that employ those minimum wage workers. We are ending the consideration of this issue basically where it began and for many of us where we have been for the last few years-- with the majority of the Senate supporting a minimum wage increase as long as there are provisions to soften the impact of that increase on the small businesses which create minimum wage jobs. Every time I have had to debate this, I have had a bill that had an increase in the minimum wage and it also had some amendments that offset the impact. Now, I didn't take the Finance Committee offsets; I took some other offsets to do it. One of the things I have noticed around here is that if you ever do an amendment on a bill like this, it will be considered a poison pill, and the second time you try to do that bill, even if you have changed the wording, the arguments will be exactly the same as before you changed the wording. So we sometimes get locked into the concept and the history of what has gone on around here. We could have had this increase done earlier had there been some willingness to offset it with a package, as was done the last time the minimum wage was increased and as I suspect will happen every time in the future that the minimum wage is increased because a higher wage is of no use when the job itself is gone. The Senate chose to look at the whole picture this time around. The minimum wage could have been raised years ago had some on the other side been willing to accept the important role that working families and small businesses--those are a lot of the same people--play in providing employment in this country. Some people like to talk about two Americas. What the Senate is preparing to do today recognizes that there is one America. We are all in this together, and we don't need to do great injury to one group of Americans just to aid another. That kind of partisan rhetoric isn't accurate, and it is aimed at spreading a very skewed view of America. It is aimed to divide rather than unite Americans around the simple solution. Mandating the wage increase without proper relief to the working families who employee many of America's low-skilled workers is an assault on the middle class. Let's get our facts straight. Passing the Senate's bipartisan minimum wage and small business relief package is good for low-skilled workers and it is good for the middle class working families of America. It is time we did this. I hope we will have the vote soon. I look forward to the speeches we can do afterwards, thanking all of the people that have made this possible. I am very confident that is exactly what is going to happen. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce a very important bill, one that my colleague Senator Kennedy and I have been working on for some time. For decades, the United States has been the standard bearer in bringing new drugs and medications to the world market. Like it or not, the FDA has a very important role in all of our daily lives. The FDA is involved in ensuring the safety of the meals we are eating today, the pills we are taking, and even the cell phones in our pockets and briefcases. The FDA's role in our health and in our economy is broad. Nearly half of all Americans take a prescription drug daily. Anyone who prescribes, provides or takes a prescription drug could benefit from enhanced safety and risk communication about these life-saving products. Over the last few years, a spate of safety issues, such as the withdrawal of the arthritis drug Vioxx and the labeling of antidepressants for suicidality in adolescents, has caused a crisis of public confidence in the FDA. I believe the American people are losing confidence in the FDA and its ability to evaluate and weigh the benefits and risks of prescription drugs. In addition, staff at the agency feel like they are under heavy fire, with little or no protection from the prevailing political winds, due to the lack of a confirmed Commissioner of Food and Drugs for most of the last six years. I believe that only Congress can restore the public's confidence in FDA and morale at the agency. In 2005, the HELP Committee held two hearings on the issue of drug safety. We received over 50 recommendations from witnesses at those hearings. At that time, Senator Kennedy and I pledged to develop a comprehensive response to the drug safety issues raised. Last August, we introduced the Enhancing Drug Safety and Innovation Act. That bill, S. 3807, was the product of working across party lines, and created a structured framework for resolving safety concerns. Careful and comprehensive pre-approval planning of how drugmakers and FDA will identify, assess and manage serious risks post-approval is a better way to obtain safety information without compromising patient access. In September 2006, the Institute of Medicine released its report titled ``The Future of Drug Safety: Promoting and Protecting the Health of the Public.'' The recommendations in this report had much in common with S. 3807. The Senate HELP Committee held a hearing in November 2006 at which representatives of the IOM, a physician and drug safety expert, patient groups, a consumer group, and a pharmaceutical company testified about the IOM report, the bill, and the relationship between them. In addition, other stakeholder groups made additional comments on the bill. Yesterday, FDA released their response to the IOM report. Newly confirmed Commissioner Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach has put forward a number of promising ideas to improve the internal processes and culture at FDA. His leadership is outstanding and his ideas are helpful, but internal change is not enough to alter public perception. FDA needs new drug safety authorities, and this bill provides those authorities. While the bill we are introducing today reflects numerous refinements to clarify ambiguities or to address issues that S. 3807 had not addressed, we realize that there are thoughtful differences of opinion and ideas on how best to move forward with drug safety. I welcome any and all suggestions on improving this bill, and I look forward to working with my colleagues and other stakeholders to understand those concerns more fully and incorporate any necessary changes in the bill which will be considered in front of the HELP Committee in the next few weeks. I hope that all of my colleagues will take another look at this legislation and its goals and work with me to change the status quo. Everyone agrees: We must do more for drug safety. Under the Enhancing Drug Safety and Innovation Act, FDA would begin to approve drugs and biologics, and new indications for these products, with risk evaluation and mitigation strategies (REMS). The REMS is designed to be an integrated, flexible mechanism to acquire and adapt to new safety information about a drug. The sponsor and FDA will assess and review an approved REMS at least annually for the first three years, as well as in applications for a new indication, when the sponsor suggests changes, or when FDA requests a review based on new safety information. The development of tools to evaluate medical products has not kept pace with discoveries in basic science. New tools are needed to better predict safety and efficacy, which in turn would increase the speed and efficiency of applied biomedical research. The Enhancing Drug Safety and Innovation Act would spur innovation by establishing a new public- private partnership between the FDA, industry and academia to advance the Critical Path Initiative and improve the sciences of developing, manufacturing, and evaluating the safety and effectiveness of drugs, devices, biologics and diagnostics. The Enhancing Drug Safety and Innovation Act also establishes a central clearinghouse for information about clinical trials and their results to help patients, providers and researchers learn new information and make more informed health care decisions. Finally, the Enhancing Drug Safety and Innovation Act would make improvements to FDA's process for screening advisory committee members for financial conflicts of interest. FDA relies on its 30 advisory committees to provide independent expert advice, lend credibility to the product review process, and inform consumers of trends in product development. The bill would clarify and streamline FDA's processes for evaluating candidates for service on an advisory committee, and address the key challenge of identifying a sufficient number of people with the necessary expertise and the fewest potential conflicts of interest to serve on advisory committees. I want to thank the dozens of stakeholders, including the Food and Drug Administration, patient and consumer groups, industry associations, individual companies, and scientific experts who have taken the time and effort to give us their comments and input on the bill. Their assistance has been invaluable, and I look forward to continuing to work with them as we go through this legislative process. Senator Kennedy and I believe that this bipartisan effort will bring more consistency, transparency, and accountability to the process of assuring a drug's safety after it is approved. The 110th Congress will hold an exceptionally full agenda with respect to the FDA. In addition to updating the FDA's authorities as we are proposing today, Congress must renew the drug and device user fee programs, as well as the Best Pharmaceuticals for Children and Pediatric Research Equity Acts. The introduction of this bill today is the beginning, not the end, of the process, and I look forward to working with my colleagues to advance these important pieces of legislation.

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, we have a process that is set up and a vote that is called for, and I think we ought to follow that process. I think we have made a lot of progress, and as long as we continue to have progress in a bipartisan way, this will make it through the process. It has been something everybody pledged themselves to early, and I hope we haven't broken that pledge. I object.

Mr. ENZI. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Cloture Motion

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I rise today to speak in support of cloture on the underlying bill. I appreciate the wise direction that this body has decided upon with regard to the minimum wage. We have correctly concluded that raising the minimum wage without providing relief for the small businesses that must pay for that increase is simply not an option. I hope this is an approach that our colleagues in the House will not derail. This approach recognizes that small businesses have been the steady engine of our growing economy and they have been the source of new job creation. It, also, recognizes that small businesses in every sense of the phrase are middle class families too. I am proud the body has chosen a path which attempts to preserve this segment of the economy which employs so many working men and women and trains them. The Senate has recognized the simple fact that a raise in the minimum wage is of no benefit to a worker without a job or a job seeker without a prospect. As this Congress moves forward, we will need to confront a range of issues facing working families. Lessons in this debate should not be forgotten as we approach complex issues. Yesterday, we were referencing the so-called war on the middle class. That is partisan rhetoric which was never accurate and is now simply divisive. Who is more middle class than America's small business men and women? Tax relief to the middle- class small business owners who must pay the cost of this wage increase mandate is no attack on the middle class. An attack would be passing the bill without such tax relief. I urge my colleagues to support cloture, and I yield the floor.

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I rise today to speak in support of the motion to invoke cloture on the Baucus substitute to H.R. 2. At about the noon hour today, we will be voting to end the debate on the minimum wage bill. Regardless of how that vote turns out, I believe the direction this body has decided upon with regard to minimum wage is clear. And I appreciate it. The direction the Senate has taken is that raising the minimum wage without providing relief for small businesses would be wrong. And now we have a cloture vote on a bill that includes relief for small businesses, which will soften the impact that the minimum wage increase will have on small businesses. We are trying to keep working families working. The people who run these small businesses are working families, too. They are taking a lot of risk and providing a lot of jobs. In fact, they are the engine that drives the United States. The big companies would like us to think they are. But small businesses create a lot of jobs. Now, primarily, the jobs we are talking about are for people just entering the labor market, the ones often who dropped out of school, who have very low employment skills. Those small businesses teach them some skills and move them on up to the path of employment. They are a huge part of the job training system in this country and they rarely get any credit for job training. We have had debate over the last week--and it has just been one week. I would like to point out that on Monday we did not have any votes. On Tuesday we were only allowed two votes. Through the whole week we only had 11 votes. We were not allowed any votes after Thursday, which included all of Friday and all of yesterday. That is really not an open process. That is only three days of voting on amendments. When we began this session, we talked about having an open process, a very bipartisan process of doing things. I am not sure we got the message from the last election, which was that the American people want us to do these things, but they want us to do them in a bipartisan way. I am hearing some rhetoric on the Senate floor about the Republicans want to do this; and the Democrats want to do that. What we need to talk about is what we need to do for America. We need to work together on these things. Right now we have a proposal for cloture that includes what both sides have been talking about, that takes care of the minimum wage worker and takes care of the businesses that employ them and gives them the training. We in the Senate recognize that small businesses have been the steady engine for growing the economy and that they have been the source of new job creation. America's working families rely on small businesses, and small businesses rely on working families. So I am proud this body has chosen a path that attempts to preserve this segment of the economy which employs so many working men and women. The Senate has recognized that our economy is interdependent. One simply cannot claim credit to be helping workers at the same time they are hurting the businesses that employ them. Recognition of this simple fact is the reason the bill before this body couples a raise in the minimum wage with relief to those businesses and working families that will face the most difficulty in meeting that mandate. This body has also recognized the even simpler fact that raising the minimum wage is of no benefit to a worker without a job or a job seeker without a prospect. I take this occasion to urge that these simple, real world truths be recognized by our colleagues in the other Chamber. I have gone through this process before on a number of bills and tried to figure out how it happens. A lot of time there is more animosity between the two Houses than there is between the two parties that serve in those Houses. I know making any change to the minimum wage bill they sent over will upset them on that end, just as any change they make to a bill on their end upsets us. We send them perfect bills and they have to fiddle with it, and they send us perfect bills and we fiddle with it. There is some animosity between the two Chambers. And then we have to get into the rules as well. All tax measures have to start in the House. That is fine as long as they start them. But there has to be a way to get the process moving. This bill has a way to get that process moving. It is more cumbersome than it probably ought to be, but I think with cooperation it will work, and I think the House will join us in this effort. It isn't as easy as just taking a small piece of something that affects the economy and doing it in isolation. When we start going to the broader economy, it gets more complicated. That is why our forefathers designed this great system of cumbersome Government. We have 100 people with 100 views--I don't know, maybe we have 100 people with 200 views, and the House has 435 people with at least an equal number of views. The beauty of our system is that it has to get through this maze of all of these people with different backgrounds and different ideas and different ways of seeing the world, which results in amendments which result usually in things getting better. It is often complicated, and that slows the process down. That is something we have to work through, but I think any mechanism we have that speeds things up usually results in us winding up with legislation we have to go back and correct. It is a tough system, a long system, but it works. Unquestionably, as this Congress moves forward, we will need to confront a range of issues facing working families. We have to face the rising cost of health insurance and the availability of that insurance, the necessity and costs of education and job training, and the desire to achieve an appropriate balance between work and family life. These are important issues, and the way this body has determined to address the minimum wage should give us an outline as to the way such other issues could be approached as well. We need to listen to each other and include those issues that make a difference without upsetting the whole world. It can be done. It has been done. Senator Grassley and Senator Baucus work together on legislation. They are the ones who put together this tax package. They said: No, this isn't exactly what I like or you like, but it is something we can like together, and it has a chance of passing this body. I have been pleased that there hasn't been a rage against the tax package they put together, just as there hasn't been a rage against raising the minimum wage. We appear to have two points on which there is agreement. I think that will be reflected later in today's vote, too. There are other issues. Those other issues have been reflected in amendments from our side. There have been a few, contrary to what has been said on the floor, amendments from the other side as well. When we were in the majority, we didn't put in nearly as many amendments on bills as the Democrats did, and I recognize why offering amendments is important. It is important because we have issues we think are important, and the only chance you have to have them passed on the floor is to put them in a bill as an amendment, if you are in the minority. So on our side, we will likely offer more amendments to the bills that come up this year than those who got to draft the bill to begin with. They are ideas we want to have considered. We hope they will be considered in a reasonable way and in a reasonable amount of time. I will be emphasizing to our side the need to keep those reasonable and to keep them within a reasonable timeframe. If we do that, we can progress through a lot of issues, such as the ones I mentioned. The rising cost and availability of health insurance in this country is at a crisis and we have to do something about it. There are a number of plans that are floating out there, and all of them--all of them-- have some good points to them. None of them is perfect. That bill will have to go through the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. It probably will. There are ways it can be written, I suppose, where it can be sent through the Judiciary Committee or sent through the Finance Committee. But usually that bill goes through the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. The chairman of the committee and I as ranking member of that committee--and it doesn't matter what session of Congress we are talking about or what decade of Congress you are talking about--the chairman and the ranking member in that committee often have a huge disparity of views on how to solve the health, education, labor, and pensions issues. We adopted 2 years ago a little rule that I found to be very useful when I was in the Wyoming legislature, and that is the 80-20 rule. That is, people agree on 80 percent of the issues and 80 percent of any issue. This isn't just a philosophy for Congress, this is a philosophy for one's daily life. If you are working with other people, you will probably find you will agree on 80 percent of whatever you are talking about. On any particular issue, you usually agree on 80 percent of that issue. If you concentrate on the 80 percent of agreement, there are a lot of possibilities for getting things done. If you concentrate on the 20 percent on which you don't agree, there is very little likelihood that you are going to progress on whatever it is you are talking about. That is something we have instituted in this committee, and I think that rule has moved it from the most contentious committee to the most productive committee. I don't know if people noticed during the last session of Congress, there were 35 bills brought out of that committee. We got 25 of them considered in the Senate and even helped the House to get 2 of theirs through. So we helped to get 27 bills signed by the President. That is at least 20 more than usual for any committee and probably about 24 more than usual for any committee. There are disadvantages to that. The press likes a good fight, and the press is more than willing to report on a good fight. We didn't have fights on those 27 bills that were signed. The most contentious one was the pension bill. The pension bill was 980 pages. It covers how to save people's pensions, how to make sure when they retire they will get what they have been promised, what they deserve, what they want, something that will give them quality of life in retirement. We made the most significant change in pension law in 30 years. I remember that we had an agreement before we ever brought it to the floor that there would be 1 hour of debate, two amendments, and the final vote. I went to the Parliamentarian at that time and explained what we were doing and made sure it was getting written up properly so we could do that the moment we began the debate. I asked: When is the last time that complicated of a bill had that kind of an agreement? The words I heard back were: Not in my lifetime. So it is possible to take difficult bills and arrive at agreement that will move the people's business forward. The unfortunate thing for the people of America is that when they are watching us on this floor, what they usually get to see is the 20 percent with which we disagree, the 20 percent we are not going to give in on, the 20 percent that defines us. I will be urging my side, and I have said it several times, there are issues that define us, but every issue is not an issue that defines us. We will probably be trying to figure out a way on every bill to make it a defining bill. With the amendments we have done on this bill, there has been some defining. But we have an opportunity today--I think it is going to happen at 12:15 p.m.--to invoke cloture on the package that includes what was asked for by this side and delivered by the other side. That is pretty landmark. That is pretty good. We do have the other business that needs to get done. It doesn't have to be done on this bill. Maybe in the meantime there are some issues we can work on--the issues we talked about in some of these amendments--where we can reach that 80 percent agreement and we can move on with those issues. In addressing the minimum wage, we have rejected the notion that it will be a clean bill. Ultimately, we did so because it is not a clean issue. By that, I mean neither the real world nor questions of national economics nor social policy are as simple as we would like them to be. Quite the contrary. They are complex and they are interrelated. While pretending that economic or social issues are simple, it often makes for great rhetoric here, and it makes for great politics, but it seldom makes responsible policy. Around here, clean more often than not simply means ``do it my way'' and does not respect the democratic process and allow the Senate to work its will. I am pleased we rejected such false simplicity and chose the course of coupling an increased wage with provisions that will assist these small business employers who will be facing the greatest difficulties in paying these increased costs. I hope we do not forget the wisdom of this approach as we address other workplace, economic, and social issues. None of these are simple and none, no matter how laudable the end, are without costs or free from the danger of unintended consequences where, in an effort to do some good, we wind up causing great harm. I am also heartened that in the course of this debate, this body has begun to recognize what I know from my life to be true. Working families are not only those who are employed by businesses, they are also those who own the businesses. I have noted many times that I was a small business owner, that my wife and I operated mom-and-pop shoe stores in Wyoming and Montana. My story is not unique, particularly in today's economy. I know all small business owners have two families: their own and the families of those who work for them. I also know that business owners feel the pressure of rising costs, the dilemma of difficult options, and the uncomfortable squeeze of modern life in both of their families as much as many workers do on their own. One will find that small business people are more connected to their workers. They work with them shoulder to shoulder on a daily basis. They know what is happening in their lives. I believe we have begun to realize this reality in the way we approach the minimum wage legislation. I do not think we should lose sight of it as it moves through this Congress. I also note that while I am pleased with the overall approach this body adopted, I am somewhat disappointed that it was not as complete as it could have been. In the event cloture is invoked, we would not have addressed a range of issues that were offered as early amendments and should have been considered and voted on. In this respect, I mention again those I mentioned late last week: Senator Gregg's amendment on employee option time, something we allow Federal sector employees to do; Senator DeMint's amendment dealing with the same matter, as well as Senator Burr's amendment on health insurance costs; and Senator Vitter's amendment that would have provided measured monetary relief for small businesses that make inadvertent paperwork errors in providing Government-required information--first-time basis, corrected, no impact to the employee. All of these were well reasoned, would have provided benefits in addition to or in counterbalance to a minimum wage hike, and all were entitled to due consideration and a vote in this Chamber. We were not allowed to have a vote. Many have charged the majority denied us a vote on these amendments because they would have been adopted and that would have somehow represented a win for Republicans. Therefore, goes the theory, voting on these amendments was prevented. Whether true or not, the lack of a vote on these amendments does nothing to lend credence to the view that Congress's partisanship too often trumps positive progress. The reality is good ideas do not simply fade away, and that if not here and now, then at some point in this Congress these and other good ideas must be given consideration and must be voted on. Fairness demands it, and our responsibility to working families and small businesses requires it. A vote for cloture is a vote for small business and working families. It is a vote for a well-balanced and bipartisan solution. I am pleased that we are at this point. I will ask my colleagues to vote for cloture. Mr. President, what is the time situation?

Mr. ENZI. I yield the remainder of the time to the Senator from South Carolina.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, the Republican leader has given me his time unless he should appear on the floor, and so I will do that. I am a little disturbed about what I have heard here in the last several speeches this morning. The vote we are about to have is on whether the minimum wage will increase and there will be tax breaks for small businesses. When we returned for this session of Congress, we had a number of bipartisan meetings, and I was pleased we had bipartisan meetings and talked about how we could work together and why we needed to work together for America. We talked about minimum wage a little bit, and I even saw newspaper articles where the majority leader and others on the Democratic side talked about the importance of having tax breaks for small business to take care of the impact from the increase in the minimum wage. I was encouraged by that. I thought: We are having some bipartisanship here. We are having some working together. I am encouraged. Now, of course, the minimum wage came to the floor and I felt for a while it was a bait and switch. After Senator Baucus, the Senator from Montana, and Senator Grassley, the Senator from Iowa, worked together to come up with this tax package and the tax package was introduced as a substitute to the bill, I said: I think we are making progress. I think this is going to work. I think it can happen. I think we can work together. I think we can get it done. Then, of course, we had the cloture vote on the straight minimum wage and I thought: What is going on here? Was that to get our attention and make us feel good and then rip it away? Rip away the comments that were made about the need to help small business? We don't need class warfare in this country. I keep hearing about a book that was mentioned here, ``The War Against The Middle Class.'' Well, I am trying to figure out how the minimum wage worker made it into the middle class. I think we are talking about the small businessmen, who are being scrunched in from all angles, who are in the middle class, who are employing the people, sometimes at minimum wage, usually at a minimum skills position, and they train them to get better skills, and when they get better skills and can do more, they get paid more. I always mention the McDonald's in Cheyenne, WY. A guy there starts people at minimum wage. Now, if they have to be at minimum wage more than about 3 weeks, they are probably not learning the job, probably not showing up on time. But the main point is he has had 3 people who started at minimum wage who now own 21 McDonald's. So there are opportunities out there, but you have to learn and improve to get more wages. We can raise the minimum wage and we are going to raise the minimum wage. And that will take the bottom step out of the ladder and people will be able to step up one more. Then, as we increase prices to help pay for that, unless we have the tax breaks, all we did was raise prices. I hope we do not get into a class warfare. We do not need hostility to workers and between parties. It is 2 years until we have an election again. We do not need to start campaigns right now. We need to solve problems right now. We have said one of the problems is the minimum wage, and we are going to solve it. They said we debated this six times in the last 10 years. We have. And every time it was brought up, we needed to do some decreases in taxes for the small businesses to take care of the impact this will have. That part got ignored every time. Consequently, raising of the minimum wage got ignored each time. Hopefully, we will not ignore either message and we will do both. The vote we will have this morning will be in regard to that. Now, I will have to take some time after the vote and talk about some of the things that were raised because we cannot discuss them in a short period of time. There was talk about overtime taken away. We need to have debate on that. There was talk about unemployment. We need to have a little debate on it. When we are talking about safety officials at mines being cut back, we need to have a talk about that. Senator Kennedy, I, Senator Rockefeller, and Senator Isakson went to West Virginia and looked at the Sago mine and talked to the people there. We talked to the mine officials. We talked to union officials. We talked to the families. We did a bill in 3 months that changed mine safety for the first time in 28 years because we worked together. We did not try to find divisions. We tried to find places we could come together. Now, safety officials were cut back. They were cut back all over the Nation. The production of coal went down decidedly. Mines were closed. There were less mines. Of course, then the price of coal came back up and the mines opened again, and everything lags with the Federal Government. There are problems we need to solve, but we do not need to make them into a war. We need to solve the problems that are involved in these instances and keep moving on for America. That is the vote we will take later today: a chance to move on for America. We will raise the minimum wage, and we are going to help out the small businesses, those people with all the risk out there who are employing people and training people so that they can continue to hire those people and pay those people so we can have the jobs and the training that the small business provides. I hope that is the track we will go down. I know it will not be unanimous on either side, but we can get there if we work together. I yield the floor and I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. ENZI. I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, over the lunch hour, or shortly after that, the Senator from Massachusetts and I will work together to see what we can do on the amendments, to see if they can be voted on as expeditiously as possible. I, too, feel compelled to address the question of the Senator from North Dakota about the number of days we counted on this. The minority will always count the days on a bill as those days we are allowed to vote. We only voted three out of seven, until today when we got the second cloture vote. We will insist we get votes on amendments as we proceed through this bill and other bills. I am pleased the Senator from Massachusetts is willing to work with us to see what we can do on the outstanding amendments. Mr. LOTT addressed the Chair.

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, on behalf of Senator Cornyn, I ask unanimous consent to set the pending amendment aside and I call up amendments Nos. 135 and 138. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Whitehouse.) Without objection, it is so ordered. The clerk will report.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I would make a brief comment, if the Senator will allow that, prior to his speech.

Mr. ENZI. I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Massachusetts for his comments. He makes some very persuasive arguments in a very short period of time on the four amendments I talked about, and I am sure we could reach an agreement and have a very short debate, probably 10 minutes equally divided, on those four and then a vote, and that would simplify things a lot. I understand his comments about how we have over--I don't remember how many amendments--but I need to mention, there are amendments on the Democratic side. It is a little easier for them to forgo their amendments, because they are in control. The other side doesn't have a way to bring up issues. What I am saying right now is what the Democrats said for the last 2 years and what Senator Kennedy said a minute ago is what our leadership had to say on issues as we filed cloture. This is a very common procedure, and we all know how it works. So we will be dusting off arguments from the other side, they will be dusting off arguments from us, but hopefully we can progress through these issues in a very substantial way and get them done. I appreciate those comments, and I will learn from them. I did notice the dates we talked about for quick resolution on the minimum wage happened before this Chamber had television. I suspect a lot of the debates we have here have more to do with television than they do with the substance of the amendment we are working on. I hope Senators can forgo that possibility, although I am not sure in this culture we can. I would hope the pundits out there, radio talk shows and television talk shows, could forgo on some of the issues trying to foment each of their sides so they argue and fight. It would be a lot easier if we had some civility that went with it. I appreciate the other side's civility through these debates and I would ask that they allow these four more amendments. I yield the floor.

Mr. ENZI. I would allow the others to go first. I was trying to keep a longer queue from happening.

Mr. ENZI. I was hoping to be able to speak on the bill at some point sometime, too.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I am glad to have an opportunity to speak on the minimum wage bill that is before the Senate. I have spoken a little bit during the last week, but I have held in reserve a lot of time because we had amendments offered that other Senators wanted to explain. Normally when a bill is on the floor we have to stand down here and say: Please, if you have amendments, bring them to the floor so we can debate them. However, in about the first hour that this bill was on the floor, we had a dozen amendments that were suggested, and people were clamoring for time to debate them. We had amendments from both sides of the aisle. I think there were over 115 amendments that were suggested to this bill. Everybody realizes that 115 amendments are never going to be voted on with any bill. I don't think we have even come close to that on any of the bills that I have seen in the 10 years I have been here. Later today, the majority leader is going to file cloture. He has given notice that he will do that. That is asking the Senate to garner 60 votes in favor of bringing the debate to a close on the Baucus substitute which contains the minimum wage increase and the small business tax incentive package. I congratulate Senators Grassley and Baucus for the tremendous effort they put into coming up with a package for small business that would help offset the impact of the minimum wage increase. It is something that was considered the last time there was a minimum wage increase, and I suspect that in the future it will always be a part of a package in some way to make sure that we don't harm these small businesspeople who provide a training ground for those with minimum skills so that they can get better skills and get better jobs. The small businesses of this country are hiring people with no skills, teaching them how to operate a cash register, how to interact with customers, and often how to dress, how to cook--all kinds of services. I am reminded that in Cheyenne, WY, we have a McDonald's. They are always used as the example in minimum wage debates. They take a lot of grief, and they really don't deserve all that grief. They do a tremendous job of training young people in some very basic customer service skills. The reason I am reminded of the Cheyenne McDonald's is that we like to point out that three former employees there who started at minimum wage now own 21 McDonald's. So it is an entry way to greater things. It is not for everybody, but for those with a desire to learn and succeed, there are possibilities. Any time we can hold out hope, we are helping people. Yesterday there was a speech on the floor of the Senate and it was said that we had already spent 5 days on this bill and it was time to move on. Yesterday was actually the fourth day on the bill. Today is the fifth day. We will not be able to have any votes today. I don't know whether you count that or not because we were talking about how the Senate is supposed to work 40 hours a week just like other people do. I know a lot of my colleagues and I have our 40 hours in by about Wednesday, but at any rate, we have been talking about working a 5-day week. We are here, and we are talking, but we will not vote today. I don't know whether you can really count that as a day on the bill. We talked on the bill on Monday, but we didn't have any votes Monday. So I don't know if you can count that as a day on the bill either. Next Monday we have the right to talk on it again, and then Tuesday morning there will be the cloture vote. That would be the next vote allowed on the bill. We really had 3 days on the bill. How productive were we during those 3 days? We voted on 11 amendments. We have over 100 amendments. Many of the amendments deal with labor issues. There are some that don't deal directly with the minimum wage. But the minority side, as I have watched over the last several years, always has some unrelated amendments that they want to showcase and get passed. Another thing I have noticed as I have been here is the unfortunate thing that we do to amendments that are suggested on a key bill. Once that amendment has been suggested, if the majority is the Democrats and the Republicans suggest the amendment, that is considered a poison pill, something just designed to take the bill down. I can say that because in the past on some Republican bills, when the Democrats would submit an amendment, it would be labeled a poison pill. Unfortunately, the people of America don't get to see the debate that occurs off the Senate floor. They are not often invited into the committee meetings. They are not invited into the bipartisan task force groups that work across the aisle on solving problems before they even get to committee. There is a good reason for that. If the media were invited, they would take some of the dumb ideas that are thrown out-- and I have to admit when I am throwing out ideas, I throw out a lot of ideas; some of them stick and some you really recognize as being dumb-- and concentrate on those few dumb ideas because people get enjoyment out of that. Some of these meetings where there is brainstorming and trying to find common ground have to be held separately. These are often very productive talks. There are a number of them going on right now on key issues. I think that this is the best way to handle a bill. But what America gets to watch is us debating on this floor, the attitudes we project, and the arguments that we project. I know most of the people out there watching are always rooting for one side or the other. I don't think it is the vast majority of independents who are spending their time addicted to the television. So our constituents kind of expect us to ram home the arguments from our side, and we do. I contend that what we get to talk about on the floor of the Senate is the 20 percent of the issues we are never going to agree on. We have to get past that point and get to the point where we look at all proposals in a very serious way and figure out a way that we can accept it or modify it in some way that makes it acceptable. What I usually do is try to find a third way. We have to do a bit more of that around here, and if we do I think we will find that the Senate will be a lot more successful. Senator Kennedy and I have been practicing that for the last couple of years. We have been working prior to committee meetings, in committee meetings, and after committee meetings. We have been very successful at not having much floor debate on things that came through committee. We got 35 bills through committee, and the longest debate we had on the floor was over the pension bill. That bill was very important, one of the most important bills in the last 2 years. It was 980 pages long in the Senate, which is not a small bill. We already had agreement before we came to the floor that there would be one hour of debate equally divided, with two amendments and a final vote. Check back through the years and see how often that has happened. That was an extremely difficult bill, and we had 1 hour of debate, two amendments, and a final vote. It can be done around here. In fact, we wound up with 27 bills signed by the President. We are checking to see how many committees have had that kind of production. Most of those didn't get debated here at all because there wasn't that 20 percent of disagreement. We had the 80-percent agreement and we went with it. That is not possible on all bills, and I understand that. I am certainly encouraging my colleagues to get together, work on bills prior to them becoming what might be considered a poison pill, and see if something cannot be worked out. Hopefully, we can go back through some of these amendments that have been offered before and look at them with clear eyes and see if there isn't a way that what is being talked about in principle cannot be achieved somehow. I want to let the people watching this debate that they are not seeing the real story on bills. There is a different and better way we could do it. I hope that is how we will do it more often. Now, I will speak a little more on the bill before us. I am going to be disappointed if we don't have a few more votes on the bill prior to having the cloture vote. Again, it is a request from the minority to have an opportunity to vote on some of their amendments. So I urge my Democratic colleagues to allow a vote on a few very important amendments that my Republican colleagues have offered to the bill. I know the Democrats don't want to vote on the amendments because each of them is reasonable enough that it could pass. I know that may sound silly, but that is how things often work here. I have offered amendments--and the Democrats have sounded the trumpet that they will allow an open process on amendments offered, but they have chosen to filibuster by delay. When we only get 11 votes and only 3 days on which we are allowed to offer amendments, it is hard to claim it was a full week. Often bills that are very important here take 3 weeks. In fact, I think that is probably the normal range for a bill around here. So they have the opportunity right now to let the clock run out. But we could have already voted on the minimum wage and small business incentive package if we could have received some votes on the important amendments that have been offered. We said we were going to cull down the number of amendments, and we obviously did. I call for a vote on four amendments we still have outstanding-- although there are many others outstanding. I want to reiterate my conviction that as we move to raise the minimum wage, we must also provide a measure of relief to small businesses which will bear the cost of the increased wages. Let me first turn to the four amendments I have noted. Over the course of this debate, we have heard many times that the minimum wage is an issue of fairness, an issue that affects working parents and working families. The minimum wage is not the only relevant matter before us that implicates issues of both fairness and family life. One of the most significant dilemmas that face working men and women is the struggle to maintain a balance between their work and family life. Senator Gregg offered an amendment that reaches to the core of this issue by providing the opportunity for private sector employees to enter voluntary--I stress the word ``voluntary''--flexible work arrangements with their employers. Senator Gregg requested and deserves a vote on his employee option time amendment. However, more importantly, working families in this country deserve a vote on this amendment. Twenty-eight years ago, this body gave Federal employees this highly valued benefit. Now the other side of the aisle wants to deny private employees the same right. Where this can be a big problem is where you have a private employee who is married to a public employee. The public employee can rework his or her schedule to be able to do what the family needs to have done, and the spouse cannot do that because it is illegal. They say, why can my husband or wife do it? Well, because it is legal in the public sector. Even unions recognize this benefit is coveted by employees. In a union-sponsored health care worker survey, scheduling options was the second most important factor in accepting a job. Working families are striving to find the right balance of work and time with their children, spouses, and other loved ones. The Gregg amendment will remove a major obstacle to finding this balance. Nobody should properly invoke the importance of providing relief or help for working families, while simultaneously denying a vote on this amendment. This is not only fair, but this is giving the employee the right to choose, in cooperation with their employer, the best work schedule for their family in the workplace. Senator Kennedy has talked about the children of low-wage workers in this country. Allowing employees more flexible work schedules will cut down on unscheduled leave, sick days, child care costs, and the loss of productivity that occurs when an employee is on the job but their heart is somewhere else tending to the needs of family. Public sector employees have enjoyed flextime benefits for nearly three decades. We have not heard a lot of problems about it. At the same time, it has been denied workers in the private sector. Where is the fairness in that result? The amendment offered by Senator DeMint goes to the heart of this discriminatory result. It says if we are going to allow flextime benefits to some and not others, we ought to correct the system the other way; if it is not good in the public sector, maybe we ought to eliminate it under the Federal sector. Senator DeMint deserves a vote, provided the other one fails. Fundamental fairness demands it. By eliminating flexible work schedules for Government employees until private employees have the same rights, we hope to force our friends on the other side of the aisle to acknowledge and address this disparity. If flextime is such a terrible proposal and so dangerous to private employers and employees, one would think they would support this amendment to protect Government employees. But there is a reason they will not support this amendment. Employees who have flextime like it: 79 percent of the women who have it use it; 68 percent of the men who have it use it. There are many Senators in this Chamber who offer their employees flexible schedules. Why is it good enough policy for Senators and Government employees and not for the private sector? It is long past time for the Senate to give this popular benefit full and open consideration. Once again, if we are truly concerned about our working families and about being fair, we should not deny a vote on this amendment. Another amendment I hope we will vote on is Senator Burr's health flex proposal. All of us know health insurance costs are a major issue for both working families and small employers. This amendment would give employers the option to provide a $2.10 increase in wages or spend the increase on health care benefits. We have to recognize the tough choices employees face every day and how the underlying bill will make those choices even tougher. Most Americans get their health care through employment, but it is becoming more and more difficult for small employers to keep up with escalating health care costs. Everybody in the country recognizes the difficulty of keeping up with health care costs. The small businessman, like everybody else, wants to have insurance for his family and his employees. As most of us know, 46.6 million people in the United States, or one in seven Americans, lacked insurance during 2005. There is no pretending that a minimum wage increase is going to make that number any smaller. Senator Burr's amendment addresses this negative side effect. The availability of affordable health insurance is clearly an issue for all families, and any time this body has an opportunity to address or examine ideas designed to achieve that end, I don't think we should refuse to do so. Senator Burr has asked for a vote and he, too, deserves a vote on this important issue. Finally, Senator Vitter also offered an amendment that directly relates to the group of people I feel will be most harmed by this mandated increase in the minimum wage. His amendment is one of fundamental fairness, also, to the small employers who create the jobs and try their best to play by the rules. Senator Vitter's amendment recognizes that small businesses often do not have the in- house resources or the outside experts they need to assist them in complying with the ever-growing amounts of paperwork they are required to provide to the federal government. They cannot afford to hire expensive consultants to do this for them. Paperwork in the Federal Government is voluminous, and learning how to do it correctly often takes very thick manuals. The information they are required to give to the Federal Government is very extensive. I used to file some of those forms and reports, and I was amazed at the textbooks you had to go through to be able to fill out the forms properly. Part of that is a problem we have with the Paperwork Reduction Act. We ought to take a look at the Paperwork Reduction Act again. Our income tax forms could be much easier to fill out. I went to the IRS when I first got here, as the only accountant in the Senate, and told them that I have done a few of those forms. I could not understand them; I could not understand the logic behind them. There are a couple of places where a line could be added and you would not have to go to another form. I found out there is a huge penalty to Government agencies who add a line to a form. But there is no penalty for adding another chapter to the book that explains the form. Therefore, it is easier to add another whole chapter than to add a simple line. The Paperwork Reduction Act is creating some problems for small business that keep the paperwork from being plain and simple. As a result, small businesses sometimes make inadvertent errors in complying with these obligations. His amendment would relieve small businesses from monetary fines for certain first-time violations that pose no threat to health or safety. This is a very important criteria. The Federal Government should not be playing a game of ``gotcha'' in these circumstances, particularly with small businesses. What they should be doing is playing fair. If we, too, are being fair, we would allow a vote on this important amendment. Apart from these amendments, I believe we need to focus on the central question before this body. Everybody in this Chamber knows we will approve an increase in the minimum wage and that we will do it very soon. The debate, as I keep reminding people, has not been over whether to do the increase, it has been whether we can keep people in business at the same time we do the increase and the ways to do that. We have made some progress on that issue, I believe. There is a long road ahead to do the tax package Senator Baucus and Senator Grassley so capably worked out in a very bipartisan way because those bills are supposed to start in the House and that will be part of the argument, too. There will be some argument. Some of the offsets are opposed by some people--and I think, if you look at the list of those who oppose them, it is big businesses, not small businesses. I believe they think they are being left out of this process. However, this is a small business issue, and I am trying to solve some of those small business problems. The approval of an increase to $7.25 is simply not an issue; and, further rhetoric on this point adds nothing to the important public debate that remains. The debate is simple: How do we go about mandating this increase without harming the small businesses that have to pay for it? These small businesses have been the engine of our economy and employ the bulk of the minimum wage workers. We do great harm not only to these small businesses but to all those workers who rely on them for their livelihood if we don't provide the practical means for businesses to afford such mandated increases. We have failed in our responsibilities if we do not balance an increase in the minimum wage with the appropriate relief for small businesses. For a worker without a job, a higher minimum wage is meaningless. As a former small business owner--my wife and I had three shoe stores--I know how difficult it can be to meet payroll every week and meet all the other obligations a small businessman has to face. Here are the realities: Raising the minimum wage to $7.25 imposes a 41- percent increase in labor costs for a small employer with minimum wage workers. Many of them will see this as a tax. That is why some on our side have problems voting for an increase in taxes. It goes to a very important segment of our population, but it is a 41-percent increase in labor costs. Every employer has to face the very real issue of how he or she will deal with this increased cost and still make the payroll week after week. This cartoon appeared in one of the papers. It says: The good news is the U.S. House voted to increase the minimum wage. The bad news is I can't afford to pay any more. Although this cartoon may, at first, appear humorous, these are very real and very difficult questions that impact our small business employers dramatically. It is not a laughing matter. These payroll increases have to be paid for by employers, and money doesn't grow on trees. A lot of the things we look at as options often are not available to them. The fact is that competition regulates prices-- unless we have price controls--and employers must make hard decisions as how to meet these increased payroll obligations. When costs go up, businesses must first look to cut expenses. The choices they have can be very difficult. To meet higher mandated payroll costs, the smaller employer may be forced to consider cutting back on benefits, such as health insurance, retirement, and leave plans. It is simply too easy to forget that fringe benefits have a significant cost, and if a small employer must reduce expenses to meet payroll, these costs are often the first to go. Beyond cutting fringe benefits, small businesses may need to consider cutting back work hours or eliminating overtime or eliminating some duplication on a shift. I mentioned a video store that has always had two people to close up because they think two is the minimum for safety. They are now talking about having to go to one person to close up. Cutting hours, eliminating overtime, laying off workers or not hiring more are traditional and often necessary responses to meeting increased costs. Unfortunately, these actions ultimately hurt the very workers the minimum wage increase is designed to help. Another thing we need to do--and I have avoided putting it into the bill as an amendment--is to reauthorize the Workforce Investment Act. The HELP Committee has passed it unanimously twice. The Senate has passed it unanimously twice. But we have not been able to get a conference committee. Part of the reason for not getting a conference committee is worrying about where the conference committee will go. There ought to be a lot more confidence in the conference committee on the side of the Democrats right now because they will control the conference committee. I am hoping that the Workforce Investment Act can be a way that we can help get more job training. Small businesses also provide some job training for which they do not get paid. That does not come under that bill. As I mentioned, small businesses often hire people with minimum skills and teach them the skills they need to move up the wage ladder. Incidentally, of the businesses I checked on, the average time that a person stayed at minimum wage was 3 weeks. If they had the capability to learn, they moved up quickly. We must also remember that when confronted by higher labor costs, employers will naturally gravitate toward filling positions with the most highly skilled, experienced, and productive workers available. Once again, this phenomenon of replacing low-skilled workers with high-skilled workers in the face of rising labor costs winds up harming the very workers the minimum wage seeks to help. Minimum wage positions are often the entryway into the world of work for those who lack skills and experience. Mandated increases in the minimum wage run the risk of closing that entryway to many. Beyond these cost-cutting measures of eliminating benefits, reducing hours, downsizing, laying off employees, and reducing low-skill and entry-level employment, employers might have to face the prospect of increasing the price for goods and services. Such increases drive inflation and cause all consumers to ultimately pay the price of these mandates. The irony is that as the cost of these labor increases is passed through to consumers, it affects everyone, including the minimum wage workers whose recently increased wages are suddenly devalued by the increased price of goods and services that impact them as well. My colleagues and I feel strongly about the working families of this country and the businesses they work in and the businesses they run. I wish to emphasize that point. I consider the working families of this country to also include small businesses. A lot of us don't realize the ``wake up in the middle of the night wondering what is going to happen with the business'' concern and the real risks these people take. A lot of them are just mom-and-pop businesses that hire 3, 5, 15 people. There is support for raising the minimum wage, but we recognize that by doing so, we put people out of business or make them cut their workforce. If we end up putting someone out of work, we are not doing them any favors. That is the reason we have offered a number of amendments to H.R. 2. This bill never went through the committee process, either in this body or in the other body. I think the committee process helps the chances of moving a bill along and takes care of a lot of the amendments we maybe ought not debate on the floor. We have not had a chance to offer any amendments at all to this legislation until this week. When a bill goes directly to the floor and circumvents the committee process, Members have no choice but to go through the committee amendments process on the floor of the Senate. We only got to vote on 11 amendments, and have only gotten 3 days to vote on amendments. Once again, I urge the Democratic leaders to allow us to vote on the amendments we have offered, and I strongly urge them not to forget the working families of this country who employ low-skilled workers. They will need real relief in order to keep their businesses growing and their employees working under this mandate. This body must commit in a bipartisan way now to the real issue at hand; that is, providing a responsible increase in the minimum wage that allows small businesses to continue employing and providing job opportunities to the very people the minimum wage is designed to help. The simple answer is before us. Amendments Nos. 135 and 138, En Bloc, to Amendment No. 100

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside, and I call up amendment No. 169.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, the flexible time proposals we are debating today could have a monumental impact on the lives of thousands of working men, women and families in America. There are some fortunate Americans, including most State and Federal workers, who already have the right to flexible time scheduling. In fact, according to a national study, some 43 percent of all U.S. workers have this right, and they love to use it. Seventy-nine percent of the women who have to use it, and 68 percent of the men who have to use it, Study on the Changing Workforce, Families and Work Institute) But the majority of Americans do not have access to flexible time scheduling, and they deserve it, too. It could help the 67 percent of Americans who say they don't have enough time with their children and the 63 percent of Americans who say they don't have enough time with their spouses. At the very least, it would remove one of the barriers for achieving a work-life balance. So who are the people who are prohibited access to this type of benefit? Well, it isn't any Member of this Senate. Salaried employees are not penalized for flexible work arrangements. Employers don't have to increase pay for these employees if they work more in one week and less in another. It isn't government employees, either. Flexible work arrangements have been available in the Federal Government for almost three decades. In fact, this program has been so successful with government employees that in 1994 President Clinton issued an Executive order extending it to parts of the Federal Government that had not yet had the benefits of the program. President Clinton then stated, the ``Broad use of flexible arrangements to enable Federal employees to better balance their work and family responsibilities can increase employee effectiveness and job satisfaction while decreasing turnover rates and absenteeism. I couldn't agree more, but now we need to go further and extend this privilege to private sector workers. It is long past time to give employees the choice--the same choice as Federal workers. There is no reason that government employees need greater flexibility in meeting and balancing the demands of work and family than private sector employees. There are two proposals under consideration today. Senator Gregg has offered an employee option time amendment. This would give employees the option of ``flexing'' their schedules over a 2-week period. Basically, hourly employees who wish to could voluntarily have their work hours calculated on a biweekly rather than a weekly basis. This way a working mother could work 50 hours in one week and 30 hours in the next week, while her husband worked an opposite schedule and their children enjoyed an extra 10 hours a week with a parent. If such an arrangement were made and agreed to by both the employee and the employer, the employee would still be entitled to overtime for any hours beyond that agreement. For example, if an employee was asked to work 32 hours in a week that was scheduled to be a 30-hour week, the employee would be paid overtime for the additional 2 hours. I have to emphasize again, because I know my friends on the other side of the aisle don't always understand this, that the flexible time arrangement is entirely voluntary. In fact, the Gregg amendment requires written consent from the employee, and only employees with at least a year's tenure would be eligible. No employee could be pressured to enter into one of these agreements. Such coercion is specifically prohibited and punishable with monetary penalties. The second amendment which has been offered to this bill is a little different approach. Senator DeMint's amendment addresses the disparity between government and private employees that has existed since 1978. It essentially says government employees cannot exercise this benefit until private employees have the same right. I hope we will pass the Gregg amendment today and the DeMint will not be necessary. There is no reason this shouldn't be the case. There is a long history of support for flextime on both sides of the aisle. I hope my friends won't mind if I remind them of a little of this history. Although Democrats may now be attacking flextime proposals and calling it a ``wage cut'', some seem to be forgetting that flextime is not a new issue but one with a long, bipartisan history. In the early 1980s Senator Stevens led the effort to secure Federal worker access to compensatory time off and flextime. In 1985 former Senator Nickles shepherded a bill through the Senate that extended these positive benefits to State and local employees. These Senators did not foist an unpopular program onto unsuspecting workers over the objections of Democrats. Both of those laws passed the Senate with overwhelming, bipartisan support. Senator Kennedy voted to ensure that Federal employees would have access to flextime to have the scheduling options necessary to balance work and family life. Senator Kennedy, along with 11 other Democrats, cosponsored the Nickles bill to extend flextime and comp time to State and local employees. Flextime was not a pay cut for State and local workers when Senator Kennedy and other Democrats endorsed it in 1982 and 1985. And it is not a pay cut for private sector employees now. We are coming together--Republicans and Democrats--to raise the minimum wage in this bill, and to do it with fairness for the employers who will be subject to this mandate. Let us also come together to give fairness to the employees who have been left out in the cold for 28 years. Let's give private employees the same right to arrange flexible work schedules as government employees. I urge my colleagues to support the Gregg amendment and, if it becomes necessary, the DeMint amendment.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I yield the remainder of the time to the Senator from Nevada.